Classical Music

Includes son(s) for vln and pno by Ludwig van Beethoven. Soloists: Pamela Frank, Claude Frank.

The year 2010 marked a century since the London String Quartet, known affectionately as the LSQ, gave its first concerts. Britain's leading chamber ensemble for two decades, it was equally well known in America, where it competed on equal terms with the Flonzaley Quartet: in 1925 leading American critic Olin Downes hailed 'the finest quartet playing that has been heard this Winter in New York'. The LSQ gave many premières, made myriad records and at different times included Albert Sammons and William Primrose. That almost no trace of the group remained in the catalogues in its centenary year was sad but easily explicable. Much of its recorded output was produced by the acoustic process; and often the music was abridged because the Columbia Graphophone Company was not fully committed to chamber music until around 1923. One can still enjoy those old discs, which represent the best of the neat, unfussy British string style; and some of them are reproduced here. But the five programmes performed at the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1951, issued here for the first time, inevitably give a better idea of the LSQ's capabilities: for one thing, they are played straight through, before a sympathetic audience, rather than being done in a sterile studio by the old stop-start 78rpm method.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Whether performing Grieg, Grainger, or Schumann, Grainger himself seizes on the music's rifts: while he can produce a fetching cantabile, he tends to disturb the surface by jabbing at the accompaniments, shifting mood without preparation, sharpening the rhythmic profile (a special boon in the Schumann Symphonic Etudes), and grabbing on to small details. The piano part of the orchestral In a Nutshell is not really a solo opportunity—but Grainger uses it as a platform to rail against the orchestra, snapping out his accents in a way that turns the music violent... Echt Grainger is certainly what we get on the Music & Arts CD... However, I can't help regretting Music & Arts's choices when they put together this CD. I have no complaints about the performances themselves. Grainger's antisentimental roughening of the Grieg (modeled, in part, on his mentor Grieg's own readings) is the most vital I know; and despite the sprinkle (and occasional downpour) of wrong notes, this particular performance (once available on an International Piano Archives LP) is arguably the best representation (he never made a studio account) that has survived. But why couple it with the commercial studio recordings of the Schumann works, which have long been widely available from both Pearl and Biddulph?

Still, Maggi Payne's transfers are good, too...and former Fanfare colleague Kevin Bazzana's elaborate essay serves as a model for the kind of annotation that [others] should be providing...

-- Peter J. Rabinowitz, FANFARE [3/1998]

[A] must-have for Frederic Rzewski's fans, of whom, to judge from his large CDiscography, there exists a passel... This performance by the composer (an excellent pianist) of the solo-piano work, The Road (1996), consists of "Turns" and "Tracks," the first two of a projected eight parts, which Rzewski guesses will take about two and a half hours to play. The music shows to excellent advantage one of Rzewski's (for me) more engaging sides—a taste for the whimsically extravagant meander crafted in an anything but slipshod manner. From his remarks we learn what the music already demonstrates: a commitment to structure, schemata, form (more apparent, in the event, in the all-piano release). The Road also reveals Rzewski's fondness for broad effects: on toward the end of "Turns" we hear a stretch of hand-to-wood drumming; in the 25-minute "Tracks," which begins in silence, thence to some scarcely audible inside-the-piano scratching, we hear in addition to some impressively powerful keyboard writing renewed knocks on the instrument's body, a little vocalizing, and so on.

Rzewski's music rarely strays far from his social concerns. "'Turns' is a set of eight two-minute studies, some of which resemble fugues. No. 4 is a piano arrangement of a choral piece protesting the French nuclear tests in the South Pacific, 'Stop the Testing!' which I wrote on the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing... ."

Whangdoodles (1990), composed for its present performers, is a work of considerable charm and ingenuity. As its motivic device, Rzewski takes two songs, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, (O the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees I the rockrye springs where the whangdoodle sings. . . ), and Yidl mit 'n Fidi, which bounce about and mesh into a comely entity. As for acerb tonalities, the writing wouldn't trouble your maiden aunt. Winant's important percussion part consists largely of a hammered dulcimer, "a folk instrument of Persian origin . . . found . . . in both East European and Appalachian traditional music. 1 would like to think that the 'whangdoodle' of the American hobo song may suggest the whanging, or twanging, sound typical of the instrument." Rzewski goes on to say that for this work his "technique involves the intentional suppression of the censoring superego . . . while the writer dodges through the window thereby opened." In the parlance of the volk Rzewski celebrates, "Whatever gets you there," for indeed it does.

In the final work, To the Earth (1985), we hear another of Rzewski's penchants, which in this tidily concocted and brief (8:49) morsel works very nicely: chanted speech. Percussionist William Winant delicately drums on four flowerpots while reciting a "text based on a Homeric hymn," ("To the Earth, Mother of us all, I will sing . . . "). A paean to Mother Earth on flowerpots indeed!

Performances top-drawer, recorded sound very good.

-- Mike Silverton, FANFARE

Because it's the most immediately accessible of the piano disc's works, let's begin with this two-piano version of Rzewski's hard-driving, viscerally affecting Winnshoro Cotton Mill Blues of 1980. (For the original, spectacularly recorded solo assault, see hatART 6089, North American Ballads & Squares, Frederic Rzewski performing.) The piece pictures its subject, a cotton mill at full tilt, as handily as any tone poem I can think of, working itself thence into a neat transition to the eponymous job-lament dating from the 1930s ("Old man Sargent, sittin' at his desk I The damned old fool won't give us a rest I He'd take the nickels offa dead man's eyes . . . ").

Night Crossing with Fisherman (1994), for two pianos (Ursula Oppens is the dedicatee), isn't quite as thematically coherent as its title suggests. The work divides into three parts, "Night," a moody introspection for piano solo; the aptly titled "Crossing," for two pianos in intense conversation; and "Fisherman," for piano solo and Rzewski's recitation of a passage from the Arabian Nights (politically relevant, of course) about a fisherman who labors through the night for a man asleep. (Presumably it is Oppens who takes the "Night" solo.)

Winnshoro Cotton Mill Blues makes its mark by kicking subtlety out the door. By contrast, Ludes I and 2, of 12 short pieces each (the longest, 1:41, the shortest, 0:38), insinuate themselves into one's affections, playful, will-o'-the-wisp creatures that they are, by degree. Rzewski does an excellent, often fascinating job of explaining his music's background and form. So I won't trouble to summarize his "how these delights came about." Suffice that they range widely in substance and mood, happily short of Rzewski's affection for maul-driven social panaceas.

-- Mike Silverton, FANFARE

Few pianists can equal Charles Rosen for sheer lucidity of thought... the playing is big and confident (nothing frail about Rosen's vision of Chopin). Then, too, his fastidious attention to detail—especially his rhythmic acuity and his scrupulous inner lines—often lights up the music in revealing ways (note how he puts into relief the dotted gestures in the Polonaise-fantaisie). And his sympathy for the avant-garde carries over to the finale of the Second Sonata, which has rarely had its modernistic spirit so persuasively conveyed.

-- Peter J. Rabinowitz, FANFARE [1/1991]

Dussek: Duos for 2 Fortepianos

Classical Music

For players and listeners alike, the viola quintets of Mozart stand among the highest examples of chamber music. There are many who would not hesitate to name the most often heard of them (the C major and G minor) as representing some of the finest music in our heritage, in any category. The Fine Arts Quartet, which recorded these masterpieces for Vox, was a distinguished American ensemble, tracing its beginnings to the early 1940s in Chicago.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The first two volumes in this series -the only one ever recorded with the same pianist playing all works - met with high critical acclaim. Jonathan Woolf wrote in MusicWeb International "...beautifully played, and recorded, the first box in Music & Arts' series [CD-1236] is profoundly impressive." And Jed Distler wrote in Gramophone: "My review of Volume I praised Grante's thoughtful virtuosity and stylistic insights, together with his wide range of agogic stresses, articulations and embellishments, not to mention an acute sense of textural diversity an registral differentiation that have as much to do with Grante as with the vintage Bösendorfer grand used. These words apply even more to Volume 2 [CD-1242] where Grante's highly detaile fingerwork goes right to the heart of each sonata's character." " "Sales Inventory

Classical Music

Serge Rachmaninoff's piano music can serve as a powerful introduction to the instrument for those not yet familiar with classical repertoire: it's immediacy, sheer charm, and expressive power cannot fail to move even non-musical listeners. These same qualities, however, yield the most common prejudices against Rachmaninoff, especially among those who view him as a reactionary bent on easy appreciation, as if this were inherently synonymous with mediocrity. In these virtuosic performances of three Rachmaninoff solo works of which Isle of the Dead is a recording premiere Italian pianist Carlo Grante demonstrates the music's depth of thought, originality, and inventiveness, making a convincing case for it's viability today.

Classical Music

Connoisseurs of historical performances will certainly know the famous photograph taken at a reception in Berlin in 1929, showing conductors Bruno Walter, Arturo Toscanini, Erich Kleiber, Otto Klemperer, and Wilhelm Furtwangler. Kleiber was the youngest of these esteemed maestros, and today remains perhaps the least known of them. This situation is doubtless due in part to the fact that of the five, he by far had the smallest recorded legacy and certainly the fewest appearances in the US. These circumstances should not however, lead us to underestimate Kleiber, who in 1923, became the youngest Generalmusikdirector in Germany, at that country's premiere opera house, the Berlin Staatsoper. He had a falling out with Nazi leaders and left Berlin in 1935, becoming a wanderer and guesting at various European venues. He settled with his family in Chile in 1940, conducting mainly at the Teatro Colon during the war, as well as in Havana. When hostilities ended, he did not immediately return to Europe as might be expected. He did however, accept an invitation to lead the NBC Symphony in four concerts in February-March 1946. Toscanini appreciated his music making and Kleiber was invited back for another quartet of concerts presented in this CD set, which contains a broad cross-section of his symphonic repertory favorites.

The 21 Mazurkas Scriabin penned over a period of some 15 years (from 1888 to 1903) are musical treasures from one of the most remarkable tone-poets Russia ever produced. Long neglected by pianists, they were for the most part relegated to the limbo of early efforts, or often regarded as inferior ñ albeit interesting ñ imitations of Chopinís more ìauthenticî creations. Doubtlessly, the mystery and melancholy of Chopinís Mazurkas found a sympathetic echo in the hypersensitive soul of the young composer, whose affection for the Polish master began in boyhood and was indeed never to wane. Yet, in adapting the dance most indigenous to Poland and most closely associated with Chopin, Scriabin, even at the early age of 16, by his very nature, could do no less than transform it into something striking and original. It could not be helped: his vision was unique, a way of apprehending the world very much estranged from commonplace notions of reality, where angels, dark imaginings, intense nostalgia, and imitations of unseen realms were the norm. Refracted through the prism of an extraordinary sensibility, his mazurkas would become essentially mazurka-fantasies. They would take on an allure of pieces improvised in the bleakest hours of the night, where subterranean, atavistic passions unexpectedly surge forth and an eerie desolation sets in. At other times, they would beguile by sheer charm and sensuality, often self-indulgently so. The American pianist and critic John Bell Young, himself a noted exponent of Scriabinís music, wrote on hearing an advance copy of this recording: ìTerrific! He is a Scriabinist to the manor born.î Le Vanís recording of Brahmsí Sonatas no. 1 & no. 3 has been acclaimed internationally as was his release of Lisztís Complete Cello/Piano Works with cellist Guido Schiefen for Arte Nova (BMG), awarded best chamber music disc for the year 2000 in the Neue Musik Zeitung. Le Van has resided for several years in France where he is Artistic Director of the International Franz Liszt Festival.

Recordings were made of Szymon Goldberg (1909-1993) over virtually a 60-year period. It must have been one of the longest studio careers of any violinist - it was certainly one of the most consistent in quality. The present set gathers up all the 78rpm material, which itself covers some two decades and presents the violinist in repertoire to which he did not return in later years, such as string quartets, string trios and string duos. An earlier volume (Music & Arts CD-1223, 8 CDs) presented Goldberg's best live recordings. Despite an often difficult life, Goldberg had an extraordinary ability to project a balanced view of the music he played. He was the archetypal Classical violinist and in his everyday life, behaved exactly as he played - a rare gift. In person, he was diminutive and soft-spoken. On stage, he never hectored the audience through his violin or pulled the music about to create an effect. Taking the view that the composer knew best, he did not impose an egotistical interpretation. Rather, he sought out the quiet centre of the piece he was playing and let his performance grow out of that. It followed that he was a great Mozart violinist, possibly the finest of the last century. He was, perhaps, at his best in chamber music, well represented here; but he was also an assured soloist and made a few excellent concerto recordings in the 78rpm era. Volume I of this Goldberg project (CD-1223) was released in 2010 and was named a Musicweb International Record of the Year and earned a gold medal from Diapason Magazine.

Classical Music

Ravel's recording in 1930 of his Boléro is one of the great treasures of recorded music with its consistent tempo of quarter note = 63 instead of quarter note = 76 as marked and which the composer did not accelerate. This is not its first appearance on compact disc. It was released briefly with wobbly sound and deadened by the No Noise process (Philips 420 778-2) where it was misdated 1932 on the packaging. Now at last we have it in an astonishingly well-engineered transfer. (The Philips release also had Ravel's Chansons madécasses sung by the incomparable Madeline Grey with Ravel as her accompanist. This, too, was not without sonic blemishes and can still be heard to better advantage on the real-time cassette (In Sync C4143).) Ravel's recording of the Introduction and Allegro dates from 1923. There is more than a little surface noise on the discs used to make this transfer, but it becomes secondary to the hypnotic exoticism of this performance.

The three finest recordings of Ravel's string quartet I have heard are the one the Galimir String Quartet recorded in 1934, the one Galimir recorded in 1983 for Vanguard, and this performance from 1927 by the International String Quartet approved in all its particulars by Ravel and, chronologically, the first to be committed to discs. There are some intonation problems from cellist Herbert Withers in the third movement and the surfaces are not silent, but the fervor and the depth of emotional involvement are such as to override such reservations.

Ravel himself preferred the Pavane to be taken very slowly—as Koussevitzky recorded it in 1947—but Pierné's performance from 1929 was the slowest to appear during the composer's lifetime. Albert Wolff's recording of La Valse, while not the equal of later performances by Monteux and Ansermet, certainly can hold its own among them and its sheer elegance and poetry manifest the gentle approach the composer preferred. There is sufficient Ravel material to fill yet another compact disc and we can hope it will appear in time. William Malloch who did the transfers for this release also wrote the exemplary notes.

-- Jon Tuska, FANFARE [3/1993]

This set is offered at a special price: 5 discs for the price of 4.

2009 release. The best of Bach's fugues on a single subject are contrasted with fugues likewise on a single subject by some of his prominent contemporaries and predecessors. This is Colin Tilney's third release on Music and Arts, following the widely acclaimed 1993 Bach English Suites, recorded on the same Italian harpsichord as Fugue, and the 1995 CD Scarlatti High and Low.