Classical Music

Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, 1/93; Gramophone nomination as best recording of the year in its class, 1993. '...monumental (and genuinely virtuoso) reading of Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano. This truly phenomenal recording will surely remain a yardstick in Alkan performances for many years to come...' -Michael Stewart in Gramophone '...the outstanding pianistic event of the year...Marc-André Hamelin [is] a superman of the piano and a titanic presence in concert.' -Adrian Corleonis in Fanfare '...blazing conviction and superhuman virtuosity. One of the great piano recordings of the century...' -Donald Manildi in American Record Guide

Francescatti who was a year younger than Heifetz, was among the foremost violinists of the mid-20th century, from about 1935 to 1975. In the words of critic Henry Roth, there was "a special character, a vitality and a savoir faire to his playing that set him apart from a host of gifted virtuosi who possessed vibrant sound and creditable musicianship." The concert performances collected here, all of them previously unissued, provide good examples of his Italianate lyricism and ravishing tone.

The average birthdate of these eight composers is 1900, and the youngest of them, Oscar Peterson, is sixty-seven. So this is a nostalgic look at the music of black composers; there is no Anthony Davis here. William Grant Still's music has flowed into the cracks of our national musical heritage; I call a composer great who has created a single masterpiece, and Still's “A Black Pierrot“ from his Songs of Separation is as haunting a song as Schubert or Wolf ever composed. Three Visions are evocative miniature tone poems and the Seven Traceries are impressionist sound paintings.

Howard Swanson's The Cuckoo is a light, gay scherzo and trio, with the bird cuckooing away in one hand while the other flies all over the keyboard. Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943) studied with Nadia Boulanger, earned degrees from Oberlin and Eastman, conducted choral societies, performed before presidents, and was awarded honorary doctorates from Harvard and Oberlin. His In the Bottoms depicts “black man's slave camps at the river's edge.“ The five pieces go from somber contemplation to a gay dance. Ulysses Kay's three Inventions are brief, formal pieces. John Wesley Work, Jr., studied at Columbia and Yale and became chairman of the music department at Fisk University. His Big Bunch of Roses starts with a Negro folk tune and develops in a colorful and relaxed way. Oscar Peterson's The Gentle Waltz is languorous and jazzy and sweet, Duke Ellington's Come Sunday is a soft, flowing hymn with a touch of the blues; both pieces are played in arrangements by jazz pianist Denny McErlain.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was another master composer; every work of his I have heard is at least worthy, often inspired. His suite of three waltzes—Allegro molto, Andante, Allegro assai— stands out even among all this lovely music. It has warmth, individuality, melodic charm, and a sturdy, upright dignity without a hint of pomposity that is his own special character. Monica Gaylord studied at Juilliard and Eastman and has played throughout the United States and Canada. She has a beautiful touch for these winning works, and when it comes to Coleridge-Taylor's heroic final coda, she peals forth bronze thunder; if this were a live recital, it would bring down the house. The pianist also writes the notes, in which she shows herself to be a knowledgeable historian and a fine writer. A fine recording rounds out the assets of this lovely disc.

-- James H. North, FANFARE [3/1993]

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This winsome collection of 20th-century music was warmly welcomed by James H. North on its original release in 1992 (Fanfare 16:4), and I can only second his endorsement. He called it "nostalgic," and I guess he's right—although to my mind, that's not so much because of the age of the composers (as he pointed out, their "average birthdate" is 1900), but rather because they all aim (at least, in the works here) for a soft-edged accessibility that went increasingly out of fashion as the century wore on. Indeed, even Dett's musical evocation of slave camps abstains from brutality. Fortunately, Monica Gaylord has the subtlety of touch this predominantly gentle recital requires. While she's perfectly capable of ringing out the splashy final numbers of the Coleridge-Taylor and Dett sets, she's at her most impressive extracting the delicate impressionistic colors from Still's Traceries or coaxing out the rhythms of Ellington's meditative Come Sunday. Fine sound and erudite notes by the pianist only add to the attractions. A first-rate reissue.

-- Peter J. Rabinowitz, FANFARE [3/1999]

Hans Knappertsbusch conducts Studio & Live Performances (192

Belgium-born composer and violinist Eugene Ysaÿe was known throughout his career as one of the last great artists of the romantic era. Though he was befriended and admired by other romantic giants like Franck, Debussy, and Chausson, he also had an affinity for the Baroque style. This album, which features world-renowned violinist Charles Castleman playing Ysaÿe's Six Sonatas for Solo Violin, celebrates Ysaÿe's dream of meshing the baroque and romantic cultures.
Definite J.S. Bach-inspired motives are sprinkled throughout the Sonata No. 2, where Ysaÿe actually inserts a few well-known melodies from Bach's Violin Partita No. 3. The Sonata No. 4 pays tribute to the style of Fritz Kreisler and uses the composer's Viennese rubato and parlando bowing style.
Castleman does an excellent job of imitating these historic figures as he plays the interesting phrases in the style they were meant to be played. Even though every note is played in its intended place, Castleman manages to make every phrase sound improvised, giving it the romantic flair Ysaÿe intended.

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO. 9 MEN

A staggeringly powerful reading, it represents one of the high points in Furtwängler’s entire discography. Like his two BPO accounts from 1949, this one with the VPO uses modified Haas—the latter’s insertion of 10 bars from the 1887’s Adagio is omitted—and there are elements from the 1892 Schalk (a cymbal clash is heard in the 1949 finales, but not in this one). This 1944 has greater passion and is more listenable than are either of the BPO 1949s.

-- Jeffrey J. Lipscomb, FANFARE [reviewing the box set of Bruckner symphonies conducted by Furtwängler, Music & Arts 1209]

Elman made two commercial recordings of the Tchaikovsky Concerto. The first, with Barbirolli in 1929, has seldom been out of the catalogue in one form or another. The second dates from an LPO session with Boult in 1954 and is much less well known. But dating from December 1945 comes this live Boston/Paray traversal that catches the great violinist still on the right side of physical infirmity and a gradual but inexorable waning of powers. These latter do manifest themselves in particular ways in the companion concerto, the Mendelssohn.

In terms of structure the Boston performance of the Tchaikovsky differs little from the 1929 traversal; the timings for the first movement are in fact almost identical though there are differences in matters of thematic emphasis, metrical displacements, vibrato usage and phrasal elasticity. This is still however, very recognisably, the master tonalist of old, one who imbued every phrase with lavish intensity and a throbbing, molten vivacity. He brings intense concentration and expressive shading to his opening rhetorical statement and the Elmanesque rubato that no-one could quite match. He is very slow and highly romanticised; the orchestral pizzicati that point the rhythm are delayed an age as a result. Elman lavishes prayerful simplicity after the cadenza and his voluptuous vibrato takes on an ever more devastating candour. Behind him the Boston winds are highly characterful and though there is some crunch and other such aural damage (especially in tuttis) it will detain only the pickiest of listener. Elman is not quite certain in his passagework at the end of the movement – though the harmonics are negotiated well enough – but one can hear how eventful and tactful is Tchaikovsky’s orchestration when a fine conductor is in charge clarifying lines. The orchestra emerge newly distinctive in the slow movement – flute and clarinet principals especially. Elman’s phrasing rises and falls, ever more rapturous and involved, his line taking on more and more a sense of direction, the orchestral string blending under Paray of real distinction. In the finale the orchestral accents are commensurately strong; this is the one movement where the excitement of a live performance impels Elman to a fleeter performance than his earlier commercial recording though oddly it’s not necessarily more overpoweringly exciting.

The Tchaikovsky is a reminder of Elman’s eminence; in the first decade of the century it was he who was the most fêted of young fiddlers and the Tchaikovsky was for a decade or more "his" concerto. The Mendelssohn dates from November 1953. His slightly earlier commercial recording with Defauw and the Chicago Symphony has always been highly regarded whilst the twilight Vanguard session in Vienna that produced the later disc, with the State Opera Orchestra under Golschmann has not. Again Elman’s overall conception changed little and the difference in timings between Mitropoulos and Golschmann are negligible. Elman is perhaps guilty of some rough playing in the opening movement of the Concerto; some rather inelegant expressive pointing is another particular feature (but how irrepressibly Elman it sounds). With the highlighting comes a rather static introspection and an equally glutinous tonal projection that can too dramatically personalise the line. Nevertheless against this one can cite the finger position changes that remind one of the old lion and the beautiful strands of lyrical weight he can and does lavish – even if the vibrato itself is now slowing and the tempos ossifying somewhat in terms of phrasal interconnectedness. In the Andante he no longer possesses the elfin projection or sense of relaxation that the greatest interpreters of this work bring to it (if indeed he ever really did – his recording with Defauw, though of course highly personalised, was highly impressive). He does rather distend the movement (to 7.50). He is jaunty and unmotoric in the finale; he never used it as a piece of showmanship as other, less scrupulous colleagues did. He also makes a couple of fluffs on the lower strings but these are minor details – even if the final bars are rather grandiosely emphatic.

The recordings have been handled with skill; the attendant problems are really insignificant ones and won’t be in any way problematic. As one who welcomes anything by Elman, no matter how minor, these major live performances have a still compelling part to play in expanding and widening the Elman discography; that they are ancillary to the main body of his recordings is undeniable but wise heads will want to hear them and reflect on Elman’s place in the hierarchy of great violinists.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

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2011 three CD release containing new Blues compositions and arrangements by Allen Lowe and featuring Jazz greats Roswell Rudd, Marc Ribot, Matthew Shipp, and Lewis Porter.

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Tempo flexibility, dynamic contouring, and rhetorical gesture are part and parcel of Bruckner's music as promulgated in the first published editions used by Knappertsbusch until the end of his life. John Rockwell wrote that "Knappertsbusch's way with Brucknerian rubato - varying the pulse of the music without undermining Bruckner's solid grandeur - seems to capture the essence of the music time after time, mixing serenity with thrilling urgency." Granted, Kna did not always follow the letter of the first printings in his realizations. His predilections for dramatic underlining reflects the same tradition that infuses the old scores with various refinements of tempi, phrasing, and dynamics. Critics judged the performance on this CD superior to the conductor's VPO recording (on Decca) when it first appeared (in 1998); now it has been completely refurbished.

The German-born, Anglicized composer, instrument builder, and publisher J.B. Cramer was an outstanding representative of the London Piano School. In the late 18th-century and 1s half of the 19th, two schools of piano playing came to prominence. One is the so-called Viennese school and the other the school of Field (so described by Friedrich Wieck). This school might more accurately be called the school of piano playing based in London which was founded by J.C. Bach and Muzio Clementi. These and succeeding pianists admired the English grand pianoforte and used it whenever possible. Now badly neglected, Cramer wrote keyboard sonatas of outstanding merit, the best of which are resurrected in this collection. Curiously, for the last 31 years of his life, Cramer stopped composing in this genre. Why? One reason is that the sonata as a form had become unfashionable in England during this period, most pianists writing for the more popular market. Another reason Cramer's whole output declined after 1830 may be that he felt completely out of sympathy with the new pianos, with the new style of composition and with the new pianists. Although he knew many of the new pianistic stars, he found little sympathy for their music and playing styles. He was firmly committed to the pre-1835 Broadwood grand, with its leather hammers, triple stringing and wooden frame. The new school of piano playing alienated him and in turn he became a relic of the past, respected to his face but privately scorned. Out of sync with the prevailing musical climate, there as no demand for his serious works and he simply stopped producing them. These last sonatas then, represent a final flowering of his compositional talent coinciding with the final phase of the early Broadwood grand piano. The performer's previous fortepiano recordings of works by Beethoven, Weber, Clementi and Dussek have been favourably reviewed in Gramophone, Fanfare, Musica, and other trade journals.

Carlo Grante is one of the most active and accomplished performing and recording artists of his generation. His concert performances feature a broad repertoire: recently, under the direction of conductor Fabio Luisi, he performed Franz Schmidt's Concertante Variationen with the MDR Orchestra of Leipzig at the Gewandhaus;.

Classical Music

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

This set is offered at a special price: 12 discs for the cost of 10.

I reviewed this when Music & Arts first issued it; now it is back, under the same catalog number... My comments remain the same. This disc is of interest mainly to Furtwängler specialists; while both performances are quite strong, neither matches other readings of the same works by this conductor. The Stockholm Philharmonic plays well, but cannot involve itself in Furtwängler's unique world with the abandon and comfort of both the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics. Those interested in this coupling with Furtwängler would be better served by a pair of 1953 Berlin performances (DG 415 666 2, no longer available), or the 1954 Salzburg Festival performances with the Vienna Philharmonic, released in wonderful sound by Orfeo (C293921B). In all cases, be prepared for a particularly unusual Eighth, much more massive and weighty than you are used to, and with a few rhythmic quirks that might bring a smile of affection or derision, depending on your receptivity. One important bonus on this Stockholm CD is the rehearsal excerpt from the Leonore Overture No. 3, prepared for the same concert. It offers a fascinating view of Furtwängler's rehearsal technique, is well recorded, and is more substantial (about 11 minutes) than some previous issues. Good transfers, and an insightful (if oft reprinted by Music & Arts) essay on Furtwängler by Neville Cardus.

-- Henry Fogel, FANFARE