Szymanowski: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4

Composed between 2004 and 2022, the seven works on this album reflect the concerns and crises of our time. These include the pandemic, racial unrest, global conflict, reflections on the realities of war, the pervasive use of gun violence, pollution, and social strife. The music oscillates between struggle and celebration and gives powerful glimpses of redemptive hope in our shared experiences, one that values civic identity and collective expression and offers a fanfare for those who shape our future for the better.

Franz Krommer served the Habsburg emperors as court composer in Vienna, having succeeded his Czech compatriot, Leopold Kozeluch. He excelled in a vast range of music, notably the string quartet and music for winds, but he also wrote eight published symphonies and a sequence of concertos. In the recordings heard here conductor Marek �tilec uses corrected parts based on archival records. Both the First and Second Symphonies are fulsome and vigorous with graceful trios and bustling energy, revealing an increasingly bold and adventurous language. The attractive Concertino is in effect a divertimento full of shifting moods.

Alfred Schnittke's oeuvre carries an unmistakable personal signature that integrates widely differing stylistic worlds. The profoundly compelling works heard in this programme display an extraordinary level of expression and colour. From the haunting sonorities of the prepared piano in his First Concerto Grosso to the playful theatricality of Moz-Art (after the fragment K. 416d), this album brings together all of Schnittke's works for two violins, both with and without orchestra.

Internationally acclaimed performer, professor, and composer Larry Lipkis has written over 100 works for a variety of vocal and instrumental ensembles. Lipkis's love of commedia dell'arte stems from his career as a performer of Renaissance music, and these four concerti are musical depictions of characters from this popular theatre tradition. The impish and impetuous Pierrot is personified by the bassoon, while his love interest Columbina flits and charms through a mercurial violin. The gently youthful Innamorata, or female lover, is expressed through a translucently accompanied flute, and the romantic entanglements and acrobatic humour of Harlequin are a perfect fit for the outsized musical personality of the bass trombone.

Joseph Gabriel Rheinberger's musical legacy can be found in his reputation as a renowned organist and professor, as well as in his extraordinary facility and productivity as a composer in all forms, including a considerable amount of solo piano music. From the high-spirited Second Sonata to his final Fourth Sonata, with it's defiant opening and hymn-like Romance, Rheinberger's piano sonatas are polished, beautifully balanced, and tasteful, drawing on established Classical-Romantic traditions while being especially effective in producing flowing and memorable melodies.

Fromental Hal�vy's five-act grand opera La Juive charts the forbidden love between a Christian man and a Jewish woman, and the tragedy that ensues. The work's pageantry, opulence, and thrilling music made it one of the most enduringly successful operas of the 19th century, with more than 500 performances in Paris alone. This acclaimed contemporary staging from Oper Frankfurt features Ambur Braid as the heroine Rachel and John Osborn as her father �l�azar.

The four works on this album by the esteemed Chinese-American composer Chen Yi are all premiere recordings, two of which - The Soulful and the Perpetual and Three Bagatelles - she has adapted specifically for violinist/violist Patrick Yim and pianist Kiu Tung Poon for this recording. Admired for bridging Eastern and Western traditions, Chen Yi draws on authentic folk music from the west of China, evoking the sound of the bawu and lerong in Three Bagatelles. Originally composed for saxophone and piano, The Soulful and the Perpetual is characterised by two opposing movements - the first lyrical; the second a perpetuum mobile. Spring in Dresden is a vivid and energetic work with erhu-inspired sliding tones, while the Chinese Folk Dance Suite is colourful, virtuosic, and brilliantly conceived.

The name Pleyel is chiefly remembered today as a piano manufacturer, but the company's founding figure Ignaz Pleyel, a former pupil of Haydn, was one of the most acclaimed composers of the late 18th century. The success of Pleyel's finely wrought twelve string quintets, three of which are heard on this album, inspired Mozart to compose his own quintets in C major and G minor. Their appeal lies in their well-paced balance between crackling energy and lyrical expansiveness. These highly accomplished works are sprightly, good-humoured, and filled with such an intrinsic lightness and grace that they are guaranteed to delight as much now as they did centuries ago.

Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet (Complete)

Legendary composer for stage and screen John Williams has admired the United States Marine Band, the "President's Own," since childhood - and in recent decades, the maestro and ensemble's mutual admiration has deepened amidst a series of collaborations marking the group's major anniversaries. The culmination of this twenty-year relationship was Williams' return to conduct the band's 225th anniversary gala concert in July 2023, along with the release of this 2026 album, John Williams and 'The President's Own,' Vol. 3. Completing a trilogy of albums issued by Naxos of America, this live recording brings the outstanding virtuosity, good cheer, and moving musicianship of that 2023 Kennedy Center concert to the world.

ROGERS, Roy: Along the Navajo Trail (1945-1947)

THE SOUNDTRACK

Saint-Saëns holds a vital place in the history of French chamber music. At a time when his compatriots were more devoted to opera and song, Saint-Saëns (who wrote both, too) repeatedly produced chamber music of compelling individuality and lasting significance. The 1875 Piano Quartet in B flat major, Op 41 remains one of the great works in the chamber repertory, a masterful example of the composer’s organisational skill and lyric gifts. The gorgeous Barcarolle is followed by the youthful Piano Quintet in A minor, Op 14, a brilliantly confident work with a concerto-like role for the piano.

TCHAIKOVSKY Manfred Symphony. The Voyevoda • Vasily Petrenko, cond; Royal Liverpool PO • NAXOS 8.570568 (68:51)


This latest entry to Naxos’s Tchaikovsky series introduces the young and extraordinarily gifted conductor Vasily Petrenko (b. 1971), whose only previous exposure on discs seems to be a performance of Prokofiev’s The Gamblers (Avie), highlights from Tchaikovsky ballets (Avie), and the two Liszt piano concertos and Totentanz (Naxos). Remember you heard it here first: this is a conductor of the very first rank. In another world, with the right publicity behind him, he would be another Karajan or Markevitch. He would sell records.


I’ve been a fan of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred for decades, having first heard the recording by Toscanini. At the time I wasn’t aware that, for reasons known only to himself, he made numerous little one- and two-bar paper cuts in the first three movements, then excised a whopping 118 bars from the last movement, but I quickly discovered this when I heard the original recording by Fabian Sevitzky and the Indianapolis Symphony (Victor, 1942). I’ve also heard the recordings of Mariss Janssons, Andrew Litton, Riccardo Muti, Mikhail Pletnev, Michael Tilson Thomas, Constantin Silvestri, and Paul Kletzki. I never heard Raymond Leppard’s recording, but I heard Leppard conduct it in person with the Cincinnati Symphony many years ago. It is etched in my mind as one of the finest, most lyrical versions I’ve ever heard, much like a performance of Guido Cantelli (I told Leppard as much; he admitted that as a young musician working in England, Cantelli’s work with the Philharmonia Orchestra subconsciously influenced him a great deal).


Yet all of these performances, even Toscanini’s (ignoring his cuts in the score), tended to let me down in an overall assessment of the work. The only one I currently own is the Muti, so I will make a direct comparison of him to Petrenko. Muti is actually quite good for a non-Russian; he follows the score tempos and most (but not all) of the phrase markings closely. But, like all the conductors whose versions I’ve heard, even the Russian Pletnev (who is, in my view, vastly underrated), there is an essential life-force, you might say a “soul of Russia” feeling, missing from their recordings.


You can hear it in the way Petrenko conducts the very first movement, taken at quarter note = 66 rather than the score tempo of quarter note = 60. This may seem a radical shift, but in practice it’s not so great. The principal reason why the music sounds much faster is that Petrenko keeps nudging the beat forward, even in the Lento lugubre section, as well as strictly observing—as even Toscanini did not—the phrase marks that are clearly meant to bind the phrases together. This even extends to the dragging notes in the lower strings (violas, cellos, and basses) where Tchaikovsky very clearly marked these notes with long accents (>) rather than alla breve markings (^), which is how they are normally phrased. In addition, he moves the music forward even after pauses that follow agitated passages and introduce more lyrical ones. In this way, he creates a sound picture in the manner of such great Russian conductors as Markevitch, Coates, Svetlanov, Temirkanov, and Gergiev, a style that combined forward propulsion and subtle rubato with a peculiarly Russian string tone, warm yet edgy. In Petrenko’s hands, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic suddenly becomes, by a startling form of alchemy, the Moscow State Orchestra. This performance doesn’t just speak Tchaikovsky; it speaks Russian, with all its visceral earthiness and thick consonants. The soul of Tchaikovsky is laid totally bare. We are deep in his subconscious.


Yet another example of this is the way he conducts the second movement. Here he is not as fast as many conductors, certainly slower than Muti; but whereas Muti conducts in a rather choppy Italianate fashion, Petrenko phrases in a legato fashion, even when scrupulously observing the staccato markings in the flute and piccolo passages. The result, if one does an A-B comparison, is that Petrenko actually sounds faster than Muti, even though his tempo is more relaxed, taken at the score tempo of quarter-note = 120, while Muti cranks it up two notches to 132. His third movement is very Svetlanov-like, an Andante with plenty of con moto , and his last movement is the most fiery I’ve heard since Sevitzky’s original 1942 recording. (The rest of Sevitzky’s reading was rather static to my ears, but in the last movement he is even more exciting than Toscanini is, and he does not chop out 118 bars as the Italian maestro did.)


There are a few other recordings of the tone poem Voyevoda available (10, to be precise), including good ones by Claudio Abbado (who “speaks” Russian pretty well for an Italian), Antal Dorati, Markevitch, and Leonard Slatkin (Russian by heritage). Petrenko pushes them all into oblivion. This Voyevoda is musically erudite, to be sure, but it also displays almost the same passion and intensity as Pique Dame or this version of Manfred.


If you’re a fan of Manfred, you simply cannot pass this disc up. If you’ve never been a fan of Manfred, you must hear this performance before you make your final decision on the work.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

John Knowles Paine was one of the ‘Boston Six’, a group of important American composers active in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. His German training equipped him with considerable formal skill and he soon rose to become a pioneer of the symphonic tradition in America. Paine’s Symphony No 1 received a tremendous reception at its première on account of its attractive themes, skilful orchestration and accomplished design. The Overture As You Like It is notable for its graceful and tuneful themes, whereas Shakespeare’s Tempest is a more adventurous and powerful Lisztian tone poem.

Over the last two centuries and in today's churches, hymns may be referred to as songs, prayers, or even spirituals, but the need for them remains the same. These pieces are written as instruments of praise and worship to God, as prayers in time of need, and as reflections in expression of joy, sorrow, or thanksgiving. On this recording, there are inspirational words written to a Gaelic melody of unknown date and origin ("Morning Has Broken"), a song written by a grieving father after the loss of all five of his children to tragedy ("It Is Well with My Soul"), and a hymn assembled gradually by three people over 150 years in three countries ("Be Still My Soul"). The words and melodies may mean something different to everyone who sings them, but the intention of them has been the same for hundred of years - to worship, praise, and thank God.

As a result of his varied activities inside and outside the concert hall, as composer, conductor of professional and amateur ensembles, lecturer on television and radio, author of books on music, and a visible supporter of the anti-nuclear movement, Yasushi Akutagawa (1925–89) might be considered the Japanese equivalent of Leonard Bernstein. Thanks to Morihide Katayama’s thorough program notes, we learn that Akutagawa’s compositional career can be divided into three periods: early, in which he attempted to integrate the rhythmic impulses learned from his main teacher, Akira Ifukube, with a lyrical strain identified with another teacher, Qunihico Hashimoto (who himself had studied with Egon Wellesz in Vienna), while also absorbing musical influences from Russian composers like Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and Shostakovich (he conducted the Japanese premiere of the latter’s Fourth Symphony); middle, exploring avant-garde tendencies as Akutagawa aligned himself with fellow composers Toru Takemitsu and Toshiro Mayuzumi; and late, attempting a populist combination of elements from the first two. Helpfully, on this disc we are given one work illustrating each of these respective periods.

Listening to these attractive works, however, one can hear commonalities that run consistently through Akutagawa’s music—a rhythmic vitality, colorful orchestration, and ability to paint a mood, all of which may be attributed to Akutagawa’s childhood love of Stravinsky’s early ballets. Occasional echoes of The Firebird and The Rite of Spring emerge and quickly recede—so quickly, in fact, that they sound less like an influence and more like a brief, subconscious, unattributable memory. Much more substantial, primarily in the earliest of these compositions, the Trinita Sinfonica (1948), is the post-Stravinsky Russian influence. There is a playful tone and flair unheard in the later works, especially in the jubilant roller-coaster finale, and a hint of dark undercurrent to the otherwise romantic flow of lullabies in the slow second movement.

Even though the Ellora Symphony (1958), a product of Akutagawa’s exploratory period, was originally designed to allow an aleatoric re-ordering of its 20 (now reduced to 15) concise movements from performance to performance, the alternately tranquil passages and turbulent outbursts (heavy on percussion) contain a motivic and symbolic unity that keep their dramatic logic intact. Built from Akutagawa’s primary compositional method of manipulating small units, each movement’s close-knit intervallic motifs represent masculine and feminine characteristics. Katayama states that the symphony is “a hymn to primitive reproduction,” but the fantasy and power of the music—especially those Stravinskyan ostinatos—suggest sources and a setting more mythic than merely primitive.

From the period of his greatest popularity, the Rapsodia (1971) fluidly mixes these propulsive rhythms, via small energetic units and ostinato figures, with long-lined counterpoint and tone painting. Despite his occasional use of indigenous dance melodies and pentatonic scales, if these three works are typical, Akutagawa’s compositions contain less specific Japanese musical references than many of his contemporaries. But his fluency in the mid-century modernist vocabulary—especially in the hands of an experienced conductor like Yuasa—makes his music worthy of attention.

Art Lange, FANFARE

Ellington, Duke: Jump For Joy (1941-1942)

Mompou, F.: Piano Music, Vol. 3 - Paisajes / Impressions In

I like contrasts', Ibert was fond of saying. All six works on this CD show his absolute mastery of orchestral writing, each one of quite different form and inspiration.

HITS OF THE 1950s, Vol. 1 (1950): Music! Music! Music!

KAYE, Danny: Danny Kaye! (1941-1952)

KITT, Eartha: C'est Si Bon (1952-1954)

JOLSON, Al: Al Jolson, Vol. 2 (1916-1918)

ANDERSON, L.: Classical Juke Box (1947-1950)

KAISER-LINDEMANN: Hommage a Nelson M., Op. 27

Leroy Anderson's music once was so ubiquitous that anyone with even cursory contact with broadcast media could not help hearing it. So don't be surprised--especially if you're over 30--if you find your ears perking up quite often in recognition as you play this delightful disc. Those of us who played in high school bands and orchestras no doubt will have vivid memories of Bugler's Holiday or Trumpter's Lullaby, but for most listeners this collection will serve to attach names to tunes heard for years in supermarkets and shopping malls--tunes such as The Syncopated Clock, The Girl in Satin, and Blue Tango. Anderson applied his classical training to his love of jazz, which, combined with his uncanny instinct for good tunes helped him create a long series of "pops" hits. He was equally adept in both worlds, whether the European-style waltzing of Belle of the Ball (with its "blue note" trio), or the straight-from-the-dance-hall Jazz Pizzicato.


The disc opens with the Serenata (a cheeky knockoff of Gershwin's Cuban Overture) and closes with the ever-popular Sleigh Ride, here freed from those goofy lyrics and sounding more like its true self: a fine composition that can be enjoyed whatever the time of year. Anderson had a particular flair for musical depictions of everyday objects, such as the aforementioned clock, or the typewriter, or even sandpaper (in the Sandpaper Ballet). Whether object, animal (The Waltzing Cat), or body part (March of Two Left Feet), Anderson never abandoned his operative principle: make music fun! Richard Hayman's long experience in this specialized genre shows in his high-spirited, rhythmically smart, tonally tangy realizations with his orchestra. If you've been finding yourself bereft of smiles lately, purchase this Naxos disc and you'll get a whole hour's worth.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

Howard Hanson, a composer of imagination and sweep and a colorist of huge eloquence, is one of the most approachable of all twentieth century symphonists. His guiding spirit was always Sibelius, and in the Symphony No. 1 ‘Nordic’ he used the same key as in the Finnish composer’s own First Symphony. The work is haunting, rapturous and serene, beautifully orchestrated and wholly commanding. The Lament for Beowulf, written for chorus and orchestra, dates from 1925. Its dark, brooding tension reflects its poetic inspiration with indelible force. “This is confident, generous, beautifully made music, richly (and sensitively) scored. Schwarz, and his splendid Seattle orchestra do not short-change us on any of this and they are beautifully, ripely, recorded here.” (Gramophone on the original Delos release)

Recording information: The Arkansas Best Corporation Performing Arts Center, F (05/23/2009-05/24/2009).