R E V I E W S

As the important, influential Viennese operetta Die Csárdásfürstin has not been captured on many complete recorded versions, it’s particularly nice to welcome this beguiling new one...The music very craftily fuses Vienna with Budapest in a way that hadn’t been heard since Johann Strauss’s 1885 Zigeunerbaron, and was not heard again until Kálmán’s own Gräfin Mariza in 1924...Operetta maven Richard Bonynge has a close connection with Kálmán, having conducted this score in Australia and elsewhere. His enthusiasm for its riches is manifest in this robust yet finely-detailed recording, in which the vaguely klezmer-like Gypsy string and wind underpinnings come through clearly, as played by the Slovak Radio orchestra, which gets the hot-pepper and tokay accentuation stylishly right...Yvonne Kenny sings prettily as Sylva Varescu...Mojca Erdmann is a delightful Countess Stasi...Naxos adds some Kálmán extras at the end and includes a brief speaking cameo by the composer’s daughter, Yvonne." -- Opera News, April 2005

This is by no means the first good recording of Emmerich Kálmán’s operetta masterpiece The Gypsy Princess. That honor probably goes to the classic EMI, with Anneliese Rothenberger and Nicolai Gedda...But if you are fond of the Viennese operetta idiom and you don’t know this work or lack a recording of it, this new set is a must.

One of its attributes is the sound quality—and while I don’t have four-channel sound, I do have both two and three-channel setups, and in both of those incarnations this hybrid SACD was a stunning audio achievement. Even played as a standard two-channel CD the sound is warm, richly colored, highly detailed without ever seeming clinical. Naxos indicates that this disc contains three versions of the same music: a 5.1 multichannel DSD surround-sound version, a two-channel DSD version, and a standard two-channel stereo version.

It is, however, musical qualities that most strongly recommend this set, and chief among those is Richard Bonynge’s conducting. I should make clear that I have never been a Bonynge enthusiast, and find that in the classic bel canto operas he recorded with his wife Joan Sutherland his conducting lacked incisiveness, rhythmic spine, and momentum. For that very reason, this performance is astonishing—those are precisely the qualities he brings to Kálmán’s delightful score, along with an affectionate warmth that is in evidence from the first notes of the Prelude. It is hard to imagine a more engaging and involving performance of the score than Bonynge gives here. The two leads, Yvonne Kenny and Michael Roider, sound as if they were born to sing this music, even though one of them (Kenny) is Australian. Roider, born in Salzburg, has a lovely lyric tenor voice and the style in his blood. Kenny’s lyric soprano has long been known to us in Mozart and other “serious” repertoire, but she shows a lovely comedic flair and a natural feel for the line of Kálmán’s music. The rest of the cast is splendid, and the entire thing is a treat. It has the feel of a real performance, despite being a studio recording (made in 2002). The second disc is filled with orchestral excerpts from other Kálmán works, which are well worth hearing, and are conducted with the same skill.

Naxos should have gone to the expense of supplying a full libretto. Their detailed synopsis is very helpful, and probably enough for a work that doesn’t deal in dramatic complexity, but we still miss some of the wit and some of the charm of the piece without having a full text available. Nonetheless, this is a highly recommendable set.

Henry Fogel, FANFARE

Naxos' triumphant march through Poulenc's complete chamber music continues with this latest release containing, among a host of smaller items, a smashing performance of the magnificent Sonata for Two Pianos, one of the composer's greatest large works in any medium. Alexandre Tharaud and Francis Chaplin play beautifully; their performance is a touch less expansive than Fèvier/Tacchino on EMI, but still hypnotically seductive in the slow introduction and third movement, while the faster music has the right rhythmic skittishness and crisp articulation. The other outstanding performance here is the Sonata for horn, trumpet, and trombone. This awkward but charming piece has seldom sounded better balanced and more natural (not to mention in tune), and it's very well recorded in a warm acoustic. The other pieces are trifles, but no less enjoyable for that. Another winner. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

These brilliant, hard-driving performances bring back (happy) memories of Russian orchestras of the 1960s and a style of playing that has all but disappeared. The performances aren't subtle, but then neither is the music, and my how Theodore Kuchar and Co. deliver the goods! The playing isn't perfect: in Pictures, Gnomus sounds a touch frantic, and the trumpets smear their rhythms in Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle; but incidental imperfections count for little next to Kuchar's "pedal to the metal" approach. Listen to the plangent wind sonorities in the second Promenade, to the pounding attack on The Hut on Fowl's Legs, or to the totally uninhibited brass and percussion at the conclusion of The Great Gate of Kiev. This is the real deal, an impression only confirmed by scorching accounts of both versions of A Night on Bald Mountain (Mussorgsky's original and Rimsky-Korsakov's better-known rewrite). The other two short pieces, the Hopak and Golitsin's Exile, simply put the icing on the cake. Don't let the cheap price, the not-terribly-well-known performers, or the brevity of this review prevent you from trying out this really exciting and very well recorded disc (probably the best sonics from this source thus far). You'll be missing a real treat if you do. [6/7/2003]

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

One of Japan's most influential composers and conductors, Kazuo Yamada rejected the 'facile exoticism' of Japanese nationalism. His influences include Mahler and Strauss. He employees Japanese instruments related to shomyo (the chanting of Buddhist hymns).

Winterreise is one of the greatest, most compelling and intense of all vocal song cycles. For the first of his explorations into the world of art song, Matthew Gee has turned to Schubert’s work in this unique arrangement for trombone and piano. English titles are used for the poems to emphasize the fact that text is no longer the primary expressive vehicle here. Instead, it is entrusted to the trombone, an instrument whose vocal qualities and ability to employ glissando, vibrato, portamento and microtonal inflections- allied to the use of various mutes- offers an astonishing array of tonal possibilities.

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REVIEW:

The idea of playing the vocal part of Schubert’s Winterreise on the modern slide trombone may seem far-fetched on paper, yet the multi-talented Matthew Gee’s cultivated mastery compensates for the lack of a text. He adjusts his timbre to each song’s specific emotional quality while following Schubert’s phrasings and dynamics closely. Gee also shifts registers for variety’s sake, although sometimes his use of mutes can stick out like a sore thumb (in Die Wetterfahne, for example).

The more lyrical, introspective songs provide ideal showcases for Gee’s smooth sonority and prodigious breath control; check out his honey-filled legato control in Der Lindenbaum, or those seamless and suave interval leaps in Rast. Pianist Christopher Glynn matches his partner’s singing tone with seamlessly dovetailed support. The sonics are rather diffuse and muffled at times, but the high level of music making always comes through. What could have been a gimmick or curio turns out to be a plausible and intelligently considered artistic endeavor.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

GREAT RUSSIAN SYMPHONIES (10-CD Box Set)

The word ‘symphony’ is used to describe an extended orchestral composition in Western classical music. By the eighteenth century the Italianate opera sinfonia—musical interludes between operas or concertos—had assumed the structure of three contrasting movements, and it is this form that is often considered as the direct forerunner of the orchestral symphony. With the rise of established professional orchestras, the symphony assumed a more prominent place in concert life between 1790 and 1820 until it eventually came to be regarded by many as the yardstick by which one would measure a composer’s achievement.

The symphony came late to Russia. The first attempts at a Russian Nationalist symphony were made in the late nineteenth-century by Balakirev and his acolytes, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov as well as by Tchaikovsky, whose symphonies (despite his European leanings) have a distinctly Russian flavour. In their wake followed numerous composers, from Glazunov to Myaskovsky, similarly instilling their music with the melodies of their homeland. In the years that followed Russian politics had an unmistakable impact on the Russian symphonists, as Rachmaninov and Prokofiev (among others) went into exile whilst composers such as Shostakovich vented their political frustrations through the medium of music—his Leningrad Symphony being a prime example.

R E V I E W:

The most important works here also tend to get the best performances. So let’s proceed in order of overall quality. Best are Shostakovich’s Fifth with Petrenko, Borodin’s Second and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade with Schwarz, Kuchar’s Prokofiev First and Fifth, and Kalinnikov’s First, and Antoni Wit in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth and Sixth. All the rest are fair to good. These include Glazunov’s Sixth and Rachmaninov’s Second (and The Rock) with Anissimov, Shostakovich’s Seventh and Miaskovsky’s 25th (Yablonsky), Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and assorted short works (1812 Overture, Romeo and Juliet) with Adrian Leaper, and Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy and Third Symphony with Golovschin. Topping it all off is a pretty respectable Antar Symphony conducted by André Anichanov. Yes, you can do better in most of this music, but this 10-disc set is well-chosen and an easy way to get a big pile of popular and unfairly neglected Russian symphonies, so who’s complaining?

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Tengyue Zhang won the 2017 Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) International Concert Artist Competition, one of the world’s most prestigious events. His debut recital illustrates the moods, colors and techniques of the concert classical guitar from baroque transcriptions to masters of the twentieth-century genre such as Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Tansman, and Brouwer. Despite being from very different backgrounds and time periods, several of the pieces share intriguing relationships in their use of variation form or thematic motifs and harmonic progressions. Aside from the GFA, Tengyue Zhang has also won first prizes at other well-known competitions- Austria’s Forum Gitarre Wien International Youth Competition, the Changsha International Guitar Competition, the 2017 Schadt String Competition, and the 2017 Alexander Frauchi International Competition in Moscow.

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REVIEW:

One is struck by the extraordinary level of comfort and ease that his total mastery of his program communicates. He manages to imbue every single work with tremendous personality, power, and nuance.

– Classical Guitar

Sergey Prokofiev was so musically precocious that no less a figure than Reinhold Gliere was employed as his live-in tutor. Gliere’s lessons proved to be both rigorous and inspiring and the young Prokofiev wrote a delightful sequence of works for the piano. Revealing an increasing command of harmony, these miniatures show why he was, at the age of thirteen, the youngest ever student to be enrolled at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. ‘Old Grandmother’s Tales, Op. 31,’ written in New York in 1918 is suffused with nostalgia, while the ‘Six Pieces, Op. 52,’ are vivid arrangements of some of his earlier works.

Includes work(s) for guitar by Fernando Sor. Soloist: Goran Krivokapic.

A golden opportunity to make the acquaintance of some of the most spirited music of the late 18th century.

Domenico Cimarosa is regarded as one of the foremost Italian opera composers during the second part of the 18th century. He vied with Salieri and Paisiello, the latter said to have been intriguing against Cimarosa, just as there is said to have been animosity between Mozart and Salieri. Cimarosa grew up near Naples, where his family later moved. There he was able to get a good education, not only in music. When he was 23 he got his first commission to write an opera, a buffa entitled Le stravaganze del conte, the overture to which is on this disc. It was a success, as was his next essay in the genre. Soon he was sought after throughout Italy. In the mid-1780s he moved to Florence and in 1787 received an invitation from Empress Catherine II of Russia to come to St Petersburg, where he stayed four years. In 1792 he moved to Vienna on an invitation from Emperor Leopold II and there produced his masterpiece, Il matrimonio segreto, which is regarded as one of the best buffa operas ever. Today his reputation rests practically only on this work, which is still performed. It is also famous in the history books for being so appreciated by the Emperor that the company had to reprise the whole work the same evening. This disc presents the overture in a world premiere recording of the Vienna version which is longer than the established version.

Cimarosa later returned to Naples, where he was politically active in the liberal party and was condemned to death. Through influential friends this sentence was commuted to banishment. He planned to go back to St Petersburg but his health deteriorated quickly and he died in Venice in 1801.

His list of works is impressive and only his operas, most of them in the buffa genre, come to close to one hundred. Even though most of them are forgotten today there are occasional revivals. I was lucky enough to catch a performance of Il mereato di Malmantile in Dubrovnik more than thirty years ago. There I also heard and saw the short intermezzo giocoso Il maestro di cappella for bass-baritone and orchestra, hilariously sung and acted by the great Sesto Bruscantini.

Cimarosa’s music is light and melodic, very often with a joyous atmosphere. He was a skilled orchestrator, even though he lacked the individuality and the psychological insight of Mozart. On the surface the two are rather similar and Mozart lovers should find Cimarosa to their liking.

The twelve overtures on this disc – and there is obviously more to come since this one is marked ‘vol. 1’ – are mainly lively and energetic and make a good evening’s listen. It is not wall-paper music, since there are always attractive things to keep the listener alert. It can be an unexpected turn of a phrase here or a sudden general pause. It is no wonder, to judge from the overture, that his debut opera Le stravaganze del conte, became a success, since it is truly infectious, fizzing along at rollicking speed. The Matrimonio segreto overture starts surprisingly solemn for a buffa with the first chords sounding almost like Die Zauberflöte, but then Cimarosa lets his hair down in his accustomed manner. This Vienna version differs in several ways from what we normally hear: among other things there is an oboe solo as the second theme which was omitted later. For a good recording of that version – and a superb reading of the complete opera – I strongly recommend Barenboim’s recording on DG (review).

For Il ritorno di Don Calendrino Cimarosa composed an extra long overture, partly through recycling the overture from L’Armida imaginara and adding two new movements, a beautiful Andantino and a spirited concluding Allegro.

There is enough variation in the music to allow the disc to spin until the end without the need for a pause – partly of course since it spans a period of twenty years, during which the composer undoubtedly developed. High-spirited most of it is but he also writes a slow mid-section in the Il convito overture, where there is a fine French horn solo.

Alessandro Amoretti is well versed in the music of this period and Esterházy Sinfonia is a splendid modern instrument ensemble. The producer/engineer couple Ibolya Tóth and János Bohus have also done a good job with the sonics.

Since there is probably little chance to hear these overtures live and since other recordings are in short supply this is a golden opportunity to make the acquaintance of some of the most spirited music of the late 18th century.

-- Göran Forsling, MusicWeb International

Patric Standford wrote in a wide variety of forms, from large-scale orchestral and choral music to a cappella, chamber and instrumental pieces. While teaching at the Guildhall School of Music in London he won several major international composition prizes. The First Symphony, each movement of which is named after a season, grew from a string piece conceived as a memorial for the conductor Sir John Barbirolli. Dedicated to and premièred by the soloist on this recording, Raphael Wallfisch, the powerful Cello Concerto is built around a theme from the fifth movement, Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit (You now are sorrowful) of Brahms’ German Requiem.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was at the height of his fame and technical mastery by the time he began work on his fourth opera in 1923. Prominent opera houses clamored to stage his works, and the Viennese premiere of Das Wunder der Heliane (‘The Miracle of Heliane’) featured Lotte Lehmann among its star cast. Its story is one of the redemptive power of love over injustice and adversity, expressed in music that is richly impressionistic and intensely dramatic. Korngold was criticized for resisting the tide of modernist atonality in this opulent score, but its symbolism and compelling romantic atmosphere can be appreciated today more than ever. This Freiburg Opera production has a strong cast topped by soprano Annemarie Kremer, one of the most successful singers in the lyric dramatic soprano repertoire. Award-winning baritone Aris Argiris has established an international career, performing regularly at the world’s most prestigious opera houses.

Includes work(s) for organ by Samuel Sebastian Wesley. Soloist: James McVinnie.

Piano music featured prominently for the most part of Alwyn' career. The composer himself was no mean pianist, as evidenced in the varying technical demands made on the pianist in the works included here. The major work on this recording, Fantasy Waltzes.

After the success of Aida in December 1871, and despite his enormous popularity, Verdi retired as an operatic composer. + It took the young publisher Giulio Ricordi and composer and librettist Arrigo Boito a number of years to entice him to embark on what was originally called Jago, and only later known as Otello. + Verdi retained a reverence for Shakespeare, and had already composed Macbeth. + With Otello, completed in November 1886, and triumphantly received, he created a masterpiece from a play that, as Bernard Shaw noted, had all the ingredients of an Italian opera.

Lively and involving … a fine addition to the expanding list of Rossini operas on Naxos.

Rossini’s La cambiale di matrimonio was his first opera to be performed, premiered in 1810 at the Teatro San Moise in Venice. It ran for thirteen performances, which was not bad in the fast-paced Italian opera business. At the time Rossini was still a student at the Bologna Conservatory and in fact La cambiale di matrimonio was his second opera; Demetro e Polibio, written for another opera company was not premiered until 1812.

The libretto to La cambiale was by the experienced hand of Gaetano Rossi, who wrote the librettos for Tancredi and Semiramide. La cambiale isn’t quite in that class; it is based on a five-act comedy from 1790 which owes a lot to the comedies of Goldoni. The plot concerns the English merchant, Tobia Mill (Vita Priante), who desires to wed his daughter to a Canadian business contact Slook (Giulio Mastrototaro) very much as a business transaction. The daughter Fanny (Julija Samsonova) is in love with Eduardo Milfort (Daniele Zanfardino). The plot is helped along by Mill’s clerk Norton (Tomasz Wija) and the maid Clarina (Francesca Russo Ermolli). Needless to say all ends happily with Slook returning home disappointed.

La cambiale di matrimonio has not been that frequently on disc; not that the work is lacking in the necessary qualities but probably more because of the extensive dialogue – there is a great deal of it. In fact, in another composer’s hands it could have become little more than a comic play with songs. Instead Rossini creates a series of brilliant ensembles which certainly make the piece worth hearing.

This performance was recorded live at the Rossini in Wildbad festival with a cast which included four native Italians. This shows: the recording is vivid and entrancing, capturing the lively performance with dialogue rattling along at quite a rate of knots; there is also a bit of stage noise. The drawback is that Naxos provide only a detailed synopsis; you can download an Italian libretto but there doesn’t seem to be an English one which might put people off.

There are only four solo numbers - arias for Fanny and Clarina, entrance Cavatinas for Mill and for Slook. As was to become his wont in his serious operas, Rossini drives the plot through a series of duets, trios and ensembles with the first of his famous multi-part, dramatic finales.

The cast are perhaps not perfect, but their performances are all infectious. Priante and Mastrototaro are both a delight as the pair of buffo basses, making light of the fact that the tessitura of the parts seems to go rather high. They throw off Rossini’s roulades with a degree of abandon. Samsonova does not sing Fanny with quite the right amount of entrancing ripeness, at times her tone becomes a bit slender above the stave. Her account of the duet with Slook - where she has to repeatedly tell him that she will never be his - is inclined to be untidy, but this might also be the effect of the dramatic moment. These are not serious problems, she fits into the ensemble nicely. Zanfardino’s Milfort does not get an aria, though he duets with Samsonova; Zanfardino has a nicely slim lyric voice.

Wija and Russo Ermolli provide strong support in the important roles of Clarina and Norton. Russo Ermolli impresses in her aria. This Clarina is a young woman not a blowsy old maid and Russo Ermolli captures this nicely.

Under the lively direction of Christopher Franklin the Württemberg Philharmonic Orchestra acquits itself well, providing vivid support. They use a harpsichord for continuo.

This is a lively and involving account of Rossini’s first opera. Whilst not perfect, it does bring out the comic drama of the piece and is certainly a fine addition to the expanding list of Rossini operas on Naxos.
-- Robert Hugill, MusicWeb International

Set in the town of Chalons near the German border at the time of the French Revolution during the Reign of Terror in 1794, Johann Strauss II’s final operetta The Goddess of Reason languished for 111 years until this 2009 in-concert revival. Its light-hearted mockery of the aristocracy, morality and the army, somewhat controversial at the time, seems as harmless now as that of Bernstein’s ebullient opera Candide and its humour stands the test of time. Abounding in waltz tunes and marches, its exuberant music is vintage Strauss. For this recording Christian Pollack has reconstructed the score as it would have been heard on its opening night with additional items that Strauss added for its 25th performance.

Includes italian song(s) by various composers. Ensembles: Juilliard School Trombone Choir, Joe's Jersey Jazz Jesters Big Band, Alessi Street Band, Extension Ensemble. Conductors: Virginia Allen, Sam Pilafian. Soloists: Joseph Alessi, Warren Jones, Barbara Allen.

Meyerbeer created his operas as vast, elaborate woven tapestries-showered with detail and colour-the result of years of painstaking work. This landmark recording of the Crusader in Egypt was made in January 2007.

Social and musical life in Biedermeier Vienna during the first decade of the 19th century created a great demand for dances which took place in the residences of wealthy citizens. With their echoes of the Austrian countryside Schubert’s folk-type Ländler are dances in 3/4 time, precursors of the waltz. Composed towards the end of his life when Schubert wrote his greatest music, the sets of 16and17Ländlerare notable for their melodic inventiveness. The 16arededicated to the ladies of Vienna and known as the Wiener Damen-Ländler; while the Écossaises were intended for facing lines of dancers rather than couples. Daniel Lebhardt relishes the joy and ‘irresistible and sometimes quite delirious’ ingenuity of these jewel-like dances.

Music for wind ensemble was a regular part of entertainment in Beethoven’s day, and his Octet was composed for the skilled players in the service of his patron, the Archbishop-Elector in Bonn. The charming and skillfully written Sextet is also ‘from my early things and, what’s more, was written in one night’; impressing a critic of the time ‘by its splendid melodies, leisurely harmonic flow, and wealth of new and surprising ideas.’ Wind partitas often opened with a March, and the Rondino was originally intended as the Finale to the Octet, two suitable pieces to complete this fashionable Beethoven soiree.

In 1921 Arnold Schoenberg was forced to leave his holiday home in Austria because of the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe.

CHILL WITH RACHMANINOV

Includes work(s) by Sergei Rachmaninov.

MARTINU: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4

Includes work(s) by George Frideric Handel.

In his vast compositional activity Ferdinand Thieriot manifested himself first and foremost as a worthy representative of the German Romantic movement. The well-known music theorist and critic Hermann Kretzschmar definitively stated in 1895: “… His contribution to Romantic music is characterized by the way it unfolds simply and naturally, by its amicable elegance of mood, and in particular by the unsurpassed clarity of musical form and language.” In 2004 the Amadeus Verlag published his two string trios for violin, viola and violoncello in D major and in A minor. Both works are full of the lyricism so characteristic of Thieriot’s writing, while also manifesting a refined precision of musical language, elegance of form and irreproachable taste. Undoubtedly the two string trios make a valuable addition to the international chamber repertoire. On this album, the works are interpreted by the successful Trio Lubotsky (Mark Lubotsky, Katarina Andreasson and Olga Dowbusch-Lubotsky)