Handel' oratorio Semele was composed in 1743 and tells of a beautiful mortal, whose short but spectacular love affair with Jupiter. King of the Gods, comes to a terrifying end in consequence of both her own vanity and the scheming of Jupiter' insanely.

Following my studies at the Tirana Conservatoire in 1982, I worked for three years as Music Director in a remote town in Southern Albania near the border with Greece.

Inspired by the vast potential of the tonal foundation of music, at a time when many of his contemporaries were embracing the twelve tone ideology, the eminent German composer Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling produced a rich, varied and highly personal body of work.

Beautiful music for bedtime by the world’s greatest composers.

Thomas Viloteau, First Prize Winner in the 2006 Guitar Foundation of America Competition, has studied at the Barcelona Conservatorio Superior de M sica under Joan Furio, and at the ecole Normale in Paris with Alberto Ponce.

The Lithuanian composer Feliksas Bajoras began his career as a violinist. His compositions demonstrate his strong interest in Lithuanian folk-music and often contain a personal element. His Symphony No. 2 reflects his experiences on a visit to the former Czechoslovakia, and Zenklas (The Sign) sets a poem by Mindaugas Tomonis, whose death in the Soviet period it commemorates. Fully aware of twentieth-century musical trends abroad, Bajoras absorbs these into his musical language, essentially continuing the neo-romantic tradition.

Tchaikovsky' songs represent a little-known but highly characteristic facet of his musical personality. In all he composed over 100 songs, most of which are set to poetic texts about the problems of emotional entanglement.

Glinka's ever-popular overture to Ruslan and Lyudmilla sets the stage for a journey through the wind band repertoire that includes one of it's cornerstones, Theme and Variations by Arnold Schoenberg.

Schoenberg' Three Piano Pieces come from 1894, long before he had developed the theories that led to serial music. His pupil Berg' Sonata, Op. 1 was written as his period of study came to an end.

Isotaro Sugata's compositions may be viewed as a synthesis of several different kinds of Western music, as well as incorporating elements of traditional Japanese imperial music.

Best known for his choral and symphonic works, Krzysztof Penderecki has also written many fascinating concertante pieces. His Concerto Grosso No. 1 makes full use of the potential for interplay between three solo cellos and orchestra.

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

The most important Danish composer of the first third of the twentieth century, Carl Nielsen was prolific in almost all genres. The six Symphonies are essentially tonal, emotionally direct works, which alternate long lines of melody with passages of blazing energy. The idea of writing a symphony based on the Four Temperaments � The Choleric, The Sanguine, The Melancholic, and The Phlegmatic, came to Nielsen when he saw a primitive peasant painting in a village inn. The title of the Third Symphony, Sinfonie espansiva, an afterthought, has been explained as an expansion of the scope of the mind and of the life that comes with it.

A master of the flute demonstrates the varied possibilities of his instrument. Wolfgang Schulz, principal flautist of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra since 1970, is one of the best known and most active flautists in the world, an.

TELEMANN 12 Fantasies for Solo Violin • Augustin Hadelich (vn) • NAXOS 8.570563 (64:52)


Keith Anderson’s notes to Augustin Hadelich’s release of Telemann’s 12 Fantasies for Solo Violin suggest that the composer wrote these brief works with amateurs and students in mind. Be that as it may, Augustin Hadelich, winner of the 2006 International Violin Competition, makes a case for them as brilliant showpieces, featuring a kind of fluent virtuosity very different from the more crabbed difficulties that stud Bach’s slightly earlier solo works. The first movements of the First Fantasie, in B? Major, encapsulate Hadelich’s general approach to the fantasies: finely tuned sensitivity to dynamic nuance in the opening Largo and almost runaway virtuosity in the ensuing Allegro, with swirling figuration separating patterned, stepwise melodic progressions in the first notes of each group. Hadelich takes care to articulate the moving lines so that Telemann’s underlying patterns become immediately intelligible. Even if, therefore, the fantasies make few strenuous demands on the performer (as few, in fact, as they may on the listener), still, in performances like these, they sound thoroughly engaging, impressively idiomatic, and dashingly brilliant, even when heard seriatim . Hadelich reproduces the gestures that characterize these fantasies as boldly as their style will permit, explicating the rhetorical flair with which Telemann endowed them (perhaps in lieu of contrapuntal complexity). The works remain interesting in the sensitive slow movements, the moderately paced gestural ones, and even in movements like the phosphorescent middle one of the 12th.


Those whose preference for modern instruments might eliminate Andrew Manze’s set (Harmonia Mundi France 907137), which I sent to the head of the class in 19:5, will likely find Hadelich’s readings more probing in the slow movements and less straightforward and deliberate in the fast ones than Angèle Dubeau in her generally engaging readings (Analekta 8708, 17:2), which I preferred to Hans Kalafusz’s (on Intercord 820.740), not to mention the less prepossessing sets by Frederick Sarnau (Gallo 687, 16:1) or Ivan Ženaty (Supraphon 11 14072). Still, those willing to adjust themselves to the analog sound of Arthur Grumiaux’s set (Philips Eloquence 8291, 31:4) may find Grumiaux’s purity, elegance, and authority preferable overall to Hadelich’s more variegated playing. Naxos’s engineers have captured their artist in the reverberant ambiance of St. John Chrysostom Church in Newmarket, Canada. But even for those who might prefer Grumiaux, Hadelich provides a vibrant, exciting alternative viewpoint. Enthusiastically recommended.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham