Ibert: Piano Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

MERTZ: Bardenklange, Op. 13

Classical Music

Classical Music

Alexandra Hawley and Jeffrey McFadden offer a wonderfully eclectic program for flute and guitar. If you haven't heard this combination of instruments before, on the evidence presented here you'll very likely agree that it's a most musically rewarding pairing. The flute's smooth timbre ideally complements the guitar's non-legato and softly percussive tone quality--aspects put to good use in Robert Beaser's Mountain Songs, where McFadden's rustic, folksy picking and strumming is tempered by Hawley's serenely floating melodies. Joan Tower's quasi-impressionistic Snow Dreams initially conjures up idyllic, pastoral images before the composer's spiky harmonic style slightly sharpens the music's edges. Likewise, Lowell Liebermann's Sonata for Flute opens with a blissfully ruminative Nocturne, an atmosphere that dissipates immediately with the start of the nervously dancing Allegro finale.


Based on Mexican folk tunes, Terry Riley's Cantos Desiertos features delightfully stirring dances rendered with the aid of percussion. Finally, Peter Schickele's Windows offers a neo-Renaissance Pavane and a songful Cantilena before charging into an all-out strum-fest for the closing Refrain. Hawley and McFadden play beautifully, sounding convincingly at home in all of the varying styles and modes presented by this unusual mix of composers. Naxos' engineering gives listeners a realistic sense of the recording venue. This is one of those discs you just put in your player and totally enjoy.
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

HANDEL : Harpsichord Suites Nos. 1 - 8

In researching libraries and publishers' basements for materials for this project, I found some of the greatest American love songs ever written, a richness of music that made it difficult to choose.

Not too many listeners are Dybbuk admirers, and even Bernstein's supporters find this music less interesting than much else that he wrote. The fact that the music resorts to some dodecaphonic and numerological compositional techniques isn't a point in its favor, though in actual sonority it's entirely characteristic of Bernstein, and at this late date it's easy to hear that his personality inhabits every bar. If there's a problem with the piece, it likely stems from the fact that the overall impression it makes is a bit glum, lacking in that special snap that makes his best work so memorable. Certainly the supernatural subject is a dark one, and it calls forth plenty of eerie, atmospheric scoring; but the actual musical material seems stretched thinly over the work's 45 minutes (48, if you're the composer). Bernstein recorded the complete work for Sony, but broke it up into a pair of suites for his DG remakes. I do prefer the original; the music is what it is, and over time it has grown on me--and might well do so for you too.


Fancy Free of course is delightful, and often recorded, but this performance holds its own with the best--and I frankly prefer Andrew Mogrelia to the composer in Dybbuk. He's just that much livelier, and the Nashville Symphony sounds as inside the idiom as the New York Philharmonic of several decades' past. This newcomer also is better recorded than Bernstein's performances either on Sony or DG, and the excellent version of "Hot Stuff" that opens Fancy Free also is a plus. If you're a Bernstein fan, you will certainly want this.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Quartet No. 7 was written in 2000 and first performed within weeks after the World Trade Center attacks. It is subtitled Angels, and includes the organ along with the quartet, the only work I know of for that combination. The Quartet No. 2 (1972), the briefest, least ambitious work here, opens as a canon, each instrument eventually entering with the same material. The theme, though, is so remarkably heterogeneous in it's glissandi, trills, tonal and atonal phrases that the canonic effect is not immediately apparent. The Quartet No. 8 (2001-2002) was written as a memorial to the victims of 11th September, and moves through three movements from complete instability to a kind of hypnotic serenity. The opening movement, On wings of sound, is entirely in glissandi, with no fixed reference point anywhere; it is a palindrome canon, a fact that can hardly influence one's perception of it's eerie writhing. A field of uninterrupted glissandos also marks the opening of the Quartet No.4, from 1976-77. Here, though, an accelerative process is in motion, the lines moving faster and faster up to an unexpectedly serene close. The Quartet No.3 from 1975 is similar to the Fourth in it's use of ostinato, but comes closer than any of Coates' other quartets to the idea of theatrically contrasting the personalities of the different instruments, as in Charles Ives's Second Quartet or those of Elliott Carter. The final movement is a Prayer couched in stately chords of parallel fifths - you might notice it's repeated eight-note tune coming back in retrograde. The entire quartet takes a sense of unease from the viola and cello being tuned a quarter-tone off from the violins.

American Salute: Spirit of the Nation is a tasteful collection of orchestral pieces devoted to the history and vitality of the United States. Performed by a series of orchestras, highlights include Aaron Copland's sweeping "Hoe Down," "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and Ferde Grof�'s "Grand Canyon Suite 'Sunrise'," during which the anticipation of the sun hitting the lip of the canyon is palpable. The introspective moments of "Variations on 'America'" and Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" are also a nice touch, as they offset the collection's more bombastic moments. Basic versions of the "Star Spangled Banner" and "Stars and Stripes Forever" round out the set.

Three of Alan Hovhaness' six symphonies for wind ensemble are included on this Naxos release. After hearing these, I'm eagerly waiting for the label to get to the other three. All of the ensemble playing is flawless, the many solos are ravishingly beautiful, and conductor Keith Brion's grasp of the music results in performances I can't imagine being bettered, surpassing even the classic Mercury Living Presence recording by the late Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble.


The symphonies are separated by two of the composer's works for trumpet and band, the solo part played by Scotland's great trumpeter John Wallace. He soars ecstatically above his colleagues in the Prayer of Saint Gregory, and his more varied part in Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places (the most aggressive music on the disc) achieves a threatening quality without ever losing beauty of tone.


Hovhaness' style is so distinctive, and his oeuvre so vast, that it's easy to tag him as having written the same piece over and over. And it is true that these works share many of the same elements: long, arching modal melodies, rich triadic harmonies laced with non-harmonic chiming notes, "spirit murmurs", and fluent, noble fugues. But there is enough difference in the inspiration of these works, and enough stylistic development, that you don't really get an impression of sameness. And there are many passages that haunt the memory: the flowing oboe and harp duet at the heart of the Fourth Symphony; the crossing trombone portamentos in the same work; the gorgeous fugue for all of the bell-like instruments in "Star Dawn"; the emergence from the frightening eruption that represents the "Desolate Places".


The recording was made in a church in Paisley, Scotland, and the venue contributes just the right mixture of spaciousness and intimacy to suit the music. If you are the sort of record collector who keeps alert for good new releases of unusual repertoire, this is a disc with the musical values and production quality that you always are hoping for. [1/4/2006]
--Joseph Stevenson, ClassicsToday.com

Charles Tomlinson Griffes only lived 35 years; his death in 1920 cut short one of the most promising careers in American music. During his short life span he created a collection of short, rhapsodic works that are full of color and romantic adventure.

The Pleasure-Dome of Kubla-Khan is best known in its orchestrated version, expanded and altered somewhat from the original piano composition. It is a lush, lyrical, and dramatic work whose exotic melodies exude Middle-Eastern and Oriental influences. Of the other compositions, the Piece in D minor, from 1915, stands out. Elegant, impassioned impressionism reigns in this engaging work, and it certainly deserves wider recognition.

Though the rest of the pieces on the CD are all worth hearing, the early transcription for two pianos of the Hansel and Gretel overture is most impressive.

As performed here, it is one of the most charming duo-piano pieces in the repertoire. Michael Lewin plays the rest of the program with passion and precision, though his interpretations lack that last measure of urgency given by James Tocco on Gasparo.  The recorded sound is exemplary, using 24-bit technology for the highest resolution.

--Rad Bennett, ClassicsToday.com

Sparrows was written in 1979 for the Twentieth Century Consort. The text consists of fifteen haiku by the eighteenth-century Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa. Instead of reproducing the aesthetic of the haiku, with it's sharply outlined images, Schwantner's music absorbs the meaning and character of these naturalistic and universalist images and expresses them in a comprehensively lyrical musical form. He thus creates a series of what might be called dream-stages. These stages reach from exuberant harmonies, harsh dissonance, effusiveness finally to gentle hope. Schwantner draws freely from fully varied stylistic precursors to represent the poetic imagery. Reminiscences of Renaissance dances and baroque polyphony can be heard. By the process of reconciling contrasting musical styles with the continuity of the work, Schwantner successfully makes these styles his own. The wide range of atmospheres and colors is created by a setting whose acoustical possibilities are used in a most profound and creative way. The voice is supported by three instrumental groups, woodwind, strings (tuned a semitone lower, to add a particular fullness to the whole ensemble), and a combination of piano, harp and percussion. The sound of the percussion is strengthened by the strings, which strike the crotales or antique cymbals with their bows, evoking an otherworldly sound to accompany The River of Heaven. The instrumentalists must also sing at various key points in the whole work. This chorus element accompanies the references to sparrows at the beginning and end of the text. On the first occasion this exotic effect produces a mysterious atmosphere of threatening danger, while at the end this effect is particularly intimate, touching and even soothing. Soaring was written in 1986 and is a short, highly virtuosic high-wire act for flute and piano. In accordance with the title, Schwantner follows his favourite practice, fanning out chords that give this and many other pieces their sweeping character. The piano begins with an intense introductory gesture that articulates the harmonic element engaged throughout the work. Following the piano's opening, the flute enters with a series of declamatory phrases that interact continually with the piano in a dialogue. The two instruments form a continuous musical thread, with the flute forcefully projecting it's voice, while the piano provides a supportive backdrop. The materials here later formed the basis of a larger more extended work, A Play of Shadows (1990), a fantasy for flute and chamber orchestra. Distant Runes and Incantations was written in 1984 as a kind of piano concerto with full orchestra. In 1987 Schwantner arranged it for chamber ensemble. This version is scored for solo piano, flute (also piccolo and alto flute), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), percussion and string quartet. The title of the work is taken from a verse of an independent poem that provides a poetic support for the music. Schwantner explains that this is a procedure that he has used in various pieces, as, for example, in the orchestral Aftertones of Infinity (1978) and Music of Amber (1981). Although the work is not particularly programmatic in conception, the poem provided a source of extra-musical imagery continued throughout the development of the work, fitting with and forming the composer's musical ideas. The music consists of a single extended movement in which the piano weaves continual threads through the texture. The piano has the principal responsibility for the presentation of simple musical elements, sharing, mixing and uniting these elements with other instruments. Two Poems of Aguedo Pizarro were written in July and August 1980, the third of five works composed for the American soprano Lucy Shelton. The work was first performed by her and pianist Margot Garrett on 25 November 1980 in Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York City. The texts are taken from a bilingual collection of poems under the title Sombraventa-dora / Shadowinnower by the American poet Aguedo Pizarro. While the original poems were written in Spanish, the work uses an English translation by a friend of the poet, Barbara Stoller Miller. The surrealist images and magical poetic landscapes that the poems evoke reflect, the composer tells us, the vocal quality that he found most bewitching in Lucy Shelton's singing, and the result was an attempt to bring together these two irresistible worlds. The two songs are very different. Shadowinnower is a rather aggressive, harmonically tense song, consisting of various small sections. Here there are minor-third sounds that also play a large part in Music of Amber, both works often using the same musical material. The special feature of the first song is (apart from the pipe, performed by the singer and pianist in two places) is the very effective introduction of four crotales, played by the singer as she sings, a very unusual demand. Black Anemones, the second song, offers a great contrast with the dramatic and complex first song. On the one hand is the vocal line melodious, singable and catchy, while the work is harmonically based on fifth overtones, as in two lyrical passages in Sparrows. The result is a work of a tender, very romantic, nostalgic, even ecstatic character. Music of Amber, written for the New York Music Ensemble in February 1981, is scored for flute, clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), violin, cello, piano and percussion. The first performance was on 10 April 1981 at the Civic Center in Chicago. In the same year the work won first prize in the chamber music category at the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. The first movement, with the subtitle Wind Willow Whisper, was originally commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Da Capo Chamber Players and was performed by them in March 1980 at the Alice Tully Hall. Because of the relatively short duration of the movement a second movement was written and the first movement was enlarged by the extension of the percussion part. The second movement, with the subtitle Sanctuary, provides a formal counterbalance, and at the same time reveals and develops further musical material from the first movement. The work is dedicated to the American patron Paul Fromm. There is a short poem before each of the two movements.

"Nicolas Flagello is one among many worthy 20th-century American composers to have fallen between the cracks. His language is post-Romantic in the manner of Barber and Menotti, but that only provides certain jumping off points. He is also rigorously neo-Classical, an adept orchestrator, and a master of the rhetorical gesture. Both the point and pithiness of his Symphony No. 1 and his Theme, Variations, and Fugue would have made Brahms and Roussel, among others, smile."
"David Amos is an old hand at producing effective performances of pieces that don't as yet have a performing tradition. Here he elicits inspired playing from the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. The recording is fine by current standards, and the liner notes by Fanfare's Walter Simmons are concise and informative. This is a wholly meritorious addition to Naxos's ongoing 'American Classics' series." -- William Zagorski, FANFARE

"Naxos's sound is couched in an ideal balance of spaciousness, presence, and detail, with climactic moments packing a startlingly gutsy wallop. The timing claimed on the cover is 10 minutes short of the actual disc duration: one is getting even greater value for very little money, and at Naxos's price it would amount to self-defeating, criminal neglect to pass this by." - Adrian Corleonis, FANFARE

REVIEW:

The current offering by James Sedares and the New Zealand Symphony is the best [Thomson recording] yet, with a big, clear sound and some virtuoso work from several sections, for example, the brass. As a bonus, the New Zealanders include Pilgrims and Pioneers, here recorded for the first time. (Thomson wrote this in 1964 for John Houseman's Journey to America, a one-reel film that was shown four times an hour in the U.S. Pavilion at the New York World's Fair.) Finally, this recording's fine liner notes by Marina and Victor Ledin include Thomson's own program notes from the first performances of these works.

-- American Music (Michael Meackna) Fall 2000

Sedares's generally fine performance with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra shows why the Symphony on a Hymn Tune has enjoyed the most popularity of Thomson's works...the Allegretto's rhythms are pointed incisively and with great flair, and Sedares builds the finale quite successfully with ardor and warmth, the bizarre repeated hammer chords of the coda aptly unsettling.

It's a grand idea to offer all three of Virgil Thomson's symphonies on one disc - at budget price no less-so obvious one wonders why no one has done it before...the playing of the New Zealand symphony is most impressive throughout, and the recorded sound is first-class. This disc neatly plugs a gap in the Thomson discography. Highly recommended.

-- Fanfare (Lawrence A. Johnson)

Charles Tomlinson Griffes only lived 35 years; his death in 1920 cut short one of the most promising careers in American music. During his short life span he created a collection of short, rhapsodic works that are full of color and romantic adventure. The Pleasure-Dome of Kubla-Khan is best known in its orchestrated version, expanded and altered somewhat from the original piano composition. It is a lush, lyrical, and dramatic work whose exotic melodies exude Middle-Eastern and Oriental influences. Of the other compositions, the Piece in D minor, from 1915, stands out. Elegant, impassioned impressionism reigns in this engaging work, and it certainly deserves wider recognition. Though the rest of the pieces on the CD are all worth hearing, the early transcription for two pianos of the Hansel and Gretel overture is most impressive. Griffes had gone to Europe to study with Humperdinck, and no doubt intended his masterful arrangement as a tribute. As performed here, it is one of the most charming duo-piano pieces in the repertoire. Michael Lewin plays the rest of the program with passion and precision, though his interpretations lack that last measure of urgency given by James Tocco on Gasparo. The latter, however did not record all of this music, so at the low Naxos price, no one should mind duplicating a few of these works. The recorded sound is exemplary, using 24-bit technology for the highest resolution. --Rad Bennett, ClassicsToday.com

"The two symphonies on this latest release from the superb American Classics series, infused with characteristic, deliciously pastoral, lyricism, show off Harris at his most colourful. The National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine brings to the fore some intricate instrumentation in its adept performance under the guiding hand of Theodore Kuchar."

- Tarik O'Regan, The Observer

STRONG: Roi Arthur (Le) / Die Nacht

Classical Music

This is good. Very good. Not only does this disc offer an imaginative array of first-class wind music, the performances are well nigh ideal. Dvorák's Serenade has just the right "outdoors" quality, a freshness of rhythm and, in the slow movement, a lyrical serenity that's totally delightful. Better still, the recording captures the work perfectly: not so close that we're serenaded by clicking valves and gasping musicians, not so far that the distinctive wind timbres congeal into a sonic fog. Better still, the horns are ideally balanced and integrated into the ensemble, rather than positioned as a trio of soloists in their own acoustic (as so often happens). Georges Enescu's Dixtuor is an elusive masterwork, and the Oslo players clarify its complex but luminous textures by stressing the music's gentle, bittersweet lyricism. I've never heard it sound so purposeful or so melodically appealing. As for "Youth", Janácek's 70th birthday present to himself--well, it sounds as buoyant and vivacious as its title, the crucial writing for low instruments (bassoon and bass clarinet) being captured with special vividness. This is a disc that you will want to listen to again and again, and I can't recommend it highly enough.--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Any composer dubbed by Haydn as "one of the greatest geniuses I have met" deserves serious attention. One such was German-born Joseph Martin Kraus. Born the same year as Mozart (1756), Kraus survived him by a year, dying of tuberculosis at age 36. Remarkably, despite having lived in Sweden for less than eight years, he was befriended by King Gustavus III and became the country's greatest 18th century composer. That reputation is gaining wider endorsement today through a pioneering Kraus series on Naxos, of which this is the latest installment. The performers, as before, are the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under Petter Sundkvist, who continue to give exemplary readings of these remarkable if obscure late Classical symphonies.


Though the C-sharp minor and E minor works that open and close this program fully reflect the tastes and semantics of their era, the Symphony in C minor, subtitled "Symphonie funèbre", is an astonishing discovery. Written in April, 1792, following the assassination of Gustav III (the event inspired operas by Verdi and Auber and its political repercussions were felt throughout Europe), this is one of the most extraordinary musical valedictions to pre-date Beethoven's Eroica. All four movements are somber and slow-moving, and the use of timpani, solemn brass, and muted strings seem uncomfortably alien to a work of the period. This is an exceptionally fine account; Sundkvist's orchestra plays magnificently under his watchful direction, and the solo cello and horn in the chorale section of the finale sound suitably eloquent.


This disc also includes Kraus’ Overture in D minor (according to Haydn's friend Fredrik Silverstolpe, Swedish ambassador to Vienna, it was performed by mixed wind band at Good Friday services in Stockholm for many years) in its original instrumentation, the outcome of detailed reconstruction of Kraus' original manuscripts. Another surprise is the C # minor 'Sinfonia da camera'; the second section of its minuet is simply the first part played backwards (a trick Haydn himself tried on occasion)! As with previous releases, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Sundkvist, offer spirited and polished orchestral playing and a bright-well-balanced recording. Highly recommended.
--Michael Jameson, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

This is one of those recordings that amply demonstrates the wisdom of Naxos' mission: greatly interesting though underheard repertoire; well-informed, talented performers who do justice to the music; unbeatable price. These quartets by Georges Enescu, who is much better known as one of the most influential violinists of the first half of the 20th century than as a composer, are lovely. The two works share a generally husky and dark-voiced tonality, sublimely Romanian textures, melodies that never slack into kitschiness, and a tendency to squeeze in many more thematic ideas than is perhaps advisable (see the 46-minute Quartet No. 1 for an example of such, though the much later second quartet is much more successful in squelching that impulse). The Romanian Ad Libitum Quartet (founded, coincidentally, at the Georges Enescu Academy of Arts in Iasi) is a perfect advocate for this music, with playing that is passionate yet never vulgar. The miking results in a wonderfully crisp sound, but the recording levels were clearly set a little too low. Be prepared to jack up the volume a few settings higher than you might regularly use. --Anastasia Tsioulcas, ClassicsToday.com

Brouwer: Guitar Music, Vol. 2

Einojuhani Rautavaara is one of the most original and accessible composers of the second half of the 20th century. His music has a deep romanticism to it, yet he often uses twelve-tone and atonal constructs as an integral part of the process.
The First Piano Concerto is a very strong work, and though very original, seems descended from the colors of Debussy, the broadness of Tchaikovsky and the harmonic contours of Sibelius. The piano writing is full, rich and virtuosic, pitting the soloist against the forces of the orchestra. This is a work that truly deserves to be a part of the standard repertory.
The Third Symphony employs much of the same power, but adds the grandeur and religiosity of Bruckner at the opening. At its weakest, some of the orchestral colors and motifs seem borrowed and melodramatic, but it is an immediately accessible work which opposes the formalist academic tradition.
'Cantus Articus' is the strangest work on this recording. Subtitled a "Concerto for birds and orchestra," this work features recorded Arctic birdsong, not just as background, but as the featured element. Unfortunately, anyone who has seen Hitchcock's THE BIRDS recently will find 'Cantus Articus' more than a little creepy!