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!

Bach: Overtures (Suites) Nos. 1-4

One of the nicest things about Naxos' complete survey of Bach's orchestral music is that each disc always includes a substantial musical "bonus" that distinguishes it from the numerous competing performances available. In this case, conductor Helmut Müller-Brühl and his intrepid band of keyboard and string players offer a reconstruction of the Concerto for Three Harpsichords BWV 1064 in its original version for three violins. Comparison of the two versions is fascinating, not least because the players offer a fractionally more expansive tempo in the slow movement of the violin version, acknowledging the stringed instrument's superior ability to sustain a long, lyrical melody. It's this sensitivity to the natural qualities of the solo instruments themselves that allows the players to set ideal tempos, and to perform each work with just the right mix of high spirits and idiomatic musicianship. In short, these are performances as good as any, and a great buy. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concertos, Vol. 1

This is a repertoire that's been surprisingly well represented on disc, benefiting from the glasnost/perestroika-inspired revival of liturgical music in Russia in the early 1980s and the coincidental CD-fueled resurgence of the classical recording industry. One of the beauties of the unique, harmonized chant forms that characterize Russian church music is the attention this music received from some of the country's finest composers, some of them well known--Grechaninov, Bortnyansky, Glazunov, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov--and others more obscure but nevertheless highly skilled. Most of the composers represented here are among the latter category, but the music is first rate and the choir, from Moscow's historic Novospassky Monastery, is equal to the best on disc. It's also a plus that most of the selections, by Lvov, Arkhangelsky, Smolensky, Kastalsky, and others, aren't duplicated elsewhere. The program follows a service of the Divine Liturgy, which includes hymns, antiphons, the Great Litany, the Trisagion, Nicene Creed, a psalm, and the Doxology. I was pleasantly surprised by the exceptional quality of the singing, set in shimmering, vibrant sound made in a Moscow studio but with the kind of (artificial?) resonance that could just as well have come from the wood and stone environs of an ancient church. There are many excellent choices for recordings of Russian religious music, but if you want to hear what the real thing sounds like, you won't go wrong with this--and its budget price makes it especially attractive. --David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Opera Explained: Verdi - Aida

2019 Grammy Award WInner - Best Classical Compendium


Kenneth Fuchs is one of America’s leading composers. He celebrates his unique fifteen-year recording history with conductor JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra with this stunning release of three new concertos and an orchestral song cycle. Kenneth Fuchs has composed music for orchestra, band, voice, chorus, and various chamber ensembles. His music has achieved significant global recognition through performances, media exposure, and digital streaming and downloading throughout North and South America, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Australia. The London Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of JoAnn Falletta, has recorded five discs of Fuchs’s music for Naxos American Classics. The first, released in August 2005, was nominated for two GRAMMY® Awards (“Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra” and “Producer of the Year, Classical”).

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REVIEW:

Now stretching back over the past fifteen years, JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra have been recording the major works of Kenneth Fuchs.

All of the present disc comes from the past six years, the most recent, Poems of Life, completed in 2017. The opening Piano Concerto, in the conventional three movements, was composed at the request of Jeffrey Biegel, who is the soloist on this disc. Often testing his technical virtuosity, the finale calls for prodigious dexterity in the fast flowing finale.

We can admire the London Symphony for the multitude of colours they provide, just as if the play the music regularly, and our gratitude to the conductor, JoAnn Falletta, the composer’s unstinting champion.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

REVIEW:

Gerard Schwarz's David Diamond symphony recordings originally appeared on the Delos label in the early 1990s. They remain impressive (though unfortunately still rare) documents of this composer's uniquely engaging music. In contrast to Symphony No. 1's ebullient opening, Diamond's Second begins with a wistful Adagio funebre, one of the work's longer and more profound movements, another being the beautiful Andante expressivo (with its evocative string and woodwind writing). The harmonic and melodic style occasionally recalls Copland, who comes most immediately to mind in the brass and bass drum play of the scherzo. However, the finale brings that unique blend of folksy Americana and classical rigor that marks much of Diamond's work.

Symphony No. 4's finale uses a similar rhythmic structure and even shares the same key as the Second, but otherwise the two works are quite different. Diamond compacts a lot of material into three brief movements. The musical language is less overtly tuneful than in No. 2, but the composer's expanded harmonic and textural palette ensures ever-captivating sounds, just as his sense of dramatic contrast and well-timed climaxes provide substantial emotional impact throughout. Schwarz conducts both scores with keen sensitivity, while the Seattle Symphony (particularly the brass in No. 4) relishes the challenge of this then-unfamiliar music. The low-level recordings require a volume boost to register fully, and they retain some shallowness, but not enough to detract from full enjoyment of the performances.

--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

Charles Ives wrote almost two hundred songs. Although his reputation rests on orchestral, chamber and piano music, it is Ives's songs that represent the heart of his creative thinking. The expressive variety encountered is accordingly vast: indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting is analogous to the wider evolution of American music during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This new edition includes all the songs that Ives completed. The alphabetic approach ensures that each volume (of which this disc is the fourth of six) contains a representative cross-section.

Chopin: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-3

PROKOFIEV: Peter and the Wolf / BRITTEN: Young Person's Guid

As Scriabin's Preludes progressively leave their Chopin models behind and dig deeper into sensuous abstraction, Evgeny Zarafiants' probing, dark toned interpretations truly hit home. No skating over Scriabin's increasingly troubled waters for this pianist, whose wide dynamic range and multi-tiered palette of articulations add dramatic dimension and heft to these elusive scores. The real eye-openers, though, are four preludes written by Scriabin's eleven-year-old son Julian. They're quite extraordinary in their confident, fluent piano writing and harmonic sophistication, bearing hints of early Schoenberg alongside the elder Scriabin's musical style. Julian drowned at age 11 in 1919. We will never know if he would have grown up to take over the family business, so to speak, yet these remarkable pieces are no doubt worthy of the Scriabin name. --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

John Philip Sousa’s compositions and the unprecedented international popularity of the Sousa Band helped establish the identity of a nation still culturally innocent and full of brash new energy. Sousa’s patriotism is represented in the Globe and Eagle March, the inspiring Keeping Step with the Union March and the setting of war verses for the We Are Coming March. Upbeat pieces such as the Tally Ho Overture contrast with the Sunday hymn fantasy In Pulpit and Pew, the fantasy In Parlour and Street, a medley of popular, operetta and operatic tunes, and a charmingly original version of Sousa’s favorite folk-song Bonnie Annie Laurie.

For anyone new to Hanson’s works this CD is a brilliant introduction to a really inspirational composer.

This is the fifth volume in Gerard Schwarz’s fervent traversal of the seven Hanson symphonies for Delos. The three pieces are drawn from DE 3160, 3092 and 3130. As with the earlier volumes Schwarz brooks no dilution of the music. Nothing is routine or careless.

The old passionate munitions and the aggressive air-burst energy is still there in the six-movement Sixth Symphony. Hanson was writing way against the prevailing current of the times – it was 1968 – but the fuel still ignites! This work initially took a while to take a hold on me but now its swaying Nordic romance will not let go. The music has exuberance, chattering Sibelian zest, an epic stride and the benefit of a resplendent recording. It was dedicated to Leonard Bernstein and the NYPO. Schwarz takes things at a faster lick than Siegfried Landau and the Music for Westchester Symphony Orchestra version from the early 1970s. Landau was first issued on Turnabout LP TV-S34534, revived on CD on Excelsior and also as part of a VoxBox CDX5092.

Lumen in Christo growls with awe. Somewhere in there we are told that there is material by Handel and Haydn. It is deeply subsumed. The choir sings texts with light as their subject from the Latin Requiem and from The Bible. The music has a symphonic mien so do not expect much in the way of relaxation after the rippling power of the Sixth Symphony.

The Seventh also uses the Seattle Symphony Chorale. It’s a setting for choirs and orchestra of texts by Walt Whitman. Hanson – then within four years of his death - sticks to his last. The style essays no change. Indeed he even incorporates that long-breathed treasure of a melody – the grand theme from The Second Symphony. He first set Whitman’s verse in 1915 and latterly in Drumtaps (1935), Song of Democracy (1957) and The Mystic Trumpeter (1970; rec. Delos DE3160). This is not the work’s first recording. That honour rests with the World Youth Symphony Orchestra Interlochen and the National Music Camp High School Choir who recorded it in August 1977 on Bay Cities BCD 1009. Atmospheric though that original is it cannot hope to compete with Schwarz’s fully professional version.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed for a final Schwarz Naxos disc including the Piano Concerto and The Mystic Trumpeter. In due course I would guess that Naxos will also issue a boxed set as they did for Barber and Schuman.

– Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

RUSSELL: Rhapsody for Horn and Orchestra / Middle Earth

The songs of the American composer Charles Ives (1874 - 1954) have been well-served on CD, but they have never before been recorded in their entirety on a budget-priced label or arranged, for recording purposes, in alphabetical order. The American Classics series of the budget Naxos label is in the midst of doing both. This CD is the third of a complete recording of the Ives songs arranged, quixotically, in alphabetical order. The performers are a group of young musicians affiliated with the Yale University School of Music. They offer readings of Ives as varied, idiosyncratic, and unpredictable as the songs themselves. In 1922, Ives gathered 114 of his songs, arranged them in reverse chronological order, added comments, and self-published them in a book called simply "114 songs". All told, Ives composed about 200 songs. The songs dating from his early years frequently draw heavily upon German lieder, parlor music, or hymns. The songs of Ives's maturity are deeply complex, varied, and musically adventurous. Throughout his life, Ives freely shifted musical material between his songs and his other compositions. From the beginning to the end of his career as a composer, Ives drew heavily on other music, incorporating many quotations from both classical and popular sources.

Like his orchestral work, Jacob Druckman's chamber music is notable for its bold physicality and vivid atmosphere, qualities also on full display in the String Quartet No. 3 (1981) that opens this new Naxos disc. The first movement's abrupt dynamic shifts, sinister dark/light shadings, slithery runs, and persistent mewing portamentos suggest a musical game of cat and mouse. The more recent (1994) Dark Wind also follows this pattern, however a very different aesthetic informs Quartet No. 2 from Druckman's earlier (1966), purely atonal period. Anyone familiar with Elliott Carter's works in the genre will know what to expect here, although Druckman is less interested in extreme complexity than he is in rhythm and color (even if the latter is simply varying shades of gray).

Reflections on the Nature of Water was composed for solo marimba. The six movements feature such titles as Crystalline, Fleet, and Relentless, and they are indeed varied by tempo and mood. But admittedly, the sound of atonal marimba begins to wear before long, and listeners are accordingly advised not to play this entire CD in one sitting. To its credit, the program features exceptional, virtuoso performances from the Group for Contemporary Music (featuring Druckman's son Daniel on marimba), as well as vivid recorded sound by Naxos. For the adventurous.

--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

Cavalleria rusticana is the short opera that has all the elements of a grand opera compressed into a single highly dramatic time span. The story of love, lust, blood-feud and betrayal played out against the pageantry of the Easter celebrations in a Sicilian village delivers an emotional wallop because of the youthful vigor and musical wealth of it's great score which includes the glorious Easter Hymn and the deeply moving Intermezzo. Mascagni was never to repeat his youthful success but this brief work is enough to ensure his immortality. 1 CD with 12-page booklet.

REVIEWS:
International Record Review (3/00, p.54) - "...Fialkowska brings us the first budget-price version [of Paderewski's concerto] and lavishes her considerable resources on both the concerto and the lively, attractive 'Polish Fantasy'..."

Includes work(s) by William Grant Still. Ensemble: Fort Smith Symphony. Conductor: John Jeter.

Diamond dedicated his Symphony No. 8 to his friend and mentor, composer Aaron Copland on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. The work was completed in November 1960 and received it's première with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic on 27th October, 1961. While essentially tonal in harmonic language, Diamond incorporated highly chromatic elements and even a twelve-note tone row, not unlike what the Symphony's dedicatee was doing during this same period in his Connotations, though Diamond's work is far less aggressively dissonant in overall sound. The composer provided these notes for the première performance: I. Moderato-Adagio-Allegro vivo. The basic row is proclaimed in the very opening bars of the introduction; it is in two halves. The first, a forceful rhythmic theme of five notes (4/4), is thundered out by the orchestra tutti. The second, a more lyric theme of seven notes (3/4), is sung softly by a single clarinet. Thematically, the second phrase is destined to be the more important; in fact, the row is immediately rearranged and presented by a solo horn, which starts with this second phrase in an even more lyric version, and concludes with a lyric transformation of the thundering five-note opening. The fast body of the movement, a free sonata-allegro structure, starts with a heavily syncopated version of the row as presented by the French horn. This is the principal theme; a contrasting second theme is presented at a more relaxed tempo by a solo clarinet, ben cantando, over a soft counterpart of strings. Both themes are developed, and return in very nearly their original form during the course of this long but highly concentrated movement. The conclusion is a stunning climax compounded of the essence of both themes. II. Theme (Adagio), Variations and Double Fugue. After a two-measure introduction, which turns into a sequential accompaniment, the first violins begin a high, flowing melody that is the theme (3/4). Soon the orchestral basses and cellos enter with this same melody, while the violins continue the forty-measure theme. Variation No. 1 is a canon, in which the violins lead and cellos follow with the same melody, always at a distance of one measure. There are seven variations in all, the last of which repeats a long section from No. 1, and then leads without pause into the lively double-fugue. The first principal theme of this is derived from the principal theme of the first movement. Other themes from the first movement make their appearance, too, as the Symphony moves on to it's climax and conclusion.

Arthur Farwell has been called 'the most neglected composer in [American musical] history.' Hounded by accusations of 'cultural appropriation,' he has posthumously fallen prey to changing notions of cultural authenticity. As the leader of the 'Indianists' movement, Farwell believed it was a democratic obligation of Americans of European descent to try to understand the indigenous Americans they displaced and oppressed. To this end, he merged Indian music and lore with Western concert forms - today, a controversial practice. The performances here recorded originated at a landmark PostClassical Ensemble festival at Washington's National Cathedral. The Dakota String Quartet, resident quartet of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (SDSO), comprises principal string players of the orchestra. First violin Doosook Kim has been concertmaster with the SDSO since 1995 and performs as a soloist and chamber musician in the US and internationally.