Opera Explained: VERDI - Falstaff (Smillie)

Includes work(s) by various composers.

24 Bit Digitally Remastered, rare photos, vintage memorabilia, detailed liner notes.

Rachmaninov’s Chopin Variations is a relative rarity on disc and a work that has never caught on in the concert hall. Here is a performance that makes you wonder why. More clearly than in Berezovsky’s (incomplete) recording (Teldec), more compellingly than even Howard Shelley (Hyperion), Scherbakov illustrates how the Variations, touchingly dedicated to Leschetizky, come from the same golden vein of inspiration that followed the Second Piano Concerto, even reusing some of its figurations and modulations (listen to Vars 3 and 8). Contrast the limpid lyricism of the brief Var. 17, one of the composer’s greatest melodies, with the bravura finale (Scherbakov chooses the alternative presto coda to end the cycle): this is great Rachmaninov playing with an eye for detail and lucid phrasing as much as for atmosphere and colour.

The five Op. 3 pieces are notable for the beautiful tonal quality of the playing (this and the recording throughout are first class). I’ve heard more cohesive takes on the Prelude, the second of the set (Hofmann, for example, and the composer himself), and the opening ‘Élégie’ has a slightly indulgent tempo, but Scherbakov’s individuality and character carry the day.

In the Sonata he manages to combine drama, breathtaking articulation and clarity of texture (usually one disappears at the expense of the other in this work). While it does not claim the pent-up, nerve-jangling thrill of Horowitz’s famous account, and despite a slight loss of tension in the final pages, Scherbakov’s must rank as a front runner among modern recordings.

-- Jeremy Nicholas, BBC Music

If you’re new to the music of Anton Webern, this superb budget CD is just the introduction you need. Until now, there’s been nothing much to tempt those unwilling to pay top price for Herbert von Karajan’s seminal recordings, or the equally engrossing and sometimes more revelatory DG remakes with the Berlin Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez. In contrast, Takuo Yuasa isn’t a household name, and his Ulster Orchestra isn’t in the big league, but don’t let those factors deter serious evaluation of this release alongside the best available alternatives.

Yuasa’s account of the Op. 1 Passacaglia affords striking evidence of the high quality of his ensemble. The playing is fine-grained and exact, and the cumulative effect of the performance is mightily impressive, with the vehement 16th variation especially telling. Webern’s Symphony Op. 21 may only last seven minutes or so, but Yuasa manages to pack a terrific wealth of detail and vast emotional range into its diminutive time-frame. There are some superb moments in the performance, none more shattering than the fearsome outburst from the first horn during the second section.

Equally shocking is the whip-crack violence Yuasa unleashes in the third of the Five Pieces Op. 10, played very fast and with impressive precision by this accomplished team. The awesome funeral march (No. 4 of the Six Pieces Op. 6) hasn’t quite the impact of Karajan’s, and Boulez’s is more monstrous yet; but Yuasa’s skill at building angst-ridden crescendos comes into its own in one of the finest of many outstanding moments on this recording. The muted trumpet solo in No. 5 (with celesta and glockenspiel) has the required eerie quality, and the uneasy stasis of the close is persuasively attained.

In sum, although the Ulster Orchestra’s solo and ensemble work is of high order, the principal benefit of the Karajan and Boulez recordings is that the Berliners produce playing of unrivalled tonal beauty side by side with those moments of near-seismic disturbance that are the true essence of Webern’s music. By choice, I’d opt for Boulez, whose more recent recordings are finer than DG’s earlier ones with Karajan; but Yuasa’s accounts have the spare, skeletal feel and expressive economy that makes them very rewarding indeed. An outstanding achievement.

— ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

Lorenzo Micheli was born in Milan and graduated cum laude from the prestigious G. Tartini Conservatory in Trieste. In 1999 he was the first Italian to win the grand prize at the Guitar Foundation of America Competition, a prize that included a solo recital tour of over fifty cities throughout the U.S. and Canada. This Naxos disc features Micheli in the studio playing the music of one of his countrymen, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco was one of Italy's most promising young composers in the 1920s. A Sephardic Jew, Castelnuovo-Tedesco felt an affinity for Spanish music and culture that is reflected in much of his work. Unfortunately, he was forced out of Italy once state-approved anti-Semitism took hold.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco's music is deliciously rhapsodic, and Micheli's guitar sings gloriously in this program. 'Escarramán' is a suite of Spanish dances inspired by Cervantes. Micheli plays this colorful work with grace and verve. Two movements are standouts: "El Canario," an elegant dance that displays Micheli's fluid technique; and "El rey Don Alonso el Bueno," a charming set of variations on an old nursery tune. Micheli has fire to spare, and dazzles with his picking technique in the spicy 'Tarantella,' Op.87b.

Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from eighteenth-century German authors, early Romantics, Biedermeier poets, and Heine.

The three works on this recording were composed at the height of David Diamond’s popularity. ‘Rounds’ is his most enduringly popular piece, whose simple economy of means prompted Aaron Copland to exclaim, “Oh, I wish I had written that piece.” The concert suite ‘Romeo and Juliet’ explores the “innate beauty and pathos” of Shakespeare’s play. Taking its cue from the work of nineteenth-century Romantic composers, ‘Symphony No. 6’ is cyclical, the second and third movements deriving from material found in the first. Conductor Arthur Fagen has been professor of orchestral conducting at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music since 2008 and music director of the Atlanta Opera since 2010. He has conducted at the world’s most prestigious opera houses and music festivals, and from 1998 to 2001, he was guest conductor at the Vienna State Opera. Here he leads the Indiana University Philharmonic Orchestra, the premiere orchestra at the school, and the Indiana University Chamber Orchestra.

Leonard Slatkin’s Copland is always first rate, and this release is no exception. He already recorded the complete Billy the Kid in St. Louis for EMI, but that disc could be anywhere right now, except readily available, and so if you want the entire work this performance is just the ticket. I actually prefer the full-length ballet to the suite. You get about ten minutes more music, all of it worth hearing, and the result is a work that has a more compelling range of narrative and less of that picture postcard Americana feel that just might be starting to sound a tad old. It only remains to be said that throughout the disc the Detroit Symphony plays terrifically.

Grohg is early Copland, but much of it got reused in the Dance Symphony. Inspired by the silent film Nosferatu, the music is aptly dark and spooky, with a decadent sheen similar to what we find in, say, Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin. That said, you can plainly hear the composer to come in such numbers as the Dance of the Street-Walker, with its angular sonorities and burlesque atmosphere. As with Billy, Slatkin proves a completely convincing guide to a remarkably assured piece of writing. The coupling of these two works also makes for a more interesting release than usual, and justifies purchase even if you already own a Billy the Kid or three. First rate sonics too.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

Includes suite(s) for rec by Georg Philipp Telemann. Ensemble: Cologne Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Helmut Müller-Brühl. Soloist: Daniel Rothert.

Ah, such pleasing, dreamy music! You can almost see fluffy, feathery clouds drifting across a bright blue sky looking down on a lily-covered pasture. Picturesque? You bet. This is atmospheric music, pure and simple. Beauty of sound is given such a priority that concerns of form and structure seem irrelevant, though it's readily apparent that the four-movement Fantasy Sonata for harp and viola is a most substantial and seriously crafted work. The Sonata for flute and harp unavoidably conjures up images of Pan, while the Quintet, with its briefly dark and disturbing moments, shows evidence of having been composed in the wake of the First World War. However, it is the Elegiac Trio that presents Bax's real response to those events, particularly the death of his friend, Irish poet Padraig Pearse. Yet, there is no rage in this music; on the contrary, it inhabits a similar sound world to Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp, which was composed six months earlier. Throughout all these works, Alison Nicholls draws exquisitely beautiful sounds from her harp, playing with the imagination so essential to the music's expressive character. She is handsomely partnered by Mobius, an ensemble of seven young musicians from four different countries. Their commitment and enthusiasm are evident from the first note to the last on this vividly recorded program. [10/17/2000] --Victor Carr, ClassicsToday.com

This program brings together a wide variety of Alan Hovhaness’ works including numerous world premiere recordings. These range from the earliest of his band compositions, the processional ‘Tapor No. 1,’ to more recent chamber pieces such as the gentle barcarole of ‘Vision on a Starry Night.’ ‘The Ruins of Ani’ returns us to the tragic location also explored in Hovhaness’ ‘Symphony No. 23 Ani’, while the ‘Three Improvisations on Folk Tunes’ evoke dances from the Indian subcontinent. Newly discovered works with percussion include the Japanese-influenced overture to Hovhaness’ opera ‘The Burning House’ alongside ‘October Mountain,’ now a classic in its genre.

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REVIEW:

The value of the Naxos label’s ongoing American Classics series has never been so aptly demonstrated as with the success of this release from the able but hardly well-known Central Washington University Wind Ensemble. A few pieces here have gained exposure: October Mountain is a fixture of percussion ensemble concerts in the U.S., at least, but several are world premieres. This is all to the good, and there’s not a dull moment to be had here. This is both a wide sampling of Hovhaness’ music and a valuable close focus on his music for winds.

– All Music Guide (James Manheim)

A native of Brooklyn, New York, the composer, clarinetist, conductor, actor, film director and educator Stanley Walden has written orchestral, chamber and solo works, as well as operas and musicals including Oh! Calcutta! This disc of chamber and in.

The young American composer Carson P. Cooman is one of the most active of his generation, having written over six hundred works in many forms. This disc presents a broad overview of his music, from orchestral to chamber and solo works.

Pare Lorentz's The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937) are landmark American documentary films. Aesthetically, they break new ground in seamlessly marrying pictorial imagery, symphonic music, and poetic free verse, all realized with supreme artistry. Ideologically, they indelibly encapsulate the strivings of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.

The first film created by the United States Government for commercial release and distribution, The Plow was also – in the words of the film-music historian Neil Lerner – "the most widely publicized attempt by the federal government to communicate to its entire citizenry through a motion picture." It became the first film to be placed in Congressional archives and, following the wishes of FDR, would have become the first film screened at a joint session of Congress had the capitol chambers been equipped to show a sound film.

Virgil Thomson's scores for both films – here recorded in their entirety for the first time since Alexander Smallens conducted the soundtracks – are among the most famous ever composed for the movies. Aaron Copland praised the music for The Plow for its "frankness and openness of feeling," calling it "fresher, more simple, and more personal" than the Hollywood norm. He called the music for The River "a lesson in how to treat Americana."

The Plow that Broke the Plains was denounced (accurately) as New Deal propaganda. Sensing competition, Hollywood barred The Plow from its distribution system. Billed "The Picture They Dared Us to Show!" it opened at New York's Rialto Theatre and was cheered nightly. Public demand prevailed: eventually, over 3,000 theaters (out of 14,000 commercial cinemas nationally) screened The Plow to enthusiastic reviews. The Baltimore Sun found "more serious drama in this truthful record of the soil than in all the 'Covered Wagons' and 'Big Trails' produced by the commercial cinema."

Voted the best documentary at the 1938 Venice Film Festival (beating Leni Riefenstahl's Olympiad), The River was an overwhelming critical and commercial success. Paramount Pictures accepted it for national distribution. Lorentz's script, a Whitmanesque poem called by James Joyce "the most beautiful prose that I have heard in ten years," was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

The rationale for the present CD is obvious: the original thirties' soundtracks, gritty and opaque, do not do justice to Thomson's scores; more recently, this music has only been performed and recorded in the form of suites culled by Thomson, with many pages omitted.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

American music is culturally diverse and exciting, mirroring all the best America has to offer. The last two centuries have seen an extraordinary flowering of musical life in the United States. In recognition of the many gifted American men and women of music, Naxos is pleased to present the American Classic Series.

When complete, this series will consist of over 200 titles, exploring the full spectrum of American concert music. All the familiar names are there: Copland, Ives, Grofé, Barber, and Sousa but so are many others such as: Bennett, Dédé, Foote, McKay, and Siegmeister all of whom have contributed to the rich musical tapestry that is American.

All of us at Naxos invite you to journey with us as we set out to discover America.


Click Here for the complete Naxos American Classic Series

Includes work(s) by Arnold Rosner. Ensemble: Ukrainian National Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: John McLaughlin Williams.

When, in 1922, Charles Ives published a volume entitled 114 Songs, he was indirectly drawing attention to the fact that the genre played a central part in his output. 85 years on and, for all that his wider reputation may rest on orchestral, chamber and piano music, songs represent the heart of his creative thinking. Nor was that initial volume comprehensive; Ives having written nearly 200 songs, of which this edition includes all those he completed. The expressive variety is vast: indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting, from those drawing on Austro-German Lieder and English parlor-song traditions to ones that evince anarchic humor as keenly as others do profound vision, is analogous to the evolution of American music over the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth centuries. Although it would be possible to collate Ives's songs according to type, the alphabetic approach adopted by this edition ensures each volume (of which this disc is the fifth) contains a representative cross-section of his achievement. A wide range of poets is set, including a number of (mainly early) German settings as well as forays into French and Italian writers. The temporal distance (1887-1926) traversed by these songs is as little compared to their stylistic diversity or their emotional range.

Don't let the brevity of this review lead to the incorrect conclusion that there isn't plenty to enjoy, for James Judd and his New Zealand orchestra offer a pair of terrific Copland performances. Billy the Kid gets a shapely, dramatic interpretation: the initial and closing evocations of the West's wide open spaces offer grandeur without bombast, while the ensuing episodes follow seamlessly, including a very exciting gunfight. In the symphony, Judd is very much his own man. He catches the simple dignity of the first movement very well, then turns in the most dynamic scherzo since the composer's own Everest recording. The Andantino, taken at a daringly slow (but never slack) pace, sets up the blazing finale with particular effectiveness. Here, Judd and his players pull out all the stops, with nicely differentiated brass timbres in the opening fanfare and some really tight, rhythmic playing in the buildup to the central development's crunching climax. The closing pages once again provide the right feeling of triumph without the excess pomposity that has bothered so many critics and performers (even Bernstein) over the years. Naxos gets good, natural sound, though some of the percussion (snare drum rim shots, woodblock, and bass drum) seems a bit too backwardly placed--not a major point. This is a very fine release indeed. [2/14/2002] --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

CASCARINO Pygmalion. Portrait of Galatea. Blades of Grass. 1 Prospice. Meditation and Elegy. The Acadian Land • JoAnn Falletta, cond; Geoffrey Deemer (Eh); Philadelphia Philharmonia • NAXOS 8.559266 (76:02)


Here we go again. A good man spends his life writing music for the love of it, putting bread on the table by teaching harmony and counterpoint at a small local institution. During his lifetime, he gets a few performances, writes a bassoon sonata that’s a modest hit among bassoonists, and then spends 25 years writing an opera, which gets two performances. The good man dies at 80, unknown outside of local musical circles. A few years after his death, his music is finally recorded.


Romeo Cascarino was a fine but almost completely unknown midcentury American composer in the great Copland-Barber-Bernstein tradition who wrote delicious music obviously meant to be enjoyed rather than edified. His inspirations may be a little musty (Greek mythology, 19th-century romantic poetry) but they provide ample raw material for rich music that runs the emotional gamut from, say, C to V. (The wildest extremes are absent from his gracious music.) He’s not Beethoven, but by not trying to be profound, he manages to avoid writing the kind of pedantic, grey music that makes the music of many midcentury Americans more dutiful than beautiful. The music on this CD is beautiful from beginning to end, some of it exceptionally so. Its clarity, wit, and unabashed lyricism put me in mind of Francis Poulenc, although the sound is more 1950s Leonard Bernstein (including the more symphonic theater music), with a splash of the more overt populism of some Copland or, say, Morton Gould. Some of it is so tasty I found myself listening to it two or three times in one sitting.


Tom DiNardo’s brisk, informative notes include a rather concise biography of Cascarino in which even the high points are modest. Born in Philadelphia (in the venerable Italian community of “South Philly”), he was an autodidact. At 17, he “was invited to Tanglewood after Aaron Copland looked at some of his early works.” (Just looked at? This is where the standard issue composer bio says “was impressed by.”) In 1945, while still in the army, he won a prize in the George Gershwin Memorial Contest. (I assume that had it been first prize, it would have been so mentioned.) This was a small contest sponsored by two Jewish organizations, although later winners included Peter Mennin and Harold Shapero. A 1947 Bassoon Sonata for (hometown) Philadelphia Orchestra bassoonist Sol Schoenbach once circulated on a Columbia recording, and he received two Guggenheim Fellowships. He refused commercial music work, and remained loyal to a low-paying local college despite having better offers. His first orchestral score, the ballet Prospice —which, along with everything else on this CD except for Pygmalion , is recorded here for the first time—was only ever performed in a two-piano arrangement. The later Pygmalion was “intended” for a ballet, with a libretto that “would appeal to a choreographer like Anthony Tudor, whom [Cascarino] greatly admired.” This reads like a composer whose dreams exceeded his grasp. Cascarino was evidently not naive about this, however; as DiNardo points out, Cascarino described himself as “an idealist, which for me is a realist who’s learned what to live for.” But the whole story seems rather sad.


Well, happily both pieces are much, much better works than their performance history intimates. Why any conductor who saw this appealing, lively, vividly drawn, and wonderfully scored music would not want to perform it is beyond me. Pygmalion is, indeed, the pick of the litter, as its prior recording suggests, although it appears to have been an extremely modest recording from the 1950s or 1960s, based on a fuzzy photo of its cover that I found somewhere in the musty corners of the Internet. No performers were indicated. The rich harmony, tidy orchestration, and stateliness of this music remind me of a John Ireland work. Portrait of Galatea is intended to be more impressionistic, and it is more loosely constructed and not as memorable. Prospice is based on a stiffly proud Browning poem, and is appropriately inspirational.


Cascarino was also commissioned by what DiNardo terms the “Benjamin Tranquil Music Project” which elsewhere is termed the Benjamin Award for Tranquil Music. In either version, it sounds like a parody, but the resulting work, The Acadian Land (based on Longfellow) is, for me, the other high point of this CD. It holds up well after many playings.


Alas, there’s nothing from Cascarino’s magnum opus , the opera William Penn, based on the life of the Quaker statesman who established Pennsylvania and founded Philadelphia. Cascarino worked on this from 1950 until 1975, and it was finally staged for two performances at the venerable Academy of Music, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Tom DiNardo (who doesn’t credit himself in his booklet notes). Evidently, this CD, too, owes its existence in part to DiNardo’s efforts. (Listed as executive producer, he’s also the music critic for Philly’s “second” newspaper, which doesn’t give him as much space as he deserves.)


This CD makes me want to hear more of Cascarino’s music. According to DiNardo, the composer’s output is small. His dates are 1922–2002, but the music on this CD is mainly for orchestra or chamber orchestra, and spans the years 1945–1960. (The Meditation and Elegy was written for piano in his teens and transcribed for string orchestra in 2000 by one of his pupils.) Did he write any other orchestral music after 1960, or did the opera take up all his energy? Did he write anything after completing the opera in 1975? Is there any chamber music besides the Bassoon Sonata? I wish the booklet notes provided more information. And there’s no further information online. I guess I’ll just have to check out Cascarino’s childhood haunt (and mine), the music division of the Free Library of Philadelphia, whose Fleisher Collection is the world’s largest orchestral lending library and holds Cascarino’s scores. Regional orchestra conductors: hint hint.


It remains only to praise enterprising conductor JoAnn Falletta for shaping immaculate performances. The orchestra of record is the “Philadelphia Philharmonia” which, as a lifelong Philadelphian, I’d never heard of until I read the note in the booklet that reveals its secret identity as the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, a venerable local organization not to be confused with the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra (which also has done a couple of CDs for Naxos) or the late Philadelphia Chamber Symphony (which did some lovely LPs for RCA in the 1960s). Even though it’s a major part of Philadelphia’s musical life, the COP has evidently never recorded under its own name. Why they didn’t take credit for this CD is beyond me. Except for a couple of minor trumpet slips, the playing is quite fine. The recorded sound is decent, with good orchestral balances. And thank you to Naxos for making it possible for this lovely music to be heard by millions worldwide, even if the composer didn’t live to see it happen.


FANFARE: Eric J. Bruskin

MARTINU: Works for Cello and Piano, Vol. 1

CARPENTER: Violin Sonata / String Quartet / Piano Quintet

Includes work(s) by various composers.

FRANCK: Great Organ Works, Vol. 2

Includes christmas carol(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Musica Ficta Vocal Ensemble Copenhagen. Conductor: Bo Holten.
Includes work(s) by Carl Nielsen (Composer), Niels Gade, Christoph Ernst F. Weyse, Johan Peter E. Hartmann, Peter E. Lange-Müller. Ensemble: Musica Ficta Vocal Ensemble Copenhagen. Conductor: Bo Holten.

This CD of light music for string orchestra seems just right to usher in the summer. It starts with a suite by John Rutter based on folk tunes, its four movements devoted to "A-Roving," "I have a bonnet trimmed with blue,""O, Waly, Waly," and "Dashing away with the smoothing iron." Those familiar with Rutter's Christmas discs will know what a clever arranger he is, and not be a bit surprised that he manages to work in several other folk songs in counterpoint to the featured ones. Orr's pastoral piece smacks, in a good way, of Delius, and Melachrino's composition is idiomatically written for strings, as one would expect from the creator-conductor of the "Melachrino Strings." Two of the works, by Cordell and Gibbs, are compositions of a type that English composers do so well: tributes to earlier times. The Gibbs is reminiscent of Peter Warlock's Capriol Suite in its harmonic "modernization" of consonant tunes set to old-fashioned dance rhythms, such as the Minuet and Sarabande. The Royal Ballet Sinfonia plays all this music with confidence and charm, not to mention good tone. David Lloyd-Jones, one of my favorite underrated English conductors, paces performances that are just right and beautifully phrased, and the recorded sound is generally excellent, if a bit bass shy and remote. --Rad Bennett, ClassicsToday.com