The sound of unaccompanied chant moves and inspires those seeking the sublime. In our increasingly busy and secularized world, people return to chant, regardless of their religious beliefs, for the peace and calm that this eternal music offers.

TYBERG Symphony No. 2. Piano Sonata No. 21 • 1Fabio Bidini (pn); JoAnn Falletta, cond; Buffalo PO • NAXOS 8.572822 (74: 47)

I defy the average educated listener not to call out the name of Anton Bruckner within seconds of the start of Marcel Tyberg’s Second Symphony. The cut of the melodies, the rhythms, the sectional construction, and the scoring are utterly characteristic of the Viennese master—who died in 1896, three years after Tyberg was born. Most curious. That impression continues throughout the first movement, and off and on (but mostly on) throughout the entire symphony. Indeed, the thing that is least Brucknerian about Tyberg’s symphony, which was composed in 1927, is that it is barely 42 minutes long. (To be fair, there’s a bit of Korngold as the symphony reaches its conclusion.) In other words, Tyberg concludes his movements just when Bruckner would have been getting his second wind. I am astonished that Bruckner’s name does not come up once in the entirety of Edward Yadzinski’s booklet note. Perhaps he thought mentioning it would have been the epitome of obviousness. I’m not really suggesting that Tyberg’s Second is on a par with Bruckner’s symphonies—at times it sounds a little awkwardly put together, and too terse—but it is a fascinating, fascinating near miss, and really very enjoyable, and if this disc doesn’t get wide exposure, at least because Tyberg’s unknown symphony is so doggedly familiar (!), then there is no justice in the world. Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic play the heck out of it, by the way, and Naxos’s engineering is lustrous.

The Piano Sonata No. 2 is no less fine. Bruckner wrote no piano sonatas, I believe, but Brahms completed three of them, and there are times when Tyberg’s sturdy, 33-minute sonata sounds as if it is aiming to be “Brahms’s Fourth.” The hyper-masculine opening gesture, for example, and the feminine response that it receives, would hardly be out of place in Brahms. Other influences appear in this sonata, however, including, strangely enough, Szymanowski. Again, call this music derivative if you like, but there’s no escaping that Tyberg’s lack of innovation is not dull but really rather delightful, given the attractiveness of the material. Pianist Bidini makes a very good case for it, playing it with plenty of romantic temperament, and with steely wrists and fingers.

I missed Naxos’s earlier Tyberg release (8.572236) in which his Third Symphony is paired with his Piano Trio. Jerry Dubins and Robert Markow both welcomed it strongly; in fact, it made the latter reviewer’s Want List in 2011. There also was a feature article in Fanfare 34: 2 in which Falletta discussed Tyberg. To make a long story short, Tyberg, who had a Jewish relative several generations back, was a victim of the Nazis and died in 1944. He spent his young years in Vienna, but around the time of the Second Symphony, he relocated to what today is part of Italy. Shortly before his deportation, he entrusted his music manuscripts to a friend, and they were passed on to that friend’s son, who ended up in Buffalo. After spending years trying to interest various conductors in Tyberg’s scores, he finally attracted Falletta’s attention. She recognized the music’s worth, and if a Tyberg revival is in the works, we can thank her, and the efforts of the Marcel Tyberg Musical Legacy Fund of the Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies in Buffalo.

Knowing that I have a tendency to be excitable, I don’t want to overdo my praise for this music or for this release, but glorioski, this is enjoyable stuff.

FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle
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Marcel Tyberg’s Second Symphony sounds a bit like Bruckner for people who hate Bruckner. It features thematic material uncannily similar to Tyberg’s Austrian predecessor, only married to a more traditional, pithy approach to form. It lasts just 42 minutes, and so in comparison confirms Bruckner’s own originality, or incompetence, depending on your perspective. There’s nothing here that might make you sit up and say, “Aha, that must be Tyberg,” but it is beautifully scored, well-made music nonetheless. The Adagio is particularly lovely, basically diatonic in harmony, but with tunes that never go exactly where you expect them to. Had Tyberg survived the Second World War and written more in this vein, we might go so far as to call it “personal”.

The Piano Sonata No. 2 dwells squarely in the world of Beethoven and Brahms, but again with remarkable success. It’s a large work in four movements, and even more than in the symphony the centerpiece is an Adagio drawn on a very large scale. The finale, so often the Achilles’ heel in Romantic music, is actually the shortest movement, but full of contrast and quite satisfying, thus revealing that Tyberg’s classical sympathies go beyond mere imitation.

The sonata is very well played by Fabio Bidini, a pianist who takes its challenges in stride and shapes each movement quite effectively. As in the previous release in this series, JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic take charge of the orchestral component, offering a performance of the symphony full of character and conviction. The Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies in Buffalo sponsored this recording through its Marcel Tyberg Musical Legacy Fund. That such a thing even exists is just one of those facts that makes you feel good about life, as does Tyberg’s music. Go for it.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Born in Vilnius and a student of Nadia Boulanger, Romuald Twardowski writes music which blends tradition and modernity. His writing for strings is consistently masterful, whether in the lyricism and capricious rhythms of Serenade for string orchestra, or the ‘new simplicity’ of his Violin Concerto. Fantazja hiszpanska (‘Spanish Fantasia’) shows how deeply the composer absorbed flamenco music during a visit to Spain, while Niggunim explores authentic Hassidic Jewish melodies. Capriccio in Blue is a delightful and wholly original salute to George Gershwin. Award-winning violinist Kinga Augustyn’s playing has been described as ‘stylish and vibrant’ (The Strad). She also appears on other recordings for Naxos, including a release of Polish violin classics about which Fanfare wrote: “she meets the challenge magnificently. Hallmarks of her playing are razor-sharp execution, even in the most taxing technical passages.”

TVEITT: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 5

The second release in the Naxos Geirr Tveitt survey comprises two orchestral suites drawn from A Hundred Hardanger Tunes Op. 151. There are not--and never were--a full hundred, but what survives are four orchestral sets of 15 pieces each. A further group was lost in the disastrous fire at Tveitt's ancestral farmstead in 1970 that resulted in the destruction of most of his completed works. Tveitt lived in the Hardanger region of western Norway, and the folk tunes (the "Hardingtonar") were collected by the composer during his travels throughout the locality. The material often is humorously orchestrated, most cleverly in the second group heard here, the Suite No. 4 "Brudlaups-Suiten" ("Wedding Suite"). This set takes the form of a programmatic representation of a traditional Nordic wedding and includes such graphic episodes as Hardanger Tune No. 58 "Brura-drammane" or "The Bride's Drink". Here, a peasant has slipped something into the bride's beverage and the first bassoon gives a risible portrayal of its undesired laxative effects! This account uses the recently completed edition by Bjarte Engeset, who directs a capable and attractive performance and secures a colorfully idiomatic response from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.


Suite No. 1 (un-titled) has been recorded previously on the Simax label by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Per Dreier. Although Dreier's is marginally better-engineered than Engeset's Naxos disc, there's little to choose between these two well-paced, evenly-balanced performances. If you're interested in Tveitt's music, try out this budget CD; the music is entertaining enough to fully justify the minimal outlay, and you can't go wrong with Engeset's strongly committed readings of both suites.
--Michael Jameson, ClassicsToday.com

Geirr Tveitt composed five orchestral sets of Hardanger tunes, each containing fifteen pieces. Whether or not there were in fact ever a hundred written we will never know, and the Third Suite was among the works destroyed in the terrible fire in 1970 that claimed so much of this fine artist's work. Restoring what survives has been a true labor of love, not to mention a delight to music enthusiasts. Anyone expecting from Tveitt a folksy cuteness à la Grieg is in for a shock. Though full of innate charm, these settings owe more to the ethno-musicological school of, say, Bartók and Kodály, with the composer making no effort to minimize their often-gruff character and tangy dissonances.


Suite No. 2 consists of fifteen "mountain songs," cleverly grouped with respect to mood and contrast. Outstanding here is No. 9, "Do you hear the song in the waterfall's roar," an elemental piece of orchestration as powerful as anything by Iceland's master of nature's musical fury, Jon Leifs. There's also room for comic relief towards the end, both in "The mountain girl skiing downhill" (and falling on her butt in the process), and in the marvelous evocation of the "Jew's harp melody" on muted trombone. Suite No. 5 is, if anything, even more evocative, consisting as it does of 15 "troll tunes," suggesting subjects magical and mysterious. Contrast the very long final number, "Doomsday," with its seven pounding timpani and pealing bells, to "The crooked harp that could talk" and you'll be amazed at the range and subtlety of these wonderful little pieces.


As with Naxos' recording of Suites Nos. 1 and 4 by these same forces, the performances are marvelous. Suite No. 2 has also been released by BIS with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra under Ruud, but this performance is every bit as good interpretively and sonically, and marginally superior technically. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra in particular benefits from richer (more numerous?) strings, and a brilliant horn section that sports a powerful tone squarely in the grand British tradition. BIS' coupling is Suite No. 1, and for the price of that single disc you can own both of Naxos'. I'm happy to have more than one view of this marvelous music, but if you're on a budget, the choice is obvious.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Turina wrote lots of piano music, and it’s so colorful and piquant that you tend to forget how similar much of it really is. This well-planned disc takes “travel” as its theme, and it works quite well. The most surprising moment occurs in the central Gibraltar movement of “Álbum de viaje”, which features a very Spanish-sounding version of “God Save the King”. As with other discs in this ongoing series, Jordi Masó makes a wholly idiomatic and compelling tour guide through these glittering pianistic landscapes. If you’ve been collecting this series, this release is self-recommending, but newcomers should give it serious consideration as well. The music really couldn’t be more appealing.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Jordi Masó’s critically acclaimed survey of Turina’s complete piano music continues to unearth exciting discoveries. Turina’s gift for evocative writing is explored in the early and little-known Coins de Séville which fuses Andalusían folk music with French impressionism to remarkable effect. The virtuosic La leyenda de la Giralda evokes Seville Cathedral’s bell-tower and symbol of the city in four vivid episodes. The streets, sounds, and rhythms of Turina’s native city infuse much of his music and in Por las calles de Sevilla and his final work, Desde mi terraza, their lure is felt with a fierce intensity.

Especially revealing, enjoyable and interesting.

If you’re a sucker for Spanish music (as I am), then you’re going to love this disc. Turina’s piano music—there’s a ton of it—sounds a lot like Debussy in his Spanish mode, only more so. In other words, it’s consistently colorful, intensely lyrical, harmonically evocative, and so pretty that you think it can’t be as good as much of it is. This program is built around the idea of “fantasy”, and it makes perfect sense. Ritmos is better known in its orchestral guise, but the piano version sounds totally satisfying. It’s difficult to understand exactly what is “italiana” about the eponymous Fantasía—it sounds just as Spanish as everything else on the disc, and really, who cares? Jordi Masó has done excellent work in this ongoing series, and he’s in excellent form here. He makes everything sound natural, rhythmically pointed, and builds the climaxes without banging. Turina was, notoriously, a gentle soul who liked his music played with elegance, and Masó does just that, but without forgetting the muscle lying beneath the surface. Excellent sonics complete this wholly winning package.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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Well, how are your shelves holding up if you are collecting the Naxos complete Turina or even their Spanish Classics series? There was the orchestral stuff (for instance as on 8.555955) recorded in the mid-1990s. There were the Piano Trios recorded in 2000. Since then we have had the complete piano music with Jordi Masó as our reliable and wonderful volume-by-volume guide. From knowing very little fifteen years ago almost every note is now available to us thanks to Naxos and the indefatigable and brilliant Masó. What fortunate times we live in when we can enjoy this music at Naxos budget prices.

The disc opens with the earliest work here ‘Ritmos’ which is subtitled ‘Fantasia coreográfica’. It was magically orchestrated and is available on the first disc listed above. This version was first performed in Barcelona in October 1928 but never danced. The piano version it seems came first. It falls into six brief movements and is quite nationalistic in style and language with, after a dark Preludio, a very Spanish ‘Danza lenta’, later a ‘Garrotin’ an Andalusian dance (Turina was from Seville) and later still a Danza Exotica with its Latin-American rhythms. I commented in the review for volume 4 (8.570026) that Turina could have a “certain sternness of expression”. ‘Ritmos’ deliberately begins in a dark, stern tone before falling into happy and vibrant dance-mode as it draws to its conclusion.

In fact this CD is neatly planned and it is all about the ‘Fantasia’ - a form which obviously suited Turina as he was able to use his flights of not inconsiderable musical imagination unencumbered. It provided a platform from which he could immerse himself in the nostalgic childhood memories which often haunt his music. He was also a fan of the cinema as demonstrated in the ‘Fantasia cinematográfica’ which is partially in 5/8 time - the rhythm of the Basque dance called the ‘Zortziko’. There is another dance, this time originating from Galicia, a ‘Farruca’ in a slower 4/4. I’m not quite clear how we are to imagine the film that Turina thought might accompany these dances.

In the 16 ^th Century Spanish composers like Antonio de Cabezón wrote ‘Fantasia sobre ….’ for example on ‘la Vacas’ or other popular tunes. Purcell in the 1670s wrote for viols a ‘Fantasia on one note’. Here Turina writes a Fantasia sobre cinco notas and these notes spell out, in an inventive sort of way, the five letter surname of (Enrique Fernandez) Arbos who was celebrating his 70th birthday at the time (1934) and who had been a ‘big player’ in Spanish music. The influence is not renaissance but baroque with an opening Prelude followed by a ‘Tocat y fuga’ and then a ‘Coral con variaciones’. Not surprisingly it became one of Turina’s best known piano works.

The booklet is very cursory about the ‘Fantasia italiana’ - just offering us the fact that the three movement suite “was composed for Arturo Saco del Valle” the Spanish conductor and composer who died in the year of its composition. What is noticeable, right from the start, is how Spanish some of the ideas are despite the title. The first movement is a fantasia in itself ‘Vision fantástica’, the second ‘Driadas’ (Dryads) is lithe and melodious and the third ‘Napoles’ brings the music into the Italy of the title. It’s a curious work and not one which I found especially memorable.

Turina calls the Fantasia del reloj (Clock Fantasy) ‘Three Moments for piano’. These are entrancing miniatures with a distinctly religious and slightly nationalistic flavour. The sequence was composed for himself to play. The middle movement, which in English translates as ‘The hours in the magic corner’, is full of harp-like glissandi. The outer movements often have a hymn-like texture.

The final work on the disc is the Poema fantástico which is a true fantasy, not only musically with motifs and melodies tossed around between the four movements in a free-wheeling manner, but also in the scenes which are evoked. We return to the composer’s interest in visuals. A central figure, a Madrilena, moves between scenes first in ‘The hotel and lobby’ where a waltz is sometimes heard and then aimlessly walking the ‘Old Streets of Madrid’. The ‘Crossroads’ (Encrucijada) segues into the final ‘Afternoon at the cinema’ in which her movements and feelings are mixed in with the music of the film. I am not convinced by this piece but, according to the excellent booklet essay by Justo Romero the Spanish musicologist Federico Sopeña called it “one of the most important of Turina’s piano works”. Perhaps I just got out bed on the wrong side.

Nevertheless this is an especially revealing, enjoyable and interesting volume of Turina. I have heard now four of them, highlighting a particular area of this prolific composer’s output. I recommend that you search it out and brighten a chill British winter.

-- Gary Higginson, MusicWeb International

TURINA Cuentos de Español: Series 1; Series 2. Recuerdos de la antigua España. Siluetas • Jordi Masó (pn) • NAXOS 8.570370 (73:05)


Another enjoyable album—the fifth—in Jordi Masó’s traversal of the complete piano music of Joaquin Turina. This CD consists of four suites of what might be termed musical postcards of Spain, or in the case of the Recuerdos , a depiction of Spanish icons such as “the eternal Carmen.”


In his review of the first disc in the series, Peter Burwasser neatly summed up the effect of this music: “Turina consistently displays excellent craft and affection for his native culture, even as the work . . . feels oddly aloof from the natural passion of Iberian music.” ( Fanfare 28:6). That aloofness is here evident in the Cuentos de Español. The sixth movement of Series 1, subtitled “Malaga,” is at once less pianistically sophisticated and less downright earthy than the Malaga depicted by Albéniz in Iberia . By comparison, Turina is a little more well mannered.


Elsewhere, notably in the Recuerdos , the composer seems more inclined to set surface prettiness aside. “L’éternelle Carmen” is suitably sultry and capricious, “Don Juan” believably vigorous, and the “Habanera” movement nice and languid (although melodically it is not as memorable as those by Bizet and Chabrier). The Silhouettes , a later suite from 1931, is the most overtly virtuosic, resplendent with trills, cadenzas, and in the final movement (“Le phare de Cadix”), flashing glissandos.


Masó’s mastery of this repertoire is never in doubt: his melodies sing and his rhythms snap. The recording of the piano is suitably warm. As I said, an enjoyable disc, although if you are not collecting the whole series, I would suggest you go for the third volume containing the pieces representing Spanish women, Mujeres españolas.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

One of the most ambitious and complex works in Spanish piano repertoire, the picturesque Sanlucar de Barrameda is one of Turina’s true masterpieces, the composer describing it as ‘my homage to this wonderful city of silver… where the salt spray of the ocean is mixed with the aroma of manzanilla.’ The varied pieces that form Trilogia include a grief-stricken dedication to the memory of his daughter and an entertainingly humorous finale filled with quotes from other works. This final volume in the Naxos edition of Turina’s complete piano works concludes with the tantalizingly unfinished Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary.

Vol. 11 of Jordi Masó’s complete Joaquín Turina piano edition features music inspired by the immediate surroundings and/or various aspects of his everyday life, a Turina specialty. Verbena madrileña is a brightly colored portrait of a Madrid feast-day. En la zapatería describes the shoemaker’s tasks in vignettes ranging from Wagnerian drama to balletic pirouettes. The Linterna mágica is cinema-inspired; the Radio Madrid suite offers up ‘broadcasts’ from different places in Spain. Each miniature is a brief flash of inspiration from deep within Turina’s fertile, creative spirit.

This penultimate volume of Joaquín Turina’s complete piano works features his “programmatic” pieces: music inspired by local scenes or texts by the late-Romantic poet and author Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836–70). The “tragicomedy” Recuerdos de mi rincón is a lighthearted divertissement with twelve mini-scenes that portray local characters from Turina’s Madrid neighbourhood, while La Venta de los Gatos brims with truly inspired and beautiful moments. El Cristo de la Calavera further reveals Turina’s deft touch for dramatic and picturesque style while faithfully adapting Bécquer’s story to include every detail. Originally composed for a stage drama, Navidad is filled with Christmas carols and traditional melodies.

The tenth volume in Jordi Masó’s ground-breaking series of the complete piano music focuses on the years of Joaquín Turina’s maturity and the works he called a Ciclo pianístico. El castillo de Almodóvar (Almodóvar Castle) and Rincones de Sanlúcar (Corners of Sanlúcar) are both memorably evocative and descriptive. Elsewhere Turina takes classic forms, such as the toccata, fugue, partita and prelude and brings to them a more abstract but richly nuanced sensibility. The previous volume in this series has brought considerable acclaim: ‘In Masó you have an ideally committed and affectionate master of the idiom, finely recorded.’ (Gramophone, on 8.572915)

Turina was one of the great musical poets of his native Andalusia, and his music is drenched in its colour, variety and dance. Jardins d’Andalousie illustrates his dazzlingly picturesque absorption of the seguidilla rhythm and an invocation of courtly scenes. Le Quartier de Santa Cruz is one of his longest piano works and depicts a dramatic narrative of love, duel, and drama in Seville, whilst En el cortijo visits the plains for a quartet of rural episodes of rich characterisation and virtuosity. Jordi Masó’s ongoing Turina cycle has received worldwide acclaim.