Includes work(s) by Peter Breiner. Ensemble: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: James Judd. Soloist: Takako Nishizaki.

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Adam de la Halle "the Hunchback" is justly the most famous composer of the late 13th century, and his greatest gift to posterity, Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion, is the first-ever opera - a pastoral romp brimming with delightful songs.

Classical Music

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This performance goes right to the top. Not since the amazing mono Ancerl recording has there been a version of this work of such intensity, such expressive urgency, and (yes, believe it or not) such incredible orchestral playing. It's impossible to praise the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic enough: they put their London colleagues to shame. The cellos and basses have a dark, tactile presence in pianissimo not heard since the old Kondrashin Melodiya recording. The horns play the daylights out of their solos in the first and third movements, while Petrenko has the violins sustaining, articulating, and phrasing the climax of the first movement with a passion and grit that's beyond praise.

Indeed, as an essay in Shostakovich conducting alone this performance deserves an honored place in every collection. Petrenko has the players digging into the second movement with unbridled ferocity at an ideally swift tempo. He ferrets out every subtle detail of scoring in the crepuscular Allegretto while never permitting the music to drag. His finale has just the right manic high spirits, and he clarifies the DSCH motive in the timpani at the end better than anyone else ever has. It's all captured in gloriously vivid, present sonics by the Naxos engineers. Thrilling, perfect, essential--a magnificent achievement and hands down the modern reference recording.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

GOUNOD Symphonies: No. 1 in D. No. 2 in E? • Patrick Gallois, cond; Sinf Finlandia • NAXOS 8.557463 (68:14)


Charles Gounod (1818–1893), internationally famous for his grand opera Faust, composed both these symphonies in 1855. By that time, he was an accomplished and well-traveled musician, but not famous, and the symphonies went unperformed and, before the LP era, unrecorded. All the critics I read are unanimous that this is a shame. Though not among the towering masterpieces of the genre, both are perfect within their modest intentions. Among words and terms that fairly describe them are cheerful, polished, attractively scored, deftly organized, melodious, and economical. Now that they are available, listeners seem to like the First (here 29 minutes long) a bit better than the Second (almost 40 minutes), if they show any preference at all.


Gounod’s Symphony No. 1 is most often discussed as the model for the Symphony in C of his 17-year-old student, Georges Bizet. The two works are similar in length, mood, orchestration, and faithfulness to classical models. Furthermore, both remained unknown until modern times. But Gounod as a symphonist sounds like a French Mendelssohn, whereas his student, subsequently world-famous for Carmen, already sounds like himself. However, if the student’s essay deserves greater fame than its model, that is no reason for neglecting the fine work of the older composer.


Conductor and flautist Patrick Gallois recorded these symphonies with the Sinfonia Finlandia of Jyväskylä in May 2004. The performances are alert, disciplined, expressive, and beautifully recorded, making a highly recommendable disc. The leading current competitor is a widely praised Philips disc with Neville Marriner conducting the ASMF Orchestra. That costs more than this Naxos release, but has the bonus of including the ballet music from Faust. One assumes that Marriner either plays the symphonies faster, or skips repeats—possibly both. Finally, one should mention an ASV disc of the Gounod symphonies featuring John Lubbock and the Orchestra of St. John’s, which has its partisans.


FANFARE: Robert McColley

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Ciaramella.

Peerless musicianship.

This superb CD proves that time travel is possible. To listen to these outstanding performances by Ensemble Leones of Neidhart's beautiful music and witty, sophisticated, sometimes outrageous poetry is to be transported back eight hundred years to an incredible period in the history of music and civilisation in general. Everyone who cares about that heritage should hear this recording.
 
All the Neidhart songs in Leones' recital, both music and texts, are taken from the so-called Frankfurt Neidhart Fragment, dated to around 1300 and housed at Frankfurt-am-Main University. The eight surviving pages of a larger manuscript reveal - at least to the patient and trained eye of a scholar like Lewon - six songs by Neidhart, five with more or less complete melodies. This is the first complete recording and performance, made possible by Lewon's painstaking reconstruction of the surviving material, necessitating in one case the borrowing of appropriate melodies from elsewhere. The results may or may not be entirely authentic, but the songs are compellingly evocative and utterly convincing. The instruments employed by Leones are recent reproductions but they sound terrific, especially when played with the delicacy and intuition of Lewon and Romain.
 
Thanks to Lewon and his ensemble - whose ranks swell or shrink according to the current project, incidentally - 21st century audiences can enjoy Neidhart's peerless musicianship, specifically his maverick take on the generally more deferent Minnesang tradition. His Dörperlieder ('bumpkin songs') take the themes of the usual hohe Minne ('high love') - the courtly ideals of love from afar and chivalry - and transfer them to rough rustic settings. The real joke is on the gentry who laugh at the buffoonery and coarseness of the peasants in his songs - they are the implied object of Neidhart's insinuations and sarcasm.
 
It was a bold decision by Leones to perform the nearly ten-minute long song 'Ich claghe de blomen' without instrumental support - over 100 lines in nine stanzas - but such is the power of Neidhart's music and poetry that time flies past. In any case, the alternation of male and female voice, as well as the interpolation of purely instrumental items, makes listening to this recital as varied an experience as it is aesthetic.
 
The CD ends with a rather out-of-place song by Adam de la Halle, billed as a 'bonus track' and certainly sounding like an afterthought. The preceding song by the great Walther von der Vogelweide is at least no anachronism, but its inclusion is not really explained in the booklet.
 
As the notes explain, the German of Neidhart is not strictly Middle High German (MHG) but a Low version of the same, reflecting where the texts were written, and explaining why some of the sounds are reminiscent of modern Dutch. At any rate, Neidhart's language should prove at least as intelligible to modern Low German speakers as Geoffrey Chaucer's is to those familiar with today's English.
 
On the subject of pronunciation, both Marc Lowen and Els Janssens-Vanmunster sound entirely authentic, and their excellent diction only heightens the listener's joy. Their singing style is folk-like but not 'rustic', emotional without affectation, plaintive or humorous as appropriate without recourse to melodrama. Practically impeccable, in other words.
 
In his interesting notes Neidhart expert Marc Lewon points out that the 'von Reuental' still frequently attached to his name is erroneous, founded on "a nineteenth-century misapprehension". Curiously he, and Naxos in their title, set about perpetuating another of those with a mistranslation of 'Reuental' - 'riuwental' in MHG - as "vale of tears". In MHG tears is 'trene', 'Tränen' in modern German, whereas 'riuwe' equates with modern German 'Jammer' or 'Schmerz' - the minnesinger's 'lament' or 'pain'. The Nithart of these poems is a knight, not a cry-baby!
 
In his acknowledgements Lewon also thanks the proof-reader for checking his translations from German into English, but some of the phraseology is decidedly shaky for all that. For example, "in his Bavarian sphere" for "in seiner bairischen Heimat" ('in his Bavarian homeland'); "but from which the German Minnesang of Neidhart’s time was yet but far"; or "Neidhart only played the fool" for "Neidhart [...] spielte nur vordergründig den Narren" ('Neidhart only played the fool ostensibly'). Sometimes the language is so inapt as to misrepresent the original: "They show the distinctive trademarks of Neidhart’s oeuvre and touch on many aspects of his lyrical portfolio, featuring content, form, and musical modes typical to his work" is only tangentially equivalent to the German, quite apart from the linguistic horror that is "lyrical portfolio". Punctuation is also inconsistent and sometimes appears almost randomly applied.
 
Full sung texts, with translations into modern German and English, are downloadable for free from the Naxos website. The German translations are good, the English somewhat clumsier, with numerous misjudgements of term and register, as well as a few, sometimes meaning-changing typos - but perfectly serviceable nevertheless.
 
This CD was briefly reviewed here last year, when Naxos released it as a download only. Pace that review, no harp is used in this recording.
 
-- Byzantion, MusicWeb International

The works on this disc span much of Astor Piazzolla's compositional career, from the Sinfonia Buenos Aires of 1951 to the Concerto of 1979. The latter has a title, "Aconcagua", the highest peak in the Andes, but it was not given by the composer. All of this music is stunning, and it's marvelously performed here. The best-known work, naturally, is an arrangement: Las Cuatro Estaciones, here in the version for string orchestra by Leonid Desyatnikov.

I have to confess that I prefer a more varied scoring in this music, but it would be very hard to beat this performance for clarity and beauty of texture. Tianwa Yang handles the solo violin part with aplomb, digging into the "dirty" sounds--the glissandos and other effects--with relish, but without ever coarsening her tone as so many others routinely do. There's elegance here as well, and she finds it. The result is that the "Spring" fugato, for example, has amazing rhythmic definition but also a very welcome lightness and freshness.

The Bandoneón Concerto offers a perfect marriage of Piazzolla's tango-saturated melos with large-scale form. It's worth recalling that the composer spent several years studying with Alberto Ginastera, as well as Nadia Boulanger, and all of his music in whatever form betrays a very high level of compositional craft. Daniel Binelli plays the solo part extremely well, and he's perfectly balanced against the larger ensemble. He also participates (to a lesser degree) in the Sinfonía Buenos Aires, in which the influence of Ginastera is very evident (and entirely welcome).

This early work is thrilling: a blend of Latin rhythm, soulful melody, explosive percussion, and now and then a touch of Stravinsky. The finale will blow you away, and there are some haunting timbres in the slow movement featuring the combination of bandoneón and woodwinds. The Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero plays all of this music with the necessary guts and also a welcome degree of polish. The players sound completely at home in the idiom, and Guerrero delivers bold, uninhibited interpretations across the board. This is just a great disc of colorful, distinctive orchestral music, and it belongs in every collection.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

BLANCAFORT Pastorel-la. American Souvenir. Sonatina antiga. Ermita i panorama. Cavantina i diàleg. Romance, Intermezzo, and March • Miquel Villalba (pn) • NAXOS 8.557335 (64:38)


This is the fourth in a series devoted to the piano music of Catalan composer Manuel Blancafort (1897–1987). His work resembles that of his fellow Catalan Federico Mompou. I hear a similar tough edge to the harmony, stabs of dissonance underpinning the intimate surface, but Blancafort draws on a wider stylistic range, incorporating neo-Classical influences ( Sonatina antiga ) and often a Debussyan sparkle. A fluency to the writing indicates the composer’s prowess as a pianist, and one or two pieces that wind down in a gradual rallentando remind us that the Blancafort family was in the pianola business.


I have found this disc beguiling, returning to it out of sheer pleasure as much as reviewing necessity. The stately Cavantina and the similarly melancholy Saraband that constitutes the central movement of the Sonatina (Tendresa) reveal a considerable depth of feeling. On a more Impressionistic note, the piece entitled Ermita i panorama (“Hermitage and Panorama,” 1930–31) opens with a folksy theme, sounding like a Hispanic Vaughan Williams, then blossoms into virtuosic activity. With its rippling surface, this could be a newly discovered prelude by Debussy.


American Souvenir (1926–29) consists of two movements. The first was inspired by an Atlantic crossing the composer undertook, where the slow progress of the voyage was punctuated by the distant sounds of bustling activity and the resident American jazz orchestra on board. The second is a tribute to Charlie Chaplin, a screen star who fascinated Blancafort—much as he fascinated the composer’s French contemporary Charles Koechlin. In both these pieces, Blancafort retains his personal voice (as indeed did Koechlin in his own Chaplin tribute, the final movement of the Seven Stars Symphony ). There is no mock-ragtime to depict the 1920s; rather the composer has evoked the energy of that era through his own musical language, more a passive observer than participant. A tinge of pathos to the high jinks makes the second piece suitably “Chaplinesque.”


The music covered in this program comes from a six-year period centering on the late 1920s, with the exception of the three-part Romance, Intermezzo, and March , written in 1942. In this suite of pieces, Blancafort has pared back his textures and any French influence has practically disappeared. The result is plainer, closer to Mompou in its concision. Several of these works remain unpublished, including Ermita i panorama and the lilting Pastorel-la that opens the recital.


Pianist Miquel Villalba presents this unfamiliar music with skill and sensitivity; one senses that his heart is in it. The sound is enjoyably warm and clear. In its gentle way, this disc is a winner.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

This fascinating disc presents the young Georges Bizet' first composition after having won the prestigious Prix de Rome, the grandiose Te Deum, which remained unpublished until 1971, and his Prix de Rome cantata Clovis et Clotilde.

CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 2. Variations on “Là ci darem la mano.” Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise brillante • Eldar Nebolsin (pn); Antoni Wit, cond; Warsaw Phil O • NAXOS 8.572336 (62:53)

Eldar Nebolsin was born in Uzbekistan in 1974. He eventually went on to study with Dmitri Bashkirov, before garnering international attention after winning the Santander International Piano Competition back in 1992. In addition, he was awarded the Sviatoslav Richter Prize in the International Piano Competition, Moscow, in 2005. He is a name that is new to me, and I’m glad that I had the opportunity to hear a bit of what he’s doing right now. He has the kind of virtuosity that is less apparent than other pianists’, because he always seems to be completely in touch, musically, with what he’s doing—and not for the sake of showing off what he can do. He has a fluid sound, and a good lyrical sense—sometimes losing the rhythmic bite, the quirkiness of the rhythms, but always maintaining a beautiful sound. The concerto’s first movement is perfectly paced to bring out the Maestoso character that is asked for in its tempo marking. But again, sometimes the music loses that aforementioned bite and consequently its momentum. The way Nebolsin handles the delicate filigrees of the concerto’s Larghetto, though, is just one example of his good taste in never over-sentimentalizing this music. The Allegretto vivace that follows is equally well done, having an almost eerie, misterioso quality to it from the very beginning of the movement. The pianist shines especially in these latter two. The Mozart Variations—the piece that Schumann was so impressed with that he called Chopin a genius—has never been hugely popular in this century. Nebolsin does a good job of letting the music flow naturally, while keeping the textures of the piano figuration light and airy—not so easy, considering the difficulty of these etude-like variations. Antoni Wit and the Warsaw Philharmonic provide excellent accompaniment, surging when necessary, supporting at other times, and getting out of the way when the soloist comes to the fore...The variations are splendid, and Nebolsin gets my vote for one of the best available.

FANFARE: Scott Noriega

Naxos' so-called "house pianist" Jeno Jandó is on top form in Bach's Goldberg Variations. He takes after Glenn Gould's perky tempos, dry-point articulation, and blueprint clarity, but on his own terms. For starters, Jandó does not link up variations without pausing or adapt a common pulse to unify groups of variations, opting instead to treat each one as a separate entity. Furthermore, Jandó takes all of the repeats, including the rare one in the Aria Da Capo that Weissenberg and Gavrilov observe. He embellishes some repeats more than others do, or simply phrases differently on the second go-rounds, albeit not to Murray Perahia or András Schiff's elaborate specifications.


If Jandó doesn't set records for speed, scintillation, and absolute rhythmic steadiness in the cross-handed variations, they still manage to swing, with plenty of breathing room to boot. Jandó takes a harder-nosed look than usual at the minor-key variations, as if he weren't interested in the canon at the fifth's melodic profundity or the canon at the seventh's wrenching chromatic zingers. And next to the inner drama and extraordinary harmonic tension Perahia illuminates in the famous "black pearl" 25th Variation, Jandó is relatively reticent. He also tends to scale his dynamics between mezzo-forte and mezzo-piano, although this may result from the close, somewhat airless, though not unattractive microphone placement. All in all, Jeno Jandó's Goldbergs add up to a solid, recommendable bargain alternative to the reference versions listed above.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Alberto Ginastera was one of the most admired and respected musical voices of the twentieth century, who successfully fused the strong traditional influences of his national heritage with experimental, contemporary, and classical techniques. The two Cello Concertos are among his most innovative, brilliant and technically formidable compositions. The First Concerto, the definitive version of which was premièred by Ginastera’s second wife Aurora Nátola in 1978, is notable for the provocative singing lines, Latin dance rhythms and virtuosity of its solo part, and the intense colours and abundant percussion of the orchestral accompaniment. The Second Concerto, composed as a 10th wedding anniversary tribute ‘To my dear Aurora’, makes more prominent use of Argentine folk elements. It includes a brilliant depiction of the rising sun, percussion instruments portraying sounds of the jungle, and a celebratory rustic finale.

MAXWELL DAVIES The Boyfriend: Suite. 1 The Devils: Suite. 1 Seven in Nomine. 1 The Yellow Cake Revue: Excerpts 2 • 1 Nicholas Cleobury, cond; 1 Aquarius; 2 Peter Maxwell Davies (pn) • NAXOS 8.572408 (71:02)


After listening to much of Maxwell Davies’s “regular” music, the suite from The Boyfriend, written for the Ken Russell movie, certainly sounds a bit strange to say the least, being a take-off on 1920s “Jazz Age” music. The interesting thing about it is that both the music and its orchestration are not only more subtle but better both as music and scoring than a great deal of real “Jazz Age” pop, particularly the majority of Paul Whiteman’s output. It has a wonderful charm about it, and as a suite it holds together extremely well, something you might not at all expect from movie music specifically crafted to tie into a certain period. In a way, it almost sounds like a suite of early Gershwin tunes arranged by a master. Or, to put it another way, the music is “bound” organically, despite its allusions to 1920s songs, in a way that even some modern music is not properly tied together. Moreover, the chamber orchestra Aquarius is having an absolute ball with this music, playing it with a verve and a kick one might never expect from a British chamber orchestra (a dance band, yes, but a chamber orchestra, not necessarily). I was absolutely enchanted from first note to last with the Boyfriend suite, though I didn’t expect to be. Bravo!


The suite from The Devils, a score for a film based on Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudon, is quite the opposite: dark, moody, often ominous-sounding music. An uncredited soprano sings very well in a portion of the Sanctus during the second piece, “Sister Jeanne’s Vision,” and here we encounter the type of “madness” music that Maxwell Davies reworked so effectively in his song cycle, Eight Songs for a Mad King (written around the same time). One certainly couldn’t imagine a sharper contrast in styles than between these two film scores—except for, believe it or not, a bit of 1920s-style music in the midst of track 10, “Exorcism.” The soprano returns, after which we inexplicably get another short bit of 1920s dance music. (Apparently, those devils of Loudon liked to do the Charleston.)


Seven in Nomine, dating from 1965, quotes the tune of John Taverner’s Gloria Tibi Trinitas in four of the seven pieces, only one of which actually bears Taverner’s title. Written for the unusual combination of a wind quintet, string quartet, and harp, it reveals yet another side of the composer, the ability to paraphrase earlier music while taking it to a new level. I found it interesting, considering that this is technically a modern work, that the solo strings of Aquarius play with straight tone. You just can’t break the British of that nasty habit. Yet the music itself is evocative, atmospheric, and very beautifully scored, with Maxwell Davies’s unusual modern harmonies creeping in such that they almost seem to have been part of the original piece, so organic do they sound. Since the music maintains a soft volume level and generally slow tempos (one notable exception being the low-volume but cheerful outburst of winds on track 16), it also generates a feeling of calm and well-being.


A similar calm, albeit more syncopated in places, emerges from his two piano solos from The Yellow Cake Revue. This was Maxwell Davies’s contribution to a campaign against mining uranium discovered on the Orkney Islands, where he lives. Both pieces here, the slightly jaunty “Yesnaby Ground” and the reflective “Farewell to Stromness,” are built around a repeating chords pattern in the left hand with undulating melodies in the right. The latter piece almost sounds like Minimalism, but is much more attractive than any American Minimalist piece I’ve yet heard.


All in all, a good if unusual album in Naxos’s Maxwell Davies collection, and one that you will probably want if you are a fan of this composer.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Respighi’s unfinished First Violin Concerto in A major (1903) was revised and completed by composer/conductor Salvatore Di Vittorio, who directed its première in 2010. Harking back to the masterful writing of Vivaldi and Mendelssohn, the Concerto also foreshadows the orchestral technicolour of the great Italian composer’s ‘Roman Trilogy’. The lyrical Aria and graceful Suite, newly transcribed by Di Vittorio, embody Respighi’s abiding love of Baroque music, while Rossiniana is a delightful reworking of Rossini’s piano music, Les riens (Trifles), much enhanced by Respighi’s contribution of new melodies and innovative orchestration.

RODRIGO: Piano Music, Vol. 1

Nearly 80 minutes of Elgar in march tempo many be a bit much at a single sitting, but this disc fills a useful niche. The most interesting work here is the symphonic prelude Polonia, dedicated to Paderewski, and composed during the First World War. Making use of various Polish melodies (including music by Paderewski and Chopin), at nearly fifteen minutes it's a major statement for a mere "occasional" work, and the only reason I can think of that it isn't better known is that it's not about England so no one especially cares. James Judd and the New Zealand Symphony play it very well, as they also do the Pomp and Circumstances Marches. Frankly, you can have your Boults and Barbirollis: compared to Judd they sound far less involved. He actually has interesting ideas about phrasing (listen to how he drives the opening of March No. 2), and makes a persuasive case for this music as music, rather than as a high school graduation exercise or some other mundane event.


The Coronation March and the Funeral March from Grania and Diarmid are also bigger than their titles might suggest, the first as reflective as it is opulent, the second really a brief, elegiac tone poem. It's a bit hard to get excited about either the Empire March or the March from Caractacus, and the March of the Mogul Emperors (from The Crown of India Suite) could crash and bash with more abandon (where is the tam-tam?), but there's certainly enough here to whet the appetite of committed Elgarians. The sonics are also quite good: a touch low-level, perhaps, but easily adjustable, with plenty of room to expand and good bass separation between timpani, bass drum, and organ pedals (which are well caught but not overbearing). In short, this is another successful collaboration between Judd and the New Zealanders--long may they continue.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

WEINBERG Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes. Symphony No. 6 • Vladimir Lande, cond; Glinka Choral College Boys’ Ch; St. Petersburg St SO • NAXOS 8572779 (61:02)


Mieczysaw Weinberg’s sad and tortured life is described in the liner notes. The fate of his impressive and unjustly neglected music is explained by the fact that he was kept under wraps by his Soviet masters while others were given all the international glory. Naxos’s series of Weinberg releases, which so far includes three CDs of his cello music, is augmented here with this release of his wonderful Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes and innovative Symphony No. 6.


The Rhapsody begins softly, mysteriously, but builds into an impressive musical structure in which the music almost morphs from one section to another rather than sounding forcibly juxtaposed. These Moldavian themes have a certain Sephardic quality about them, a soulful minor-key tendency that influences one’s emotional reaction to the music even in the most energetic passages. Wisely, too, Weinberg does not over-write, so the piece doesn’t overstay its welcome.


The Sixth Symphony, composed in 1963, is a more mature and reflective work. Divided into five movements, it begins quietly, but this initial Adagio sostenuto does not stay quiet for long; rather, it breaks out into louder, yet no less somber, moods in which the brass and winds combine with the strings in a mode that tends toward the minor. Basses (and possibly cellos) sustain quiet chords while a solo flute plays with great anxiety above them; the solo role then passes on to horn and clarinet. A group of winds, including clarinets, plays a mysterious and restless melody above growling basses; another, quieter eruption with horns ensues; then it ebbs into a soft, unresolved dissonance for the finale.


The second movement includes the chorus of boys’ voices, singing a Lev Kvitko poem about a boy who makes a violin from scraps which he then plays to an audience of animals and birds. (Unfortunately, no texts are included, nor does Naxos direct you to a translation on its website.) The music is bitonal and polyrhythmic, in fact producing at times an almost purposefully uneven, galumphing gait. The music for the boys’ chorus is almost a chant, covering perhaps six tones that are played against the ever-changing harmonies of the orchestral background. A solo violin, emulating the boy’s homemade violin, plays plaintively, then the chorus returns while low wind, string, and brass chords play below them.


The third movement, marked Allegro molto, sounds almost hectic in its fast-forward motion, brass and percussion dominating the soundscape in a more mature and advanced sort of Khachaturian style. An almost klezmer-style clarinet solo interacts with glockenspiel and woodblocks, slurred trombones, and tubas. The fourth is described as a subtle reworking of one of Weinberg’s Jewish Songs from 1944, a rather ominous poem by Samuil Galkin in which the place where a home once stood is now a graveyard for murdered children, which will serve in the future as a memorial. The movement begins in a loud and ominous mood, with crashing timpani, but the chorus enters here in a softer, more conciliatory mood. Its song is a little more involved melodically here, written in C Minor and with the boys often singing in their lower range. Even the clarinet is pitched low, and the basses continue to pursue an ominous mood with occasional outbursts by the horns and low trumpets over percussion. Eventually, what sounds like very low, soft trombones underscore the boys’ song, occasionally colored by glockenspiel and oboe. Oddly, Weinberg ends the symphony with yet another slow movement, marked Andantino. It is based on a poem by Mikhail Lukonin in which “children of the present and future, from the Mississippi to the Mekong, are bid sleep in the confidence of a bright and productive tomorrow.” Appropriately, the music itself is like a lullaby, with wistful choral passages sparsely accompanied, first by the winds and then by lower strings. Certain elements heard earlier make tentative reappearances here, then the choir stops singing in order to give way to a solo violin playing a plaintive melody. The ending is a quiet, unresolved dissonance.


This is remarkable music, excellently played and sung by the various forces involved. As usual, Naxos’s over-reverberant sound blurs the clarity of certain instruments, but in the more atmospheric movement of the symphony this works to its advantage. There’s another recording of the Rhapsody available, conducted by Gabriel Chmura with the Polish National Philharmonic on Chandos 10237, which received a good review in these pages from Barry Brenesal, and both the excellent Kiril Kondrashin and Vladimir Fedoseyev have recorded versions of the Sixth Symphony that I haven’t heard, but taken on its own merits, Vladimir Lande’s performance is very fine.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Remembered as the first of the great piano virtuosos, Muzio Clementi condensed his years of composition and performance into the monumental, three-volume Gradus ad Parnassum.

The greatest Czech artists have recorded this music, but they yield surprisingly little to JoAnn Falletta and her Buffalo players. If perhaps the winds aren't quite as characterful as their Bohemian colleagues, Falletta ensures that the performances have just as much energy and rhythmic snap. In Fairy Tale, a gorgeously romantic work as substantial as a symphony, The Game of Swans and Peacocks has all the bounce of a Slavonic Dance, while the large outer movements are beautifully shaped and exquisitely played.

Just as Fairy Tale might pass for a four-movement symphony, so the Fantasy is every bit as serious and cogent as a major violin concerto (though it has only one long movement). It's as big as, say, the Bruch G minor, perfectly proportioned, and like all of the music on this disc its neglect is simply incomprehensible. Michael Ludwig remains an impressive soloist; he has a big enough tone to do the lyrical moments justice, and plenty of dexterity in the flashy bits. He and Falletta make the ending memorably exciting.

The Fantastic Scherzo is a masterpiece of atmosphere and melody--like so much of Suk's music, the bitter-sweetness of its main ideas will stay with you for days. It's quite wonderfully played here: crisp and lively. Really, Falletta's performance is as good as any, and extremely well recorded too. It's so important that this wonderful music gets played by non-native musicians; it's the only way that it stands a chance of entering the standard repertoire, where it so obviously ought to be. Projects like this deserve your support, and will reward your time and attention many times over. Strongly recommended.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This second disc of orchestral works by Z+�dor includes his most-performed piece, the Divertimento for Strings and the composer's own favourite, Studies for Orchestra.

Arthur Bliss is a hard composer to place. He maintained a very high standard of craftsmanship throughout his long career (he died at 84 in 1975, and wrote music for more than half a century), but his idiom was more "20th-century tonal English" than overtly personal. He became Master of the Queen's Musick, a position difficult for non-British listeners to take seriously, but evidently he enjoyed the job. There is, in fact, a certain heraldic quality to his writing, most evident in A Color Symphony, and there's an aristocratic fastidiousness that's quite evident in the two pieces on this disc, even when they rise to passionate climaxes.

The Meditations on a Theme by John Blow may well be Bliss' orchestral masterpiece. It's a gravely beautiful piece, well-contrasted, frequently touching, and unforgettably scored. The actual tune doesn't appear in full until the end, when it emerges with unforced majesty as the inevitable culmination of the half-hour's prior journey. Metamorphic Variations, a very late piece written just a couple of years before Bliss' death, is a touch less richly colored, and it takes a while to warm up; but the work's latter half (the sequence running, in order, Polonaise, Funeral Procession, Cool Interlude, Scherzo II, Duet) is marvelous, and the gently affirmative ending is unaffectedly poetic.

David Lloyd-Jones has made several fine Bliss recordings for Naxos, and this is another. The Bournemouth Symphony plays beautifully throughout and is very well recorded. Indeed, Naxos' Bliss series represents one of the label's more noteworthy efforts on behalf of any British composer--but is anyone noticing? This series remains somewhat "under the radar", but it surely deserves the attention of all serious collectors.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Chamber music occupies the largest part of Camillo Schumann' extensive compositional output, his admiration of Brahms, Liszt and Rachmaninov evident at every turn.

Gaubert: Works for Flute, Vol. 3

Enrique Granados performed extensively in Spain, France and the United States, collaborating with many of the leading artists of his day. His first masterpiece was the collection of 12 Danzas españolas, refined and expressive evocations of the richness of Spain’s regions and dances, which gained high praise by composers as diverse as Massenet, Saint-Saëns, Grieg and Cui. By turns vivacious, melancholy and hypnotic, they are as fresh as his poetic Improvisation on the Valencian Jota, heard here in a transcription from a piano roll recording made by Granados himself.

The young French guitarist Gabriel Bianco adds First Prize in the 2008 GFA International Solo Competition to an impressive list of previous awards from international competitions.

Despite a sonic soundstage that places the orchestra and soloist in a position akin to viewing celestial beings from the wrong end of a telescope, these are simply fabulous performances. It's good to have the Third Concerto in its conjectural three-movement manifestation (Tchaikovsky completed a first movement, which consigned it to a stand-alone composition, while Tanyev reconstructed a second and third movement from outlines Tchaikovsky had sketched for an ultimately rejected symphony), especially in a reading full of enough sweep and passion to outdistance Peter Donohoe's fine EMI traversal. Konstantin Scherbakov's sparkling, assured fingerwork in the cadenzas alone is a selling point--and the First concerto is a keeper, no doubt about it! It's fast, it's fluid, and it's utterly without airs, mannerisms, and pretentions.


Unlike other pianists who milk the lyrical unaccompanied sections out of shape, or dive into the octave sequences as if they were sporting events, Scherbakov's organic feeling for tempo relationships and musicianly virtuosity binds everything together, and the Russian Philharmonic musicians play their hearts out under Dmitry Yablonsky's uplifting direction. For superior sound, sophisticated orchestral execution, and soloistic individuality, it's worth spending the extra cost for Argerich/Abbado (DG) or Volodos/Ozawa (Sony). But give this release a try, and don't be surprised if you return to it more often than you've anticipated. [6/9/2004]
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

BUXTEHUDE: Chamber Music (Complete), Vol. 1 - 7 Sonatas, Op.