His appointment in 1757 as maestro di capilla and organist at the Escorial, the royal palace established by Philip II of Spain, allowed Antonio Soler to mix with fellow court musicians, among whom was Domenico Scarlatti, whose influence was to remain profound. Soler wrote some 150 sonatas, his greatest compositional memorial, most for the young prince, Don Gabriel. The works in this volume reveal Soler’s mastery of dashing bravura and his exploitation of a full keyboard range in Sonata No. 88, felicities of hand-crossing in Sonata No. 89, and his awareness of the contemporary influence of Haydn in Sonata No. 92.

This new West Side Story, the first American-based recording to appear since DG's star-studded 1985 composer-conducted version, blessedly avoids that earlier production's operatic pretensions, returning instead to the work's Broadway roots by using young, theatrically trained singers with some genuine acting ability. Even with that, it's probably wishful thinking to expect that this cast (fine as it is) can recreate the vibrant, raw freshness and scintillating brilliance of the original. Mike Eldred's Tony comes off best; singing with a more mature sound than Larry Kert, he nonetheless creates a sense of heightened expectancy and wonder in "Something's Coming". As Maria, Betsi Morrison struggles to maintain an authentic-sounding Puerto Rican accent, but she sings beautifully throughout, especially in "Tonight" and "I Have a Love". I'm afraid Marianne Cook's Anita is no match for Chita Rivera's, but she communicates the character's feelings convincingly enough. The remainder of the ensemble consists of good, solid, legit voices, but a lot has changed on Broadway since 1957: the overall style of singing, with its occasionally overemphatic declamation (as in "A Boy Like That" and "Cool") makes clear how years of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals have influenced American performers.


This recording utilizes Bernstein's score in its original form, before it underwent the necessary revisions to make it more suitable to the needs of musical theater at the time. Actually, it sounds pretty much the same, the most obvious distinctions being a few missing bars near the end of the Prologue and the different vocal arrangement for "America".


Kenneth Schermerhorn was studying with Bernstein during the creation of West Side Story and briefly was considered as a possible conductor for the premiere. Finally getting his chance nearly 50 years later, Schermerhorn conducts the score with an authority and enthusiasm that reveals his intimate knowledge and personal conviction, even if at times his tempos drag (as in "I feel pretty" and "Gee Officer Krupke"), though not as much as the elderly Bernstein's. Then there's the somewhat obsessive concern with full note values at the expense of rhythmic flow (as in the "Jet Song", and in "Quintet", with its heavy articulation on the word "tonight") that occasionally robs the music of its spontaneity.


Throughout, the Nashville Symphony plays with an ideal blend of symphonic elegance and jazzy swagger that shows why this work is such a wonderful classic. Only the multimiked and obviously studio-bound recording, with its artificially close voices, slightly disappoints. Yet despite this and the above-noted concerns, this production faithfully recreates the magical and enthralling world that is West Side Story, and anyone coming to this piece afresh is in for a rare and special experience. [11/4/2002]
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

Before he was thirty, Olivier Messiaen had written the work that established his worldwide reputation asa visionary composer for the organ, La Nativité du Seigneur (The Birth of the Saviour). A synthesis of hisinnovatory compositional style, it is rich in colourful harmonies and precisely noted but flexible rhythms,many derived from Hindu tâlas and from the metre of Gregorian chant. This musical commentary on theChristmas story is divided into nine movements evoking timeless grace, beauty, radiance, exhilaration,and majesty. Tom Winpenny is Assistant Master of the Music at St Albans Cathedral, the oldest site ofcontinuous Christian worship in Britain.

Bruno Walter, like many another revered conductor, was also a composer. Let's not forget Weingartner, Klemperer, Furtwängler and Leslie Heward to mention only a few. I am also sure there were and are plenty of revered composers who were also conductors. Walter's conducting heritage has had its meed of recognition especially on CBS-Sony (39-CD box issued in 2012) but also on Decca with Ferrier and Patzak in Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde.

His work as a composer came to an end when exposed at close quarters - conducting premieres in many cases - to the full glory to the music of his friend Mahler. Before that withering blast had taken its toll he wrote two symphonies, Das Siegesfest for solo voices, chorus and orchestra, various songs and one each string quartet, piano quintet, piano trio and violin sonata. The violin sonata has had quite a few recordings - Graffin (Hyperion), Wallace (VAIA) & Shahan (Talent) - but it was CPO's contribution of the red-blooded hour-long Symphony No. 1 in D Minor with Leon Botstein that knocked me sideways. Mahler had dismissed the work out of hand, it seems. I have been waiting with enforced patience for CPO to follow up with Walter's Second Symphony. Incidentally I should also mention, curiosity value or not, Walter's two-piano arrangement of Mahler's Resurrection (Naxos).

The Violin Sonata is very much a sonata for violin and piano with neither player ancillary to the other. It's in a romantically high flown yet not over-boiled style with some indebtedness to Brahms. Earnest it may be but this is no obstacle to Walter prefacing the middle movement's dolce-dolce writing with what amounts to a gawky troll tango. It's a clever touch and carried off in a very seemly way. While there is ardor in spades in the first movement, the 'Moderato' finale flirts with some florally static salon-style pages before, in its last few moments, asserting itself. Interesting but not transfixing. The other three recordings of the Sonata come with works by other composers. This Naxos disc introduces listeners to Walter's four-movement Piano Quintet; a first recording as far as I can see. This is an exultant work with plenty of joyous activity for each of the five musicians. It is demonstrative, tense and brimming with intense cantabile. Here the finale makes for a convincing conclusion; more so than the equivalent movement in the Sonata. It should appeal to those who are already captivated by the quintets by Vierne and Medtner. Both performances are more than capable with the listener gaining the feeling that the players know the music well enough to enjoy putting it across rather than having to concentrate on forming the notes.

The notes, in German and English, are accompanied by a well selected photograph of the young, confident, and pursed-lipped Walter adorning the booklet cover.

– MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)

The songs on this album are not as well known as other works by these three composers, but this more intimate form of expression often goes straight to the heart and soul of their work. Tchaikovsky wrote songs throughout his life, and it is easy to find autobiographical parallels in his chosen themes of love and longing. Rimsky-Korsakov's songs are characterized by tender lyricism, while Rachmaninov's wordless Vocalise has become one of his most famous melodies. Margarita Gritskova was born in 1987 in St. Petersburg. She is a prizewinner of the Luciano Pavarotti Competition in Modena, and the Concurso Internacional de Canto 'Villa de Colmenar Viejo' in 2010. She has performed in Carmen under the direction of Mariss Jansons in St. Petersburg, and appeared at world renowned festivals across the globe.

Alexander Moyzes, one of the leading Slovakian composers of his generation, created a nationally inspired style that also assimilated trends aligning his music with contemporaries such as Shostakovich. The Eleventh Symphony builds on the success of the Tenth, intensifying it's emotional impact and developing sophisticated cycles of transformation and variation. Simpler and more concise than preceding works, the Twelfth Symphony was Moyzes' final orchestral statement and his 'diary in music.' He said it 'also seeks to express my attitude to life... We have to take life as it is, with all it's digressions, demands, and haste.' The Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra was established in 1929 as the first professional symphony orchestra in Slovakia. The orchestra is currently led by conductor Mario Kosik.

This album concludes The Brahms Trio’s five-volume survey of the piano trio in Russia with remarkable works by composers whose names have all but disappeared from the musical world’s collective memory. Vladimir Dyck, a student of Widor at the Paris Conservatoire, took French nationality in 1910 but his life came to a tragic end when he and his family were arrested in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. His Piano Trio, Op. 25 contrasts Russian soulfulness with the lightness and deft scoring he brought to his film compositions. Constantin von Sternberg’s genial Op.104 reflects his career as a virtuoso pianist, while Sergey Youferov’s expansive and nostalgic Op.52 is a farewell to the Russian ‘Silver Age’, a world about to be destroyed by revolution.

Following the huge success of My First Classical Music Book, Genevieve Helsby and Jason Chapman return with My First Piano Book. Bursting with life and humor, this is a uniquely comprehensive introduction to the piano, designed first and foremost to inspire. Text and illustrations are so perfectly in tune with each other that every page is a treat to explore. With a cast of animal characters showing what they know (and what they don’t!), this truly is both informative and great fun. This original and vibrant approach to the piano integrates listening to professionals and learning to play in a unique and approachable way.

Hungarian composer Paul Abrahám enjoyed huge success across Europe with his ‘jazz operettas’, not least in Weimar Berlin where his works scored for an orchestra augmented by a jazz band caused a sensation. Ballim Savoy (‘Ball at the Savoy’) has a plot reminiscent of Die Fledermaus and its variety of influences, some European and some reflective of contemporary American popular song, won the kind of acclaim only equaled by Franz Lehár. The premiere, which took place in December 1932, was for some the last major cultural event of Weimar Germany.

The international success of Faust after it's premiere in 1859 completely overshadowed all of Gounod's subsequent operas. He had known Goethe's masterpiece for two decades and brought to the text his gifts for memorable melody and rich orchestration. Added to this, the plot of Faust's ageing and the heroine Marguerite's redemption, offered the opportunity for the most spectacular stage effects. Heard here in it's 1864 London version with an additional air and without spoken dialogue or ballet, Faust represents 19th-century French opera at it's peak.

Written in 1944, Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony is one of his greatest and most complete symphonic statements. At its première he himself called it “a symphony of the grandeur of the human spirit”. The first movement couples considerable strength with unexpected yet highly characteristic twists of melody. After a violent scherzo followed by a slow movement of sustained lyricism, with a fiercely dramatic middle section, the finale blazes with barely suppressed passion. The Year 1941 is another wartime work, a symphonic suite written in response to the German invasion of the Soviet Union. This is the first volume a of complete cycle of the Prokofiev Symphonies with the OSESP and Marin Alsop, the orchestra’s newly appointed principal conductor.

REVIEW:

Alsop is evidently a sympathetic interpreter of Prokofiev, because the tempo and pacing always feel spot-on, and the character of the music rings true. Naxos offers exceptional reproduction of the vivid instrumental colors with appropriately resonant acoustics, so this series starts off brilliantly, with worthy performances that sound terrific.

– AllMusicGuide.com

Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov has said that ‘I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists.’ This is particularly pertinent to works such as the Two Dialogues with Postscript that engage hauntingly with Schubert and Wagner, and the evocative Moments of Memory II which alludes to Chopin and yearns for an unreachable past. ‘Music is still song, even if one cannot literally sing it,’ says Silvestrov. Silvestrov was born on September 30, 1937 in Kiev. He began private music lessons at the age of 15. From 1955 to 1958 he studied music at evening school in Kiev while training to become a civil engineer. For the following six years he was enrolled at Kiev Conservatoire. Here he was a composition pupil of Boris Lyatoshinsky and also took harmony and counterpoint lessons with Levko Revutsky. His catalogue consists mainly of orchestral, chamber, vocal and piano pieces. These have been played internationally. Early works such as the Piano Quintet earned him a place among the leading avant-garde Ukrainian composers of his generation.

The guitar’s range and sense of national colour are celebrated in this recital by Armen Doneyan, the exciting young French virtuoso, with music from Hungary, Poland, Italy, Spain, Cuba and Brazil. His programme includes Luigi Legnani’s Fantasia, Op. 19 with its scintillating Listzian brilliance, as well as the fiery and evocative Fantaisie on Hungarian Themes by Johann Dubez. The pivotal figure of Francisco Tárrega, who established a unique Spanish voice for the guitar, is included as is the vivacious, flamenco-influenced Sonata by Turina. A contemporary master, Leo Brouwer, is represented by his evocative Rito de los Orishas.

Composed to mark the centenary of the genocide of 1915, the Armenian Requiem is a large-scale sacred work structured around the liturgical chants encountered in requiem services appended to the traditional Armenian Mass. It is written in a form that, uniquely for the music of the country, is not based wholly on the model of the Latin Mass. Instead, taking the precedent of Britten’s War Requiem, Ian Krouse embeds poems as interludes, and his work- a poignant meditation on loss couched in a marriage of Western and Armenian forms- offers both conciliation and hope. American composer Ian Krouse has been lauded in the music press and is widely known for his pioneering efforts in the development of the guitar quartet. Over the past few years Krouse’s vocal works have begun to receive more attention. In addition to hundreds of performances annually by guitarists and guitar quartets all around the world, Krouse’s works have been performed or recorded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Ukraine Radio and Television Orchestra, the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, and the UCLA Philharmonic Orchestra.

One of the outstanding composers of his day, Johann Adolph Hasse was seen as possessing "the same qualities of true genius, taste and judgment" as his librettist Pietro Metastasio. Didone abbandonata represents the once hugely popular 18th century genre of opera seria, exploring the same tragic story as Purcell's earlier Dido and Aeneas while expanding the heroine's conflicts between regal duties, love, and helplessness in the face of desertion.

Named after a scribe at Madrid's Royal Chapel, the Guerra Manuscript is a vital source of the tono humano, a form of secular song characteristic of and exclusive to the Spanish Baroque, from a period when solo accompanied songs were at their most popular. Accompanied by double harp or harpsichord, these texts deal with subjects such as the pain of unrequited love and the balance between suffering and joy, also drawing on mythology and the natural world to symbolize the many facets of the human condition. This is the penultimate volume in a complete edition of these 17th-century gems.

Classic Thanksgiving: Songs of Praise, It's Thanksgiving Day as I write this. The music on this CD is great for Thanksgiving, or any time of the year. "Praise My Soul," "Immortal, Invisible," and "Ave Verum Corpus" are particularly well done. The Halifax Choral Society has a nice, clear sounds. My only criticism is the omissions; how could you not have "We Gather Together" on a Thanksgiving CD?! "Now Thank We All Our God" would have been apposite as well. On the other hand, there are very few CDs devoted exclusively to Thanksgiving, where Christmas CDs are a dime a dozen, so this is a must-own. In addition, fans of Holiday music, English hymns and Baroque concertos will enjoy it at any time of the year.

Much decorated by his native country, António Pinho Vargas, originally best known for his jazz performances, is now one of Portugal’s leading classical composers. His instrumental and film music has won numerous awards, and his chamber works have been performed by some of the world’s leading ensembles. In turning to the sacred, Pinho Vargas has crafted music of moving declamatory power. He has organized Judas into five specific scenes with an epilogue, whilst the Requiem is a very personal and powerful reply, in the composer’s words, ‘to a history of numerous works of the past’.

SCHWANTNER Percussion Concerto 1. Morning’s Embrace. Chasing Light • Giancarlo Guerrero, cond; 1 Christopher Lamb, perc; Nashville SO • NAXOS 8.559678 (68:00)


Bottom line first: If you know and love the music of American composer Joseph Schwantner, you will find this brilliantly performed and vividly recorded disc irresistible. You need read no further. Those who are unfamiliar with the music of this magnificently gifted composer are urged to read on.


Schwantner long ago established himself as one of the preeminent composers of our time. Born in Chicago in 1943 and educated at Northwestern University, Schwantner has been the recipient of numerous awards including the 1970 Charles Ives Scholarship and the 1979 Pulitzer Prize, as well as commissions from the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony, the National Symphony, and many other world-class ensembles and artists. His style is immediately accessible and very eclectic, incorporating elements of French Impressionism, jazz-influenced harmonies, African drumming, and Minimalism. Schwantner often finds inspiration in poetry, the verbal imagery of which frequently becomes the basis for his titles—… and the mountains rising nowhere, Aftertones of Infinity, Chasing Light (included on this disc), etc. Early on he developed his own unique sound, distinguished by mildly dissonant harmonies scored in an open manner, often presented in glittering pyramid and cascade effects. He is also a master orchestral colorist. Schwantner’s early works were somewhat episodic and fragmented, relying almost entirely on successions of independent and seemingly unrelated sonic tapestries, held together by a recurring, structurally binding chord. More recently, his works have been more forward-moving and thematically based (though I would hesitate to describe them as melodic in the traditional sense), while still retaining the composer’s unique sound and compositional fingerprints.


My friend and Fanfare colleague Walter Simmons very accurately described Schwantner’s 1994 Percussion Concerto as “a tremendously exciting showpiece, involving the featured instruments in lots of activity, well organized into a coherent statement” ( Fanfare 21:6). The emotional and musical heart of the work is the second movement, “In Memoriam,” a moving elegy to American composer Stephen Albert, a close friend of Schwantner, whose life was cut short in a car accident at age 51. The binding element of the movement is the bass drum, which plays a repeated rhythm representing the beating of a human heart. The emotional effect is overwhelming as the heartbeat fades and slows to silence. The two outer movements are more overtly flashy, though no less musically substantial, displaying the virtuoso potential of a virtual arsenal of percussion instruments. The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its principal percussionist, Christopher Lamb, who performs it on this disc and whose insightful, texturally clear, and colorful interpretation makes a wonderful companion to the more overtly virtuosic premiere recording by Evelyn Glennie and the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Slatkin (RCA 68692). I would not want to be without either recording.


Two recent works, both of which were inspired by the sunrise at Schwantner’s home in rural New Hampshire, complete the disc. The composer’s own wonderfully informative program notes, upon which I could not improve, provide eloquent and accurate descriptions of these works. Schwantner tells us that his Morning’s Embrace , composed in 2005, “draws its spirit and energy from the intensely vibrant early-morning sunrises I experience living in rural New Hampshire. The powerful kaleidoscope of hue and color piercing the morning mist and trees provided potent imagery for my musical imagination.” The work is a dazzling procession of orchestral color from dark to light, the effect of which is quite breathtaking.


Chasing Light from 2008, a similarly inspired work, concludes the disc. Again in the composer’s words, “One of the special pleasures of living in rural New Hampshire is experiencing the often brilliant and intense early-morning sunrises, reminding one of Thoreau’s words, ‘Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.’” He further states, “ Chasing Light , like my earlier work Morning’s Embrace , also draws inspiration from the celebration of vibrant colors and light that penetrate the morning mist as it wafts through the trees in the high New England hills.” Like its companion piece, this four-movement orchestral tour de force is a feast for the ears.


The Nashville Symphony, conducted by its music director, Giancarlo Guerreo, plays the music as if it owns it, stepping up to give performances befitting the greatest orchestras in the world. The recording is rich and lucidly detailed, though I would have preferred a bit more orchestral presence in the concerto. Highly recommended and a Want List no-brainer.


FANFARE: Merlin Patterson

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

These three works represent the first recording for Naxos by the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic, which is composed of elite conservatory students from across the United States and abroad. The chosen works reflect the richness and variety of the American repertoire. A work of immense poignancy and power, John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1 is a commemoration of friends of the composer who died during the 1980s and '90s. Michael Torke's Bright Blue Music evokes rich lyricism couched in the composer's favorite key of D Major. The suite from Copland's Appalachian Spring is one of the great, quintessential American works.

Review:

Large-limbed, vivid, and intense, John Corigliano’s 1989 Symphony No 1 commemorates the Aids crisis, memorialising some of the composer’s friends who succumbed at a time when diagnosis meant death. It has also stood the test of time simply as good music, here performed superbly.

– Sunday Times

Composer, educator, performer, and author Bruce Adolphe has a close affinity to the piano, and he acknowledges the transformative influence of Chopin on the way the instrument has been perceived right up to the present. Chopin Dreams places the Romantic master firmly into modern times, building on his models and imagining him as a jazz pianist or exploring what he might have played at a Bar-Mitzvah. The Chopin Puzzlers take Chopin’s style and mixes it into what Dick Hyman has called “the wittiest and funniest musical parodies imaginable.” Seven Thoughts Considered as Music vividly depicts profound and provocative statements from the past in a philosophical and sometimes explosive musical journey

"The opening "Candide" Overture is particularly poignant, for it reveals a band full of life and spirit eagerly responding to Mr. Judd's forward-leaning and even accelerating tempo. But perhaps the most valuable item here is Bernstein's Symphony No. 2, "The Age of Anxiety," a strong work -- alternately atmospheric and excitable, and ultimately carefree -- that is not overrecorded. Jean Louis Steuerman is a deft piano soloist, and the orchestra again does itself proud under Mr. Judd's steady hand." - James Oestreich, NEW YORK TIMES

At first glance Tchaikovsky does not seem easily to fit the "Chill" bill. He is known for pieces such as the 1812 Overture, music which is impassioned and animated in distinctly Russian style, often fiery, even ballistic, and infused with darker moments inspired by the composer's personal turmoil. However he also wrote some of the most beautiful, fragile and ethereal ballet music that has ever been choreographed, as well as lyrical slow symphonic movements and haunting songs. His unique talent lay in his inspired and inventive use of melody, seen at it's best in works such as the Nutcracker with it's myriad infectious tunes. Many of Tchaikovsky's melodies are based on folksongs he collected, predominantly Russian and Ukrainian but also Polish, Italian, Spanish and French (this last seen in the Piano Concerto No. 1, in this collection).

A strong opponent of oppression in all it's forms, Leonardo Balada met Martin Luther King in 1967. His Sinfonia en Negro is a powerful response to King's subsequent murder as well as a description of the black people's journey in the Americas from slavery to freedom. Both the Sinfonia and the virtuoso Double Concerto use Balada's pioneering blend of ethnic music with avant-garde techniques, while Columbus: Images for Orchestra is a free adaptation of four contrasting scenes from his acclaimed opera Christopher Columbus (8.660237-38). in 2007 Leonardo Balada won an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters that helped make this recording possible.

Thierry Lancino' vast Requiem is a challenging and eloquent contemplation on human mortality which the composer describes as 'both an epic fresco and sacred ceremony'. in a paradox which brings the Christian into dialogue with the Pagan, Lancino presents.

During his time William Schuman (1910?1992) was a notable part of American musical life, as a teacher, administrator, and composer. His legacy of musical compositions is significant and distinctive, and this release couples two striking examples of his art.


Symphony No. 7, premiered by Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony in 1960, is in four movements played continuously, beginning with a pregnant, sinewy, and dark, slow movement that is succeeded by a brief Scherzo that is typically pugnacious and characteristically scored, not least in the percussion. The slow mood returns for a radiant Cantabile intensamente that grows in emotion, and the symphony concludes with a propulsive finale that begins skittishly (reminding us of Copland and developing an exuberance that suggests Leonard Bernstein) and ends in thrilling clamor. Whether this lively movement is quite the expected corollary to what has gone before is a moot point, although there is no doubting the sheer quality of the music, and the uplift of the final measures.


Symphony No. 10, ?American Muse,? was first heard in Washington, DC, in 1976, Antal Dorati conducting the National Symphony Orchestra. Leonard Slatkin and the Chicago Symphony then took it up, and Slatkin recorded American Muse , dedicated ?to the country?s creative artists, past, present and future,? and other works of Schuman, for RCA with the Saint Louis Symphony in either 1991 or 1992 (RCA?s booklet doesn?t specify what was recorded when). It?s a great piece, the last of Schuman?s 10 symphonies (the first two were withdrawn by the composer), a vindication of writing real symphonic music, and begins with a sustained, brass dominated Con fuoco that is a virtuoso display of considerable import; a tidal wave of communication. The lengthy Larghissimo that follows is hauntingly beautiful, very personal, even private, but it steals to the listener?s heart, and the finale, having begun in exploratory fashion, is an optimistic summation.


Both Slatkin and Gerard Schwarz are deeply sympathetic conductors of Schuman?s music, but I imagine Slatkin?s version of ?American Muse? is now deleted. Schwarz?s leading of both symphonies is excellent; so, too, the sound quality; and the music is superb. With Schuman 4 and 9 already released from Seattle, one hopes the other four symphonies will follow. Very important.


FANFARE: Colin Anderson

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

A 60th Annual Grammy Award Nominee

Acclaimed as one of America’s leading contemporary composers, Richard Danielpour wrote Songs of Solitude as a response to the events of 9/11. Drawing on the poems of W.B. Yeats, the work enshrines a sense of economy and sparseness, formed of a set of six powerful orchestral songs. The motivating force for War Songs was a series of photographs of the young men and women killed in the Iraq War. The song cycle, with its texts by Walt Whitman, was written for the Nashville Symphony to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. Toward the Splendid City is a portrait of New York City driven by Danielpour’s love-hate relationship with his hometown. This is vivid music, subtle tonal-modern tour de force expressions, the main works heartfelt reactions to two of the most difficult historical periods in the USA.

------

REVIEWS:

Performances are exceptionally well-wrought, detailed and strong. The sound is excellent. The music unforgettable. Very much recommended.

– Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

Thomas Hampson…performs the music with just the right blend of evenness and emotional intensity, and the effect of the final and longest song, Come Up from the Fields Father, which lasts half the length of the whole cycle, is especially affecting here. The accompaniment by the Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero is nuanced and subtle throughout, fitting the music very well indeed. Hampson and Guerrero are also well-teamed for Songs of Solitude.

– Infodad.com (October 2016)

SCHOENBERG 6 Songs, op. 8. 1 Friede auf Erden. 2 6 Pieces, op. 35. 3 Ei, du Lütte. 4 Kol Nidre. 5 Moses und Aron: act II, sc. 3 excerpts 6 • Robert Craft, cond; Jennifer Welch-Babidge (sop); 1,6 David Wilson-Johnson (rabbi-narr); 5 Simon Joly Chorale; 2–6 Philharmonia O 1,5,6 • NAXOS 8.557525 (78:31)


It’s our job to listen carefully to every recording, but I sometimes put on a disc—for its first hearing—while doing something else, just to let its music seep into my (un?) consciousness. My immediate response was: This is Schoenberg ? Most of the Six Songs, op. 8, of 1903–04 have somehow escaped this Schoenberg-lover; they are all flat-out gorgeous. The Brahms-loving composer leaned more on Wagner here, the rich harmonies only a touch more adventurous than his. The vocal writing is thoroughly operatic; these could be six dramatic arias, each with an orchestral prelude and postlude. The orchestrations are varied and colorful, hinting at Zemlinsky and even Tchaikovsky, as well as The Ring . The results are closer to Gurrelieder than to anything else of Schoenberg. Perhaps the popularity of these songs has been limited because they are not a united song cycle but six separate works, or perhaps it’s because no one has sung them like Welch-Babidge (there are recordings by Anya Silya and by Eva Marton). I was not particularly impressed by her Marzelline in the Met’s Fidelio , but she is magnificent here, displaying full, rounded tones over a wide register and dynamic range, consistently landing on pitch across many leaps. Her voice recalls a young Phyllis Bryn-Julson, although I never heard the latter tackle dramatic writing with such a high tessitura. Each song is a major piece; they vary in length from one-and-a-half to nearly six minutes, spanning over 25 minutes altogether.


This is the a cappella original of Friede auf Erden (“Peace on Earth”), written in 1907 when Schoenberg was searching for new ways but hadn’t yet settled on any. Craft’s chorus manages the difficult music well, but the piece still fails to make much of an effect. The Six Pieces for male chorus (“Inhibitions,” “The Law,” “Expression,” “Happiness,” “Mercenaries,” and “Obligation”) are no more successful. Schoenberg wrote his own texts, which are poorly expressed pieces of vague social and religious philosophy—at least in English translation; it’s difficult to imagine what he had in mind. The music may be more interesting to analyze than to hear; Craft does so at length in his always-educational program notes. Ei, du Lütte (“Oh, you little one”) is a brief, charming chorus written when Schoenberg was 21.


With Kol Nidre (1938) we return to top-notch Schoenberg—the return of the orchestra is equally welcome. The Kol Nidre is a Jewish liturgy; Schoenberg—writing in English—had objections to the historical text, but his modifications merely served to get his piece banned from use in synagogues. This performance is sensational, putting all others I have heard to shame. Craft and the Philharmonia realize all of the music’s oddly moving details, and Wilson-Johnson, who is a singer rather than an actor, gives a superb reading of the extensive, dramatic narration, a no-holds-barred emoting which works perfectly in this wild piece.


Three excerpts from “The Golden Calf at the Altar” scene of Moses und Aron are an odd filler, as there are several top-notch presentations of the opera on disc (and a superlative one on DVD; see Fanfare 31:2, page 344). Craft matches any of them but does not offer any special insight, nor does Welch-Babidge singing the Young Girl. The best part may be Craft’s notes: “An orgy follows, but at this point the excerpt ends.” And so does the disc.


The generally excellent recordings come from six sessions held from 2003 to 2006, all at Abbey Road Studio One. The orchestral songs are very well balanced; Welch-Babidge remains in front of the orchestra, yet instrumental details are always clear, and the whole has beauty and life. An awkward splice at 1:29 of the opening song is unfortunate. A major handicap to appreciating this all-vocal disc is the lack of texts. They are available, but only in German, at www.naxos.com/libretti/557525.htm. Sony’s two-CD set of Schoenberg choral music under Boulez (44571) has German and English texts for much of this music, but not the songs for soprano.


For the orchestral songs and Kol Nidre , a Want List candidate.


FANFARE: James H. North

An interesting big symphony coupled with a shorter work that represents Casella at his considerable finest.

To my mind one of the most interesting and successful current Naxos series is that devoted to the orchestral music of Alfredo Casella. The current release is the fourth and contains Casella’s third and last symphony. Suffice to say all of the excellent values of performance and engineering/production of the first three volumes are duplicated here so admirers need not hesitate.
 
I had no knowledge of the major works prior to collecting these discs but I was mightily impressed with the scale and power of the earlier two symphonies. Casella’s third and final essay in the form is actually – and rather confusingly – simply titled Sinfonia and dates from 1939 making it a full three decades younger than the earlier pair. All three are big works; Nos. 1 & 3 clock in around the ¾ hour mark and No.2 is a full 55 minutes. Although the influences are different it is clear to hear that Casella was a man who was willing to let his admiration for the music of others infuse his own. So where the earlier works are epically Mahlerian the later work echoes Shostakovich and Nielsen as well. I would have to say that this Sinfonia has not made as immediate an impact on me as the earlier works. The central pair of movements seem to contain the most cogent and well argued music. In the excellent liner-note by David Gallagher it is pointed out that the work is truly symphonic in that nearly all of the melodic material in the entire work derives from the opening germinal material. This I suppose reflects the experience gained through his career but it does not necessarily make for as compelling a listen as the excitingly confident indeed bravura music he wrote in his twenties. The first movement in particular suffers from extended passages of musical material being ‘worked’ without the sense of it creating an emotional landscape for the listener. After the rather appealing sparse opening the scoring suffers from being rather heavy and unrelenting. That being said the final pages of the movement flutter away into quiet inconsequence. These are all impressions that are based on a relatively brief acquaintance with the work and without the benefit of the score.
 
The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma under conductor Francesco La Vecchia continue to make the good impression they formed previously – the strings play with good ensemble and a well balanced tone. Italian brass players are always game to play with plenty of edge and attack and so they do here. I have not heard the other available version on CPO from the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln under Alun Francis but I cannot imagine they have much to fear from it in purely technical terms. Having heard very little ‘war’ music in the opening movement the second movement Andante molto moderato opens with a string-led threnody that is instantly much more engaging and powerful than anything in the opening movement. The Rome strings are good but I can imagine this movement being even more powerful if played with the weight and unanimity of Vienna or Berlin. I like the way the music slowly builds a momentum becoming a rather lop-sided yet unrelenting march underlying some lovely lyrical lines for the strings and woodwind. It is rather quirky and individual before the mood lightens towards a calm major key resolution. The third movement Scherzo has a mechanistic (rather than militaristic) feel and while it has some of Shostakovich’s stamping energy it lacks the nightmarish malice of that composer’s writing that makes his scherzi in particular so remarkable. I wonder if it would benefit from a slightly more unleashed tempo than here? I’m sure La Vecchia’s choice is dictated by the complex filigree writing that surrounds the main material but it does result in a basic pulse that plods.
 
The Finale is altogether more buoyant indeed optimistic which might seem at odds with the wartime context. But as Gallagher points out repeatedly Casella was an enthusiastic indeed sycophantic supporter of Mussolini and his fascist agenda and since the war was still going relatively well for the regime in 1939/40 why not be optimistic? Again, I find there are passages which I suspect appeal more to the academics who admire the way in which the material is developed – to my innocent ear they lack a huge amount of melodic interest. But there are several passages which allow the impressive Rome horns and brass to shine excitingly. This is the movement that sounds most heroically filmic. After the bombast of the opening ten minutes of the movement there is a coda/epilogue that is rather beautiful in the way the musical lines grope upwards sinuously in a mood of hymn-like reflection which just as it is fading away with elegiac solo strings is flattened by a raucously noisy conclusion. Given that that ending lacks any of the irony or forced good-humour of a Shostakovich one is left assuming that Casella was feeling pretty good about things in 1940 after all!
 
If the symphony was the only work on offer here I would direct collectors to the earlier works. However, it is this disc’s ‘filler’ which proves to be the absolute jewel here and indeed one of the finest works by Casella I have yet encountered. This is also a work written in time of war – 1916 – but here the presence of tragedy and sorrow is unmistakeable. This Elegia eroica is subtitled “alla memoria di un Soldato morto in Guerra”. The very opening is magnificently striking in a way that eluded the symphony totally. Tolling horns, ominous tam-tam, skirling wood-wind and disconsolate strings immediately plunge the listener in a world of loss and despair. It feels much more modern and challenging than the later work. This is how Casella described it; “a heroic funeral march, a more intimate deeply sorrowful central episode; and finally a fusillade of death that thunders through the orchestra [and] subsides into a tender lullaby evoking an image of our country as a mother tenderly cradling her dead son”. The musical means Casella uses for this are actually considerably more modernistic than the potentially maudlin narrative might imply. It reminds me of the expressionist scores being written in Germany around this time and certainly quite unlike any other contemporaneous Italian score I can think of. The Rome orchestra are superb here relishing the extremes of dynamic and range the piece demands. Casella’s particular coup-de-théâtre was lost on the work’s first audience. The final lullaby is given to the solo oboe which plays fragments of the 19 ^th century patriotic song Fratelli d’Italia over a string-led rocking berceuse accompaniment – definite echoes of The Firebird here. It is a passage of tender beauty and poignant rapture – all drowned out in 1916 by “a tidal wave of indignation … not a single note could be heard.” Casella pares his orchestration right back to a skeletal minimum to stunning effect. In its quasi-minimalist way this passage pre-echoes Holst’s Uranus or the finale of Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No.6. Even the way Casella avoids any ‘comfortable’ ending adds to the impact and sincere power of the work.
 
So a conundrum for the collector to consider – a big symphony that is interesting but not the place to start your symphonic investigation of the composer coupled with a shorter work that represents him at his considerable finest. On balance, at the Naxos bargain price point, I would say worth buying for the Elegia alone. Hopefully Naxos will continue to use this creative team for further projects and indeed more Casella.
 
-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

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Francesco La Vecchia’s recordings of modern Italian music for Naxos have been impressive, nowhere more so than in his discs dedicated to the finely crafted works of Alfredo Casella. The Third Symphony, written for Chicago, is a late piece (1940), but still an ambitious essay in the grand tradition. It’s beautifully put together, melodically pungent (maybe a touch of Honegger), colorfully scored, but also austere, even severe in places. It’s clearly the work of a mature master. Elegia eroica is a funeral march dating from 1916, a passionate threnody “to the memory of a soldier killed in battle.”
As with the other discs in this series, the performances are wholly convincing, well played and recorded. In the case of the symphony, though, there’s very strong competition, even better engineered, from Alun Francis and the slightly finer WDR Symphony Orchestra on CPO, coupled to the tone poem Italia. La Vecchia does present a legitimate alternate view, of course, with some strikingly different bits of instrumental detail, and a work of this richness ought to be heard in more than one interpretation. So if you’ve been collecting this series, by all means grab this release without qualms.
-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The combination of flute and guitar was a feature of early tango recordings – instruments central both to the genre and to the music of Astor Piazzolla. The composer’s quintessential Histoire duTango charts the form’s evolution from its appearance in the barrios of Buenos Aires to its eventual assimilation by classical composers. The Six Études tanguistiques for solo flute is Piazzolla’s only work for a melodic unaccompanied instrument. The remainder of the program presents a sequence of arrangements by Vicente Coves and Kazunori Seo and includes some of Piazzolla’s most famous and beautiful compositions as well as preserving a historically important, previously unreleased recitation by Horacio Ferrer.