Classical Music

As a leading virtuoso who premiered Beethoven’s final violin sonata with the Archduke Rudolph, Rode was at the center of European musical life, his compositions sitting at the apex of the French violin school. The final volume in this acclaimed series presents one of his most inspired pieces, the Violin Concerto No. 11 in D major, lyrically expressive and full of good-humored zest. Violin Concerto No. 12 in E major is notable for the ingenious ways in which, through trills, staccato, spiccato and cadenzas, Rode heightens the music’s bravura. Violinist Friedemann Eichhorn studied with Valery Gradow at the University of Music in Mannheim, with Alberto Lysy at the International Menuhim Music Academy in Gstaad, Switzerland, and with Margaret Pardee at The Juilliard School in New York. He performs with many renowned orchestras across the globe, and his previous recordings for Naxos were highly acclaimed.

Composed in 1954 for the 400th anniversary of the founding of São Paulo, Ameríndia is the composer's largest symphony. Effectively a hybrid symphony and oratorio for soloists, chorus and orchestra, it is memorable for it's stylistic variety and breadth, drawing on many different sources of Brazilian music. This recording is based on a newly revised edition made by Editora Criadores do Brasil (the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra's publishing house) in collaboration with the Academia Brasileira de Música. Born in Brazil in 1934, Isaac Karabtchevsky studied conducting and composition in Germany under Wolfgang Fortner, Pierre Boulez, and Carl Ueter. He has held posts at the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra (OSB), La Fenice in Venice, and the Tonku¨nstler in Vienna. He is currently director of the Petrobras Symphony of Rio de Janeiro and the Heliopolis Symphony, an orchestra composed of young musicians, most of them from disadvantaged communities in São Paulo.

Virtuoso duo Sándor Rigó and Christina Leeb-Grill have taken Jean Françaix’s description of his own work, ‘musique pour faire plaisir’, as the motto for this program. Dance styles and rhythms are at the heart of this repertoire, from the spectacular Brazileira with which Milhaud concludes his theatrical Scaramouche, through Piazzolla’s refinement of tradition in his Tango-Études, to the Brazilian rhythms showcased in Villa-Lobos’s Fantasia. Paquito D’Rivera adapted his Invitaciónal Danzón especially for this recording, providing Sándor Rigó with space to demonstrate his brilliance in improvisation.

Francis Pott's acclaimed musical voice is one of uncommon eloquence and seriousness of purpose, and his works have been performed and broadcast in over 40 countries. This recording presents world premiere recordings of two major pieces. At First Light is a memorial work which takes the form of a series of slow meditations surrounding an exuberant motet, with wordless commentary from a lamenting cello. Word, with it's significant role for the organ and the inclusion of texts by the Welsh priest and poet R.S. Thomas, reveals Gospel contemplation in a postmodern world.

Lord Berners’ early music was avant-garde in style earning the admiration of Stravinsky, and while it was soon to become more accessible, it never lost its distinctive style and flavor. The Triumph of Neptune is one of his major works and his most ambitious ballet score, commissioned by Diaghilev with choreography by Balanchine. A ballet-pantomime-harlequinade, its inconsequential plot features music as diverse as it is brilliantly inventive. L’uomo dai baffiisa delicious ballet for puppets with stripped-back instrumentation, and Philip Lane’s deft orchestrations of Valses bourgeoises and Polka offer ripe wit.

Antonio Ruiz-Pipó was a versatile musician whose compositions display both Andalusian and Parisian influences as well as reflecting his own life story of non-conformism coupled with an infinite love for humanity. This program reveals his inclination towards South American music, and in the duets Homenaje a Villa-Lobos and the quartet América she looks towards the habanera and samba (as well as a little boogie-woogie). Ancient sounds from a faraway land echo in the Homenaje a Antoniode Cabezón, while Cuatropara Cuatro and A Sevilla are pure Andalusian Ruiz-Pipó in terms of their colors, rhythms and narrative.

The English composer John Ireland drew his inspiration from his country' heritage, it's poetry and it's landscapes. He emerged as a celebrated composer towards the end of World War I, having destroyed almost all of his student works.

Acclaimed for his sacred choral and organ works, Francis Pott was recognized in 2021 with the Medal of the Royal College of Organists, its highest award. Regarded as an Everest of the organ repertoire, Christus is a Passion symphony that traces this dramatic Biblical narrative through evolving tonality, portraying Christ’s vast struggle through betrayal and crucifixion towards ultimate triumph. Christus here enjoys itsfirst studio recording, made in the presence of the composer. Included also are premieres of Surrexit Hodie (a toccata for Easter Sunday) and a commemorative chorale prelude, Schmückedich, Oliebe Seele.

Rossini’s Neapolitan theatrical debut in 1815 won him overnight esteem as well as the favor of the Bourbon dynasty, ensuring lucrative contracts and commissions. The following year he composed Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo, an allegorical cantata on the theme of the wedding between the sea goddess Thetis and the hero Peleus. Written to celebrate a royal marriage, it is an intensely theatrical work in which Rossini drew on some of the greatest contemporary singers, specialists in the ornamented bel canto style, and created a staged spectacular with chorus and a wealth of colorful orchestration.

One of Lithuania’s leading artistic figures, Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis pursued a career as a painter as well as a musician, seeing all art as springing from the same source. His earlier works inhabit a romantic idiom, with the colorful influences of folk-music and the beauty of the countryside intermingled with pieces showing his development while at the Conservatoires of Warsaw and Leipzig. Muza Rubackyte’s recordings of Ciurlionis have been described as ‘flawless’ (American Record Guide) and she herself as ‘one of today’s most important pianists’ (Chicago Tribune).

The music of Iranian composer Behzad Abdi fuses dastgāh (the Iranian modal system) with Western classical forms. He wrote Iran’s first national opera, Rumi (Naxos 8.660424-25), and Hafez also exemplifies his approach to the medium. The opera’s subject is the great Persian poet and mystic Hafez, whose sonnets and poetry are still widely read across the Persian-speaking world today. Behrouz Gharibpour’s libretto traces the poet’s tribulations, memories of keeping his poems from being destroyed by a despotic government, and subsequent exile. Abdi’s polytonal technique serves to reflect the unique concepts of Hafez’s 14th-century poetry with passion, lyricism and power.

The second volume in this series (Volume1is on 8.574005) continues to explore little-known examples of Auber’s elegant and refined operatic music. Julie was his first stage work, its fantasia-like beauty foreshadowing the operas, opéras-comiques and lyric dramas to come. Striking melodies and haunting episodes abound in these overtures and entr’actes, and there is restrained yet fragrant Iberian color in the overture to Léocadie. The Violin Concerto is lightly scored and gentle, with a tarantella-like finale full of folk vitality.

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REVIEW:

This disc concentrates on Auber's early career between 1805 and 1829, going back to his first opera, Julie, ou L’Erreur d’un moment, where the orchestral scoring could be just for an enlarged string quartet. At the other end of the spectrum, in Fiorella from 1826, he was in competition with Rossini and requires a much more fulsome orchestra. We then move into the world of serious opera in 1824 with Leocadie. The Violin Concerto poses no major problems for Marketa Cepicka, a ‘song-like’ quality in the first two movements concluded by a suitably frolicking dance finale. The playing of the Czech orchestra is first rate for the Scottish/Italian conductor, Dario Salvi, the musicologist who is unearthing these long forgotten scores.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

The six Cello Suites represent J.S. Bach’s genius at its most distilled, with the composer confronting the enigma of writing counterpoint for a monophonic instrument at its core. Jeffrey McFadden’s arrangement for guitar enhances the music, adding a harmonic dimension and making the implied interaction of voices explicit. The Suites contain some of the most fascinating and beautiful movements in all of Bach's oeuvre, and remain one of the most important works in the history of Western music. ‘Jeffrey McFadden not only is an extraordinary guitarist – he’s also an inspired musician’ (ClassicsToday.com on Naxos 8.554354, works by Napoléon Coste).

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REVIEW:

McFadden avoids the result coming too close to a version for harpsichord, though the guitar can never equate to the range of tonal colours available from a solo cello, nor, for that matter the dynamic range of the instrument. Though we do hear fingers moving around the fret, let me conclude this short review by admiring the clean-cut playing of this world famous Canadian guitarist. We can now look forward to the second disc.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Polish pianist and composer Franz Xaver Scharwenka was raised in the spirit of European Romanticism, championing the music of Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Liszt, and gaining enormous popularity for his own compositions, which Liszt greatly admired. Scharwenka’s fourth and final Piano Concerto (which the composer performed under the direction of Mahler and Stokowski) is a work of genius which stands at the apex of his achievement. The shorter pieces on this album have recently enjoyed renewed popularity, proving the value of Scharwenka’s legacy for modern listeners though much of his music remains to be rediscovered.

The Glogauer Liederbuch is a forgotten treasure a rich repository of fifteenth-century music. It contains 292 songs devotional chants and instrumental pieces which were performed by educated enthusiasts or students not by professional musicians. The collection also includes several pieces known as 'Schwanz' (tail) which probably designates them as dances ('schwanzen' being a derivation of 'tanzen' i.e. dancing). The music sung or played in this Lower Silesian monastic community originated in many different countries but all the pieces show a richly developed standard. The Liederbuch is the oldest known set of part-books from central Europe.

MADERNA Piano Concerto. 1 Piano Concerto (version for 2 pianos 2 ) . Concerto for 2 Pianos 3. Quadrivium 4 • 1,2,3 Aldo Orvieto, 2,3 Fausto Bongelli (pn); 1,3,4 Carlo Miotto, cond; 3 Gruppo 40.6; 1,4 Arena di Verona O • NAXOS 8.572642 (66:32)


Bruno Maderna (1920–73) was an Italian postwar composer and conductor. He studied composition with Gian Francesco Malipiero in the early 1940s; it was Malipiero whom he felt was not only a great teacher, but who also gave to him an appreciation of earlier music. Around the same time he studied conducting with Guarnieri at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena; he proved to be gifted in this respect as well. He later attended an international course in conducting in Venice with none other than Hermann Scherchen, the great German conductor who was highly interested in contemporary music. During the 1950s Maderna worked to revitalize the musical scene in Italy. One of the major projects, which came to fruition in 1955, was the founding of the Studio di Fonologia Musicale of the RAI. This allowed both Maderna and Berio to work further in their experimentations with electronic forms of music-making. By the 1960s he was conducting more than ever. He worked with some of the most prestigious orchestras in the world at the time—New York, Chicago, Amsterdam, and Cleveland, to name just a few—conducting everything from contemporary works and Mahler symphonies to Mozart and Debussy operas. Compositionally, he remained equally interested in a wide range of music throughout his life—dodecaphonic, early Venetian and Flemish, electronic; everything was filtered through his keen mind. He died—too young—at the age of 53.


The first three works on the current recital (of which the two versions of the Piano Concerto are premiere recordings) are all short works—all between 11 and 12 minutes. The Piano Concerto (1942) is an early work. It sounds a bit like a mixture of Bartók, Berg, and perhaps Hindemith, though there is already a unique sound that shines through. The work is contrapuntal, well orchestrated, and highly melodic. It is above all else a pleasure to listen to. The version from 1946 for two pianos sounds almost like an x-ray of the music by comparison. It is fascinating to have these two versions side by side, as many of the details that get lost through the addition of numerous tone colors are all of a sudden brought to the fore; the piece sounds new. One can hear that the 1940s saw Maderna seeking new avenues of expression. The Concerto for Two Pianos (1948) is far away from the sound world of the previous two works. It begins with a mysterious air to it, using few notes and just the pianos to create its mood. It becomes more animato as the composition progresses, adding more and different percussion instruments into the mix, erupting at times, receding at others. It ends with a torrent of timbres. Quadrivium (1969) is a late work. Lasting some 31 minutes, it is the longest work on the recording. It is composed of four percussionists and four orchestral groups, symbolizing the four liberal arts—arithmetic, algebra, music, and astronomy. It is the most experimental of his works on the disc, featuring strict serial writing, aleatoric moments, and counterpoint, and is infused with a sense of exploration of sonorities. I can’t say that this type of music will be for everyone, but repeated listenings help in the appreciation and understanding of this music. I can only say that I have been rewarded in the process.


The musicians on this recording give the sense that they have studied and love this music—and there is much to be loved, even by the casual listener. The early works, in particular, are delightful in sound and conception, while the later works, though more complex, are also quite engaging; just be prepared for a good deal of writing for percussion instruments. The sound quality is excellent—each instrument literally pops out of the mix when required. The numerous changes in color on the piano are captured vividly here as well. Overall this is a very fine release of music that should be better known, more listened to, and in the end cherished.


FANFARE: Scott Noriega

Also available on Blu-ray Audio

Leoš Janá?ek’s dramatic Glagolitic Mass is set to a ninth century Old Church Slavonic text. With its highly individual synthesis of thunderous brass outbursts, rhythmic energy, radiant melodies and interludes of rapt contemplation, the work has established itself as a unique contribution to the choral repertoire. An avowed statement of his belief and patriotic pride in Czechoslovakian national independence, Janá?ek’s Sinfonietta uses spectacular large-scale orchestral forces. Both of these works belong to the composer’s last and most inspired decade, and represent his mature musical language at its most communicative.

Debora Halasz's fiery Seixas (Naxos 8.557459) and Lars Ulrik Mortensen's poetic Buxtehude (Naxos 8.570580) stand out.

Ernesto Halffter, one of Manuel de Falla’s most admired disciples and a student of Stravinsky and Ravel, was a close associate of iconic figures such as Dalí, García Lorca, and Buñuel on the 20th century Iberian cultural scene. His magnificent score for Jacques Feyder’s 1926 silent film, Carmen, is one of the great impressionistic Spanish masterpieces of its era. More sombre and tragic than the music for Bizet’s opera, Halffter’s vivid panorama depicts the range and depth of the powerful emotions encompassed within the Carmen story, a tale of thwarted love, passion, jealousy, and violence set in the heart of Andalusia in southern Spain. This is not only the work’s world première recording but the first performance to realise the composer’s musical intentions in full.

Recording of the Month

This is a major release no matter what the colour, creed, nationality, race or gender of the composer. I repeat: this is a major release.

Born in Texas, Lokumbe is a composer and a jazz trumpeter who has worked with Gil Evans, Roland Kirk and the Jazz Composers Orchestra amongst others. Dear Mrs Parks was premièred in February 2005, by many of the performers here. That performance was broadcast nationwide and on the net. I recorded it and thus have heard the work several times prior to receiving this new CD.

The story of Rosa Parks is well enough known, I think, but for anyone who doesn’t know it, briefly: on 1 December 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white passenger. This action sparked the Montgomery (Alabama) bus boycott. Because of her actions, Rosa Parks became an important figure in the modern Civil Rights movement. She has been called “The Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement”. She died a few months after the première of this work, which she attended.

What we have here is a celebration of Rosa Parks, using jazz, blues, funk and classical elements all fused together with great skill. Nowhere is one conscious of the change from one style to the other simply because the work is written in only one style – that of Hannibal Lokumbe. This is the work of an obviously very talented, and gifted, composer which makes it all the more confusing that it’s the only work of his I have ever heard.

As a composition it has arias, choruses, orchestral movements; everything you’d expect from an oratorio – drama, release, praise. This is a very fine piece indeed. It is full of good things. The orchestration is brilliantly colourful. Lashings of percussion drive the dance music, which is truly joyous. The arias are ecstatic declamatory utterances, and the choruses are full-blooded.

The performance is totally committed, but be warned both Janice Chandler-Eteme and Kevin Deas employ a very fast vibrato which becomes tiring on the ear. Otherwise I have no worries about this disk whatsoever.

As a new look at oratorio it is vibrant and totally compelling. I hope that this piece will make many friends. Here is an important composer who has something to say and knows how to say it. Good notes and a full text are included in the booklet. Perhaps I should point out that the language is easily understood: it’s tonal and approachable.

Don’t miss this. It’s as important a choral work as Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast or David Blake’s Lumina.

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

Anton Rubinstein was one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century music, a great piano virtuoso, conductor and influential teacher. The fifth of his six Symphonies is thoroughly Russian in it's melodies, and is often compared to his student Tchaikovsky's First Symphony. The overture to Rubinstein's first opera Dmitry Donsky is based on a similarly national Russian theme, while Faust, written in Leipzig in 1854, is the sole surviving movement of an abandoned Faust symphony. Rubinstein's Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 can be heard on Naxos 8.555590 and 8.555979.

With his Four Seasons, Antonio Vivaldi created perhaps the most famous and influential work of late Baroque music. Even today, his imaginative solutions to the challenges of depicting the seasons in music are completely compelling in their evocative power. Recorded in the Concert Hall of the State Chamber Orchestra, Zilina.

Mieczyslaw Karlowicz was a significant talent, and his early death in 1909 (at age 33) was a serious loss to 20th century Polish music. His symphonic poems are typically refulgent late-Romantic works, full of ambition and, to be frank, pretension. Consider the three parts of Op. 10 (Eternal Songs): Song of Everlasting Yearning; Song of Love and Death; Song of Eternal Being. Heavy-duty stuff, and there's no point in pretending that Karlowicz, talented as he was, did full justice to the program, but the point is that he tried, tried hard, and produced gobs of richly entertaining music in the process.

Antoni Wit's first disc of tone poems was exceptional, and this one is excellent as well, if a hair less outstanding than previously. What problems there are stem from having the New Zealand orchestra rather than Wit's own Warsaw forces. Of course the New Zealanders play very well, and are well recorded, but their string section lacks the luxuriance that the music ideally requires, and while some listeners may prefer a leaner basic sonority, what Karlowicz really asks for is Strauss on steroids (i.e. Korngold and that crowd). Still, you won't find better performances of this music than Naxos' edition, and you can purchase this second volume with complete confidence.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This album is the second release in the Naxos Czech Music Masters from Vienna series, and features the world premiere recording of Kozeluch’s magnificent coronation cantata. The coronation of Leopold II in Prague in 1791 came at a difficult time for European monarchs, although Leopold himself enjoyed a reputation as an enlightened ruler. Two musical works were commissioned for the occasion: Mozart’s opera ‘La clemenza di Tito’ and Kozeluch’s cantata ‘Heil dem Monarchen.’ The cantata, by turns celebratory, serene and darkly dramatic, was well-received and enhanced Kozeluch’s reputation in royal circles. It almost certainly played a part in his appointment in 1792 to the court of Leopold’s son and successor, the last Holy Roman Emperor Franz II.

Having visited in recent times many new countries, many diverse sites, many places hallowed by history and poetry, having felt that the various aspects of nature and of related scenes did not pass before my eyes as vain images.

Tchaikovsky encouraged Georgy L’vovich Catoire to pursue a musical career, remarking that he was ‘gifted with a powerful creative talent’. Catoire’s passion for Wagner was intense and this infused his music with rich chromatic harmonies and sweeping melodies. His works for violin and piano are some of his very finest. The Violin Sonata No. 1 in B minor, Op. 15 is a substantial and compelling piece, full of grandeur and constantly evolving rhythms. Like its successor, the raptly beautiful, single-movement Violin Sonata No. 2 in D major, Op. 20, subtitled Poème, it shows the influence of French Impressionism.

Frederic Rzewski is most celebrated for his virtuosic variations for piano, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (8.559360). The Four Pieces began as a sequel to that breath-taking work, but whilst sharing certain similarities – Andean dance rhythms and tremendous drama – it occupies its own very distinct sound world, offering a compound of intense lyricism, shattering darkness, and hints of revolutionary fervor. The Housewife’s Lament is a set of variations on an anon. 19th c. tune with strong influences of Beethoven. The punning title Hard Cuts refers to cuts both budgetary and musical, and Rzewski’s signature elements appear throughout: folk rhythms, pointillist clarity, minimalism, and unique craftsmanship.

The genesis of Rossini’s first full-scale opera Demetrio e Polibio is shrouded in speculation, but its initial intention as a ‘family opera’ for the tenor Domenico Mombelli, with roles for his daughters and a libretto by his wife seems clear. Its narrative of political turmoil, romance, kidnap, and the ultimate blessings of true love and unity is a prelude to subjects to which Rossini would frequently turn in future triumphs. The composer’s facility for melody and his genius for combining voices into the loveliest of duets is already much in evidence in this confident but rarely heard debut.

Brian’s Sixth Symphony, subtitled “Sinfonia Tragica,” makes an ideal introduction to his music. It’s full of evocative sounds and unusually (for him) arresting thematic ideas, and its single movement takes less than twenty minutes. The last few minutes are a Mahlerian phantasmagoria of march and dance tunes not unlike the wild outburst in the development section of the first movement of the German composer’s Third Symphony, but the final bars are hauntingly elegiac. Very well recorded once before for Lyrita, this newcomer is also quite well done, and has enough differences in tone and texture to justify duplication.

Symphonies Nos. 28 and 29 both date from 1967, and both have four movements that play without pause, more or less. No. 28 is only fourteen minutes long in total. Late Brian is an acquired taste, largely because of the music’s relentlessly contrapuntal textures, heavy orchestration with lots of low brass and percussion, and lack of simple repetition to permit listeners to get their bearings. Indeed, these pieces, and the brief, single-movement No. 31 for that matter, sound as though Brian simply chopped off hunks of music from some larger overall blob of material. And yet, the opening of No. 28 has an innocent simplicity of tone and texture that the composer never lost, and all of this music sounds like no one else. That is why it retains its peculiar fascination. It may not be “easy” or “friendly,” but it is distinctive, and the work of a strong musical personality with a definite message.

As with No. 6, the performances under Alexander Walker sound remarkably assured given the unfamiliarity of the material, and they are very well recorded. The Havergal Brian Society and Mr. Godfrey Berry underwrote this production, and they definitely got their money’s worth.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com