This series marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner, which falls in 2024. It’s dedicated to Bruckner’s symphonies, all recorded in new transcriptions for organ by Hansjörg Albrecht. The third recording was made on the impressive organ of London’s Westminster Cathedral. A bonus track on each volume will be a brand new composition for organ that references Bruckner the composer. Two or three volumes will be released each year, with the project reaching its conclusion in 2024. Hansjörg Albrecht is – besides Ton Koopman, Masaaki Suzuki, Martin Haselböck and Wayne Marshall – one of the few artists who are regularly present internationally both as conductor and concert organist. He is considered a musical innovator and lateral thinker without fear of contact. As a conductor, he consistently follows his own paths – between archive and new creation and with an extensive repertoire from Bach to Messiaen – and with his organ transcriptions he has established himself as a specialist among the virtuosos of his instrument. Hansjörg Albrecht is Artistic Director of the Munich Bach Choir & Bach Orchestra (founded in 1954 by the legendary Karl Richter). He also has a longstanding collaboration with the San Carlo Opera House in Naples, the Chamber Orchestra Moscow, the Staatskapelle Weimar and the CPE Bach Choir Hamburg. As conductor and organist he performs worldwide in the major music centers such as London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Rome, Moscow, Tokyo and New York and regularly collaborates with internationally renowned artists and orchestras. He also conducts opera productions in Naples and Dubai, among others, as well as ballet projects with the dance companies of Marguerite Donlon and Boris Eifman.

This series marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner, which falls in 2024. It's dedicated to Bruckner’s symphonies, all recorded in new transcriptions for organ by Hansjörg Albrecht. This first recording in the 10-volume edition is performed on the impressive Bruckner organ of the St. Florian Collegiate Church in Linz, Austria. A bonus track on each volume will be a brand new composition for organ that references Bruckner the composer. Two or three volumes will be released each year, with the project reaching its conclusion in 2024. So, stay tuned.

TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 1 in g, “Winter Dreams.” Capriccio Italien • Christoph Poppen, cond; Southwest German RO • OEHMS 760 (57:57) Live: Saarbrücken 12/2007; Mainz 1/2010


This appears to be a sequel to Tchaikovsky’s Fourth with Poppen, reviewed in Fanfare 33:3. Is it part of an emerging cycle? I don’t know. I was not overly enthused with the earlier release, only because I felt Poppen’s reading of the Fourth, one of the composer’s more nervous-tic-ridden scores, needed a bit more in the way of the frenzied and the frenetic than the performance delivered. I concluded that if Poppen had brought as much urgency to the symphony as he did to the 1812 Overture that complemented it on the disc, the venture would have been more successful.


Tchaikovsky’s “Winter Dreams” Symphony is another animal altogether. Aside from the flash of drama here and there, the work is one of the composer’s loveliest lyrical creations. For Tchaikovsky, this first-born among his symphonies was perhaps his greatest labor of love. He worked on it tirelessly for at least eight years, from 1866 to 1874, making constant and sometime drastic revisions. I’d even go so far as to say that if he had left only four symphonies instead of six, the Second and Third would not be missed, for neither surpasses the First in formal construction, handling of materials, or sheer melodic inspiration.


My last encounter with a “new” Tchaikovsky First was a 1995 Arte Nova recording with Samuel Friedmann leading the Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic, reviewed in 32:1. I thought it was very good, not quite equal perhaps to my longtime favorite with Michael Tilson Thomas and the Boston Symphony Orchestra on a 1970 Deutsche Grammophon recording, but still quite successful in capturing Tchaikovsky’s musical portraiture.


Much the same may be said of this recent recording by Poppen and his Southwest German Radio Orchestra forces. The recording has excellent perspective and presence, and Poppen’s reading of the score is well balanced and nicely characterized. I especially liked his fantasy-spun Adagio (“Land of Desolation, Land of Mists”), which morphs perfectly from a feeling of finding oneself alone and forlorn into that most human of reactions to such circumstances, escape into a state of semi-conscious reverie.


With so many recordings of the symphony and the Capriccio Italien (nearly 100 of the latter!) competing for your attention and dollars, it would be a tough case to make that Poppen’s, at full price, can lay claim to being better than any number of others. Just saying it’s at least as good as any number of others, and perhaps better than a few, seems to me recommendation enough, should you happen to be in the market for a new recording of these works.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

This compilation brings together popular orchestral works and ballet music by Tchaikovsky. Dmitrij Kitajenko and the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, of which he has been Honorary Conductor since 2009, have recorded the complete symphonies by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. These recordings have been awarded with numerous international prizes and are considered important reference recordings. Their recording of Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta in 2015 (with Olesya Golovneva, Alexander Vinogradov and Andrei Bondarenko in the lead roles) caused a sensation, and it received the Opera of the Year Award of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA).

This recording brings together unique orchestral suites by the Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev and the Soviet-Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian. Summer Night Suite is based on the music from Prokofiev’s opera Betrothal in a Monastery and Scythian Suite was derived from his ballet Ala and Lolly. Aram Khachaturian wrote his Masquerade Suite in 1941 to accompany Mikhail Lermontov’s play of the same name. His ballet Spartacus (1954) portrays the defeat the Romans by the hero Spartacus who leads an uprising of slaves. The suites present a range of moods and variety of melodic invention that are completely engaging. This is the Zagreb Philharmonic’s third recording for the OehmsClassics label. Their recording of Glazunov’s The Seasons, also under the direction of Dmitrij Kitajenko, received an ICMA nomination.

Richard Strauss was not yet 25 when he confronted death in musical terms. However, Death and Transfiguration was not created, as often supposed, as a more or less autobiographical report following a severe illness, but as a pictorial attempt at portraying the final moments of human existence in music. In From Italy, the just twenty-year-old Strauss reflects on a trip to Italy in which he experienced at first hand the beauties of nature and the Roman ruins. Both works are now brought together as Part 5 of the Strauss cycle with Sebastian Weigle on an released by OehmsClassics. Conductor Sebastian Weigle conducts his Frankfurter Opern-und Museumsorchester with transparency and aplomb.

In this compilation all recordings of the symphonic poems by Richard Strauss are combined with the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra under the General Music Director Sebastian Weigle. The orchestra has been awarded several times by the “Opernwelt” as Orchestra of the Year. Sebastian Weigle has been General Music Director since 2008/09. ‘...exceptionally vivid and detailed sound, which makes everything in these elaborately scored and contrapuntally dense works fully audible.’ (AllMusic.com on Vol. 6) ‘Weigle’s performances here are not only musically thrilling—both dynamically, and in regard to his color palette, his sense of voicing, and overall pacing—but thoroughly enjoyable to listen to on these transitionary days of early spring.’ (Fanfare on Vol. 5)

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Excerpts from select reviews of previously released volumes include in this set:

Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra & Don Quixote / Weigle

Sebastian Weigle secures a finely prepared, keenly purposeful and (above all) intensely musical account of Also sprach Zarathustra.

– Classical Ear

Strauss: Ein Heldenleben; Macbeth / Weigle

First impressions of this Heldenleben are highly favorable. Ingo de Haas is a generous, full-toned soloist in 'The Hero's Companion', but he's never cloying. Strauss performances don’t come more seamless and authoritative than this.

– MusicWeb International

Strauss: Eine Alpensinfonie / Weigle

Weigle’s Alpine Symphony performance is defined by a wonderful lyrical generosity, complete control of the work’s 50-minute span, and orchestral playing in which every note seems to reflect the drama that is being played out. Highly recommended

– Gramophone

The Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne with its Conductor Laureate Dmitri Kitaienko proudly present magical music illustrating the story of Nutcracker and Mouse King by E. T. A. Hoffmann and Alexandre Dumas. A Nutcracker performance can hardly be more authentic than this – especially since the artists are presenting us here with the entire ballet, not merely the Suite (Op. 71a). The ballet is complemented by the Suite from The Fairy’s Kiss by Stravinsky – composed in 1928 and arranged a number of times. It became world famous through the choreography by George Balanchine for the old New York Metropolitan Opera in 1937, later also for the City Center of Music and Drama as well as Lincoln Center, New York.

Classical Music

Schubert’s early death left us with an enormous amount of unfinished and fragmentary pieces, many of which are masterpieces. His piano sonatas are an unusual case –comprising eleven completed sonatas, ten fragmentary ones and four other fragmentary movements. Two of these fragmentary sonatas are juxtaposed in this program: the mysterious early fragment in F sharp minor D 571 and the epic Sonata in C major D 840 Reliquie, followed by Michael Finnissy’s new Vervollständigung von Schuberts D 840, commissioned and premiered by Yehuda Inbar in May 2017, and receiving its premiere recording on this release. The album culminates with Jörg Widmann’s Idyll und Abgrund: Six Schubert Reminiscences for Piano.

This interpretation of Die Winterreise is certainly unusual. Here, there is no singer; instead, the text is recited. The music still allows Schubert’s themes and motifs to ring out, but it treats them with complete freedom. The instrumental timbres are also different: tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone and bass clarinet exchange with lute and theorbo. Axel Wolf and Hugo Siegmeth join narrator Stefan Hunstein on an introspective journey that is finely connected, both musically and interpretively. Die Winterreise is about human existence, about a redefinition of one’s position after a setback, when someone who has been rejected reflects on his life, surrounded by cold and darkness. This recording reflects an interplay between faithfulness to the original and freedom of expression, creating a personal world of winter travel that resembles a musical-text radio play.

"Not only did I not review Johannes Martin Kränzle’s Romantic Ballads, neither did anyone else at Fanfare. I only heard of it because an online friend wrote me and said, “You have got to hear this guy. He’s terrific!” And he is. A good-sized, warm, rich German baritone voice with surprisingly strong low notes and, even more surprisingly, a flicker-vibrato of a type you never hear any more. But even better than the voice, Kränzle is a remarkable interpreter, digging into these songs with the kind of old-fashioned, heart-on-sleeve relish you used to hear from singers of the pre-Fischer-Dieskau era like Slezak, Kipnis, Tibbett, and young Hotter. Let’s put it this way: Any modern singer with the chutzpah to include such chestnuts as Edward, Erl-King, The Two Grenadiers, and Revelge on his first Lieder recital, and deliver performances that make you want to stand up and cheer, is someone special. Hilko Dumno, a superb pianist, contributes equally to this disc’s quality. As a bonus, listen to the way Kränzle spins humor and endless breath control through the lines of Hochzeitlied."

-- Lynn René Bayley, Fanfare 2010 Want List

Classical Music

The gifted Austrian composer Hans Rott (1858-1884) has become a figure of note in our day due mainly to his only completed and very fine youthful Symphony in E major(1880), the centerpiece of the present recording. The highlight of this disc however, comes in the form of the first recording of his eleven-song cycle for baritone, Balde Ruhest du Auch!' adapted for orchestra by the composer Enjott Schneider. Baritone Michael Volle sings; Hansjörg Albrecht leads the Munich Symphony.

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REVIEW:

This new account under review comes from the Münchner Symphoniker and conductor Hansjörg Albrecht. Beautifully recorded, it has the distinction of clocking up the speediest timings yet in three of the symphony's four movements. It also, thereby, achieves the fastest overall duration so far on disc. Albrecht's distinctly lean and muscular approach offers, in fact, something of an antidote to some other accounts which, to greater or lesser degrees, have inflated the score into something rather more portentous or even grandiloquent, as if acknowledging its perceived status as a sort of Mahlerian Holy Grail.

– MusicWeb International

Herbert Schuch's provocatively programmed recital built around "Night Pieces" matches and perhaps even surpasses the extraordinary standards set by the young pianist's earlier Oehms Classics solo release. Few keyboard artists have conveyed the somber darkness and lyrical light that characterize Schumann's Nachstücke Op. 23 to Schuch's detailed standards. His deliberately heavy tread in the first piece never compromises the sharp profile he brings to the obsessive dotted rhythms. The second piece's rapid chords are perfectly voiced, splinter free, and polyphonically aware, while discreet pedaling underlines the rolling accompaniment's feeling of unrest that is all too easy to generalize. By contrast, the fourth piece stands out for Schuch's eloquent simplicity and firmly centered singing tone.

The three short pieces encompassing Heinz Holliger's Elis--Drei Nachtstücke feature spiky dissonant outbursts, long, sparsely populated lines, and resonant silences in the best post-Webern tradition. Schuch's dynamic, caring rendition likely will be a point of reference for future interpreters.

Narrative coherence and an innate affinity for the composer's sound world distinguishes Schuch's command and control of the Scriabin Ninth sonata's multi-dimensional textures. One of the most absorbing, accomplished, and individually profiled recordings of Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit follows. Granted, some of Schuch's tenutos and phrase-end ritards in Ondine seem artificially superimposed, yet the pianist's frequently unorthodox pedalings and left-hand melodic accentuations restore the music's taut linear essence much as Toscanini "unblurred" Debussy's La Mer. He hauntingly sustains a slow basic tempo throughout Le Gibet, orchestrating the muffled chords, poignant tunes, and tolling B-flats to three-dimensional effect.

Like Pogorelich, Schuch's tonal ripeness and curvaceous phrasing at the outset provides a frame of reference for when the opening theme returns "without expression". The uncanny suppleness, accuracy, speed, and poise that Schuch brings to Scarbo must be heard to be believed: the quick high-register arpeggios will take your breath away if the dagger-like repeated notes haven't slayed you first!

In this company Mozart's B minor Adagio would seem anticlimactic, yet Schuch's forward thrust and purposeful inflections shed grittier, more masculine light on a piece we often think of as inward and fragile. Although the engineering captures Schuch's piano up close, the instrument sounds just as full-bodied, transparent, and alive as the music-making itself. One of the finest piano discs of 2009, or, for that matter, any other year.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com