Classical Music

Includes work(s) by Samuel Barber. Ensemble: Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Conductor: Marin Alsop.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

A subscriber to Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts at the turn of the century would have known the name of Arthur Foote. A leading member of the group of composers called the Boston Classicists, Foote's works were programmed regularly in Symphony Hall and one of them, the genial E Major Suite for Strings, was recorded memorably there by Serge Koussevitsky. Derivative in nature, his music evokes comparisons with Mendelssohn, Schumann or Brahms. As Boston Symphony program annotator John Burke wrote: "his art has no concerns to shake the world. It no more than searches the beauties of certain tonal combinations within the suitable confines of an accepted form."
This is one of two discs of Foote's chamber music, part of Naxos' laudable American classics series. It includes his early G Minor String Quartet and C Major Piano Quartet as well as his most popular work, the mildly evocative "Night Piece" which begins his Nocturne and Scherzo for Flute and Strings. The performances feature the Colorado-based Da Vinci Quartet, recorded with varying ambiance at the University of Denver's LaMont School of Music.

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

Elliott Carter makes his Naxos début with an ear-catching programme

It’s very good news that Naxos has added Elliott Carter to its American Classics series, beginning with a strong programme of rarely heard pieces, and juxtaposing Carter in early populist vein with Carter the 1960s’ avant-gardist in full cry.

The wartime muscularity of the Symphony No 1 (completed in 1942 but heard here in its 1954 revision) is clearest in passages which echo, or anticipate, Copland’s more extrovert orchestral scores of the same period. But that triumphalist spirit is most productively on show in Carter’s splendidly brash Holiday Overture (1944). The Symphony as a whole is less straightforward, more varied in style and character, and the slow movement in particular moves from hymnic meditation into more ambiguous regions of expression in a manner that might not be completely convincing. It is certainly distinctive, however, and fits well with the balance between restraint and exuberance that typifies the work as a whole.

By the mid-1960s, when the Piano Concerto was composed, Carter’s language had shed its tonal roots, and his forms were far more distant from those traditions that are still traceable in the Symphony. Textures are immensely elaborate, yet the music is uninhibitedly dramatic, depicting all kinds of conflicts and attempted reconciliations while subjecting the basic concept of the concerto to penetrating critical scrutiny.

The power of the drama emerging from the constantly fluctuating confrontations between soloist, main orchestra, and a mediating concertino-group of seven players is rather muted in this recording, which (I suspect) is not the result of a preparatory series of public performances. Ursula Oppens, with Michael Gielen, managed to convey rather more of the music’s inherent fire and tumult. But Mark Wait shows a finely gauged technical command, and although Kenneth Schermerhorn and his Nashville players are occasionally underpowered and inclined to play safe, the jubilant conclusion of the Holiday Overture sweeps any interpretative reservations aside. With the symphony not otherwise available, this disc is a thoroughly recommendable addition to the Naxos American canon.

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone [3/2004]

Excellent, two-disc collection of romantic classics from a wealth of composers. Works are included from Mozart, Elgar, Myers, Walton, Beethoven, J.S. Bach, and more! (Chandos)

"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

RUSSELL: Rhapsody for Horn and Orchestra / Middle Earth

Classical Music

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

Gershwin began work on An American in Paris in the spring of 1928 and it's premi�re by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Walter Damrosch took place later that year on 13 th December in Carnegie Hall (three years earlier in the same venue Damrosch had conducted the first performance of Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F). In this hugely popular one-movement symphonic poem, whose colorful orchestration includes four saxophones and several taxi horns, the composer intended 'to portray the impressions of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere'. The melancholic blues theme announced by the solo trumpet, suggesting a sudden bout of homesickness on the part of the protagonist, is one of the finest Gershwin wrote. Following the premi�re in Boston's Symphony Hall of his Second Rhapsody, conducted by Serge Koussevitsky on 29 th January 1932, Gershwin and several friends took a two-week holiday in Havana. The composer, fascinated by the small Cuban dance orchestras with their novel rhythms and unusual percussion instruments such as guiros, maracas, claves and bongos, was inspired to write the Cuban Overture. He orchestrated the work between 1 st and 9 th August 1932, completing it just a week before the first All-Gershwin Concert at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York, an open-air concert attended by some 18,000 people which was, according to the composer, 'the most exciting night I have ever had'. Cast in Gershwin's characteristic fast-slow-fast form, he wrote that he had 'endeavored to combine the Cuban rhythms with my original thematic material. The result is a symphonic overture which embodies the essence of Cuban dance'. Gershwin's magnum opus, the three-act opera Porgy and Bess, was written to a libretto by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. Based on Heyward's novel Porgy about life among the black inhabitants of Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina, the opera was started in late February 1934 and the seven hundred page full score was completed in September 1935. Heyward memorably described the idiosyncratic working methods of the Gershwin brothers, who 'would get at the piano, pound, wrangle, swear, burst into weird snatches of song, and eventually emerge with a polished lyric'. It numbers amongst it's classic songs 'Summertime', 'I Loves You, Porgy' and 'It Ain't Necessarily So'. The orchestral suite heard on this recording, the Symphonic Picture from Porgy and Bess arranged by Robert Russell Bennett, has become the standard version since it's premi�re in 1943, this despite the fact that Gershwin made his own arrangement in 1936. Evidently long forgotten about by the time Bennett made his arrangement, Gershwin's suite was retitled Catfish Row by Ira when it was rediscovered in 1958. The opera, a commercial and critical failure at the time, is now recognized as one of the greatest achievements of twentieth-century American music.

Dohnányi's works are characterized by their fluency, rich sense of harmony, and mastery of instrumentation and form. Dohnányi expressed his romantic hertiage in the perfect forms of the eighteenth century, which he used as a framework for his highly vivacious and lyrical music. Thsi does not mean the he simply produced replicas; rather, he succeeded in combining classical form with the Lisztian concpet of motifs being developed and binding together a large-scale work. Recorded in: New Broadcasting House, Manchester 12-14 September 2001 Producer(s) Ralph Couzens Mike George Sound Engineer(s) Stephen Rinker Christopher Brooke (Assistant)

REVIEW:

This release...offers an excellent musical programming concept, with all three works captured live in performances that are absolutely stunning and fully competitive with the best available. Both the Bartók and Martinů pieces were composed during their respective composers’ exile in America, while Gideon Klein’s Partita (an arrangement for string orchestra of his String Trio), is the result of “internal exile” in the Terezín concentration camp. All three men found ways to continue making music despite displacement, personal misfortune, and against the background of the rise of Nazism and the onset of war. More to the point, the program works because it offers plenty of purely musical contrast and variety.

Martinů’s Memorial to Lidice, a town wiped out by the Nazis as an act of retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, is a harrowing but ultimately hopeful orchestral elegy that receives the most gut-wrenching performance yet recorded. Eschenbach is about 50 percent slower than Ancerl (or anyone else), but he uses the extra time to excellent effect, revealing every luminous detail of Martinů’s orchestration and building the music to a shattering climax, with Beethoven’s Fifth balefully intoned by the horns. Klein’s Partita has much in common with Bartók’s Divertimento, with its folk-inflected thematic material. Its central movement is a very attractive set of variations on a Moravian theme, and it’s clear from this performance that the Philadelphia tradition of great string playing is very much alive and well. Eschenbach leads a performance both warm and incisive, revealing a major work in the process.

The Philadelphia Orchestra already has at least two recordings of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra to its credit, both with Eugene Ormandy--a fine early stereo version on Sony, and a mediocre early digital remake on RCA. This newcomer clearly is finer than either of those, as exciting a rendition as any available. Eschenbach thankfully eschews the excessive slowness that has marred his recent Mahler performances and lets the various sections of the orchestra display their considerable prowess in what remains one of the repertoire’s great showpieces. Listen to the rush of excitement in the transition to the first-movement allegro, or to the beautiful balance between woodwinds and harps in the second subject; notice the brilliant brass fugato that initiates the recapitulation, and the driving coda. It’s the real deal, from the very first note.

The sonics are markedly superior to what Sony, RCA, and EMI used to get in any of the various venues that they used, at least in stereo. The microphones are close to the players, the better to reduce the occasional noise from the audience (the occasional light cough isn’t at all bothersome), but the orchestra can take the exposure, and the sonic impact is pretty thrilling. I’m pleased (and honestly relieved) to be able to recommend it to you in the strongest possible terms.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

George Antheil's infamous Ballet Mécanique exists in (basically) three versions, the first of which (for lots of synchronized mechanical pianos and percussion) has only recently been premiered and recorded for the first time by the UMass Lowell Percussion Ensemble. The version that scandalized Paris audiences in 1926 actually was an arrangement for lots of normal pianos and percussion, and this version was recreated on a long out-of-print MusicMasters disc. Daniel Spalding and his intrepid ensemble take on the composer's 1953 revision for the time-honored (via Stravinsky and Orff) ensemble of four pianos and percussion, an arrangement that reduces the score by about half while preserving the most important thematic material. It's a fine work in its own right, more conventionally "listenable" than the early versions, and it's easy to understand Antheil's desire to give the music wider currency. Spalding and his ensemble play very well indeed, and the recording balances the various special effects (airplane propellers and electric bells) in such a way that they register without ever becoming totally obnoxious.


You can't help but feel sorry for Antheil's subsequent career misfortunes. After all, no one today seriously castigates Stravinsky for not writing more Rites of Spring, and we can only view with bemusement the cold shoulder given Antheil's post "Mécanique" production, especially considering the fact that even this notorious work was as ignored in performance as the rest of his music. Antheil clearly recognized that, like Stravinsky's "Rite", the Ballet Mécanique was an artistic dead end, but as this disc proves, he wrote plenty of fine music both before and after it. Take the Serenade for String Orchestra No. 1. Here's a delightful piece, humorous and lyrical, full of rhythmic energy and good tunes. The Symphony for Five Instruments very cleverly balances an unusual ensemble of viola, flute, bassoon, trumpet, and trombone, and will appeal to anyone who enjoys the chamber music of Poulenc. The Concert for Chamber Orchestra (actually a wind octet), also reeks of Stravinsky and Les Six, but you'd be hard pressed to find anything by that septet of composers precisely like it.


In short, Antheil's neglect is completely unjustified, as this and other fine recordings now appearing on Naxos and CPO clearly demonstrate. As with the Ballet, Spalding and the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra play these diverse other works with affection and relish. Naxos provides them with excellent recorded sound too. A winner in every respect, this disc should go far toward supporting the ongoing rehabilitation of this seminal figure in 20th century music.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Edward MacDowell (1860-1908), an exact contemporary of Gustav Mahler, was widely considered the most important American composer of his day-a time when American music was based primarily on European models. Antonin Dvorák called on American composers to turn to indigenous sources, such as Negro spirituals and Indian tribal music, for inspiration. MacDowell flatly rejected this, commenting, What Negro melodies have to do with Americanism remains a mystery to me." Thus, in the Piano Concerto No. 1 we hear the comfortable old echoes of the Grieg A minor and, in the finale, Dvorák's own concerto. MacDowell's second concerto displays a noticeably higher degree of originality, though here too the European influence is clear, in this case Saint-Saëns. The dark and portentous opening creates a mood of anticipation before the piano enters to launch the drama of the first movement. The finale is brisk and exciting, with some wonderfully bravura piano writing, with which soloist Stephen Prutsman unreservedly flaunts his brilliant technique. He's just as fine in the brief Witches' Dance, which is rather tame and far less spooky than we have come to expect after the likes of Berlioz. The soothing sounds of MacDowell's gentle Romance for Cello and Orchestra close this interesting program. As on many other Naxos recordings, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (led here by Arthur Fagen) delivers performances of international caliber. Fine sound, too." - ClassicsToday.com (Victor Carr, Jr.), January 15, 2001

Morton Gould's music is the quintessential definition of the American sound. Along with composers like Aaron Copland, he was remarkably influential in producing homegrown American musical works. Composing in a wide variety of musical idioms, Gould was brought to international recognition by his easy-listening melodies and vivid orchestral works.
This Naxos release celebrates several works that brought Gould to critical acclaim, beginning with 'American Ballads' composed in 1976. Including such notable themes as the "Star Spangled Overture" and "Amber Waves," the six-movement work captures tender themes and melodies close to the soul of any patriot. The 'Stephen Foster Gallery' suite also represents those uniquely American themes in an exquisite arrangement of songs. Gould's most famous work, 'American Salute' (based on the melody "When Johnny Comes Marching Home"), shows Gould's unmatched ability to create a synthesis between concert and popular music. Militaristic percussion and brass are accented by the soft, weaving harmonies of the woodwinds and strings.
Under the direction of conductor Theodore Kuchar, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine offers a sensible, yet light-hearted rendering of the music. Firmly grasping the essence of Gould's American spirit, the orchestra communicates the music's strong nationalism with great skill and plausibility.

Classical Music

LEES: Symphony No. 4, 'Memorial Candles'

If you're encountering the late American, New York born composer Elie Siegmeister for the first time, skip the first five tracks for now. Cue up Track Six to his gritty, uncompromising 1964 Second Sonata. The one movement work commences with stabbing, isolated pitches. These work their way into petulant clusters and stark, flickering triads. Leaping rhythmic patterns forge a grim, motoric path of no return, on which teasing jazz flourishes and starburst, two-handed arpeggios provide breezy relief. Siegmeister's predilection for granitic sonorities and bleak lyricism informs both his early 1932 Theme & Variations and his notey, rigorous Third Sonata from 1979. Five movements from the 1985 suite "These Shores" depict a quintet of American writers, whose identities are difficult to decipher without a score card. Yet this composer could write simple, accessible music too. Turn now to the opening "Sunday in Brooklyn" suite, a five movement work laced with wistful tunes and gentle, wrong-note Gershwinisms. This is music that deserves to be played much more than it is. One regrets that the composer, who died in 1991, didn't live to hear pianist Kenneth Boulton's dynamically charged, fiercely committed, and brilliantly virtuosic performances. He would have been delighted.--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

This recording celebrates Sousa's important early associations with dance and the music theatre. Picture a young John Philip Sousa, a tiny young man aged eleven, confidently standing in front of a group of much older musicians, playing his violin in the style of the famous Strauss and leading his own popular dance orchestra as Washington's society swirls and dances in front of him. It is impossible to overestimate the effect this interaction of the young man, his orchestra and the dancers was to have on the later Sousa -the composer to be. He was once quoted as saying, "I want my marches to make a man with a wooden leg stand up and dance." The dance never left him. Dancing rhythms for ever permeated his compositions, marches and dances alike. A young Dance Prince begat the March King. Soon also, his musical activities brought him to the theatre, where he began to experience the close and often raucous give and take of audience and performer that constituted the popular side of nineteenth century American theatre and early vaudeville. By the age of 21 he was the leader, arranger and concert master of the orchestra at Ford's Theatre in Washington. Later he led the Chestnut Street Theatre Orchestra in Philadelphia. Once again the magical chemistry of music and rhythm, as it reaches for audiences, became central to the composer's thinking. While many of the dances found here stem from this early period of Sousa's life, these initial encounters with the infectiousness of music and how it infuses dancers and listeners never left him. Throughout his long and sparkling career he continued to write music for each new craze: waltzes, gallops, two-steps, gavottes, tangos, cakewalks, rags, polkas, marches of course, and sometimes even a foxtrot or two.

Sonatas & Theatre Music

Classical Music