Anthony Burgess, celebrated author of A Clockwork Orange, memorably filmed by Stanley Kubrich, once said, “I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of a novelist who writes music on the side.” Initially thwarted in his desire for a professional musical career, Burgess returned to composition in the mid-1970s, writing prolifically in many genres. His music is mostly tonal but sometimes dissonant, a hybrid of Holst and Hindemith. Mr. W.S. is an imaginative evocation of the Elizabethan era while Mr. Burgess’s Almanack is a variegated work of ingenuity and charm with a nob towards modernism. This is the first recording of Burgess’s orchestral music.

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•An unusual programme of works by four composers of different generations and diverse backgrounds from Central and South America. Anton Baranov has won both the Guitar Foundation of America and Francisco Tárrega Competitions.

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The most famous Italian opera composer of his day, Domenico Cimarosa saw his fame spread all over Europe. Written towards the end of the ‘Neapolitan School’ era, his operas endured in popularity long after his death thanks to their melodic invention, colourful orchestration and sheer vitality. The overtures in this programme include I tre amanti (The Three Lovers), the hit opera that made Cimarosa’s name outside Naples, and Il pittor parigino (The Parisian Painter) and the tragedy Giunio Bruto that were admired by Haydn and conducted by him at the Esterházy court. The first three volumes are available on Naxos 8.570508, 8.570279 and 8.572734.

When Heifetz chose Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, reportedly his favorite concerto, for his legendary appearance on TV, he had already recorded it twice; the later recording, with Malcolm Sargent and the New Symphony Orchestra of London, has sometimes been recommended as representing him at his best. Although the Fantasy hasn’t received the attention that the First Concerto had garnered even in Bruch’s own lifetime (sometimes to his chagrin), its popularity seems to run ahead of the Second Concerto (which Heifetz also championed) and to outdistance by far the nearly orphaned Third, a chip of Spohr-like granite that remains the province of the few. Maxim Fedotov doesn’t challenge Heifetz’s proprietorship—or perhaps even Michael Rabin’s suave mastery, or even Kyung-Wha Chung’s passionate electricity; if his relaxed meandering in the opening movement and his weighty deliberation in the following Allegro don’t suggest fierce warlords (the Russian Philharmonic comes closer in the final movement, an Allegro guerriero), he plays with a rich, glowing tone that recalls Oistrakh’s, although perhaps not veiled with that master’s mystery, and his portamentos occasionally suggest an antique (if updated and sanitized) expressive manner well suited to this sentimental, though not maudlin, work. How did Pablo Sarasate, to whom Bruch dedicated it, play this concerto? He concocted his own confection from Scottish airs, so he must have had some familiarity with, and interest in, the folk idiom. The engineers haven’t shone the spotlight on Fedotov in the way Heifetz’s and Oistrakh’s did.

Bruch also dedicated his Serenade to Sarasate; and, though the Spaniard didn’t give its premiere, it bears the impress of his personality. If the Third Concerto seems a relative orphan, this work has remained almost unknown; but Salvatore Accardo included it in his collection of Bruch’s works for violin and orchestra with Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (originally on Philips 9500 590 and re-released on CD as Philips 289 462 167-2). While Accardo’s reading explored the work’s nostalgic sensibility, Fedotov’s takes a more muscular approach to its tangy, concerto-like virtuosity—Bruch had, after all, intended this work as a concerto-like serenade (he repeatedly wrote movements and works that he expected would turn out to be his Fourth Concerto—without losing touch with its brooding sensitivity. His tempos seem relatively leisurely in the opening movement and upon its return at the Serenade’s end (in an effective valedictory gesture, Yablonsky and the orchestra insinuate the Serenade’s returning opening materials with poignant subtlety and close with a serenely hushed cadence), as well as in the episodic passages of the fast movements; but he struts briskly, too, as in the second movement’s march. Perhaps decisively, though, he doesn’t seem quite so comfortable in the long second movement as Accardo did, and he wanders without a strong sense of direction—though with richly textured symphonic support—in the sprawling third.

Those hoping to explore Bruch œuvre at first cautiously, then with more abandon, should find the Fantasy and the Serenade a well-ordered program. Recommended as a digitally recorded alternative to Accardo’s readings.

Robert Maxham, FANFARE

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Since his appointment as chief conductor and later music director in 2003, Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra have richly proven a particular affinity for Russian repertoire, both on their numerous tours and in recording. Works by Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Medtner and Scriabin have featured on discs which have been welcomed by the international music press with distinctions such as Editor's Choice (Gramophone), Disc of the Month (Classic FM Magazine and ClassicsToday.com), Empfohlen (Klassik-Heute.de) and IRR Outstanding (International Record Review). As Litton now steps down from his post with the Bergen orchestra, the team marks the event with their rendition of Sergei Rachmaninov's gigantic Second Symphony, with its playing time of 60+ minutes as broad and expansive as the Russian steppes. The work followed upon a first symphony which in 1897 had had a disastrous reception, and it took the intensely self-critical Rachmaninov ten years before making another attempt at the genre. Fortunately the first performance of the work in 1908 was a complete success, the broad melodic gestures and the arduous journey from the brooding melancholy of the symphony’s introduction to the triumphant liberation at its close speaking directly to the St Petersburg audience. Later criticism of the symphony’s broad scale prompted Rachmaninov to sanction several cuts, however, and it was only in the mid-1960s that it became common practice to perform the symphony complete – as in the present recording. Rachmaninov is joined on the disc by his older colleague Anatoly Liadov, whose brief and shimmering tone poem The Enchanted Lake provides an atmospheric ending to the recording – in the words of Liadov himself an image of nature, as ‘fantastic as a fairy tale’, in which the listener will feel ‘the change of the colours, the chiaroscuro, the incessantly changeable stillness…’

Review:

Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony is often accused of being gargantuan, schmaltzy and overblown. In Andrew Litton’s new recording with the Bergen Philharmonic, it sounds gargantuan, schmaltzy – and just blown enough, if you like your Rachmaninov big and extrovert.

– Guardian (UK)

When he became music director in Cologne after the war at the age of thirty-three, Günter Wand insisted from the start on the inclusion of contemporary music in order to restore musical life amid the material and intellectual ruins. Among others, he championed composers as diverse as Walter Braunfels and Tadeusz Baird. This recording is typical of a program – with the added bonus of renowned horn soloist Dennis Brain and oboist Lothar Faber.

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'A disc without flaws, a true marvel' is how Jean-Jacques Kantorow's previous recording of music by Édouard Lalo was described in the Spanish magazine Scherzo. The disc in question included three works composed for the great violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate: the violin concerto, Fantaisie norvégienne and the perennial favourite Symphonie espagnole. In a review in Gramophone, the soloist was compared to his great predecessor: 'Kantorow, one of today's most individual players, has the measure of Lalo's Sarasate-inspired violin-writing - he's able to toss off the virtuoso passagework in a seemingly effortless manner and his distinctive tone lends a sensuous allure to Lalo's melodies.' On the present disc, Kantorow plays two other works intended for Sarasate, the brief Fantaisie-ballet on themes from Lalo's ballet Namouna, and the large-scale Concerto russe. The latter piece, in four movements, borrows themes from two wedding songs included by Rimsky-Korsakov in his collection 100 Russian Folk Songs. A typically expressive and virtuosic composition, it is also one of the first important French works to draw upon Russian music - many others were to follow. Two shorter violin works are included here, but the disc closes with another concerto, the Piano Concerto from 1888. It was the composer's final major work, and in it he seems to depart from the pattern of his violin concertos, with their prominent solo parts. Lalo rather chooses to integrate the piano into the orchestral texture, and although the writing is redolent of the great Romantic concertos, it offers few opportunities for the soloist to show off - a possible reason for the work's absence from modern concert programmes and its rarity on disc. Championing this solo part is Pierre-Alain Volondat, and as in the other works orchestral support is provided by the eminent Tapiola Sinfonietta, conducted by Kees Bakels.

Hindemith Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra, John Neschling Orchestral Works

These hybrid Super Audio CDs play on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Kamu offers an easy sense of movement; intense, quiet dynamics and clarity in perfect equilibrium with atmosphere. There's plenty of excitement too: the scherzo of the Second is truly vivacissimo. Symphonies Three, Seven, and above all Six are just perfect, with all the naturalness I want in these elusive masterpieces.

– BBC Music Magazine

Dukas’ three major orchestral works make a logical and satisfying single program, and they are very well performed and recorded on this fine new disc from Naxos. There’s no guarantee, of course, that a French conductor will do especially well in French music, and no doubt Jean-Luc Tingaud does not wish to be pigeon-holed or limited only to the music of his countrymen, but he does play all three pieces with a certain idiomatic flair that’s both quite memorable and often excitingly fresh.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which opens the program, receives a swift and brilliant reading, but also one notable for its naturalness and unforced musicality. Right from the start, in the slow introduction, you will register the way that Tingaud and the RTÉ wind players skillfully build long phrases from Dukas’ melodic fragments, and ensure that the tension never sags. The climaxes also are perfectly judged. La péri, with its opening fanfare brilliantly played, never lapses into the sort of droopy languor that tempts other artists into overindulgence: the music has both rhythm and impetus as well as lusciousness.

This reading of the Symphony in C major may be the most impressive performance of all. The opening movement is really gripping, and the long coda, which can sound like an artificial appendage, builds in energy right through to the final bars. Kudos to the orchestra for keeping up with some pretty hard-driving conducting here. The central Andante also is beautifully shaped and truly “espressivo”, but with no dead spots, while the lively finale offers a very satisfying conclusion. Although there is no shortage of available recordings of these works, or even discs that present them together, this one is as good as any, and better than most. Give it a shot.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The love affair between Alan Gilbert and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra began in December 1997 with a performance of Mahler's First Symphony. In 2000 Gilbert became chief conductor and artistic advisor of the orchestra, remaining in that post until 2008 - a period which has been described as 'a golden age' in the history of the orchestra. For his farewell concert as chief conductor, Gilbert chose to close the chapter by performing Mahler's last symphony, No. 9 in D major, and the present recording was made in conjunction with this very special occasion. It was a fitting choice of repertoire in another respect as well: Mahler composed his Ninth in 1909-10, after having accepted the post of music director of the New York Philharmonic, the very orchestra that Gilbert now goes on to take charge of. The symphony is often regarded as the composer's monumental - both in terms of scale and emotional scope - leave-taking of the world. In his insightful liner notes, Arnold Whittall acknowledges the difficult circumstances in Mahler's personal life at the time of composition, but rather than nostalgia he finds in it a momentum propelling the symphonic genre far into the future: 'Mahler's Ninth is one of the crowning glories of symphonic history, and many would argue that it has only rarely been equalled, and probably never surpassed, in the century since its completion.' Please note: The music on this Hybrid Super Audio CD can be played back in Stereo (CD and SACD) as well as in 5.0 Surround sound (SACD).

The subtitle of this symphony Bright May would normally lead one to think that, being written by a Soviet composer, it alluded to 1 May and the workers’ holiday. In this case you would be wrong since it refers to the month the ‘Great Patriotic War’, (the Second World War to most of us) ended. In the first of three linked movements Weinberg describes the devastation left by the war with an overwhelmingly sad introduction. This finally gives way to a calm pastoral episode that continues until disturbed by an insistent and ominous theme heavy with foreboding. This mood finally returns to the pastoral calm. Merging almost seamlessly the second movement opens with a gentle theme that once again is disturbed by a threatening passage leading to a central climax during which percussion and brass dominate before peace returns once more. This leads us into the symphony’s final movement that, like the other two, is a sequence of calm interludes interrupted by ominous passages. The symphony finally ends on a positive note.

It has often been the case that composers horrified either by the looming threat of war or its unleashing, felt compelled to express this horror in music. However, it is unusual for a composer to take a war as a theme for, in Weinberg’s case, a set of three symphonies, so many years after its end. I wondered if the passage of time leads to a better historical view of it musically or whether memory is dulled over the decades. I can’t answer that as I’m not yet acquainted with symphonies 17 and 18 but I can say that this one certainly does express the joy that must have been felt when that terrible war, whose cost was so appalling, was finally over. The continuing disturbance of that joy expressed by the gentle pastoral sections, by the dark clouds of martial sounding passages and thunderous brass and percussion can surely mean only one thing; to emphasise that winning the peace would be as challenging as winning the war. After all, Stalin was still ruling Russia with all that implied.
 
Weinberg could never have been described as a ‘Party’ hack, though like many other Soviet composers, including Shostakovich, he did write some works that could be described as “socialist realist”. These were linked to aspects of Soviet policy. An example is Weinberg’s 1985 Symphonic Poem The Banners of Peace. This followed shortly after the 19 ^th Symphony and was dedicated to the 27 ^th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. Apart from some references to revolutionary songs such as the Varshavianka the music is not overtly propagandist nor is it bombastic in any way; rather it could be construed as a critique. After all, the words of the Varshavianka, which is quoted throughout, include “We will drown our enemies in their own blood, Death to the ruthless, To all pests of the workers, Death to tsars and plutocrats!”. In 1985, over 80 years after the song’s first appearance, these words seem at odds with the concept of peace. I regard this work more as another example of Weinberg’s ability to make powerful statements and this in music that is expressive and exciting. Viewed as such this work forms another worthy addition to the increasing amount of his music available in recorded form. We should be grateful.
 
Both works are given committed performances full of colour from an orchestra that will surely have this music in their blood. It is conducted with verve and enthusiasm by Vladimir Lande.
 
-- Steve Arloff , MusicWeb International

Antonin Dvorak’s Symphonies Nos. 7 and 8 are presented here, masterfully performed by the Houston Symphony. Music Director Andres Orozco-Estrada wonderfully interprets these works, exploring a myriad of emotions from tragedy, to quiet reflection, to grandeur and triumph. This recording was made in Houston, TX at the Jess H. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts in April of 2014 (Symphony No. 7) and March of 2015 (Symphony No. 8).

Vibrant, striking colors, sensuous harmonies and coruscating wit abound in this irresistible collection played by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the baton of the young rising star Kazuki Yamada. Hailed by Gramophone magazine as a "gifted, budding maestro" with "interpretative nous, strength of personality and scrupulous attention to detail", this is Yamada's four outing for Pentatone following his three critically acclaimed releases of dance music.

Includes work(s) by Rodolfo Halffter. Ensemble: Madrid Community Orchestra. Conductor: José Ramón Encinar.

Famous for his role as keyboard player in the progressive rock band Genesis, Tony Banks has always been fascinated by the idea of writing orchestral music. Five of the seven pieces in this orchestral suite were written specifically for the Seven project.

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This compilation celebrates Philip Glass’ 80th birthday through his unique contribution to the solo piano repertoire. It includes the sweepingly diverse and intricately melodic Etudes which are both technique-expanding and also intimately personal statements. His importance as a ? lm composer is shown in the subtle power of his transcriptions from stage and screen music, Metamorphosis I-V, and in his BAFTA-winning score for the The Hours. And Music in Fifths – which Steve Reich called “like a freight train” – dates from his experimental years and is full of a mesmerising variety of pulse patterns.

This is an audio-only (i.e., with no video content) Blu-ray disc playable only on Blu-ray players.

TCHAIKOVSKY Souvenir de Florence. Serenade for Strings. NIELSEN At the Bier of a Young Artist. Suite for Strings • Trondheim Soloists • 2L 2L-090-PABD (Blu-ray: 85:16)

Here’s yet another of 2L’s superlative-sounding Blu-ray audio releases, although there’s a slight change in medium from the ones I’ve reviewed before. Those included both SACD and Blu-ray discs. This one has a Blu-ray only, but there’s compensation. Besides high-resolution LPCM stereo, 5.1 HD MA 24/192kHz, and 7.1 HD MA 24/96kHZ (not to mention MP3 and FLAC download opportunities), they’ve included, for the Souvenir de Florence and At the Bier, a 9.1 Auro-3D option that adds, to the 5.1 surround mix, an additional four-channel height option. I didn’t have a chance to try out the 9.1 tracks, and I didn’t try the downloads. (Nor have I heard the audiophile vinyl version, part of which was reviewed by Raymond Tuttle in Fanfare 36:3.) But the three “standard” Blu-ray options offer exemplary engineering. Granted, since the producers place you at the center of a circular orchestra, the two-channel version is relatively unexciting—but only by comparison to the surround versions. As I hear it, the 7.1 version provides the most gripping audio experience, with markedly greater fullness and sense of space; certainly, switching between the 7.1. and 5.1 tracks gives a strong argument in favor of the two extra channels. But if you buy this disc, I suspect you’ll spend a lot of time testing various options.

None of this would matter much if the performances were mediocre; fortunately, to my ears, they’re all first-rate (although you should also check out Tuttle’s less positive response). The Trondheim group plays with prismatically changing tone, artful dynamic molding, and superior balances (aided, of course, by the spatial setup), which bring out the music’s contrapuntal interest. Phrasing is consistently imaginative, and while it’s possible to give the Tchaikovsky works greater toughness (the Andante non troppo opening of the Serenade could surely be grander and more austere), the Trondheim’s control of accents and their rhythmic unanimity provide plenty of energy and lift (note the stunning clarity of the sixteenth-note figures in the finale of Souvenir de Florence or the swing once we get to the Allegro moderato of the first movement of the Serenade or the infectious lilt of the Serenade’s waltz). There’s plenty of sheer drama in the finale of the Tchaikovsky Serenade, too. Like Tuttle, I normally prefer to hear Souvenir as a sextet (as Tchaikovsky intended) rather than in a plumped-up version for string orchestra. But this account, played by 20 performers with all the dexterity of a much smaller ensemble, now goes to the top of my list; and the thoughtful reading of the Serenade is nearly as good. As for the Nielsen: the understated eloquence of At the Bier is perfectly gauged—and while the Suite is the work of an immature composer who was yet to find his voice, it gets a performance that draws the most from it (the mystery of the first movement is especially compelling here). In sum, a release that demonstrates the utmost care in both engineering and performance—and that could serve as a model for other companies to emulate. Strongly recommended.

FANFARE: Peter J. Rabinowitz