Howard Hanson, a composer of imagination and sweep and a colorist of huge eloquence, is one of the most approachable of all twentieth century symphonists. His guiding spirit was always Sibelius, and in the Symphony No. 1 ‘Nordic’ he used the same key as in the Finnish composer’s own First Symphony. The work is haunting, rapturous and serene, beautifully orchestrated and wholly commanding. The Lament for Beowulf, written for chorus and orchestra, dates from 1925. Its dark, brooding tension reflects its poetic inspiration with indelible force. “This is confident, generous, beautifully made music, richly (and sensitively) scored. Schwarz, and his splendid Seattle orchestra do not short-change us on any of this and they are beautifully, ripely, recorded here.” (Gramophone on the original Delos release)

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

This album includes the legendary recording of Michael Tilson Thomas conducting live musicians in the original jazz orchestra version of Rhapsody in Blue, with the solo part performed by a player piano operated by George Gershwin's own piano rolls.

This selection is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording.

Recording information: The Arkansas Best Corporation Performing Arts Center, F (05/23/2009-05/24/2009).

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, Kevin Puts now stands in the forefront of contemporary American composers. His powerfully conceived Symphony No. 2 is a musical illustration of the events of 9/11 and traces a movement from unsuspecting bliss and rhapsody through violent upheaval to a reflective epilogue that contains both uncertainty and hope. Possibly inspired by thoughts of the Mississippi, River’s Rush employs novel harmonies, while elegant transparency distinguishes the refined beauty of the Flute Concerto.



REVIEWS:

A fine introduction to a rising composer whose music is highly accessible, emotionally satisfying, and memorable.

– All Music Guide

LSO principal Adam Walker plays the solo flute part with exquisite grace and purity of tone, and Marin Alsop elicits an impressively polished performance from Peabody’s student orchestra.

– Gramophone

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

Alan Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 48 is subtitled “Vision of Andromeda”, and anyone who has seen the Hubble photos of our neighboring galaxy knows just how gorgeous that must be. For years I used one of those magnificent vistas as my computer’s screen saver. This four-movement symphony, lasting just under half an hour, is typical Hovhaness. There are lovely, modal fugues in the second movement and finale; evocative, vaguely oriental melodies all over the place; luscious string chorales, and interludes for bells and tam-tam. Check out the opening of the finale. Fabulous, isn’t it? Does it do justice to Hovhaness’ “vision”? It’s plausible.

The truth is, Hovhaness always has had his detractors. Bernstein rather maliciously called his First Symphony “ghetto music” (which would be a compliment today), and his 67 symphonies and other works can sound rather the same–but then, so does a lot of Bach. For me anyway, there’s something disarming about his childlike joy in consonant harmony, in the fluidity of his fugal writing, and his utter unconsciousness of the fact that his melodies often tread dangerously close to kitsch. Say what you will, his music is unfailingly honest. It is what it is.

There are also moments where it achieves an astonishing, passionate intensity. The Prelude and Quadruple Fugue is, in its way, a masterpiece in considering the means by which it accumulates energy as each distinctively-wrought fugue subject enters and gets combined with its predecessors. It’s so clear, so easy to follow, and so much fun that you entirely forget the sophisticated contrapuntal mind at work behind the scenes. And that is as it should be.

The Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Strings also sounds vividly tuneful and unfailingly attractive. When Hovhaness calls the finale, perhaps naively, Let The Living and The Celestial Sing, it’s easy to scoff, but the music is just so bloody pretty. Greg Banaszak plays the solo part with the suave timbre that the work requires, especially in the Adagio espressivo at the start of the second movement, while Hovhaness specialist Gerard Schwarz does his usual fine job with all three works, galvanizing the players of the Eastern Music Festival Orchestra to a welcome degree of corporate integrity. It helps, of course, that Hovhaness’ music is as straightforward to play as it is to hear. Beautiful.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Hanson’s symphonic cycle is one of the most important in American music. The Third Symphony, composed between 1936 and 1938, is imbued with the rich Nordic sensibility that runs through the First. It owes its impetus to the pioneering Swedish settlements in America, and its expansive lyricism is beautifully calibrated, with a chorale theme acting as a hopeful constant throughout the journey. Hanson wrote his opera Merry Mount, possibly his most ambitious work, in 1934. Four years later he produced this vibrant orchestral suite. “[T]he power of Hanson’s earlier works lies in the unabashed hyperbole of their gestures, the unstinting lavishness of their orchestration, and, most of all, their sincere fervor and conviction.” (Fanfare on the original Delos release)

Inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of Superman' first appearance in the comics, Metropolis Symphony has been performed by orchestras all over the world. Hailed by the London Times as a "Symphonie Fantastique for our times."

Naxos celebrates the immigrant experience with the release of Peter Boyer’s Ellis Island: The Dream of America, an ambitious work combining spoken word performances of actual Ellis Island immigrant stories with powerful orchestral music. Performed by London’s renowned Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Boyer, this recording features a cast of Oscar-, Emmy-, and Tony-winning actors: Barry Bostwick, Blair Brown, Olympia Dukakis, Anne Jackson, Bebe Neuwirth, Eli Wallach, and Louis Zorich, directed by Tony- and Grammy-winning Martin Charnin.

Boyer fashioned the seven monologues of Ellis Island: Dream of America from interviews in the Ellis Island Oral History Project with actual immigrants who came to the United States between 1910-1940, weaving a dramatic orchestral tapestry around their true stories. The work concludes with a reading of the Emma Lazarus poem The New Colossus (“Give me your tired, your poor…”), an emotionally powerful ending to this celebration of our nation of immigrants.

Ellis Island: The Dream of America was premiered by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra in April 2002 to great acclaim, and its many subsequent performances have also received enthusiastic responses. Gerald Moshell of the Hartford Courant described the first performance as “a searing emotional experience” while Harold McNeil of the Buffalo News described the piece as “at turns, horrifying, whimsical and heart-rending. But it’s always palpably engaging ...”

Peter Boyer is emerging as one of the most successful young American orchestral composers, with nearly 100 orchestral performances of his work to date. In addition to his work for the concert hall, Boyer is active in the film and television industry and is on the faculty of Claremont Graduate University.

The suite is made up of the following sections:

1. Prologue 06:09
2. Words of Helen Cohen, emigrated from Poland in 1920, read by Blair Brown 02:37
3. Interlude 1 01:24
4. Words of James Apanomith, emigrated from Greece in 1911, read by Louis Zorich 02:43
5. Interlude 2 02:07
6. Words of Lillian Galleta, emigrated from Italy in 1928, read by Olympia Dukakis 03:32
7. Interlude 3 01:33
8. Words of Lazarus Salamon, emigrated from Hungary in 1920, read by Eli Wallach 04:16
9. Interlude 4 01:56
10. Words of Helen Rosenthal, emigrated from Belgium in 1940, read by Bebe Neuwirth 04:27
11. Interlude 5 01:01
12. Words of Manny Steen, emigrated from Ireland in 1925, read by Barry Bostwick 04:42
13. Interlude 6 02:24
14. Words of Katherine Beychook, emigrated from Russia in 1910, read by Anne Jackson 02:53
15. Epilogue: "The New Colossus" (Emma Lazarus, 1883), read by all actors 01:50

-----

REVIEW:

Peter Boyer's Ellis Island: The Dream of America will not surprise or disappoint anyone looking for a straightforward presentation piece in the American populist vein, à la Copland's A Lincoln Portrait. Indeed, the music is so openly tonal, melodic, and richly orchestrated; the attitude so noble and patriotic; and the subject matter so emotionally compelling, it would be surprising and disappointing if Boyer had not followed Copland's example, and had set these authentic immigrant narratives from the Ellis Island Oral History Project in anything less than an accessible, American vernacular style. Yet it is the texts, not the music, which matter most in this work, and listeners will find the effective but expectedly epic score less absorbing than the absorbing performances by actors Blair Brown, Louis Zorich, Olympia Dukakis, Eli Wallach, Bebe Neuwirth, Barry Bostwick, and Anne Jackson, who deliver the historic accounts with believable characterizations and genuine emotions. Of course, any invocation of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty must include a recitation of Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus," which is passionately read at the work's conclusion by the cast against the stirring, anthemic accompaniment of the Philharmonia Orchestra. Naxos provides excellent sound, though it is fairly loud in places.

– All Music Guide

Listen to a Sound Sample (Grand Tarantelle)

Listen to a Sound Sample (Night in the Tropics)

" A perfect delight of a disc, of music from that grand pioneer Louis Gottschalk, who charmed the crowds here and abroad up through Civil War days with flamboyant, virtuosic display pieces. From last year’s Hot Springs (Arkansas) Festival comes a whole disc of Gottschalk’s orchestral works, and it’s a hoot. It includes the hilariously lovable Célèbre Tarantelle and Night in the Tropics, guaranteed to lift you off your seat on first hearing, and Gottschalk’s own arrangement for five pianos, nine horns and 112-piece orchestra of The Young King Henry’s Hunt (don’t ask). There’s even an opera, 13 minutes long, something Cuban... " -- Alan Rich, LA Weekly

A child prodigy pianist who was touring Europe as a virtuoso concert soloist while still a teenager, Louis Moreau Gottschalk provides one of the most colorful chapters in the history of American music. Dubbed ‘the Chopin of the Creoles’, he was, above all, the first to capture the syncopated music of South Louisiana and the Caribbean in enduring works that anticipate ragtime and jazz by half a century. His orchestral works show a composer of considerable skill who could create memorable and catchy tunes. Included in this disc of the complete surviving orchestral music are several works recorded for the first time in the composer’s original version, as well as the world première recording of La Casa del Joven Enrique.

Symphony No. 2, 'À Montevideo' RO257
Restoring the Symphony No. 2 for modern performance posed many of the same challenges as the Symphony No. 1 ( A Night in the Tropics ) and Escenas Campestres Cubanas in that Gottschalk rarely notated complete percussion parts. For this performance and recording, the timpani part was reconstructed according to the stylistic pattern Gottschalk used to excellent effect in other works of the same period, such as the Variations de concert sur l'hymne portugais.
Listen to a Sound Sample

Célèbre Tarentelle pour piano et orchestre, RO259
During his lifetime, the Célèbre Tarentelle was Gottschalk's "warhorse", the work he presented whenever he needed to dazzle concert-goers. The composer was notorious for his practice of publicly performing his own works but leaving it to his disciples to notate them for publication. Of the more than 25 versions of Célèbre Tarentelle that appeared following Gottschalk's death, the best known was notated by his friend Nicolas Ruiz Espadero (1832-90), who published his edition in 1874. Very recently, however, Gottschalk's own original manuscript has surfaced. Thus, both his solo piano part and his orchestration appear for the first time on this disc.
Listen to a Sound Sample

Escenas Campestres Cubanas, opéra en 1 acte, RO77
As with many of the works that Gottschalk created for his Havana concerts, Escenas Campestres Cubanas (Cuban Country Scenes) brilliantly combines high art, populist sensibilities and mass appeal. For example, the manuscript indicates that Gottschalk intended the use of timpani, but there is evidence that a Caribbean güiro and the three-string tiple added local spice at the first performance. For this performance by the Hot Springs Music Festival, the nearly illegible libretto was painstakingly deciphered by renowned musicologist Marcello Piras, so that the original Ramírez text could be paired with Gottschalk's music for the first time since its première. The score's final five bars, which appear only skeletally in the manuscript, were also orchestrated to match the full instrumentation.
Listen to a Sound Sample

Variations de concert sur l'hymne portugais du Roi Louis I, RO289
The march tune on which Gottschalk based his Variations de concert was written by the grandfather of the Portuguese King Luís I (1838-1889), the Brazilian Emperor, Pedro I. Were it not for the political capital it afforded him in both Brazil and Portugal, it is unlikely that Gottschalk would have given the tune any attention whatsoever. Gottschalk enlivened the Italianate march with frequent chord substitutions and contrasts of mood. The music truly comes to life during the first slow variation, bringing to mind similar works by early Bohemian national composers.
Evident in the manuscript of the Variations de concert is its hasty composition. Although the orchestration is fully fledged, Gottschalk simply neglected to jot down the solo piano part after the first variation, with the exception of one dramatic scale leading to the finale. The present performance edition represents the interweaving of Arthur Napoleon's (born Arthur Napoleão dos Santos, 1843-1925) solo piano arrangement of the work (c. 1873) into Gottschalk's orchestra. Since Napoleon made some chordal modifications in order to claim the piano reduction as his own and reap the financial benefits, this restoration to the original required extensive editing with the collaboration of pianist Michael Gurt.
Listen to a Sound Sample

Ave Maria, RO10
(c.1864, arranged by Richard Rosenberg for two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, harp and strings)

Ave Maria, gratia plena.
Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
Et benedictus fructus ventris.
Ave Maria, gratia plena.


Hail Mary, full of grace.
Hail Lord, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
Hail Mary, full of grace.
Listen to a Sound Sample


La Caza del Joven Enrique por Méhul, Gran overture
( La Chasse du jeune Henri or Young Henry's Hunt, overture) arranged by Louis Moreau Gottschalk after the overture by Étienne-Nicolas Méhul (reconstructed by Richard Rosenberg)
A prejudice against Americans kept the thirteen-year-old Gottschalk from being admitted to the Paris Conservatoire (" America is only a land of steam engines", he was told by the school's director), but he stayed in Paris to study privately with Charles Hallé, Frederic Chopin and Hector Berlioz. Thus inspired, he wrote in 1849 a highly original and elaborate fantasy on Méhul's La Chasse du jeune Henri overture.

Early in 1861, seeking material to include in a "monster concert" he was staging in Havana, he recast the La Chasse du jeune Henri fantasy as a gigantic concerto for multiple pianos and huge orchestra. Owing to confusion over rehearsal arrangements for so large an ensemble, the performance was never completed. In 2003, the manuscript of this concerto was rediscovered in the New Jersey basement of the composer's great-great-grandnephew. Thus, it was discovered that there were only five separate piano parts (three pianos, ten hands), which Gottschalk had divided among the forty pianists. For the sake of clarity, the work's première performance in Hot Springs on 8 June 2006 and this subsequent recording used one pianist a part and an orchestra of "only" 112.
Listen to a Sound Sample

Symphonie romantique, 'La nuit des tropiques', RO255
(Symphony No. 1, 'A Night in the Tropics'), edited and completed by Richard Rosenberg
Gottschalk's A Night in the Tropics (1859) had only been performed since his death in condensed and 'corrected' versions. My reconstruction of this work is based on the composer's autograph manuscript, with instrumental forces not quite as large as those employed at Gottschalk's own performances (which featured over 650 musicians) but quite large nonetheless. It retains Gottschalk's unusual voice leading and notation. I believe that the meticulous care Gottschalk took in consistently adding rests and dotted rhythms is a key to the 'tropical' passion he sought to evoke. The arrangement of this symphony for two pianos by Gottschalk's friend and colleague, Nicolas Ruiz Espadero, provided the basis of my orchestration of the lost forty-two bars at the end of the orchestral score. I incorporated the sound of 'harmonieflautas' at the end of the first movement (based on Gottschalk's own account of where and how it was employed), using an antique South American concertina. In the final movement of A Night in the Tropics, Gottschalk indicated only the first measure of the Afro-Cuban percussion, using the notation 'Bamboula'. He fully expected the ensemble to improvise the remainder of that samba movement in a manner that places it as a sort of 'missing link' between nineteenth-century concert music and a musical language that would soon evolve into that of Jazz.
Listen to a Sound Sample

Richard Rosenberg, 2006

Richard Strauss once famously remarked: "I may not be a first rate composer, but I am a very good second rate composer." The same might be said of Ferde Grofé. He's not going to win any medals for formal ingenuity, expressive depth, or contrapuntal mastery, but he knew how to orchestrate, he could turn out a good tune, and, like Gershwin's, his particular take on symphonic jazz remains irresistibly attractive. What once may have sounded cheap and glitzy now has period charm, and we can only hope that this second Naxos disc devoted to his symphonic suites won't be the last.


There's some great stuff here. The opening Hollywood Suite contains a dazzling movement called "Carpenters and Electricians" and a delightfully toe-tapping "Production Number". The Hudson River Suite offers evocative nature sounds and some authentic dog barks in "Rip Van Winkle", and concludes with a calamitous, Ivesian tribute to New York City. The Death Valley Suite features a vivid portrait of a wagon train, and like the more famous Grand Canyon Suite ends with violent weather (in this case a sandstorm). William Stromberg leads the Bournemouth Symphony in totally enjoyable performances, vividly recorded, with some particularly brilliant work from the brass section. If you like the Grand Canyon Suite, you'll be pleased to know that there's a lot more where that came from, and it's no less worthy of your attention.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Walter Piston's lovely Fourth Symphony certainly deserves greater exposure than it gets, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be popular. It begins with a lovely, pastoral opening that leads to a rambunctious scherzo with some elegant waltz music interludes. The slow movement is one of the composer's finest: it builds to a superb climax of Brucknerian intensity, while the amiable finale closes the work in high spirits. Really, what's not to like? This is the work's only stereo recording (Ormandy's is screechy mono, but wonderful all the same), and it's a very fine one. Schwarz keeps rhythms crisp in the fast movements, and phrases the "Comtemplativo" very broadly and affectingly, with some excellent solo work from the winds of the Seattle Symphony.


The couplings are also very well done, the Capriccio's naturally dry string textures and bracing harmonic idiom providing an excellent stylistic foil to the solo harp. Three New England Sketches, one of Piston's very few "titled" works, also has impressive atmosphere, though Slatkin's out of print version on RCA was better still. No matter: these are fine performances very well recorded, and deserve your attention. Thanks to Naxos for keeping them in the catalog (and to the Seattle Symphony, which understood the necessity of not leaving the master tapes to molder in some closet or basement storage room once Delos deleted the original issues).
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The re-launch of a really impressive modern Hanson symphonic cycle.

Naxos have stood shoulder to shoulder with Hanson’s music. They have recorded his piano music, a miscellany of his non-symphonic orchestral music two sets of the opera Merry Mount (Serafin; Schwarz) and even started an earlier Nashville cycle of the symphonies with one disc. The latter fell by the wayside when conductor Kenneth Schermerhorn died. Now Naxos picks up the guttering torch through licensing recordings issued originally by Delos. They have done the same thing with Diamond, Schumann and Piston. It is clear that these discs are not going to be crammed to the CD limit. Even so this series will breathe new life into the cycle and at bargain price. Nor is this an also-ran. Schwarz finds the vital spark to ignite these works to make them glow and flame. The Symphony No. 1 is effulgently passionate and lives up to its name though without quite as many Sibelian touches as its reputation would suggest. Still, this is out-and-out romantic music and instantly enjoyable. Hanson’s own Eastman/Mercury recordings are vied with though their super-virile close-up grainy analogue impact compares ever so slightly unfavourably as against these refined yet full-blooded fresh recordings. That said they are now verging on a quarter century old. The second movement of No. 1 is the epitome of tenderness in Schwarz’s hands as is the second in the Romantic complete with its pre-echoes of the Born Free theme. The Second Symphony under Schwarz also has the prescribed electricity and lusty euphoria though he still falls just short of the ecstatic abandon conveyed by Charles Gerhardt in his 1967 Chesky recording with the National Philharmonic. The high fast trilling strings of the finale and the rampant horns are gloriously confident. The Second was recycled into the Seventh Symphony in much the same way that Elgar re-ran material from earlier works in his The Music Makers. Schwarz delivers an estimably atmospheric, stern and driven Lament for Beowulf where the voice he might have been attending was that of Holst – listen to the parallels with The Hymn of Jesus (1917). The words are legibly reproduced in the admirable booklet. Lux Aeterna, a tone poem for viola and orchestra dates form the year after the Nordic. Its plangently sounded and undulating smooth contours and peppery dialogue with the viola and solo woodwind show the influence of his teacher Respighi. The grand orchestral scores of Respighi afflatus is very much in evidence and a real pleasure it is too. The Hanson of the later 1920s is also more than hinted at. Mosaics is a much later score written for Szell and Cleveland. It’s attractive and varied but lacks the intensity of the works of the 1920s and 1930s.

We are still much in need of premiere recordings of the symphonic poems Before the Dawn (1920) and Exaltation (with piano) (1920); North and West with chorus (1923); Heroic Elegy for wordless chorus and orchestra (1927); Streams in the Desert for chorus, orchestra (1969) and New Land, New Covenant, oratorio (1976). When Naxos have reissued the complete Delos-originated cycle I hope they will look for opportunities to present these works to us. Perhaps Schwarz would be interested in doing the honours or maybe John McLaughlin Williams.

Meantime if you are curious about Hanson and or are seeking a really impressive modern cycle of the Hanson symphonies look no further.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Franz Clement's name has come down to us as the dedicatee of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, but a year previously, in 1805, he wrote his own Concerto in D, and it's a major find. This is no orchestrally challenged, formally dysfunctional, tasteless virtuoso vehicle, but rather is a full-blown classical concerto nearly as long (40-plus minutes) as the Beethoven. The melodic material is consistently attractive--and just as importantly, equally interesting harmonically. Deftly scored, and of course wonderfully written for the violin, its lyricism clearly anticipates Beethoven's own work of 1806. If it has one defect, it's that the phrasing turns a little bit square now and then in the outer movements. But let's face it--by the standards of your average early-Romantic concerto (think Spohr and his crowd) this is a masterpiece.

It goes without saying that Rachel Barton Pine plays the work with the style and elegance that it deserves. While attentive to the opportunities for fireworks (and she plays her own excellent cadenzas both here and in the Beethoven), what stays most in the mind is her beautiful singing tone. It's the sort of sound that Beethoven must have had in mind when he wrote--as he so often did--"cantabile", and it makes both slow movements particularly memorable. Both here and in the Beethoven, however, I can imagine a bit more muscle in the first movements, a touch more oomph from trumpets and drums, and more fire in the Beethoven finale (the Clement strikes me as just about perfect). José Serebrier is one with Pine in adopting her highly lyrical, somewhat dreamy approach, though it's to both artists' credit that the music never bogs down or turns self-indulgent.

As we heard in Pine's previous, superb coupling of Brahms and Joachim concertos, the sonics are ideally warm and natural, and Cedille offers this set at two discs for the price of one (85 minutes of music in all). I would dearly love to give this release a highest rating simply for the discovery of the Clement, which every violin lover should hear both for its historical and real musical interest; but competition in the Beethoven concerto is just too stiff. Then again, no other label or violinist offers such an attractive and innovative coupling. So buy for the Clement, and consider the Beethoven a very serious bonus.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The reputation of Franz Clement (1780–1842) has come down to posterity on the two legs of his having been the dedicatee and first performer of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and of his having performed, between the first and second movement, a composition of his own devising, on the violin turned upside down (a “myth” that Clive Brown, who edited his Concerto for publication and has provided Çedille’s notes, puts to rest: the program mentions this trick having taken place during the program’s other half). The triviality of the one underpinning of his reputation balances the other half somewhat unfavorably. The emergence of his Violin Concerto in D Major therefore sheds new direct light on Clement as a composer, indirect light on Clement as a violinist, and lots of light of both kinds on Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. If some commentators have noted a connection between the style of writing for the violin in Beethoven’s Concerto and that of Giovanni Battista Viotti, the precise nature of that connection will almost certainly be reexamined as Clement’s Concerto becomes more familiar. Moments in the first movement will seem like déjà vu, even for those only passingly familiar with Beethoven’s Concerto, although similarities with Viotti’s détaché still abound. That first movement, although it’s marked Allegro maestoso, may lack Beethoven’s high moral seriousness and monumentality, but in the self-confident strutting of its first movement and in the cheerful gaiety of its finale (with solo passages erupting suddenly from the orchestral texture, as in Beethoven’s work), it is still obviously a country cousin, not at all unrelated. Brown notes that the two composers employed the same instrumentation (although not throughout). That might account for some of the similarity in sound; but the interrelationships penetrate farther below the surface, and aren’t limited to a few passages that might be taken as echoes. Clement’s second movement, longer than Beethoven’s, engages in rapid passagework in its central section. In eschewing outright display, Clement’s Concerto seems less like a violinist’s virtuoso showpiece than a forerunner of the symphonic concertos that would dominate so many pianists’ concerto-writing for the violin.

Rachel Barton Pine plays this newly published Concerto with an aplomb equal to its own, drawing a consistently strong and attractive tone from the 1742 ex-Soldat Guarneri del Gesù, a tone that the engineers have set a bit in front of the orchestral mass, without disturbing the overall still balance. Her own boldly violinistic cadenzas enhance the first movement especially, and also the finale (a Rondo, like Beethoven’s), although some might find that cadenza somewhat long for its context. However much light Clement’s Concerto may shed, then, on Beethoven’s, it’s attractive enough to hold the stage on its own, especially in a performance as convincing as Pine’s, with enthusiastic collaboration of Serebrier and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Pine and Serebrier change gears for Beethoven’s Concerto, in which the same instrumentation sounds more massive and similar passages for the violin more like definitive statements. Serebrier seems to make fairly frequent rhetorical micro-pauses in the tuttis and to energize their already stormy majesty. Pine plays the first movement with a lyricism that complements Serebrier’s more brooding orchestral pronouncements. (A related balance of musical ideas may be heard in Vadim Repin’s performance with Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic, 31:4.) Once again, Pine provides her own cadenza, in this case a long, sonorous, technically complex, and by the standards of the later 19th century, an idiomatic one. She’s also written a brief, transitional one between the second and third movements and an ingenious, more developed one for the finale, which she plays with aplomb. If Pine’s performance of Beethoven’s Concerto lacks the drive of Heifetz’s, the geniality of Francescatti’s, the nobility of Milstein’s, or the convincing rhetoric of Stern’s, it nevertheless offers mellifluous, sweet-toned violin-playing and thoughtful musicianship throughout.

For those who know Beethoven’s Concerto well, and for those who wish to explore its origins, the combination of these two Classical concertos should prove well nigh irresistible. Recommended.

-- Robert Maxham, Fanfare

Franck: Symphony in D Minor - Le Chasseur Maudit - Symphonic

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

REVIEW:

Kenneth Fuchs' An American Place is a bright, big-hearted, neo-romantic work in the style of John Adams' Harmonielehre. Adams' finale is an unmistakable influence as both works open with motor rhythms chugging along in the strings while woodwinds and high percussion chirp and tingle above as the music builds to a spirit-lifting sunrise. Fuchs pretty much goes his own way from there as the piece travels through a series of engaging episodes--some featuring wonderful brass writing--and closes in a similar atmosphere to its opening. Eventide is a concerto for English horn, harp, percussion, and strings inspired by Negro spirituals such as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Mary Had a Baby", though Fuchs does not quote them directly, at least not in a manner that's easily recognizable. The work is reminiscent of the pastoral mood-music of Vaughan Williams, though the English horn writing occasionally brings to mind jazz saxophonist Kenny G--a tribute perhaps to the free spirited, highly virtuosic playing of soloist Thomas Stacy.

The pleasantries end with Out of the Dark, which is a set of three pieces based on works by expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler. Heart of November begins in thorny string paroxysms, while Out of the Dark moves somewhat away from the gnarly harmonies of the previous piece. Summer Banner gradually reintroduces consonance, and the work ends in a blissful, subdued atmosphere (with fine solo work by hornist Timothy Jones). Jo Ann Falletta leads first-rate performances with the London Symphony Orchestra, captured in excellent sound--another fine addition to Naxos' American Classics series.

--ClassicsToday.com (Victor Carr Jr.)

The latest entry in Cedille's very worthy African Heritage Symphonic Series offers the most interesting repertoire yet. The four works included here, all by living composers, demonstrate a wide range of styles and compositional techniques that place their respective authors squarely in the mainstream of contemporary music. Whereas earlier issues focused on the process of "assimilation", of artists coming to grips with a musical culture that labeled them outsiders and aliens, and while even here prejudice and stereotyping to some extent determined the career options open to the two older composers (David Baker and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, born in 1931 and 1932 respectively), these works all project the feeling of having been written from the "inside".


The reason for this impression probably results from two factors: increased acceptance of African American composers as writers of "classical music", and probably more importantly, acceptance of African American popular music idioms (especially jazz) into the language of so-called "art" music. Baker's Cello Concerto and Perkinson's Sinfonietta No. 2 make this process very clear. The first work, written for the composer's friend and teacher Janos Starker and commandingly performed by Dutch cellist Katinka Kleijn, remains a gritty and harmonically dense piece in which the soloist communes with various sections of the orchestra in sustained dialog. It's chamber music writ large, its improvisatory feel pointing more powerfully to the composer's extensive jazz credentials than to his facility for more overtly popular elements. On the other hand, Perkinson's piece combines various folk songs with the famous BACH motive to create a Bartókian synthesis quite unlike anything else.


William Banfield's Essay for Orchestra reveals a touch of Sibelius in its accumulation of incident over long-held pedal tones, but its thematic material and interesting orchestral garb, with extensive percussion commentary accompanying all of the other instruments, create a very distinctive impression. The first work on the disc, Michael Abels' Global Warming, refers both to the environmental phenomenon and to the emotionally contrasting idea of improved relations among nations, and the music illustrates this dichotomy beautifully, with an opening (and concluding) evocation of heat and stillness enfolding a dance section in which imitation Irish folk music rubs shoulders with something vaguely Middle Eastern. It's delightful. The Chicago Sinfonietta's amazingly assured performances of this wildly diverse assortment enjoy perfectly balanced, warmly focused recorded sound. This is a very satisfyingly executed project that makes its points in the only way that ultimately matters: by offering excellent interpretations of interesting, thoughtful, and enjoyable music. [2/8/2003]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Ravishing performances of Stokowski's sumptuous take on Wagner. Don't miss it!

It would be hard to imagine a more sumptuous disc. Stokowski, in these "symphonic syntheses", enhances Wagner's already opulent orchestration with shrewdly added instrumental lines and with the vocal parts usually given to the strings. Then at times he thins the orchestration down for more transparent textures. José Serebrier conducts the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in thrilling performances, passionate in a genuinely Stokowskian manner and treated to orchestral sound of demonstration quality.

Stokowski's aim was to provide more satisfying orchestral items in concerts than the popular "bleeding chunks". So in the most ambitious item, on Tristan und Isolde, we have between the Prelude and Liebestod a rich orchestral version of the 2nd Act Love Duet. Where the end of the duet builds up to that chilling interruption from King Marke, Stokowski has it lead seamlessly into the equivalent passage in the Liebestod. It works superbly.

The selection starts excitingly with the Entry of the Gods into Valhalla and it is good to find Serebrier splendidly adding an anvil when Donner brings his hammer down. The Parsifal synthesis is limited to music from Act 3, thus ignoring the Good Friday Music. From Die Walkure comes the Magic Fire Music and, most excitingly, the Ride of the Valkyries. This is Naxos third Stokowski orchestrations disc and is the finest yet.

-- Edward Greenfield, GRAMOPHONE

This new release follows on last year’s brilliant album of Stokowski Bach transcriptions (Naxos 8.557883) produced by the same team. The opening track sets the tone of the album. It will come as no surprise that Stokowski’s view of Das Rheingold’s final scene is gutsy and spectacular – out-Wagnering Wagner. The conductor’s enriched brass and percussion heighten Wagner’s colouring. The Bournemouth players must have had so much fun recording its sweep and grandeur, and the vivid evocations of the rainbow bridge across the valley of the Rhine. Throughout this album, they are backed by excellent engineered sound.

Tristan was one of Stokowski’s favourite works. His expressive symphonic synthesis accents all the lovers’ despair and ecstasy. The symphonic synthesis consists of Wagner’s own concert version of the Prelude and Liebestod interpolating between them the music of the Liebesnacht from the second act; Stokowski’s intent to create an extended seamless symphonic poem. He did not alter Wagner’s scoring but limited his input to transferring the vocal lines to instrumentation: cellos for Tristan and violins for Isolde. The Liebesnacht occupies some 21 minutes of the 36½-minute whole and embraces music of the hunt nicely caught in distant perspective and a lovely nocturnal evocation of trees swaying gently in the sylvan woodlands underlining the lovers’ awakening and mounting passion. Serebrier invests a fragrant and voluptuous sensuality to match the unbridled passion of the celebrated Liebestod that follows and where its mounting excitement is literally edge-of-the-seat stuff; little wonder that this music is so often regarded as the sexiest in all the classical repertoire.

In spite of his life-long championship of the music of Wagner, Stokowski conducted only one Wagner opera in its entirety, a concert performance of Parsifal during Easter 1933. He spoke of his synthesis of Act 3 thus: “I have tried to [communicate] the idea of [the] profound perception on Parsifal’s part of the mysteries of which the Holy Grail is a symbol and of which the outward manifestations are, first, Parsifal’s initiation, and then his acceptance by the Knights, and finally the acknowledgement of him as their leader.” The synthesis excludes the Good Friday Spell music - Wagner had already made a concert version of it - but includes the transformation music from the conclusion of the final moments when Parsifal heals Amfortas’s wound by touching it with his spear. This is a spellbinding and uplifting treatment.

From Die Walküre comes familiar music, magnified in colour and thrills. Need I say more!

José Serebrier, who contributes the concise, readable and erudite notes, was, for five years, Stokowski’s Associate Conductor at New York’s Carnegie Hall and was hailed by Stokowski as “the greatest master of orchestral balance”. Serebrier’s readings are studied: meticulous attention paid to orchestral colour, detail, perspectives, clarity, transparency, dynamics, accents and phrasing.

Repeating the assertion in my review of Serebrier’s recording of the Stokowski Bach transcriptions, this album is one of the best packaged of Naxos’s releases mostly, I suspect, because the recording was “made possible through generous grants from the Leopold Stokowski Society and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Endowment Trust”. In addition to Serebrier’s notes, there is a contribution, “Stokowski and Wagner” by Edward Johnson of the Leopold Stokowski Society, and reproductions of three letters, dating from 1964/65, from Stokowski to Serebrier, one of which includes this cheeky remark: “Thank you also for sending a very pretty flute girl. More please!”

Ravishing performances of Stokowski’s sumptuous take on Wagner. This album will undoubtedly figure in my list of outstanding releases for 2007. Don’t miss this one.

-- Ian Lace, MusicWeb International

This selection is a Super Audio CD; it is playable on both regular and Super Audio players.

This very fine Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto will come as a surprise to those who view Arcadi Volodos merely as a barn-storming virtuoso with few ideas and even less subtlety. His attack on the opening chords is big and bold, to be sure, but he never bangs, and once the first movement proper gets going he's noteworthy for the smoothness and flow that characterizes the first subject, and the very relaxed wistfulness with which he shapes the work's more reflective moments. In truth, Volodos and Ozawa have a tendency to let the tension sag a little in the movement's later stages, particularly just before the coda, but only very slightly.


The second movement has an exquisite, gossamer delicacy that's quite entrancing, aided in no small degree by some very sensitive wind playing from the Berlin Philharmonic and a middle section that moves with quicksilver abandon. Lightness and rhythmic point also characterize Volodos' view of the finale, so much so that the extremely fierce orchestral contributions from Ozawa (reputedly a wimp in this department) come as something of a shock. It's a reading of high contrasts, and when Volodos finally cuts loose just before the reprise of the big tune, the effect is overwhelmingly exciting. In short, in a crowded field, there's plenty here to stake this reading's claim to your attention.


The Rachmaninov encores also are impressive, particularly the Moment Musical Op. 16 No. 2, in which Volodos throws up huge geysers of notes with effortless fluency. His own Concert Paraphrase on the Polka italienne is lots of fun as well, an uninhibited romp that closes the program in very satisfying fashion. The live recording of the concerto reveals microphones a bit too close to the piano (we really don't need to hear Volodos' fingernails clicking on the keys), though with little sacrifice in clarity even if the orchestral tuttis sound a bit harsh. Still, the excitement of what must have been a thrilling live event comes over vividly, and that's what matters. A very enjoyable release.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Zino Francescatti recorded Mendelssohn’s and Tchaikovsky’s concertos twice, possibly to take advantage the second time of stereophonic sound: the first recording of each with Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic in 1954 (both reissued in Sony’s Masterworks Heritage series, 62339—which regrettably seems no longer to be available). He made his second recording of Mendelssohn’s Concerto in 1961 in Severance Hall and his second of Tchaikovsky in 1965 at the Manhattan Center; they appeared together on LP as Columbia ML 6158 and its stereo twin, MS 6758.

Natty Francescatti seemed ideally suited to Mendelssohn’s Concerto. His tone possessed the bright and edgy individuality to highlight the flashing pyrotechnics in a personal way; and without pressing the tempos unduly, he could strike sparks in the cadenza’s off-the-string passagework and in the elfin finale. The uniqueness of his approach seems clearest, however, in the slow movement, to which he brings a fresh, chaste ardor to the familiar soaring lines, and in the lyrical episode in the finale, which he plays as though he had written it. And Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra (billed as “members of the Cleveland Orchestra in the original LP release), provided genial support.

Henry Roth didn’t consider Francescatti’s way with Tchaikovsky sufficiently urgent; in fact, the very qualities that enhanced Francescatti’s reading of Mendelssohn’s Concerto might seem diametrically opposed to those Tchaikovsky’s Concerto required. Francescatti certainly didn’t play with the propulsive intensity of Auer’s students, Jascha Heifetz and Nathan Milstein, nor with the glowing warmth of David Oistrakh, any of whom might almost have claimed the Concerto as his own. Yet it’s hard to think of just what it might be that Francescatti’s performance lacks. While remaining his dapper self, he soars in the Concerto’s frequent lyrical passages, plays with commanding brilliance in the first movement’s cadenza (into which he inserts Auer’s famous—or infamous—but nevertheless electrifying thirds), and generates overwhelming virtuoso excitement in the movement’s coda. The slow movement, taken deliberately, smolders with exotic Slavic hues, a showcase for Francescatti’s distinctive tone production, even though muted. And he realizes the excitement of the finale, both in its pounding first theme and in the moody episodes, anticipated piquantly in the introduction. The original engineers reproduced clearly the clearer orchestral textures and gave body to Schippers’s and the orchestra’s explosive tuttis.

Those who admire Francescatti should find here a compendium of his art spanning colossally the range of expressive possibilities and mastered with Sony’s DSD and SBM techniques. Urgently recommended, of course, to Francescatti enthusiasts, but with equal enthusiasm to general listeners as well.

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet Ballet (Excerpts) & Lieutenant K

Narration by Timothy West.