Classical Music

Includes work(s) by Charles Camilleri. Ensemble: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Brian Schembri. Soloists: Glen Inanga, Jennifer Micallef.

Classical Music

Puccini' fascination with exotic locations, doomed heroines, high drama and tragic romance are brought to centre stage in this immensely moving selection from his greatest operas.

Classical Music

Classical Music

A beautiful selection of the best-known operetta arias, duets & orchestral music from Vienna' golden age of operetta, including Die Fledermaus, the Merry Widow, the Land of Smiles, the Gypsy Princess, the Gypsy Baron and Countess Maritza.

This inventive album presents Tchaikovsky's occasionally heard songs in arrangements for violin and orchestra by Peter Breiner. Although the songs may not often be performed today by singers, these irresistible melodies provide justification enough to be heard in this almost equally satisfying form: "Why?", "Not a word, O my friend", and "The fearful minute" are among the composer's most inspired creations and should be heard more often. A few, however, such as the ever-popular "None But the Lonely Heart", need the soulful evocation of the human voice to make their full effect. Ljuba Kazarnovskaya's vocal recital (also on Naxos) demonstrates what a great singer can bring to this impassioned music.

But overall Takako Nishizaki's beautiful singing tone and sweetly-wrought phrasing, partnered with Breiner's affectionate conducting, make these transcriptions pleasing and satisfying musical experiences, even without the love poems that were Tchaikovsky's main impetus. My only caveat concerns the disc's tracking order: placing so many slow and similar-key selections together unavoidably engenders feelings of monotony. But since this easily can be remedied with the CD's programmability, there's no reason for you to hesitate about obtaining this serene, relaxing disc. Naxos' atmospheric recording balances Nishizaki's violin significantly forward relative to the orchestra.

--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

RAFF: Symphony No. 1, 'To the Fatherland'

SALZBURG

The Places
The places visited are associated in one way or another with Mozart. He was born in 1756 in Salzburg, where his father was a leading musician at the court of the ruling Prince-Archbishop, and remained there, with occasional breaks for foreign concert tours, until he was finally able to break free in 1781 and settle in Vienna, where he spent the last ten years of his short life.

The Music
The music chosen for the tour of Salzburg and its surroundings consists of two piano concertos by Mozart, written during his earlier successful years of independence in Vienna for subscription concerts at which he performed as soloist.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo 2.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 57 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

Charles Adler, a student of Mahler himself, provides emotional truth and scrupulous attention to dynamics in this pioneering first ever commercial recording of Mahler's 6th Symphony.

These are 'historic recordings', but you won't have to listen through a sea of crackles to appreciate them. It is astonishing to consider that Mahler's Sixth, long recognized as one of the century's seminal works, had to wait until 1952 for this, its first commercial recording. Its reappearance reminds us just how recent a phenomenon is the Mahler boom. The conductor may be unfamiliar. A refugee from the Nazis, Charles Adler settled in the USA and married into money, using it to subsidize his own record label, SPA. Which is not to decry the venture: SPA issued records of many new and unknown works, while Adler's own musical credentials were impressive enough — he had been a pupil of Felix Mottl and Mahler himself. That said, he wasn't a man to worry too much about fraudulent marketing. On the original LPs, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra masqueraded variously as the 'Vienna Orchestra' and 'Vienna Philharmonia'. Interested readers should note that an article in the winter issue of Gramophone's sister publication, ICRC, provides further useful background. Whatever may be wrong with Adler's Mahler performances, their emotional truth and scrupulous attention to dynamics goes a long way to compensate for indifferent intonation and some rather rough-and-ready orchestral playing. The timpani are the most persistent offenders and brass tuning often slips under pressure.

Adler's pioneering Sixth is said to have been set down in only 11 hours. Writing in these pages, Deryck Cooke was much taken with it, but then he always saw the first movement as a world-weary trudge rather than the brutal, authoritarian march conceived by Bernstein and emulated by most subsequent interpreters (including Karajan whose own recording is due for reissue). Adler is nothing if not direct. Having chosen his tempo, he sticks to it right through the chorale, the 'Alma' theme and even (no exposition repeat) the pastoral interlude. Mahler warns against undue 'dragging' but Adler's cowbells are anything but distant and quiet - the herd is close by and frisky. By contrast, the beginning of the coda is surely too slow. The Andante is placed second (the documentation by Gerald Fox of the Gustav Mahler Society of New York - is exceptionally strong on the composer's vacillations regarding the order of the middle movements). Cooke thought Adler sluggish here and the deliberate speed does rather draw attention to the thinness of the string sound. Notated portamentos, here as elsewhere, are too reticent. On the other hand, the narrow-bore horn produces a slightly 'stopped' tone which seems just right in context: this is clearly some sort of Viennese orchestra. Sadly, brass intonation again slips at the climax. The Scherzo fares least well. Timpani tuning is fairly wretched, and, despite a slowish tempo, orchestral ensemble and intonation leave much to be desired. Adler's finale is also on the slow side (the whole movement lasts over 33 minutes) but convincingly so, as if recognizing at the outset that the battle has been lost. It's a pity that the second hammer blow (18'55") wasn't retaken as the tam-tam is late. But the closing page is remarkable, the fate motif hammered out in very measured quavers, the finality of the strings' pizzicato emphasized by a lengthy, rhetorical pause.

At which point you may need to sprint across to your CD player to avoid launching into the opening of the Third Symphony. Back in August 1962 (its first release in the UK), Cooke was less enthusiastic about this, eagerly anticipating Bernstein's more professional CBS set. On its own terms, however, I found myself enjoying Adler's reading a good deal. The orchestral playing is better, presumably on account of the symphony being easier to play, and Adler's direct and unaffected approach seems well suited to the vernal, 'outdoors' mood of the work. The second and third movements respond particularly well to his unfussy direction, though again intonation can be poor, especially noticeable when flutes, E flat clarinets or horns are supporting the 'posthorn'. The mezzo gives a notably eloquent account of the fourth movement. Inevitably, there are weaknesses too. Cooke pointed out the excruciating wrong entry by the second violins in the finale (9.01ff. -why was this allowed to stand?) and the symphony's peroration is torpedoed by the sour tuning of the wind choir and a curiously abrupt last note. Adler is not the only conductor unsure how to pace the first movement. He has summer march in at a noticeably slower tempo (against Mahler's instructions) at 2304" and the transition to the recapitulation is awkward. The Fafner-like glissandos in horn and bassoon at the outset are strongly characterized, but those seismic runs in the basses are nowhere near distinct enough. Tension is allowed to dissipate.

Conifer find room for Adler's textually suspect torso of the Tenth (the first movement plus the "Purgatorio"). The violas cope well in the rarefied atmosphere of the opening, but the violins struggle later on. For once, Adler and/or his recording team do not make quite enough of dynamic markings and you may feel that a basic tempo is never adequately established. Still, the closing pages are as affecting as ever, notwithstanding a peculiarly 'twangy' and close-miked harp. All in all, this is a set of undoubted historical interest, if not quite on a par with the 'classic' Mahler recordings of, say, Bruno Walter. Those constitute essential purchases for the general collector. Adler's Mahler on the other hand will appeal primarily to Mahler completists who will scarcely believe their luck. Despite the difficulties encountered in preparing the present release, the remastering has been well handled and the notes are excellent.

-- Gramophone [2/1998]

The Places � The tour begins in the Salzkammergut, most of which lies nowadays in Upper Austria. It includes Hellbrunn Palace and the Residenz in Salzburg and the Styrian city of Graz. The Music � The music for our journey is taken from Mozart's Haffner Serenade, written in honour of a friend in Mozart's native city of Salzburg.

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

It is also available on standard CD.

Maurice Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales present a vivid mixture of atmospheric impressionism, intense expression and modernist wit, his fascination with the waltz further explored in La valse, a mysterious evocation of a vanished imperial epoch. Heard here in an orchestration by Marius Constant, Gaspard de la nuit is Ravel’s response to the other-worldly poems of Aloysius Bertrand, and the dance suite Le tombeau de Couperin is a tribute to friends who fell in the war of 1914–18 as well as a great 18th-century musical forbear. ‘It is a delightful and assorted collection…presented in splendid performances by the Orchestre National de Lyon led by their music director, the venerable American conductor Leonard Slatkin.’

Franco Gulli was a violinist from Trieste and was one of the most important artists in the 20th century. This release collects three wonderful and sensational recordings that show his incredible talent and artistic greatness.

Classical Music

Winners of the Grand Prize and Audience Prize at the 2014 Early Music America Baroque Performance Competition, Montreal based Infusion Baroque has produced a much anticipated debut album featuring five trio sonatas by CPE Bach. Infusion Baroque is in high demand among early music concert presenters throughout North America. They maintain a busy touring schedule, and plan to release many albums following the present release. Their performances have been described as “dynamic and alive” with a stage presence that is “poised and elegant.” Infusion Baroque is flutist Alexa Raine-Wright, violinist Sallynee Amawat, cellist Andrea Stewart, and harpsichordist Rona Nadler.

RAFF: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 10

At the time of the first performance of The Planets, Holst was suffering severely from the neuritis in his hands which plagued him all his life. Much of the actual writing out of the massive score had to be undertaken by his pupils at St Paul’s School under the composer’s supervision. As a result the score presented a considerable number of problems for performers because of missing dynamic markings although it is invariably clear what these should be. The score was newly edited by Colin Matthews and Imogen Holst in 1979 to supply these and to correct various other misprints in earlier editions. Even so The Planets is not a work that could ever be easy to play. It presents many problems not only of technique but also of balance to inexperienced players. One of these occurs almost immediately in Mars where Holst introduces a solo for the “tenor tuba” which is usually nowadays played on the euphonium. I suspect this to be a mistake; the euphonium, a brass band instrument approximating in that medium to the cello, is rather too soft-edged to make the right sort of impact. Karajan in his 1960 Vienna recording employed a tenor “Wagner tuba” which produced a more incisive effect but stood out from the orchestral balance uncomfortably at other points in the score; I do not know what instrument William Boughton uses here, but it sounds sharper-edged than a euphonium and is pretty well ideal. I suspect however that it may have been assisted by microphone placement, since later in the movement it recedes into the orchestral mix. Its duet with the trumpet towards the end (at 4.59) does not sound ideally matched. Also rather backwardly balanced is the Albert Hall organ which does not assert itself through the texture in the same way as in the superbly engineered and ideally balanced recording Charles Dutoit made in Montreal for Decca. Better that, I suppose, than the horribly electronic effect which Karajan achieved in his later Berlin recording for DG; considerably toned down in later re-masterings.
 
Boughton’s speed for Mars is nicely judged, not too hectic but with plenty of power; and one can for once clearly hear the col legno strings tapping away in the opening bars. This is a work which the Philharmonia could play in their sleep, and the technical difficulties pose no problems for them. The opening of Venus restores calm, with a poised horn solo provoking a dreamy response from the woodwind, and Bradley Cresswick produces a beautifully recessed violin solo at 2.08. This is indeed Venus as “the bringer of peace” and not the erotic goddess of love with which we are all too often presented. Perhaps the celesta at 7.50 could be more clearly audible and defined, but it is marked pianissimo in the score, and better that than an over-amplified sound. The same instrument comes through nicely in Mercury¸ which is taken at a steady speed which enables plenty of detail to be heard. Then again at 1.15 where its part is marked “solo” in the score, it does not balance either the flute which precedes it with the melody or the clarinet which follows. Here is a case where some discreet spotlighting really is needed. There is one passage at 2.34 (returning later) which never really comes off in performance – the strings and woodwind who have been playing a two-beat rhythm in 6/8 are suddenly instructed for two bars to play with a three-beat rhythm, indicated by forte accents. At Holst’s Vivace marking it is extremely difficult for the players to make this distinction clear, and the performance here succeeds no better than any others that I have heard.
 
Jupiter bustles along with plenty of jollity, but Boughton does not observe the ritenuto at 1.34 which Holst indicates as leading into the molto pesante tune on the horns – no more than do many of his rivals, including Sir Adrian Boult who gave the first performance. Oddly enough when this passage returns later on, Holst omits the ritenuto marking, and since the passages are otherwise identical one wonders whether the first marking might be a simple error which has remained uncorrected. Boughton treats the central ‘big tune’ as a country dance and not as a patriotic hymn, which is quite correct, but properly allows a slight broadening towards the end of the passage which is marked maestoso. When the tune occurs at the very end Holst indicates that a single crochet of the new speed should be the equivalent of a full bar of the previous one; Boughton observes this precisely, but many conductors make a further broadening to match Holst’s new tempo marking Lento maestoso – I think this is probably needed to give the ‘big tune’ is full breadth, but what Boughton does here is what Holst indicates.
 
The opening of Saturn is nicely poised, and for once the low bass oboe solo at 1.24 is properly piano as marked – it must be very difficult to achieve this dynamic level in the extreme low register of the instrument, and the Philharmonia player here does better than Dutoit’s rather more fruity oboist in Montreal. As the music rises to a climax, Holst marks the score Animato and indicates that the bells should be played “with metal striker”. In a footnote to the new edition of the score the player is advised to use a rawhide mallet “to avoid damaging the bells”. This is what we are given here although the sound is clearly not what the composer had in mind. Many conductors turn the Animato into a violent acceleration - Holst gives no metronome marks in his score, but in his very fast recorded performance of the movement as a whole does lend this interpretation some credence. Boughton here keeps the two tempi closely balanced, to the considerable advantage of the music. When the music dies down again the bells return, marked pianissimo and to be played with a “soft felt striker” – but here they recede too far into the background as a consequence. They are clearer even on Holst’s old 78s, although what we hear there does not sound at all like a “felt striker”. The organ pedal which underpins the music could also be more palpable. Dutoit in Montreal gets this passage just right, and the result makes more of what could otherwise be regarded as an over-extended “dying fall”.
 
The Albert Hall acoustic suits Uranus perfectly, with the timpani passages which can frequently be obscured in a halo of reverberation sounding ideally precise. The xylophone solo which is so often highlighted - with grotesque results in Adrian Boult’s 1954 reading - is properly balanced with the rest of the orchestra. The timpani could however be more defined at 2.49 (the part is marked “solo”) although they are better eleven bars later and thereafter. The notorious organ glissando at the catastrophic climax also blends into the background slightly too much, and the timpani solo at 4.40 is not really distinct enough either. The tempo of Neptune, shown as Andante in the score, is all too often taken by conductors to read Largo molto, but Boughton keeps the music flowing. However the recording here does not give any definition to Holst’s subtle orchestral effects; the tremolos in the highest register of the harps are almost inaudible and the subtle interplay of the harps with celesta and muted violins is more clearly evident in the superb engineering that Decca provide for Dutoit. Holst may have required that the orchestra should play pianissimo and with “dead tone” throughout, but he devoted considerable ingenuity to the provision of variety in the texture, and it would be nice to hear more of this. The unnamed chorus, set at a distance as Holst requires, could also be slightly more palpable, and their internal tuning sounds slightly insecure at the admittedly extremely difficult chromatic passage at 6.16. At the end they fade nicely if rather rapidly into the distance.
 
The coupling with the ballet music from The perfect fool is a well-conceived one, since the music of the two scores has much in common. This again is music that is not easy to play, but Boughton is nicely forthright in the Dance of the spirits of the earth even if the following Dance of the spirits of water could be more gracefully romantic and the final Dance of the spirits of fire is a bit brash. In the booklet note written in 1988 Geoffrey Crankshaw makes a plea for “some act of rescue” for the complete score of the opera – over twenty years later we are still waiting. At the time he was writing there had only been a BBC recording from the mid-1960s, where Imogen Holst had laid violent hands on the score, abridging some passages and introducing a spoken narration to clarify points of the plot. In her book on her father’s music she was very rude about the “intolerable” libretto (written by the composer) and Crankshaw also adduces the “poor” text as a reason for the score’s neglect. This really does the composer an injustice. Although at the time of its first performance critics suspected allegory, the plot is really a light-hearted satire on opera in general, and a very funny one at that. What it really requires is a production that takes the music extremely seriously, thus making the contrast between the vocal writing and the nonsensical words even funnier. The BBC recording of 1997 (currently available on the internet) did that, with the exception of the miscasting of Richard Suart - a very good comic baritone in the Savoy operas - in the central role of the Wizard, giving a G&S slant to music which really demands a Wagnerian singer in the Hunding/Hagen mould. Vernon Handley does take the score seriously, obtaining superb performances elsewhere and giving us every note of the score as Holst wrote it. Could somebody now please take another look at the score, giving us a properly high-class Verdian tenor for the Troubadour and a Wagnerian bass-baritone as the Traveller? Holst’s parodies of Verdi and Wagner are not only first-class satire, but are also uncomfortably convincing when they are given full weight.
 
There are a great many extremely good performances of The Planets in the catalogues – and this is an extremely good one. There are also a few which give us exactly this coupling with the Perfect fool ballet music, including a very good one by Sir Charles Mackerras with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic; recordings by Solti and Mehta, both available coupled with Boult’s early 1960s Perfect fool, are rather superficial by comparison. The minor imperfections in balance - largely the result of the natural problems in Holst’s own scoring - in this Nimbus recording are not serious enough to prevent a strong endorsement for Boughton’s performance. On a purely personal level I stand by Dutoit’s Decca version, both for its more individual view on the score and its superlative if less natural engineering.
 
-- Paul Corfield Godfrey, MusicWeb International

After the “flood of the century” the Semperoper resumed limited activities towards the end of 2002. Light was appearing on the horizon, life was going on! The first events took place at the beginning of December, with symphony concerts in which the Staatskapelle performed Anton Bruckner's Eighth Symphony conducted by Bernard Haitink. Expectant audiences were again able to assemble in the opera. The concert of December 3 was broadcast live by MDR; the single recording made of that broadcast forms the basis of this CD.

When an artist, through whatever means, becomes a transcendent artistic figure, he or she becomes the object of extreme devotion. In and beyond the operatic world, that person is Maria Callas, and those devoted to her, and they are legion, want nothing less than to hear every recorded note she sang, and are fortunate enough to be able to do so. The start of her 25 years of worldwide stardom is not far in the future as you listen to her sing the role Abigalle in Verdi's Nabucco in this 1949 live performance from the Teatro di San Carlo with conductor Vittorio Gui, one of her early champions.

Florent Schmitt life spanned both the late Romantic and 20th century eras and he counted Erik Satie and Maurice Ravel among his close friends. For most of his career he worked as a music critic and early on perceptively predicted the influence jazz would have on the future of serious music. His compositional output was comprised of a mish-mash potpourri of styles which included scores for theatre, including ballet and stage plays, including this collection of incidental music for Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra featuring the Buffalo Philharmonic conducted by JoAnn Falletta.

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Review:

The performances are admirably stylish, while the Buffalo Philharmonic boast nicely dexterous strings and woodwind.

– Gramophone

Though he wrote a great deal of church music, and also composed for the theatre, Justin Heinrich Knecht is best remembered for his Grande Simphonie ‘Le Portrait musical de la Nature’. Elegantly scored and completed in 1785, this eventful five-movement symphonic work of nature-depiction predates Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony by almost a quarter of a century. Knecht’s older French contemporary Philidor was the leading chess player of his time in addition to being a popular stage composer, whose overtures reveal the influence of the Italian school in their sparkling drama.

Classical Music

In the autumn of 1912 Jean Sibelius was commissioned to compose music for Poul Knudsen's surreal pantomime, Scaramouche, an experience that Sibelius soon regretted taking due to reservations about the production. Rarely performed today, Scaramouche is a curiosity within the Sibelius' discography. With the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Lief Segerstam featuring soloists Bendik Goldstein (viola) and Roi Ruottinen (cello).