Recording information: Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, Poland.

Classical Music

Compared with his immense vocal composition output (most of which remains to be rediscovered), the quantity of instrumental music composed by Alessandro Scarlatti would almost seem hardly worth the mention. + Yet the selected compositions on this double-disc set are immensely important, in that they allow immediate assessment of Scarlatti’s style, then nearing creative decline, which appears to be suspended between the glorious contrapuntal tradition and beautiful melodies that look decidedly towards the future. + Enrico Casazza leads the Accademia della Magnifica Comunità.

Havergal Brian may be a “cult composer”, but he’s surely one of the better ones. His music, even from its early days, was always strange, imaginative, and distinctive, and this disc, containing some very early and very late works, makes the point tellingly. Symphonies Nos. 22-24 form a trilogy. They were all composed between 11:30am and 9pm on May 26th, 1965, when the composer was 137 years old. Okay, just kidding, but 1965 is correct, and Brian was an impressive 89 at the time, which is astonishing enough. Symphony No. 22, “Symphonia brevis”, contains just two movements and lasts nine minutes. March rhythms predominate, alongside the gnarly, virtually atonal counterpoint that characterizes much of Brian’s late work. It sounds unappealing, but the music is so big in gesture and broad in its contrasts that it really does capture and hold your attention. Symphony No. 23, again in two movements but this time lasting all of 14 minutes, is more colorful and also a touch less angular, with some very beautiful moments of lyric calm. No. 24 consists of single, 16-minute movement, in which much of the storm and stress of the previously two works is resolved in lighter, brighter textures and more obviously diatonic thematic material. All three symphonies share an emphasis on march rhythms, and those characteristic brass and percussion effects (giant crescendos, deep tuba lines, three snare drums, unisons for xylophone and glockenspiel, cymbal crashes that hang over the bar lines) typical of Brian, and no one else. The advantage to having them all together, though, lies in the fact that you really can hear that Brian’s language has a wide range of expression, here displayed over a comparatively small space.

The English Suite No. 1 dates from 1905-6; that’s right, sixty years earlier than the three symphonies. Rich in invention, and much more obviously melodic, its six movements start with a march, and continue with a waltz, and character piece called “Under the Beech Tree”, an Interlude, Hymn, and finally a concluding Carnival, which pokes good-natured fun at God Save the King/Queen and other popular tunes. The Interlude is rather amazing, an experiment piece whose outer sections consist of pure texture (sound clip). It reveals Brian’s individuality even at this relatively early stage in his career—although he was already pushing 30 when the Suite was composed.

The performances here are very good. The New Russian State Symphony Orchestra sounds remarkably confident in Brian’s idiosyncratic sound world. The brass play very well, and the ensemble projects what have to be some very ungrateful string parts with astonishing conviction. Much of the credit must belong to conductor Alexander Walker, who keeps the music moving smartly along, and relishes the opportunities it offers for lyrical expression as well as instrumental color. Certainly this is one of the best issues in Naxos’ ongoing Brian cycle, especially as the sonics are also very tactile and vivid. Fans of the composer will rejoice.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

A few years ago Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra released a glorious disc containing Haydn symphonies Nos. 88, 101 and 104. Well, they’ve done it again, and their achievement is even more impressive in that this time they have chosen three relatively unknown, middle-period symphonies. None have nicknames, and few get played in modern concerts. I did see Leonard Slatkin–a champion of little-known Haydn–give a superb performance of No. 67, but other than that you’ll be lucky to hear any of these symphonies live.

This doesn’t mean that the music lacks anything in the way of interest. No. 67 is one of Haydn’s most original creations, with a slow movement that features a delicious coda played by the strings “col legno” (with the back of the bow), a trio of the minuet for two muted solo violins–one of them retuned–and a finale with a central “development” that starts as a string trio in an adagio tempo. It’s an amazing piece, and this performance relishes every striking detail.

Symphony No. 57 starts with a surprisingly unsettling slow introduction whose eerie grace notes return, purged of their unease, in the fleet main theme of the finale. No. 68 places the minuet second because the slow movement is probably the longest that Haydn ever wrote. It lasts more than twelve minutes in this performance (fourteen under Harnoncourt), but it’s so full of variety that the time passes without a thought. The finale is a “variation” rondo whose episodes constitute a veritable concerto for orchestra.

In short, each symphony has something special and characteristic to offer, and each gives McGegan and his ensemble an opportunity to display their individual and corporate musicianship and virtuosity. The strings play with precision and warmth. McGegan clearly knows when to sound “authentic,” and when to let his players sing. The solo winds and horns are excellent, ensemble balances invariably what they ought to be to let each work communicate vividly. The live sonics, a touch close and maybe very slightly edgy, actually suit the boldness and panache of the music. Haydn lovers rejoice.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Antonio Stradivarius is universally acknowledged as being the greatest violin maker of all time. About 600 of his instruments have survived until the present day, among them violins, violas, and cellos, most of which are still played, studied, and regarded by the most famous and renowned soloists, collectors, art galleries, and museums as the “non plus ultra.” The long life of Stradivarius covers a truly crucial period in the history of music: it stretches from the second half of the seventeenth century, a moment of the definitive triumph of the violin as principal instrument of Baroque instrumental music, to the first part of the eighteenth century, a period of transition toward musical classicism. We maintain that it is important, therefore, to rediscover these musicians who are little known to the public of today, but who were quite well known and respected in the Cremona of their day. They were perhaps great exchangers of concrete ideas and advice with the great violin makers of the time. As it happens today in modern violin making workshops, the exchange of ideas and advice between musicians and instrument makers is the basis for the professional growth of both.

A gifted musician, writer and watercolourist, Hugo Alfven is regarded in his native Sweden as the most significant composer after Berwald. The Fifth Symphony occupied Alfven throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and draws on themes from his ambitious 1923 ballet.

A passionate advocate of both historic and new music, Mark Steinbach is University Organist, Curator of Instruments, and Senior Lecturer in Music at Brown University. On Glass and Bach in Dresden, he performs on the renowned 1755 Silbermann Organ, one of the most famous organs in all of Europe, which is located at the Cathedral of St. Trinitas in Dresden Germany. The program ties together the music of two composers, Philip Glass and J. S. Bach, separated by centuries yet inextricably linked on a musical level. While it's a rare treat to hear Bach on an instrument very much of his time, it's also a special gift to hear modern music on such a prestigious instrument.

Classical Music

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

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (b. 1932) is one of the leading Scandinavian composers, an outstanding and insistent voice from the generation born in the inter-war years. This CD is the culmination of the composer’s unique collaboration with the world-famous American Kronos Quartet, which has been commissioning specially tailored works from the Danish composer for over 20 years.

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REVIEW:

The CD concludes with the ninth string quartet of Holmgreen, written for the Kronos Quartet in 2006. It is in a single movement, beginning and ending with recorded sounds of a roaring ocean. The blending of recorded sounds of nature and instrumental music is effective and moving, a beautiful tribute to the power of nature, representing a kind of Danish impressionism.

There is much on this collection of music that is similarly evocative, as well as much that is rather frustrating, but that mix reflects a powerful musical talent.

– Fanfare

Penderecki deserves a great deal of credit for turning his back on the avant-garde of the 1960s and '70s, recognizing much of it for the music dead-end that it has turned out to be. His "return to Romanticism" was prophetic, but at the same time we must remember that there really are only two kinds of music: good and bad, and the fact that some music might be more conventionally listenable doesn't make it inherently better. On the whole, Penderecki always has been a very talented composer, deeply concerned with serious expressive issues, but this hasn't prevented some of his neo-Romantic works from sounding relentlessly heavy, grey, and dull, nor does his change of style diminish the sonic thrill of his earlier, more radical pieces. He did excellent work in all periods, as you can plainly hear on this marvelous new release.

The Eighth Symphony, "Songs of Evanescence", actually is a cycle of 12 German poems by the likes of Rilke, Goethe, Eichendorf, and Hesse. Far from being uniformly grim, the texts (available on Naxos' website) speak of the cycle of life, death, and renewal in a manner not too dissimilar from Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (save that the entire work lasts scarcely longer than Mahler's last song, "The Farewell"). The music is beautiful: lyrically melodic, sumptuously scored, and highly varied, with harmony that ranges from the sweetly diatonic to ferociously dissonant, everywhere responsive to the text. This piece, which requires solo soprano, mezzo, baritone, and full chorus, must rank among Penderecki's finest recent creations, and I easily could see it becoming a repertory item.

Dies Irae, dating from 1967, is a work of Penderecki's radical phase. As the title suggests, it's a dark, menacing, but sonically enthralling piece that forces both vocal and orchestral forces to make some of the most hair-raising sounds in Western music. It's interesting how with the passage of time much of the music's perceived difficulty has evaporated, leaving behind a raw-nerved, expressionistic intensity that's quite special and all the more moving for being very much of its time and place (aren't all classics?). The brief Psalms of David, from the late 1950s, helped to establish Penderecki's credentials as a major composer. The percussive last movement might strike today's listeners as almost Latin-sounding, though of course the harmonic language is more acerbic, but the music exudes the freshness of a powerful new voice on its first flights of fancy.

Antoni Wit's Naxos recordings, particularly those of contemporary music, have been almost uniformly splendid, and this one is no exception. He summons terrific playing from the orchestra, has a brilliant and enthusiastic choir at his disposal, and has assembled a very impressive team of soloists, especially soprano Michaela Kaune, baritone Wojtek Drabowicz, and tenor Richard Minkiewicz. Singing this stuff isn't easy, but they make it seem so. The sonics capture the music's massive climaxes as well as its more ethereal moments in natural balance, and with plenty of head room. In short, this disc makes an ideal introduction to Penderecki's art, and to his vocal music in particular. It covers his entire creative life thus far, and offers compelling evidence of just how fine a composer he was, and remains.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. 13, Op. 113 in 1962. The climax of his ‘Russian period’ and, in its scoring for bass soloist, male chorus and orchestra, among the most Mussorgskian of his works, it attracted controversy through its settings of poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (the ‘Russian Bob Dylan’ of his day)—not least the first movement, where the poet underlines the plight of Jews in Soviet society. The other movements are no less pertinent in their observations on the relationship between society and the individual. This is the final release in Vasily Petrenko’s internationally acclaimed symphonic cycle.

This recording of recent compositions by Bright Sheng, "[a] leader in exploring and bridging musical traditions", demonstrates once again his distinctive lyrical and dramatic fusion of Western and Asian styles and sonorities. Earlier Naxos releases include works such as the Red Silk Dance (8.559610) and Spring Dreams concerto (8.570601).

Herbert von Karajan broke boundaries in many aspects of conducting, among those being that he was the first conductor to become interested in filming his performances to preserve his cultural heritage. This exceptional documentary begins with his first concert productions, taken in Japan in 1957. Following those first recordings is his cooperation with director Henri-Georges Clouzot, then Karajan’s own film company Telemondial. Karajan’s language for orchestral film productions is seen here through all of its stages. This documentary also includes interviews with Karajan and his collaborators.

“Increasingly, Shostakovich's music is captivating people all over the world and appealing to their deepest emotions. Almost like no other, it bears witness to a traumatic political epoch while remaining a timeless expression of existential human feeling and experience. For me personally,” said conductor Mariss Jansons, who died last year, “Shostakovich is one of the most serious and sincere composers of them all.” After the Sixth, Seventh, and Tenth Symphonies, BR-KLASSIK is now also releasing the Fifth Symphony by this important composer – performed live by the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under its long-time chief conductor Mariss Jansons. After accusations of formalism directed against Shostakovich in a critical Pravda article had forced the composer to withdraw his Fourth Symphony (it remained shelved until after Stalin's death), the Fifth, written in 1937, was a phenomenal success. It premiered on November 21, 1937 under the young conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky in the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. During the applause, which it seemed would never end, Mravinsky waved the score above his head for a good half hour - making it quite clear that the applause was for Shostakovich alone. Officially, the work was interpreted as the return of a prodigal son to the guidelines of Stalinist cultural policy. To this day the music has lost none of its fascination, and the Fifth Symphony ranks as one of Shostakovich’s best-known works.

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

The hr-Sinfonieorchester has for decades been numbered among the world's leading Mahler orchestras. Between 2008 and 2013 it gave its most recent Mahler cycle as part of the Rheingau Music Festival under principal conductor Paavo Järvi. The recordings were made in the unique space of the Basilica of Eberbach Monastery, in the magnificent ambiance of the Friedrich von Thiersch Hall at the Wiesbaden Kurhaus and in the outstanding acoustics of the Great Hall of the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. In all of these venues Mahler's symphonies left a particularly fascinating impression.

Gustav Mahler
THE COMPLETE SYMPHONIES

Symphony No. 1 in D Major, “Titan”
Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, “Resurrection”
Symphony No. 3 in D Minor
Symphony No. 4 in G Major
Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor
Symphony No. 6 in A Minor, “Tragic”
Symphony No. 7 in E Minor
Symphony No. 8 in E-Flat Major, “Symphony of a Thousand”
Symphony No. 9 in D Major
Symphony No. 10 in F-Sharp Minor: I. Adagio

Camilla Tilling, soprano
Genia Kühmeier, soprano
Erin Wall, soprano
Ailish Tynan, soprano
Anna Lucia Richter, soprano
Lilli Paasikivi, mezzo-soprano
Waltraud Meier, mezzo-soprano
Alice Coote, mezzo-soprano
Charlotte Hellekant, mezzo-soprano
Nikolai Schukoff, tenor
Michael Nagy, baritone
Ain Anger, bass

Bavarian Radio Chorus
North German Radio Chorus
Limburger Cathedral Boys Choir
Leipzig MDR Radio Choir
Czech Philharmonic Choir, Brno
Europa Chor Akademie
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Paavo Järvi, conductor

Recorded at Rheingau Musik Festival, 2003–2013

Bonus:
- Introductions to the Symphonies by Paavo Järvi
- Paavo’s Mahler: The Project

Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Audio Language (bonus): English
Subtitles: German, English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese (Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, 4, 8) / German, Korean, Japanese (bonus)
Booklet notes: English, German, French
Running time: 12 hrs 35 mins (concert) + 96 mins (bonus)
No. of Discs: 5 (BD 50)

On this release titled The Maltese Touch, guitarist Simon Schembri and Parisii Quartet present three works which, alongside virtuosity of execution, also display a wide range of emotions and contrasts. The guitar concerto op. 30 by Mauro Giuliani was arranged for guitar and string quartet by the composer himself. Luigi Boccherini who was for many years in the service of the Bourbon court and other nobility in Madrid dedicated his composing the specific native sound scapes, that his adopted country Spain offered. Thus he arranged a number of his earlier string quintets for guitar and string quartet like the Quintet in D major, G. 448 “Fandango”. The piece Nazca by the French guitarist and composer Erik Marchelie was written in 1988 and refers to the enigmatic drawings on the desert floor of the Peruvian desert.

The Concord Sonata by Charles Ives is without doubt the most iconic American piano sonata. Its epic length (appr. 50 minutes), its extreme technical difficulties and its highly unusual form and writing make it one of the greatest challenges for any performing pianist. Any new recording of it is an event. The sonata’s 4 movements represent figures associated with the Transcendentalism movement: Ralph Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson and Louisa Alcott and Henry David Thoreau. The piece demonstrates Ives' experimental tendencies: much of it is written without barlines, the harmonies are advanced, and in the second movement there is a cluster chord created by depressing the piano's keys with a piece of wood. The piece also amply demonstrates Ives' fondness for musical quotation (especially Beethoven’s 5th). Pianist Thomas Hell is widely recognised as a specialist of 20th century piano repertoire. He recorded works by Carter, Schoenberg, Dallapiccola, Boulez and the complete Etudes by Ligeti. “A clear frontrunner.” - Classicstoday.com

These present an even more formidable achievement... readings that are strong and positive as well as thoughtful... [No.1] crisp, lifted rhythms and a raptness to compare with Barenboim and Arrau, hold one's attention as a live performance would" [No.2] "That sense of spontaneity is similarly conveyed in the performance of the Second Concerto... formidable technique and warm, positive temperament... Tirimo is far from reticent as a soloist. He gives a commanding account" (both: Edward Greenfield / Gramophone & both 3 stars Penguin Guide) [2nd] "takes it's place among three or four best versions of this much-recorded work" (High Fidelity, USA

In this re-release Richard Hickox conducts works for strings by Herbert Howells. Performed by the orchestra he founded in 1971, City of London Sinfonia, the music represents just a small part of the often neglected British repertoire to which Hickox showed such extraordinary dedication.

On Philip Glass - Songs, Baritone Martin Achrainer and pianist Maki Namekawa give the world premiere recording of Glass's 1997 song-cycle Songs of Milarepa, about the spiritual journey of Milarepa, a Tibetan poet who lived 900 to 1,000 years ago. Martin Achrainer has quickly become a Glass specialist of a kind, having sung in multiple Glass operas including his breakthrough performance as Kepler, the title role of Glass's 2009 grand opera. Namekawa is one of the preeminent artists working with Philip Glass today. Chose by Glass in 2014 to be the first pianist to record his Complete Piano Etudes. The album concludes with Three Songs for Baritone and Piano which is a collection of songs drawn from two sources, Glass's 1989 song opera Hydrogen Jukebox which was created with Allen Ginsberg, and two songs from Monsters of Grace, a multimedia opera created with director Robert Wilson.

The stage works of Maurice Ravel are as delicate and poised as one could imagine. In the Spanish-shaded L’heure espagnole, Ravel gives new vitality into the opera buffa by making the comedic element human, and giving the plot poignancy. Ravel wrote clear vocals, harmonic magic, and radiant orchestration. He imbues Cervante’s famous character with blue-blooded Spanish swagger, while still giving him a sort of heroic kindness and openness.

Classical Music

A Common Time, the new recording from violinist Chase Spruill, includes the world premiere recording of Philip Glass's Sarabande in Common Time for solo violin (2016). His second full album dedicated the composer, it includes a selection of his works for solo violin and new transcriptions by Spruill. These new recordings feature the iconic music for the films Candyman and Naqoyqatsi, as well as music from Glass's stage works (A Madrigal Opera, Afternoon Waltz from The Screens) and purely instrumental music, such as Arabesque in Memoriam.

Schubert's Octet for strings and winds bears witness to a new creative force during a dark chapter of the composer's life, when he was haunted by illness. Powerfully imaginative, interweaving joy and apprehension, the work pays homage to Beethoven's septet while revealing a poetic and lyrical language in which the dawn of Romanticism emerges. For this recording, the Modigliani Quartet is joined by soloists Sabine Meyer, Bruno Schneider, Dag Jensen and Knut Erik Sundquist.