SCHUMANN GREAT HITS

MOZART: DIVERTIMENTI K 136, 13

BERNSTEIN CENTURY - 20TH CENTU

LEONARD BERNSTEIN - THE ROYAL

MOZART: DIVERTIMENTO K 563, ET

CANTATA DA CAMERA JACOBS, KUI

After recordings of Schubert Lieder (on Orfeo) and Brahms Lieder and Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Sony), Lipovsek now turns her artistry to two of Schumann’s great song cycles, separated on this disc by half a dozen well-known Schumann songs. The warmth and richness of sound from this Slovenian mezzo-soprano rings out from the first few bars of the Op. 39 Liederkreis. She is now making an international impact: her unique, grainy timbre and a powerful personality offer new dimensions to mainstream repertoire.

In the Liederkreis Lipovsek’s ability to utilise her vocal colouring and delve into contemplative sequences is particularly well illustrated in ‘Mondnacht’, ‘Auf einer Burg’ and ‘Zwielicht’. The haunting poignancy of Schumann’s musical lines in Frauenliebe und -leben are beautifully captured by Lipovsek and Johnson. This is a deep, reflective and rewarding performance with only an occasional vocal strain for some notes. The three central songs, ‘Du Ring an meinem Finger’, ‘Helft mir, ihr Schwestern’ and ‘Süsser Freund, du blickest’, contain wonderful expressive moments. Two minor quibbles: the sound is rather too roomy and spacious for these intimate works, and, for once, although artistically and musically faultless as ever, Johnson does not always sound as technically assured as usual.

-- Elise McDougall, BBC Music Magazine

Elgar: Symphony No.1, Op. 55, Cockaigne Overture, Op. 40 & R

SCHNITTKE: QUASI UNA SONATA, P

SCHUBERT: DER TOD UND DAS M?DC

BACH, MOZART, BRITTEN, HANDEL

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

The Artis Quartet have all the right Viennese qualifications to play Schubert – their playing is graceful and stylish, with genuine warmth of tone and expression. In the A minor Quartet they take their cue from Schubert’s many expression marks – making the accents and crescendos sound absolutely spontaneous; pointers to the underlying emotion. It helps that they play the many soft passages so delicately; by contrast the more intense, dramatic moments come over strongly without any hint of overplaying, using imaginative variations of tone-colour to point the different shades of feeling. The flowing Andante is a delight, and the restrained lilt of the Minuet, maintaining the melancholic mood, is equally successful. Only in the finale did I find some of the rhythms not ideally poised, but even here there’s much to admire.

They play the early E flat Quartet beautifully too; in the finale the leader’s elegant portamentos, and the rhythmic fizz of the opening, remind us that the young Schubert was writing in the era of both Spohr and Rossini. The C minor Quartettsatz pleased me less. Though in essence it’s another fine and brilliant performance, the frequent hold-ups for accents start to sound rather contrived.

This record is, I think, decisively to be preferred to the Panocha Quartet’s account of D87 and D804. The Supraphon recording lacks the depth and realism of the new Sony, and the performances, though lively and sensitive, don’t have the ardour and spontaneity the Artis Quartet bring to theirs.'

-- Duncan Druce, Gramophone [2/1997]

HAYDN: SYMPHONIES NOS 88, 89 &

If you're looking for...self-confident mastery in the concertos, be advised of Sony's reissue...of the authentic five and some shorter works executed with splendid panache and stylistic savvy by Isaac Stern. The orchestras are conducted by George Szell and Alexander Schneider.

-- Herbert Glass, Los Angeles Times [5/12/91]
reviewing the concertos issued previously as CBS 45614

When putting together albums like this, producers often cite "The Mozart Effect" as evidence of classical music's remarkable bolstering effect on IQ. While some question the relevancy of those studies, it's common sense that exposing kids to music rich in culture will start them on the road toward a greater appreciation of the world around them.
BUILDING BABY'S BRAIN 4 features some of J.S. Bach's most appealing pieces. Unlike other children's classical music recordings, this album is organized into more than just nap time and playtime music. It includes merry dances, marches and even simple musical exercises originally composed as tutorials.
As the father to twenty children of his own, Bach had a special connection to children. The kids who enjoy his music may or may not be smarter because of it, but their lives are certainly richer for it.

Giulini's desire is to give this music time to breathe and be heard, and he is absolutely the master of how best to bring that about.

In an age when any recording of Beethoven's Fifth is little more than a blip on an accountant's screen, it is salutary to be reminded that the symphony was once a germ in the creative mind. In the beginning there was the vision, and the work itself. After that came interpretation, and competition between interpretations, Edison and Berliner, and, finally, Beethoven's Fifth as 'product'. Giulini's recording of the Fifth, which ends with a piccolo singing high in the stratosphere as C major sounds majestically beneath, is not a performance in the histrionic (or historic) sense of the word. Rather, it is a meditation on the work's informing vision, what Goethe called "the Fall upwards", the transition from dark to light, the seeds of spiritual regeneration planted in the very ground of despair.

And that is not an elaborately periphrastic way of saying that the performance is a bit dull, that the old boy is not quite what he was. Giulini's desire is to give the music time to breathe and be heard. And he is absolutely the master of how best to bring that about. You hear this in the time he allots to the opening fermatas (and in the fineness of their sound, rich and unforced); you hear it in the slight 'lift' he imparts to the rhythm, the time they are given to dance; and you hear it in the steady, unflustered pulse of the whole.

The final two movements are treated as a seamless robe. Logically — since there is no repeat of the Scherzo's first half — Giulini omits the finale's exposition repeat. The music is thus allowed to move forward with a simple momentum of its own. Climaxes are finely judged, and rarely has the Scherzo's unexpected return within the finale seemed so fine an invention as it does here. ("An invention as inimitable as the beginning of Hamlet", as Basil Lam once described it.) There is lovely detailing of the inner parts, too. As ever with Giulini, the violas are well nursed, their launch of the finale's G major subject as eloquent as you will ever hear it. The symphony's slow movement, incidentally, is played as though it is first cousin to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.

The coupling is shrewdly chosen since Beethoven wrote the Fourth Symphony, in part, to solve a crisis in the creation of the Fifth — the crisis of how best to effect that "Fall upwards" from C minor Scherzo to C major finale. (Interestingly, the Fifth precedes the Fourth on the disc, though if you wish to follow the actual compositional chronology you would need to bail out of the Fifth Symphony before the transition on the drum, play the Fourth Symphony and only then return to the Fifth. A somewhat eccentric procedure.)

Giulini has never previously recorded the Fourth Symphony, an odd omission since it is a symphony I would have thought him born to conduct. Coming to it thus late has its risks and I am not sure that Giulini has the work's measure at every point. The slow introduction, the slow movement, and the still points of the Allegro vivace's turning world are wonderfully well reimagined and realized. The word vivace, though, implies a slightly more spirited gait than Giulini allows. But if parts of the first movement seem a touch lumpy, the finale is a miracle of unforced motion, the La Scala playing relaxed, the mood gamesome as it invariably is when the conductor takes note of Beethoven's written instruction Allegro ma non troppo. (Klemperer was always very persuasive in this movement, Gardiner on his recent Archiv recording is ruinously quick.)

Sony's Milan recordings place the orchestra a shade distantly, giving a slightly veiled quality to the string tone, but since this is consonant with the sound Giulini draws from the orchestra it is hardly a matter of great concern. Along with the Pastoral Symphony (5/94) this must be the pick of the cycle to date.

-- Gramophone [11/1995]

Selections recorded March 27-29 and April 1-3, 1993.

NORTH GERMAN ORGAN MUSIC GUST

STRESS BUSTERS

FROM AUSTRALIA JOHN WILLIAMS

"This is one of the most beautifully performed Schumann discs I have had the pleasure of hearing, regardless of vintage---an absolute winner in all respects. Three multi-sectional pieces are involved, all of them difficult of mood and character to capture and sustain. Haefliger's marked rhythmic sense, vigorous in the extraverted movements but also sufficiently free, perfectly displays the gesture of mid-19th-century romanticism, but it is his tender side that for me so wonderfully conveys the lyricism of Schumann. Haefliger in fact plays the reflective pieces as though they were Lieder, highly appropriate considering the sterling abilities of the pianist's father, the tenor Ernst Haefliger. Therefore, I write of singing, soaring lines, hoping this will convey the kind of poetry one can hear on this gorgeously rendered and reproduced disc."

-- Beth Jacques, Stereophile

Selections recorded on June 15-18, 1991.

William Kapell Edition, Vol. 6: Bach: Partita No. 4 - Suite

This release under the title "American Masters 2" has Bernstein conducting works by three composers who influenced him during his college years at Harvard. Marc Blitzstein's 'Airborne Symphony' is a near-oratorio scored for orchestra, piano, chorus, vocal soloists, and narrator (in this recording, Orson Welles). The work was commissioned during World War II in 1943, and is divided into sections that begin with the "Theory of Flight" and follow the history of aircraft through the war itself. There are theatrical and humorous qualities, as in "Air Force: Ballad of Hurry Up" a sophisticated piece whose effect is simple. It is an interesting and likable work that Bernstein periodically rescued from obscurity, as in this 1966 recording.
Walter Piston's ballet, 'The Incredible Flutist' is one of his most popular works. The suite on this recording is brilliantly fun, but not without depth. It derives its energy from theatricality as well as complexity and lyricism.
The Prelude for Orchestra by Edward Hill is an American-style symphonic work, recalling in its partly tonal edge and style the better-known works of Samuel Barber. In the hands of Bernstein the piece is strong and complements this program of mid-twentieth century American Composers.