REVIEW:

This is the world premiere recording of Hindemith’s Piano Music with Orchestra (piano left hand), commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein in 1922 and completed within six months. Wittgenstein—a musical reactionary—never played it; the commissioning contract gave him exclusive performance rights for his lifetime, and he prohibited anyone else from doing so. After his death in 1961, his estate ignored all requests about the piece; in fact, it had lost the score. A flawed copy of the original manuscript turned up in a Pennsylvania farmhouse in 2002 and was successfully coordinated with sketches in the Hindemith archives. Fleisher gave the first performance with the Berlin Philharmonic in December 2004. Hindemith was just emerging from his avant-garde youth at that time. The radical firebrand still shows up in three of the four movements, which are played without pause.

The introduction is aggressive, loud, and brassy, but it does suggest the more staid Hindemith to come. The second movement is filled with outbursts from a large percussion group. A mysterious slow movement features a long duet between piano and English horn, which later gives way to a flute; it is reminiscent of the aborted love scene in the composer’s 1926 opera Cardillac. Fleisher believes that the movement’s basso continuo, which consists of 12 quarter notes (repeated) and uses 11 of the 12 tones, was poking fun at Schoenberg’s recently devised dodecaphonic system. The finale returns to the wild, nose-thumbing style of Hindemith’s 1920 opera Das Nusch-Nuschi.

Fleisher “owns” the left-hand repertoire, and is in this case the unique interpreter. He convinces one listener that this is exactly how the piece should go, revealing everything it has to say. The Curtis orchestra supplies solid, reliable accompaniment. If a few solos are not quite as beautiful as those from the New York Philharmonic, Eschenbach’s views of the music seem more sensitive than Maazel’s and the students more comfortable with the 85-year-old music than the New Yorkers.

Dvorak’s “New World” is played to top professional standards—the strings are gorgeous, as is Rebekah Daley’s first-desk French horn—but I don’t find the reading very interesting. The recorded sound is merely decent and a bit congested, far from the brilliance Ondine achieved for Martinu’s Memorial to Lidice, also a live performance, but admittedly an SACD. The booklet lists every player but oddly gives no credit for English horn, despite that instrument’s important solos in both works. The program writers for both the New York Philharmonic and this disc may have had no opportunity to study Hindemith’s score or hear his music, as they concentrate on its fascinating history.

--James H. North, Fanfare

Several legendary but long-unavailable recordings freshly remastered in a comprehensive 'original covers' set of Ruggiero Ricci's recordings for American Decca during the 1960s. With definitive accounts of the Tchaikovsky Concerto and the Paganini Caprices recorded in 1950, Ruggiero Ricci became established as a Decca artist in the early days of LP. A decade later he began recording for Decca's American division, and between 1960 and 1970 he made nine albums of solo, recital and concerto repertoire which are gathered here in one set for the first time. Ricci had already recorded some of the solo Bach sonatas and partitas, but in 1967 he made his first complete set for American Decca. Tully Potter's illuminating booklet essay explains how a snowstorm forced Ricci to hole up in a hotel for several days prior to the sessions, and his devoted his time to perfecting his interpretations of Bach. Ricci was renowned for the astonishing virtuosity that enabled him to tackle the Caprices and Concertos of Paganini without breaking sweat - he became the first great exponent of the composer in the LP era with his Decca recordings - and he remade the Second Concerto for American Decca in 1964 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conducted by Max Rudolf: one of several albums here receiving it's first international release on CD. The American Decca legacy of Ricci also included several 'concept albums' which soon became collector's items. The set opens with the first of them from 1964, on which the violinist plays The Four Seasons of Vivaldi on four different Strads, one for each concerto, with a string ensemble fielding another ten Strads for a uniquely rich string sound. Two years earlier, Ricci had made "The Glory of Cremona", which saw him play fifteen priceless violins in sessions attended by two security guards. Even these two projects pale beside the astonishing virtuosity on display in "Bravura!", which collects some of Ricci's favourite "knuckle-breakers" by Paganini, Wieniawski and Ernst. The set closes with another album new to CD, "Violin Plus 1" from 1970, which paired Ricci with five different musicians for a unique display of his versatility, accompanying soprano Lee Venora in Villa-Lobos, taking the spotlight in a Saint-Sa�ns Fantaisie for violin and harp, and meeting David Nadien as an equal in the Sonata for Two Violins by Prokofiev. As well as one of the last century's most spell-binding technicians on the violin, Ricci was a complete musician, to whom this set pays eloquent tribute.

Mahler initially had a hard time of it. A few compositional attempts from his youth did not turn out to his liking and were destroyed. When Das klagende Lied finally met with his own critical favor, he stated, "My first work in which I have found myself as 'Mahler'!" Here it is heard in colorful contrast to the fragment from his last symphony and the "Blumine" andante originally intended for the first symphony. The Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn under its resourceful conductor Stefan Blunier is in top form on this fascinatingly detailed look at Mahler's compositional workshop.

The journey starts in Switzerland, in the canton of Thurgau, leading from Steckborn and the Bodensee to the Rhine Falls. From Styria, in Austria, comes Hochosterwitz Castle and from Bavaria Weikersheim Castle, the latter intercut with wild life from the Austrian Assling Nature Park. The tour ends amid the strangely shaped mountains of the Dolomites in Southern Tyrol, a region divided between Austria and Italy. In a remarkable way Mahler, in his symphonies and songs, has seemed to reflect the world of today in all it's bewildering variety and has now won an established place in concert repertoire. Distinguished as a conductor, his fame as a composer has grown over the years since his death. The music included here is Mahler's ymphony No. 1, nick-named Titan, not for it's massive power, but after the book by Jean Paul, a strong influence over earlier romantics and over Mahler at this stage in his career. The symphony breathes the spirit of the Austrian countryside, reflected in Mahler's songs.

Newly released as part of the Archipel Desert Island Collection, this disc captures in concert one of the two greatest and most important of Russian pianists to emerge from the Soviet Union after WWII, Emil Gilels (1916-85). + From a March, 1963 Milan concert comes Chopin’s First Concerto and the Schubert/Kabalevsky re-imagined Fantasy in F minor, D940, an orchestrated version written specially for Gilels. + Also to be heard is a live 1951 performance from Firenze of Mozart’s C minor sonata, K457.

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WITT Symphony in C, “Jena.” Symphony in A. Flute Concerto in G, op. 8 • Patrick Gallois (fl, cond); Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä • NAXOS 8.572089 (69:37)


Born in the same year as Beethoven, the longer-lived Friedrich Witt (1770–1836) is acknowledged today, if a bit shamefacedly, as the composer of the so-called “Jena” Symphony once attributed to Beethoven. Not a single note of the score changed between the time it was believed to be by the great Ludwig Van and when it was discovered not to be; yet critical opinion of the work plummeted like the stock market on the report of bad news. Funny how that happens—yesterday buy, today sell, though nothing but the name of the note issuer of record has changed.


Recordings of Witt’s works represent but the tip of a sizeable iceberg; fewer than 10 of his works, as far as I can tell, have been recorded. Yet he is believed to have written as many as 23 symphonies, numerous concertos for various instruments, a considerable volume of chamber music, a number of operas, and an oratorio, Der leidende Heiland (The Suffering Savior), which secured him an appointment as Kapellmeister at the court of the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg in 1802.


Prior to this, however—sometime around 1792 or 1793—while Witt was serving as cellist at the court of Oettingen-Wallerstein and taking composition lessons from Antonio Rosetti, he laid eyes upon four of Haydn’s latest “London” Symphonies—Nos. 93, 96, 97, and 98—which Haydn had sent to Wallerstein. This, according to Keith Anderson’s booklet note, and other biographical sources I’ve come across, was Witt’s moment of dawning light, a light that, paradoxically, would eventually dim his own lamp in the pages of music history. Witt’s worst “crime,” it seems, was not simply imitating Haydn to the point of near plagiarism, but doing so at a time when Beethoven was busy “liberating music” from the strictures of classical content and style, if not quite yet classical form. In other words, Witt chose the path of the arch-conservative. History thereby ended up lumping him together with the lesser contemporaries of Haydn and Mozart instead of with the lesser contemporaries of Beethoven and Schubert, whom Witt outlived by the better part of a decade. Which lumping would have been better for Witt’s posthumous reputation I’m not sure; neither changes the music he wrote.


Witt’s G-Major Flute Concerto, newly recorded here, has been recorded before. It was included on an MDG Gold disc that also contained the composer’s Sixth, so-called “Turkish,” and Ninth symphonies. Johannes Moesus led the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, and the concerto was played by flutist Susanne Barner. That release, which I happen to have, was reviewed by Barry Brenesal in Fanfare 29:2.


As for the “Jena” Symphony, don’t believe everything you find, or don’t find, at ArkivMusic. As of this writing, the site lists only the current Naxos recording. But the work has appeared on disc before as far back as the 1950s. An LP on the Concert Hall label with Walter Goehr conducting the Netherlands Philharmonic has been transferred to CD, and there is a downloadable Deutsche Grammophon version with Franz Konwitschny. Versions on Urania with Rolf Kleinert leading the Leipzig Philharmonic and with Wolfgang Hoffmann leading the Rhineland Philharmonia on Musical Heritage Society also exist.


In hindsight, it’s hard to imagine how Witt’s “Jena” Symphony, written sometime before 1796, could ever have been mistaken for a work by Beethoven. Even Beethoven’s earliest orchestral works, namely the first two piano concertos, present an entirely different sound world from Witt’s symphony. Beethoven’s melodic contours are different, as is his way of writing for winds and of extending and developing his thematic material. Witt’s symphony is pure Haydn. Listen to the first movement’s second theme beginning at 2:13. In shape and style, it’s close to a dead ringer for the first movement’s second theme in Haydn’s D-Major Symphony No. 93, which was one of the four “London” Symphonies that Witt had access to at Oettingen-Wallerstein.


The Adagio likewise proceeds in Haydnesque melodic phrases and harmonic gestures, while the Menuetto is big on formal flourishes, curtsies, and that big ballroom-band sound common to so many of Haydn’s minuet movements. It contains none of the sprinting, whiplash elements that, in Beethoven’s hands, would transform the minuet into a scherzo. The last movement, a spirited Allegro, would have brought a London audience to its feet, just as Haydn’s finales did. If you love Haydn (and who doesn’t?), and his 106 symphonies aren’t enough for you, you can listen to Witt’s “Jena” Symphony and pretend it’s Haydn’s 107th, or you can listen to it and appreciate it for what it is, the work of a master copycat.


The A-Major Symphony, written perhaps a year or two before the “Jena,” seems somehow lighter and fleeter of foot. A passage or two in the first movement sounds as if it’s about to lapse into the bubbly, scintillating passagework one hears in Mozart’s “Linz” Symphony. The one surprise Witt has in store for us is that he places his Menuetto in second position, before the Andante. Though not unprecedented—Haydn did it in his C-Major Symphony No. 32—the practice was uncommon before 1830. Beethoven, in fact, didn’t reverse the order of the two inner movements in any of his symphonies until the Ninth, though it’s arguable whether the Eighth even has a slow movement at all.


Though Haydn wrote close to four dozen concertos for various instruments, the medium was not his in the way it was Mozart’s, and Witt seemed instinctively to realize this, turning instead to Mozart’s concertos as the model for his own G-Major Flute Concerto of 1806. With so few of Witt’s works available on record, it would be rash to say that this concerto is his crowning achievement. I think it’s safe to say, however, that it displays a wealth of melodic invention, ample virtuosic challenges for the soloist, a richness of orchestral writing, and an originality of ideas that seemed lacking in the symphonies. With as fine a flute concerto as this, I’m surprised that flutists aren’t lining up to add it to their repertoires.


Until I received this recording, I thought that Susanne Barner on the aforementioned MDG disc was perfectly fine, but compared to renowned flutist Patrick Gallois on this new Naxos CD, she sounds rather laid-back and a bit mechanical in her delivery. Gallois sparkles and tosses off Witt’s arpeggios, runs, and roulades with panache. The Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä, under Gallois’s direction, also sounds more spirited and alert, not to mention better recorded than the Hamburgers under Moesus.


Taking that into account, along with the fact that this, to my knowledge, is the only modern recording currently available of Witt’s “Jena” Symphony, Gallois becomes the entry of choice. A selling point of the MDG is that it contains two of Witt’s other symphonies not duplicated on the current disc. So, I shall be keeping both; but for those wanting to sample Witt’s work that has netted the most ink—the “Jena”—and what may be one of his most masterly works—the flute concerto—Naxos’s CD is a no-brainer and a bargain to boot.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins


Hands up who has heard of Friedrich Witt. Not many probably, for Witt seldom even makes it to the footnotes of musical history books. His main claim to fame is that his Symphony in C major - which is the first work on this recording - was once mistakenly attributed to Beethoven. In the early 1900s musical researchers uncovered the score and found the master’s name written next to two parts of the manuscript. Remembering that Beethoven himself had intimated that he had once attempted a symphony in C, the researchers put two and two together and got it wrong. It was left to H.C. Robbins Landon to prove that the work was really by Witt, a cellist and composer from Wallerstein.

Nevertheless, the Naxos tradition of bringing the obscure to light has paid off in this recording. The three works presented give a fascinating insight into the kind of music that was being written in the tin-pot courts of Germany while the likes of Beethoven were developing revolutionary new means of expression in Vienna. This does not mean that the music is poor. Quite the opposite. It is bold and attractive stuff.

The C major symphony (nicknamed ‘Jena’ after the city’s university, where the manuscript was discovered in 1909) was composed in 1796 and is clearly influenced by Haydn. This is no coincidence. It is known that in 1792 or 1793 Haydn sent four of his London symphonies - Nos. 93, 96, 97 and 98 - to Wallerstein, where Witt must have seen them. The opening allegro is upbeat and playful, with a touch of Haydn wit. The ensuing ‘Adagio cantabile’ contains an attractive melody, while the finale is a fast-paced race to the finish that makes good use of the comparatively large orchestra at Witt’s disposal - including timpani and trumpets, as well as flute, oboes, bassoons, horns and strings.

The Symphony in A major is less riveting. Written about six years earlier, it lacks Haydn’s positive influence and is hemmed in by simple and rather restrictive sonata-form structures. The Flute Concerto in G is much more satisfying. This work was published in 1806 and benefits from a fuller, heavier, orchestral sound. Nevertheless, it still inhabits the sound-world of Haydn and Mozart rather than ‘Eroica’ Beethoven. Patrick Gallois ably tackles the tricky flute solos while simultaneously conducting the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä. There is a quasi-Romantic opening to the second movement, followed by a fine flute melody which is developed and decorated. But the final Rondo brings us safely back to the late eighteenth century.

-- John-Pierre Joyce, MusicWeb International

Digifile. My Window is a collection of nine original compositions for solo piano, scenes painted using black and white as my palette. In some tracks I took works of art from great artists like David Hockney and Jan Vermeer as the seeds of inspiration, while others captured a scene from my childhood.

STRUM: MUSIC FOR STRINGS is the first album dedicated solely to the music of Jessie Montgomery and marks her debut as a leading composer and performer. Jessie has been recognized as an important emerging composer by the American Composers Orchestra, the Sphinx Organization, the Joyce Foundation and the Sorel Organization through generous grants and fellowships that support and promote her works.

This is the first volume in what will be a three disc series profiling the best Overtures and Symphonies in Italian Opera. This release tackles the 18th century, and features favorites from Vivaldi, Salieri, and the great Neapolitan School. Specialists in the repertoire conduct these masterpieces, including Antonio Florio, and Giuliano Carella.

The four great Mozart concertos on this new album from Elizabeth Sombart span from 1785 to 1791, his final year. The range of emotions these works convey is extraordinary. No.20 in D minor left the audience at the premiere reeling. It is terse, angry and full of passion. The C major concerto No.21 in contrast, is sunny, bright and full of optimism. No.23 in A major is bathed in a feeling of warm contentment. The wistful and heartfelt Adagio is especially striking. No.27 in B flat of 1791 is an autumnal work of intense sadness, almost as if the composer sensed his life was coming to an end.

In a continuation of his symphony cycle with the London Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda conducts two curious and contrasting symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich-the Sixth and Fifteenth. Following the success of his Fifth Symphony, all eyes were on Shostakovich to create a work that would measure up to it's predecessor. The Sixth was originally intended as an immense musical monument to Lenin, to be woven with heroic melodies and folk songs. Instead his audiences were surprised to hear a quite different result-a contemplative, restrained first movement that morphs puzzlingly into a ferocious ending. The Fifteenth is another of Shostakovich's musical enigmas, with inexplicable quotes from music by Rossini, Glinka and Wagner dotted throughout, alongside references to his own music from his younger years. Written in 1970-71 when the composer's health was declining, this final symphony is one of fond reflection. Together these unconventional works showcase Shostakovich's range as a composer-from wild exhuberance to quiet introspection.

Sergei Taneyev's Piano Quintet, op. 30 is as passionate as you could wish; it's a huge piece, lasting nearly 50 minutes. The first movement alone lasts nearly twenty. The idiom is late-Romantic, owing something to Brahms but to my mind it is much closer to César Franck, as it is as passionate a work as Franck’s piano quintet. A sombre, very chromatic opening leads to an anguished allegro. The themes are good. The piano writing is very rich, almost in concertante style, often in opposition to the strings as a group. The first movement is long and strenuous but varied in texture and with moments of relief. It builds to a tremendous climax at the beginning of the recapitulation with a pounding bass in the piano while the strings cry out over it. There is a stretto coda full of dark imaginings.

The scherzo is lighter in mood, featuring a theme of repeated notes. In contrast to the first movement the players here have to be light on their feet. The trio section is slower and features long, winding lines in the strings while the piano writing is less full, almost Mendelssohnian. We return to the opening music, if anything even faster than before.

The slow movement begins with a powerful theme in the bass which turns out to be that of a passacaglia, repeating under a melody which gradually takes shape above it, increasingly decorated. Apparently this is the first passacaglia in Russian music; it is certainly impressive.

The finale features a vivid theme in jagged rhythms and another with a soaring lyrical line. After a good deal of strenuous writing there is a very quiet passage. We return to more energetic writing before the close, with restless modulations suggesting a search for a conclusion which finally arrives with an evocation of the pealing of bells.

The coupling is a song-cycle, Taneyev’s last, which sets poems by Jakov Polonski (1819-1898) who is apparently highly regarded in Russia. These songs all deal with love, but my appreciation was hindered by the fact that they are sung in Russian, while the booklet gives them only in German, with neither the original Russian nor an English translation. While Olga Gollej does sterling work on the piano both here and in the quintet, Marina Prudenskaya, basically an operatic mezzo, indeed a Wagnerian, seems to have some difficulty fining her voice down to the scale needed for songs with piano. There is also a slight edge to her voice and a certain unsteadiness.

There are no such reservations about the performance of the Piano Quintet. The Leipzig String Quartet is a well established group who apply themselves to Taneyev’s work with enthusiasm. The recording maintains a good balance between the piano and the strings, in an acoustic suggestive of a small concert hall. There are now several other versions of this work to choose from; however, if you want the songs, this is currently the only available recording, which might sway the balance for some listeners.

– MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)

Guy Fishman, principal cellist of the Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra, presents a brilliant and energized period-instrument performance of seven miraculous and seminal concertos by the Red Priest, Antonio Vivaldi. Fishman made his Symphony Hall solo debut in 2005, and is in demand as an early music specialist in the United States and Europe, performing in recital and with Arcadia Players, Querelle des Bouffons, Boston Baroque, Apollo’s Fire, Emmanuel Music, the Boston Museum Trio, Les Violons du Roy, and El Mundo, among others. He has toured with the Mark Morris Dance Group and Natalie Merchant, and has appeared in recital with Dawn Upshaw, Eliot Fisk, Gil Kalish, and Kim Kashakashian. His playing has been praised as “plangent” by the Boston Globe, and “electrifying” by the New York Times. He plays a rare cello made in Rome in 1704 by David Tecchler. Founded in Boston in 1815, the Handel and Haydn Society is internationally acclaimed for its performances and recordings of Baroque and Classical music. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Harry Christophers, H+H’s Period Instrument Orchestra and Chorus delight more than 50,000 listeners each year at Symphony Hall and other leading venues in Boston.

Franz Ignaz Beck is increasingly acknowledged as one of the most forward-looking and inventive of mid-18th c. symphonists. A student of the celebrated Johann Stamitz, Beck was trained in Mannheim, a focal point of new approaches to orchestral writing. Although small in scale, his Op. 2 set includes some of the most striking and harmonically daring works of their kind from the period. Further Beck Symphonies may be heard on Naxos 8.553790, 8.554071, 8.570799, 8.573248 and 8.573249. Founded in 1976, Thirteen Strings is one of Canada’s leading chamber orchestras. Its repertoire is diverse, covering music from the baroque era to the 21st c. The Irish conductor Kevin Mallon became concertmaster with Le Concert Spirituel and Les Arts Florissants in Paris and led and directed The Irish Baroque Orchestra before moving to Canada to take up posts with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and the University of Toronto. In 1999 he founded the Aradia Ensemble, with whom he has toured widely and has made over 50 recordings for Naxos. In 2010 Mallon was appointed Music Director of Ottawa’s Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra.

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Import Hybrid-SACD pressing. Universal. 2023.

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THE VOICES OF LIVING STEREO VO

Music Director Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra bring to life the depth and brilliance of Brahms' two orchestral Serenades on this disc, recorded live at First Congregational Church, Berkeley, California. In the late 1850s, Brahms took on the post of choral director at the court of Lippe-Detmold. The position provided him access to an orchestra, and Brahms took full advantage of his good fortune. The two orchestral Serenades were the great composer's first efforts in the genre, and in the tradition of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, they are light-hearted, lyrical and sunny. The second is notable for scoring that excludes violins. In both works, color, charm, wit (and a nod to Classical formal traditions) are present in abundance.

Stunning performances of the complete choral works (to date) of award-winning Composer Frank Ticheli, “one of the most interesting and attractive composers on the scene today” (Lawrence A. Johnson). This program offers many world premiere recordings and a broad variety of lovely and accessible choral compositions. The superb renditions by the Pacific Chorale with the Pacific Symphony or the John Alexander Singers are all under the assured baton of John Alexander.

A Musical Journey - Crimea / Russia / Uzbekistan

Notated on four staves, as though intended for some unspecified set of instruments (or even voices), these thirteen erudite contrapuncti, four canons, and an unfinished triple fugue-incorporating the letters of Bach's name-are often considered to be his musical testament. Shrouded in myths traceable to it's very origins, The Art of Fugue is a puzzle for the performers and for the listeners alike, but when a brilliant string quartet takes up the challenge, a solution becomes obvious, and the music takes flight.

Set near Edinburgh in the middle of the 17th century, Il proscritto (1842) weaves a tragic tale of lost love and political treachery during the rule of Oliver Cromwell. Available for the first time on record, Il proscritto marks Mercadante's return to the bel canto lyricism while retaining the harmonic and orchestra richness found in his "reform" operas. Leading Opera Rara's cast is Mexican tenor Ram�n Vargas as Giorgio Argyll, who sings opposite Peruvian tenor Iv�n Ay�n-Rivas, winner of 2021 Operalia competition, as his rival Arturo Murray. Their mutual love interest is Malvina Douglas sung by American mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts. Performing the opera's standout bravura aria, Elizabeth DeShong sings the role of Malvina's brother, Odoardo. The cast is completed by Elizabeth DeShong, Sally Matthews, Goderdzi Janelidze, Susana Gaspar, Niall Anderson and Alessandro Fisher.

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