Bach Collegium Japan was first noticed internationally for undertaking the huge project of recording the complete church cantatas of J. S. Bach. Although the ensemble's discography consists of predominately vocal works, the participating instrumentalists have attracted acclaim ever since the outset. On the present offering, it is Bach's two great sets of orchestral works that form the programme and the choir of the BCJ is silent. Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki first recorded the Brandenburg Concertos in 2000, but now return to these great works. The new recording took place in the recently completed MUZA Kawasaki Hall, a venue that is highly suitable to an approach focussing on the chamber music qualities of this music.

In four of the concertos Masaaki Suzuki has chosen to replace the traditional cello with the violoncello da spalla - a smaller instrument played horizontally on the shoulder or held against the breast. The instrument has already featured in the BCJ Cantata series, and opens for new possibilities in timbre, for instance in Concerto No. 6, where the violoncello da spalla blends particularly well with the two solo violas and the viola da gambas. Making a new recording also provided the opportunity to record these in many ways multidimensional works in 5.0 Surround Sound, releasing them as hybrid SACDs. This is also the format of the included recordings of the Orchestral Suites, originally released in 2005 to great and universal acclaim.

The German website klassik.com called the 2-CD set 'incredibly perfect Bach!' and named it one of the reference recordings of these oft-recorded works, while the Financial Times (UK) listed it as one of the outstanding classical discs of 2005, remarking that 'Suzuki's traversal of the Bach orchestral suites combine scholarship and style without compromising the music's expressiveness.' In the Brandenburg Concertos and the Suites, Bach explored an Italian and a French genre respectively, and in his inimitable way transcended the boundaries of both. This attractive box at a very advantageous price combines both sets performed by one of the leading Baroque ensembles in high fidelity recordings - not to be missed! Please note: The music on this Hybrid Super Audio CD can be played back in Stereo (CD and SACD) as well as in 5.0 Surround sound (SACD).

The three works for violin and orchestra gathered here testify both to the versatility of Vadim Gluzman as a performer and to the richness and variety of the influences at play in American music during the 20th century. Like the text by Plato which inspired it, Bernstein's Serenade, from 1954, is a series of statements in praise of love. Musically it is typical of its maker, with allusions both to his own music and to works by Bartók, Mendelssohn and Stravinsky, and with a hint of jazz in the finale. Composed some thirty years earlier, Ernest Bloch's Baal Shem turns to the Jewish culture of Eastern Europe, dealing specifically with aspects of the Chassidic movement. Its second movement, Nigun (Improvisation) is probably Bloch's most famous work for the violin, an attempt to recreate the ecstasy generated by fervent religious singing. Samuel Barber, on the other hand, was deeply fascinated by the music of J.S. Bach and Brahms, although this is not always obvious in his music. His Violin Concerto, which he began to compose in Switzerland in 1939, while war was breaking out in Europe, has been described as having 'a chastened and aristocratic classic style'. That violinist Vadim Gluzman possesses the musical convictions and the supreme command of his instrument to do justice to all of these works will be clear to anyone who has encountered his previous concerto disc, with works by Tchaikovsky and Glazunov. The recipient of numerous distinctions, it was glowingly reviewed, for instance in International Record Review: 'The variety of tone, lithe, sinuous and febrile ... is truly exceptional.' Gluzman is here supported by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP) under John Neschling, a team that has demonstrated its versatility on a number of recordings ranging from Villa-Lobos' Choros to Liszt's piano concertos.

This program of Spanish and European music with exclusively Spanish texts compiled from several European sources features several world première recordings. The debut CD of Spanish soprano Raquel Andueza and her group La Galanía, this recording was unanimously granted a “Festclásica 2011” award given by the Spanish Association of Classical Music Festivals. La Galanía, founded 2010, aims to perform 17th and 18th century Baroque music based on carefully researched historical principles.

This new release from ICA Classics presents the first recording of Antonio Pappano conducting Elgar with his Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. For this program, Elgar’s First Symphony is paired with his Concert Overture ‘In the South,’ which was inspired by the conposer’s holiday in Alassio during 1903-1904. Both of these works had been out of the orchestra’s repertoire for more than a century until Pappano stated that he was “on a mission to bring this music back to its place of birth,” knowing that his performers had “natural Italianate passion and lyricism,” which would be perfect for these works. Pappano’s 2012 London season opened with Elgar. Reviewers had only positive things to say: “…His surging striving account caught all the nervous energy of this elegia work… Now he should take the symphony… to his own orchestra [in Rome].”

This fabulous new album, co-produced with Bavarian Radio, presents top German piccolo virtuoso Natalie Schwaabe in an international program of recent works for ‘the screaming twig’ as the instrument is sometimes known in orchestral circles. No screaming here, though the instrument’s upper stratospheric registers are fully exploited – these works are modern and freely composed but will still be attractive to conservative listeners with elements of traditional tonality and jazz and utilizing the middle and lower ranges of the piccolo which can be ethereal and smooth. The range of pieces is wide, from the somber ‘Lachrymose’ for solo piccolo, to the bright and buzzy sonata by Gyöngyosi, and the new setting of The Pied Piper story by Kanefzky. Natalie Schwaabe was born in Tokyo, grew up in Hong Kong, studied in London and obtained her degree in Munich where she is now based, playing with the prestigious Bavarian Radio Symphony as well as enjoying a busy solo and chamber music career. Her regular partner Jan Philip Schulze is carving out a fine reputation in the new-music field with recordings for several labels, and is sought after to accompany many top vocalists.

Classical Music

In the late 1980s, William Christie and Les Arts Florissants recorded galvanizing versions of two masterpieces of early English opera: Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and The Fairy Queen. These two seminal interpretations are now available again, coupled for the first time in a single boxed set.

While the music that Mozart is most known for was composed in his late period after his move to Vienna, the composer spent two thirds of his life in Salzburg and while living there wrote around 470 of the 626 compositions listed in the Kochel catalogue. 45 of Mozart’s symphonies were composed in Salzburg, a great deal of which were written for the Prince-Archbishop, who was Mozart’s employer. Three of these symphonies, Nos. 21, 27, and 34, are featured on this recording. The Haydn Sinfonietta Wien, conducted by Manfred Huss, performs on period instruments for this recording. Their previous recordings for BIS have garnered them critical acclaim: “never less than lustrous” (International Record Review) “idiomatic and alert” (Classica-Repertoire).

Classical Music

For me, the real "Best of Satie" would include at least excerpts from the opera Socrate and the ballet Parade. But this is a nice overview of the eccentric composer's keyboard gems, culled from Klára Körmendi's excellent Satie cycle for Naxos. Many pianists take Satie's wistful melodic sensibility as license to let the music wallow and droop. Körmendi will have none of that. Her sensitive, expertly colored playing brings uncommon, refreshing urgency to the first three Nocturnes, the well-worn Gymnopédies, and all six Gnossiennes. Moreover, she has a way of making the composer's idiosyncratic expressive indications audible without hitting listeners over the head. The disc concludes with the Gymnopédies in their familiar orchestrations by Debussy (Nos. 1 & 3) and Roland-Manuel (No. 2). The French orchestra plays rather patchily in the first but redeems itself with some very nice playing in the other two. No. 3 features a lovely oboe soloist surrounded by silvery, reed-organ-like high strings. If you're looking for a Satie piano music start-up kit, this is the one. --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

This fourth volume in Marin Alsop’s acclaimed Prokofiev symphonic cycle features two of his most viscerally exciting works. Using material salvaged from his opera The Fiery Angel, the Third Symphony was hailed by Serge Koussevitzky at its 1929 première as ‘the best symphony since Tchaikovsky’s Sixth’. Originally commissioned as a ballet by Sergey Dyagilev but rejected as un-danceable, the Scythian Suite has become a popular orchestral showpiece, while Prokofiev retained a lifelong fondness for his dark-hued early symphonic sketch Autumn.

Review:

Even die-hard fans will admit that Prokofiev's seven symphonies aren't always magnificent and Marin Alsop's elegant lucidity provides only a partial solution to the problem. She gets unfailingly good string playing, often more sensitively nuanced than that of her rivals, but her Sao Paulo team does tend to 'normalize' the invention, smoothing away rough edges in a manner that not everyone will find idiomatic. Still, Alsop's reading works on its own terms, and if she makes the music sound as much like Roussel as Stravinsky one can perhaps discern why Serge Diaghilev chose to reject the Scythian Suite as insufficiently Russian.

– Gramophone

LET THE BRIGHT SERAPHIM • Christopher Monks, cond; Elin Manahan Thomas (sop); Crispian Steele-Perkins (tpt); Armonico Consort (period instruments) • SIGNUM SAGCD289 (59:07)

BACH Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, BWV 51. A. SCARLATTI Su le sponde del Tebro. TELEMANN Trumpet Concerto in D. HANDEL Music for the Vauxhall Gardens: HWV 63, 14, 42, 20, 74. Water Music: Overture; Air; Hornpipe. Samson, HWV 57, “Let the Bright Seraphim”

When does an early-music ensemble go Pop? Or Mod for that matter? The answer may well be when it’s Armonico Consort, with its very eclectic and sometimes even bizarre (though they call it “original”) programming, which features themed concerts designed to attract new audiences to classical music. To read the description of their concerts so far, with rubrics such as “Too Hot to Handel,” “Naked Byrd,” or “Monteverdi’s Flying Circus,” one wonders whether this is a revamped branding in order to be hip, or if someone in Britain has gone off the reservation. Whatever one’s view of this sort of advertising, there is little doubt that they have made some impressive achievements, such as founding the AC Academy for interactive music education, which will no doubt assure a bright future for music in England, at least. This disc seems to take a more sedate view, using George Fredrick Handel’s famous aria from Samson as the title. Here, the ensemble under Christopher Monks partners with soprano Elin Manahan Thomas and trumpeter Crispian Steele-Perkins, both well-known superstars in the early-music world, to create a program of favorites.

The cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen is a tried and true soprano display piece, whose final Alleluia is a magnificent tour de force for both voice and clarion trumpet, especially since it follows on to the sedate cantus firmus colophon “Sei Lob und Preis” in typically Bachian cantata style. The Scarlatti cantata too is a favorite for sopranos seeking to outdo the great Farinelli, while every trumpeter worth anything has in his or her repertory the Telemann D-Major Trumpet Concerto, with its flashy runs and showy sequences. Where the program departs from the ordinary is with the so-called “Music for the Vauxhall Gardens,” a paean towards the popular outdoors venue in London during the 18th century, where summer concerts were given in a rather impressive pavilion. The five pieces include a sort of greatest hits parade compiled by Steele-Perkins after similar bits and pieces published in the 1740s by John Walsh, concluding with some works from the Water Music , once ascribed to Handel but now probably by one of his subordinates, John Grano (1692-1748), and of course the title aria. As a concert, it is recognizable, even perhaps a bit well worn, since almost all of the pieces have been recorded previously by people such as Steele-Perkins himself and Emma Kirkby.

The result is something that purists might find redundant, though the performances themselves are quite good. Thomas has a nice, vibrant voice that blends well with the period instruments, and the Consort is both in tune and has some nice phrasing in these warhorses, which is the mark of absolute professionalism. Steele-Perkins performs ably for his part, with just enough variability to be able to discern the valveless quality of his natural trumpet, performing the various virtuoso parts with agility and alacrity. My hesitancy in the face of such a performance is that most who are knowledgeable of the period will not find these renditions out of the ordinary, even though they are expert. Moreover, the program itself will only appeal to a certain audience since many listeners will already have equally expert recordings of entire pieces at hand, though perhaps not all on one disc. Still, if one is just beginning to explore either the world of the Baroque, or even classical music at all, this should have some appeal.

FANFARE: Bertil van Boer

David DeBoor Canfield is not only a composer, he is also an author, critic, editor, annotator, publisher, recording producer, researcher, archivist, violinist, scholar, theologian, and professor at a pastors’ college. For the last decade, Canfield has taken on the project of his ‘After’ Series- that is, composing pieces in the style of other composers. Canfield’s first work in this series is featured on this disc- Concerto after Gliere. The piece for alto saxophone and orchestra was completed in 2007, and has been performed over 100 times throughout the world. In addition to Concerto after Gliere, this release also contains Concerto after Tchaikovsky and Rhapsody after Gershwin. On composing after other people, Canfield writes, “although I don’t have the slightest delusion about being another Tchaikovsky, Gershwin or Gliere, since I have the technique to fill these gaps and am willing to do so, why not? […] If my music in whatever style brings enjoyment to performers and audiences, I shall be satisfied, and grateful to God.”

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Shostakovich’s First Symphony propelled the teenage composer to international prominence, its emotional range and innovative orchestration marking him as a daring and precocious talent on the scene. The Third Symphony, ‘The First of May’, originally intended as part of a symphonic cycle inspired by dates on the revolutionary calendar, has been described as ‘a reckless and at times chaotic accommodation between modernist intent and revolutionary fervour’. ‘Thrilling, perfect, essential…the modern reference recording’. (Classicstoday.com on Naxos 8.572461 / Symphony No. 10)

WAGNER: Symphonic Excerpts from Parsifal / TCHAIKOVSKY: Symp

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

Also available on standard CD

RAVEL Alborada del gracioso. Pavane pour une infante défunte. Rapsodie espagnole. Pièce en forme de habanera. Shéhérazade: Ouverture de féerie. Menuet antique. Boléro • Leonard Slatkin, cond; Lyon Natl O • NAXOS 8.572887 (67:37); NAXOS NBD0030 (Blu-ray audio: 67:38)


In the last issue, I found myself enormously impressed by Slatkin’s Berlioz Symphonie fantastique , so when I received his latest CD labeled Ravel Orchestral Works 1, I was expecting him to do as right by one French composer as he did by another. That must sound pretty silly, I know, but in the event, Slatkin doesn’t disappoint. He now presides over a French orchestra, but to listen to these performances, you wouldn’t know that it wasn’t the Philharmonic of London, Berlin, or New York. That’s very high praise for both the Lyon National Orchestra and for what Slatkin has achieved with the ensemble in so short a time. But it doesn’t necessarily make his Ravel special or more desirable than that by other conductors and orchestras.


Unlike Debussy, whose orchestral output is fairly limited, Ravel actually wrote a good deal of original music for orchestra, but no small volume of it is bound up in his early vocal and choral works, and is therefore not usually included in complete collections of scores that are exclusively for orchestra. But then any collection of Ravel’s purely orchestral works, which were originally conceived for orchestra, are mainly ballet and choreographed scores that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and only one of them is on this disc— Boléro . But what of the other famous pieces included here?


Alborada del gracioso is the fourth movement from Miroirs , originally a suite for solo piano. It and two other numbers from the five-movement suite were subsequently orchestrated by Ravel himself. Pavane pour une infante défunte is a student piece Ravel wrote for solo piano in 1899 while under the tutelage of Fauré at the Paris Conservatory. Ravel orchestrated the Pavane himself, but not until 1910. Rapsodie espagnole was originally composed as a piece for piano duet in 1907, then orchestrated a year later. Ravel probably projected this to be an orchestral work from the start, but wanted to take his time working out the orchestration. Pièce en forme de habanera is, and was, as far as Ravel was concerned, a wordless vocalise for voice and piano. It exists in a number of instrumental arrangements—the present one is adapted for violin—none of which is by Ravel. Shéhérazade: Ouverture de féerie , like the Rapsodie espagnole , was originally sketched for piano, but intended for orchestra. It was destined to become the overture to an opera by the same name which Ravel worked on in 1898 but never completed. Menuet antique is another piece composed for solo piano, this one in 1895. Ravel did get around to orchestrating it himself, but not until 1929. And finally, Boléro . This is the one piece on Volume 1 of Slatkin’s Ravel survey, which, as far as we know, went straight to its orchestral form without passing through a piano version. Interestingly though, it made a backward migration to piano when Ravel subsequently produced two keyboard arrangements, one for two pianos and one for piano four-hands. The piece was commissioned by the famous dancer, Ida Rubinstein—she who played the saint in Debussy’s The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian and scandalized the Parisian archdiocese. It was bad enough to cast a woman in the role of a male saint, but a Jewish woman, and a lesbian to boot, went too far.


It seems that Ravel’s Boléro caused a flap of its own, but it wasn’t an ecclesiastical one. The work was wildly successful from its very first performance at the Paris Opéra in 1928. But not long after, Ravel and Toscanini got into a dispute over the conductor’s tempo when he led the New York Philharmonic in the piece in Paris during the orchestra’s European tour. The two men exchanged heated words backstage, Ravel criticizing Toscanini for taking the piece too fast and not following his indicated tempo. Toscanini is alleged to have replied, “When I play it at your tempo, it’s not effective.” To which Ravel shot back, “Then don’t play it.” I’m afraid I’m with Toscanini on this one. For me, Boléro can’t be played too fast, the faster the better. Much as I take pleasure in most of Ravel’s music and can appreciate Boléro ’s mechanics, it’s one of those few works, like Orff’s Carmina Burana , that induces in me a feeling of revulsion. So, by all means, get it over with as quickly as possible.


Those who prefer their Boléro drawn out will no doubt like Slatkin’s reading of it, but Ravel might have the opposite complaint he voiced to Toscanini. The score is marked 72 to the quarter note. I tested the current performance against my metronome and found that Slatkin begins at 67 and gradually speeds up, finally reaching 72 about 30 seconds from the end. But this is not what Ravel wanted; he was clear that he wanted a steady beat maintained throughout.


As indicated at the outset, this is a finely performed program of Ravel favorites. The Lyon orchestra has the full measure of this music in its DNA, producing the veritable kaleidoscope of colors, both bright and pastel, that Ravel calls for. And unless you’re a Boléro fanatic, I wouldn’t be too hard on Slatkin for his slight deviation from the composer’s explicit instructions. A conductor’s job, after all, is to offer an interpretation. The recording, too, is quite good, though not as dynamic as the Berlioz Fantastique I reviewed from this same source. I’m inclined to recommend this release, but as a nicety rather than a necessity, to those in the market for a new sampler of Ravel favorites.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Siena, Pisa, and Villa Luxuro, Nervi.

ENGLISH STRING MINIATURES, Vol. 2

Neeme Järvi has been recording for Chandos for several decades now, especially with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, with which he has made more than 100 CDs. Many of these recordings have received tremendous critical acclaim and include several Gramophone Award Winners.

This is his second Chandos recording with the Residentie Orchestra The Hague, of which he is chief conductor. The first, of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony (CHSA5080) was released in April to excellent acclaim. Gramophone wrote: ‘Järvi is too good a musician not to take his players with him. Indeed the Dutch musicians display a certain daredevil nonchalance as they breeze their way through the epic 635-bar finale.’

Mahler’s Seventh Symphony is perhaps the least well known of all Mahler’s symphonies. Its five movements were written over a period of two years, 1904 – 05, and scored and revised in 1906. The symphony has no programme, but the two serenade movements were influenced by the German romanticism of the poetry of Eichendorff, and elements of the fairytale, the macabre, and the sentimental permeate these movements.

Even though the symphony is imbued with a richness of melody, and bold and original harmonies, it is perhaps the most enigmatic of all Mahler’s symphonies. It begins with a striking funeral march, which develops into a powerful allegro, though the music is at the same time full of ‘dream-like’ elements. These dream-like fantasy elements pervade the serenade movements, which are separated by an exciting central scherzo, and the symphony ends with a vigorously contrapuntal finale. Perhaps the symphony can be seen as a journey from darkness to light, from the B minor gloom of the beginning, to the blaze of C major at the end. The journey is fascinating and very rewarding.

Since its founding, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) has maintained an unfaltering commitment to commissioning new music, resulting in substantial new works from a diverse array of composers including Aaron Copland and Philip Glass. For the 2015-16 season, three exciting international composers originating from three different continents, Sebastian Currier, Thierry Escaich and Zhou Tian, were each commissioned to write a new concerto for orchestra, showcasing the virtuosity, style, and sound of the CSO, thus furthering a genre championed by the likes of Bartók and Lutoslawski. The resulting three works featured on this live recording represent the culmination of this exciting project, and once again affirms the CSO’s core value of being a place of experimentation.

LIMITED EDITION. SINGLE PRESSING ONLY. From a landmark Jan�cek album to a previously unpublished Schubert/Mozart recording, this collection presents the Deutsche Grammophon, British and American Decca, and Westminster legacy of Rudolf Firku�n� (1912-1994), acclaimed by Stereo Review as 'the outstanding champion of Czech piano music on the international circuit'. 30 years after his death (on 19 July 1994), there are still works in the piano repertoire that have become indelibly associated with the artistry of Rudolf Firku�n�: most of all, the piano works of Leo� Jan�cek, whom Firku�n� knew as a young student in Prague. The pianist went on to make his US debut in 1941, when he played not a repertoire warhorse but the neglected Piano Concerto by Dvor�k, under Sir Thomas Beecham. Firku�n� made six recordings of the Concerto across the course of a long career; the Westminster version newly remastered here was made in 1963 and conducted by L�zsl� Somogyi, and has often since been placed at the head of the work's discography along with the version recorded Sviatoslav Richter and Carlos Kleiber. Firku�n�'s 1960 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition also attracted favourable comparison with Richter for it's plain-spoken virtuosity. It seemed to listeners at the time that the pianist's patrician technique and finely-wrought musicality had been rounded out by a new passion to his playing in what became the middle of his career. Although record labels tended to pigeonhole Firku�n� in Czech repertoire, his sympathies were wide, as the span of this set suggests. His 1973 recording of Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto on Decca (with the New Philharmonia under Uri Segal) has been forgotten, though reviewers at the time thought it was finer than the more familiar Capitol recording with William Steinberg. A 1974 album of sonatas further underlines his Beethovenian credentials, though he had already established them on Decca in a partnership with the violinist Erica Morini which yielded four albums. As well as four Beethoven sonatas, they made enduringly elegant recordings of sonatas by Mozart, Brahms and Franck. By ranging in this way across Firku�n�'s remarkably sensitive reflexes as a concerto, chamber and solo pianist, this Eloquence set demonstrates the truth of Tully Potter's verdict: 'Of all the notable 20th-century Czech pianists, Firku�n� was surely the greatest'. Perhaps most valuable of all is the inclusion of previously unreleased recordings of Mozart's Dupont Variations and Schubert's final Piano Sonata in B flat D.960. These were made in January 1963 for the American branch of Decca, but then shelved for reasons unknown. They present Firku�n� at the peak of his powers, his phrasing typically natural and unostentatious. An essay by Jed Distler surveys Firku�n�'s life and career in the context of the albums newly remastered within this Original Jackets collection.