Classical Music

An excellent Metamorphosen and a disc well worth the purchasing.

This disc is a follow-up to the same team’s superb performance of Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie . I considered that disc to be possibly the single finest achievement in Naxos’s considerable crown - a performance both epic and humane aided by a superb recording and a magnificent orchestra steeped in Straussian tradition. So it was with considerable expectation that I listened to this performance of the Symphonia domestica. Strauss’s two big programme symphonies are the pieces most often dragged out by his detractors as the ultimate examples of his over-weening ego and penchant for excess. Certainly they are scored for huge orchestras and last over three quarters of an hour. The thing that jars for many people - particularly in the case of Symphonia Domestica - is the public flaunting of private, even intimate, details - some considering the passionate love music of the adagio voyeuristic and tasteless. I have always felt this is to miss the point - Strauss was a virtuoso of the orchestra in the way others are of the violin. Clearly he delighted in being able to bend it and the rules of form and composition to fit whatever musical plan he had in mind. I feel we as listeners should focus more on the Symphonia element and less on the Domestica. After all, we are quite happy to listen to the extended unconsummated passion of Tristan and Isolde which we accept because it is a story but reject the Strauss because it is considered reportage. This is all a red herring we have been thrown. If we knew nothing of the “programme” behind this piece we would be little worse off. This piece works symphonically better than many other works so labelled. It is down to Strauss’s brilliance that he creates a series of inter-related themes thereby showing a family relationship. These is then able to treat both dramatically and musically in a coherent manner which is logical to both creative strands. As I say, a virtuoso showing off! I absolutely adore this piece. For its unbridled passion and vigour and thrilling orchestration it has few equals; not all great music has to be profound.

So to the current performance, Many of the virtues that graced the earlier disc remain. The Weimar Staatskapelle is a magnificent orchestra. They have a rich burnished tone building on a resonant dark-hued bottom end that is ideal for this style of music. All solos are taken with great style and musicality. To my ear they combine the best of the warmth of the Berlin Philharmonic with the tonal personality of the Dresden Staatskapelle; this is an orchestra I would love to hear perform live. Wit’s approach to the work is essentially similar to that of the Alpine Symphony. He eschews passing drama in favour of a longer more epic stance. This paid dividends in the earlier recording - there was a cumulative power to his interpretation that felt absolutely right. Part of the explanation for that could be that that piece, in following one day in the mountains, could be seen as a metaphor for the traversal of life from birth to death. Symphonia domestica is about a single day and the hustle and bustle that is part of it. Hence there does need to be an urgency about much of the writing. Timings alone are never a good way to judge a performance but Wit, at nearly forty-seven minutes in length, is by some measure the slowest performance I have compared. Szell blazes his way through in just over forty-one - technically stunning - but a rather regimented household one can’t help but feel! Even that most affectionate of Straussians, Kempe, is a good couple of minutes faster.

Everything starts well with the character of the orchestra both corporately and individually immediately apparent. I see that this performance was recorded about two years after the earlier one - the Metamorphosen actually dates from the same group of sessions as the Alpine Symphony - with a different engineer. He has not quite caught the inner detail with such a miraculous combination of detail and beauty as his colleague. It is from the central portion of the symphony that the performance as a whole begins to lose its way. Somehow the music seems to become becalmed. This is in part due to the loss of some of the inner detail. The contrapuntal writing in this work is remarkable even by Strauss’s standards so that even when the tempo slows there is an inner energy driving the music forward. This piece was for me one of Järvi’s greater successes in his Chandos cycle. This was due in no small part to the engineers managing to delineate the numerous lines in the musical texture. The extended love-scene lies at the heart of the work and to succeed it does need to overwhelm the listener with a series of climaxes that sweep away reserve and reservations. Sadly, in this, Wit does not succeed - it is beautiful where I want passion and considered where I want wildness. The symphony’s final section with its curious double fugue - the use of such an intellectually rigorous form after the abandon of what has gone before has always mystified me - is in many ways the piece’s weakest element and works best when played with unbuttoned good humour. It features some of the most remarkable horn writing that even Strauss produced which whilst it does register here does not overwhelm as I wish it would; once again Järvi and his SNO horns have a field day here. So I would have to say a worthy performance and an ongoing delight to hear this orchestra but not the automatic first choice I had rather hoped it would be.

Metamorphosen is a very substantial filler. The key to the approach here - and I’m sure that Wit is absolutely correct - is that this is a piece for 23 solo strings. Hence it is in effect a piece of large-scale chamber music. Other performances such as those by Karajan and his Berlin players produce a wall of tone that is remarkable - to the point you wonder how 23 players can produce that much sound - but in doing so the personal nature, the individual character of the loss that is being mourned vanishes. There is a lean quality to the Weimar sound that allows each line to be clearly followed and this reinforces the genius of the contrapuntal writing. It is a sombre performance as befits a piece written as a musical oration for a lost city and culture. Wit again directs a performance that sits at the slower end of a range of timings. Interestingly no performance I have heard clocks in at the 30 minutes indicated in the score. Of those I possess Zinman is slowest at 28:57 with Wit second at 28:16. The broad lamenting approach pays dividends here. Also the recording is splendid, beautifully balanced across the sonic range but with a richness to the bass lines that lets this extraordinary music sit on an harmonic bedrock above which the multitudinous polyphonic lines swoop and intertwine. The hardest element of this work is sustaining the single arc from gentle opening through contorted climax to desolate resolution. Wit’s pacing is excellent; never once do you feel he has allowed the music to peak too soon or conversely to sag. Listen at the very end when finally the Eroica motif in the basses appears unadorned how the accompanying upper strings blanch away their tone and vibrato to produce a final descent into oblivion. Quite superb. There is a sustained intensity to the music-making here that belies it being “just another session”. Clearly the creative fires were burning brightly in Weimar in July 2005! Metamorphosen has been fortunate in receiving many fine performances so I think it quite impossible to single out one as being first amongst equals. However, to my ear this new version is worthy of being considered up there with the very best. Listening several times to both performances on this disc I have no doubt that the earlier engineering of the string work is finer than that accorded the symphony although the latter is by no means poor.

Worth mentioning at this point Keith Anderson’s typically fine liner-note which explains with concision and clarity the genesis of both works. He points out, among many interesting facts, that Metamorphosen was composed in less than one month first note to last (13 ^th March - 12 ^th April 1945) - an astonishing burst of creativity for any composer producing a work of such complexity let alone one some 77 years old.

All in all another powerful disc of Strauss from Wit and his Weimar orchestra. For a Domestica of sheer delight I would turn elsewhere but an excellent Metamorphosen is more than compensation and at the price a Naxos disc well worth the purchasing.

-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: William T. Stromberg.

There are no finer period-instrument Haydn symphony performances available than these. Using a nearly 50-piece orchestra (thank God!), McGegan captures the music's full grandeur as well as its intimacy. These players sound like a real orchestra, a group with a corporate identity, an attractive ensemble sonority, superb wind soloists, and, miracle of miracles, period strings that don't sound like a den of dying cats. McGegan's phrasing of the "clock" theme in the eponymous symphony's second movement is a model of stylishness and wit--listen and I dare you not to smile.

His pacing throughout is ideal; allegros are swift but not so much as to blur characterful detail. The minuets are perfect; trumpets and drums cut through the texture without turning crude; tuttis really fill the acoustic space, and the dynamic range is aptly wide. No performance of these works follows Haydn's dynamic markings literally, but McGegan's adjustments flow with the music and invariably come across as natural--check out the finale of the "London" Symphony for some particularly telling examples.

The live sonics are generally very good, particularly given the fact that the recordings were made over a three-year period (2007-9). In Symphony No. 88 close miking makes the sound a touch rough in places, and I could do without the applause at the end of each work, but the audience otherwise is extremely well-behaved and extraneous performance noises are happily quite minimal. We need Haydn recordings like this: warm, humorous, affecting, yet fully cognizant of period scholarship and style. They are far too rare.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com



HAYDN Symphonies: No. 104, “London”; No. 88; No. 101, “Clock” • Nicholas McGegan, cond; Philharmonia Baroque O • PHILHARMONIA BAROQUE PBP-02 (75:16) Live: Berkeley, CA 2/10–11/2007, 11/15–16/2008; 9/12–13/2009


Nicholas McGegan and his San Francisco period-instrument ensemble are renowned for their many Handel recordings, but they play music of all eras. This is the first Haydn I’ve heard from them. This 2007 performance of the “London” Symphony is marvelous: The opening Adagio-Allegro brims over with high spirits, highlighted by blazing brass and pounding timpani; the Menuet has grace as well as bounce (McGegan does not play da capo repeats), and the Trio has a delicious lilt, with the merest hint of a luftpause in measure three. The finale is somewhat rough and ready, but its Spiritoso direction is fully realized. Comparisons with other performances do reveal a few shortcomings. As used to be the case in period ensembles, violins are rather dull; those in Richard Hickox’s Collegium Musicum 90 are clean and bright. Hickox’s forces are also better balanced and recorded (by Chandos); McGegan’s woodwinds are often drowned out by screaming trumpets. However, the Hickox has nowhere near the drive and élan of this performance. Nor can McGegan’s strings match the crisp attacks and phenomenal execution of either Colin Davis’s Concertgebouw or Leonard Bernstein’s New York Philharmonic.


The opening Allegro of No. 88 goes beautifully; the movement has no trumpets or timpani. Violins are brighter in 2008, as is the recorded sound. The Largo, however, is a disaster. Bassoons are weak; even when the pair shares the solo line, they are nearly inaudible. Taken even faster (5:30) than the impatient George Szell (5:53), this performance totally misses the movement’s calm beauty. Largos are always difficult; holding the line at a very slow tempo takes enormous concentration and ensemble discipline. Hermann Scherchen almost manages, at a lumbering 10:04; Bernstein’s 7:04 is ideal, in a uniquely lovely rendering. McGegan’s Menuet is back on track; his slow Allegretto works well. The Allegro con spirito finale, again reasonably paced, is also a success—until the coda. In this live performance, McGegan (adrenaline kicking in?) ups the tempo at the last minute, and the final three chords are smudged. Bernstein opts for a ludicrously fast tempo; his virtuoso ensemble pulls it off.


The “Clock” gets a fine performance at mostly consensus tempos; the 2009 sound (they were all at the same site, the First Congregational Church in Berkeley) is more reverberant than before but very well balanced. The Andante is too fast; is McGegan, like Szell, allergic to slow music? The bassoons revive here, but oboe and flute are a bit sour together. Menuet and Finale are magnificent; the wrong-note trumpet joke sounds cleanly, the clarinet-brightened score resounds, and this time the final three chords are crisp.


Good period performances of late Haydn symphonies have been hard to come by. This disc ranks among the best.


FANFARE: James H. North
"...Nicholas McGegan has been honing the San Francisco-based period-instrument Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra for some 25 years. Nor are performances of Haydn’s music in period style anything new. But seldom have his elemental dynamic contrasts sounded so properly in proportion or so mercurial, with the 50 or so players able to play out lustily in fortes and pull back quickly to quieter modes, whether playful, subtle or mysterious...The recordings, made at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, Calif., from 2007 to 2009, were beautifully produced and engineered by David v. R. Bowles...The release of cumulative excitement at the end of each [symphony] is of a kind that tends to happen only in live circumstances."

- James R. Oestreich, The New York Times [June 24, 2011]

Astounding debuts and legendary piano treasures on disc: newly remastered albums of 21 pianists from the analogue era, including many first-ever digital transfers. Before he became a Decca icon, Vladimir Ashkenazy appeared on DG in performances recorded live at the 1955 Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Their reissue here is complemented by a Rachmaninoff sequence with Ashkenazy's teacher, Lev Oborin. At the same competition five years later, Arthur Rubinstein was so outraged at the low placing given by his fellow jurors to the Belgian pianist Michel Block that he created a special prize for him on the spot, and DG responded likewise by issuing precious recordings of his live Chopin performances from 1960. Through the late 1960s and 70s, the 'Concours' and 'Debut' sub-labels on DG launched an array of pianists at the start of promising careers. They came from a rich variety of backgrounds and schools. Blockbuster Russians included Boris Bloch and Youri Egorov. New-World stars in the making included Steven de Groote and Zola Mae Shaulis. Among the young artists from the central European traditions were Veronica Jochum von Moltke (Eugen Jochum's daughter) and Claude Helffer. A few of these musicians, such as Ashkenazy, went on to enjoy long careers. Some disappeared from the limelight, lending to their legacy on record both rarity value and a melancholy sense of potential left untapped. David Lively, Alexander Lonquich and Ewa Poblocka are still performing today, but their DG Debut albums have never been reissued on CD. Dino Ciani, Youri Egorov and Steven de Groote died tragically young while their careers were still in the ascendant. Other pianists retreated from the spotlight and became teachers, such as Roberto Szidon and Boris Bloch. Alongside the fire-breathing virtuosity of Mikhail Faermann and Steven de Groote, the box reissues Beethoven sonata recordings made by Elly Ney at the end of her long career, and a mono-era account of the Diabelli Variations by the Swiss pianist Paul Baumgartner. These artists represent a link with the Clara Schumann school of pianism, while Erik Then-Bergh's 1951 account of Reger's Telemann Variations embodies an intellectual German style. Pianophiles of every stripe will find something here to astonish and intrigue them. The recordings are issued in the Original Covers format, and the booklet includes an introduction to each of the pianists by the piano-specialist Jonathan Summers.

Classical Music

A cycle of unaccompanied songs for solo voice, framed between two orchestral pieces, this release celebrates the 80th birthday of Aribert Remann. Remann rewrote this cycle of poems for orchestra without the voice, which resulted in Nine Pieces. This cycle took an entirely different direction than the nine poems originally.

2 CD set in an elegant, book-like package. A refined selection from the best of our Christmas music, performed by the pick of the traditional Oxford choirs on our label. There is music from the Middle Ages to modern times (including some twentieth century favourites), with an emphasis on the English choral tradition. Gloria comes with detailed notes on the history of Christmas music in England.

2018 release. Since 1939, the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert has become a tradition and the world's most famous classical music event. The list of names of leading conductors who have led the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concerts reads like a veritable who's who of great maestros: Herbert von Karajan, Lorin Maazel, Claudio Abbado and Gustavo Dudamel to name a few. For the New Year's Concert 2018 world-renowned conductor Riccardo Muti returns to conduct the New Year's Concert for the fifth time. He has conducted the Vienna Philharmonic for over 500 concerts, has a very close connection to the orchestra and is one of the most engaged New Year's Concert conductors. Italian conductor Muti holds two music directorships: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini. A prolific recording artist, Muti has received dozens of honors, titles, awards and prizes throughout his career. The Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert is unique and has often been imitated, but not equaled, with a live broadcast on television in over 90 countries around the world with over 40 million viewers. The repertoire for the New Year's Concert features works by members of the Strauss Family - Johann Strauss, father and son, as well as Eduard and Josef Strauss. Old favorites from their works are played alongside others that have never been recorded or are rarely heard. All of them programmed around two fixed points in the concert, The Blue Danube Waltz and the Radetzky March.

Orange Mountain Music is proud to present the premiere recording of Philip Glass's original score to the 2019 Broadway production of King Lear, which starred Glenda Jackson as Lear and Ruth Wilson as Cordelia/The Fool. For this new production, directed by Sam Gold and produced by Scott Rudin, Glass composed almost an hour of new music for string quartet. Complementing the quartet are three songs that Glass composed to the Shakespeare text featuring Ruth Wilson singing as part of a role that earned her a Tony nomination. Glass's quartet features violinists Natalie Cummins and Martin Agee, with Christopher Cardona on viola and Stephanie Cummins on cello. After over 100 Broadway performances, it was played in the recording studio with an absolute mastery that would not be possible for a concert piece. The recording was produced by Glass's long-time music director Michael Riesman.

This first volume in a projected series of Freitas Branco orchestral works nicely outlines his three principal styles. First, in the symphony, there is the influence of Franck and his school. This is so pronounced, particularly in the finale, that the result risks caricature. There is no need to describe the music in any further detail: if you love Franck's Symphony in D minor, then you'll also enjoy this work. It's a very, very good copy, closer to its model in sound and structure than many of the works of Franck's immediate contemporaries (Chausson, for example, or Dukas). If you forget the fact that the symphony was composed in 1924, you certainly would think you are hearing a French piece from the 1890s.

The Scherzo fantasque also betrays a French influence, this time of the impressionists, or perhaps Dukas, in its piquant use of a smallish orchestra with plenty of colorful percussion. Suite Alentejana No. 1 reveals Freitas Branco as an ethnic nationalist, recalling Falla, particularly in the ebullient concluding Fandango. It's a lovely work--but then all of this music is certainly worth getting to know, especially when the performances are this sympathetic and well recorded. Álvaro Cassuto is of course familiar to collectors from his series of orchestral works by Joly Braga Santos (one that I hope is ongoing--there's still come good stuff there). He's not only an authority on the Portuguese school, but he projects his knowledge of the composers and their various idioms with unfailing enthusiasm and stylishness, making this latest release an easy recommendation.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This third volume of Naxos' ongoing series of Liszt tone poems under Michael Halász is easily the best so far. These pieces have such a bad reputation today that I suspect listeners may be surprised to discover that they contain quite a bit of really attractive music. Festklänge begins with one of Liszt's most arresting ideas, remarkably modern in character with harmony that doesn't have to be chromatic to sound interesting. Halász and the New Zealand Symphony deliver a sparkling performance, impulsive and rhythmically taut, and the work sounds much shorter than its 18-minute length might suggest. That is no mean achievement in music that admittedly has structural issues and tends to drag in less enthusiastic hands.


Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne also goes very well. The natural sonics capture the atmospheric opening (with its then-novel bass drum rolls) very effectively. If you know your Sibelius, you will recognize these first few minutes as the conceptual forebear of the Finnish composer's En Saga. Yes, the work's various sections tend to lie side by side rather than flow inevitably into one another, but it's a lovely piece that doesn't deserve its current neglect in the concert hall. Hunnenschlacht is just plain fun: a noisy battle followed by an organ-led apotheosis. Once again Halász and company deliver the goods, with fine playing and a vivid sense of drama. Also, to their credit, they don't linger over the less-interesting music representing the "good guys". In short, these are intelligent and effective performances that deliver maximum bang for your buck. Give them a shot.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The multifaceted and multi-award winner Tan Dun has made an indelible mark on the world music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music. The Symphonic Poem on Three Notes describes an evolutionary arc from nature through industry and back to nature, the traditional orchestra augmented with a range of unorthodox sound sources such as wind, stones and car brake drums. The drama of Orchestral Theatre centres on memories of ritual from the composer’s childhood, linking folk music styles to Western atonality, while the Concerto for Orchestra describes the exoticism of Marco Polo’s geographical, musical and spiritual journeys.

Here the iconic Verona opera - and Charles Gounod's masterpiece - makes a superb comeback in the majestic setting of the Arena di Verona. 'Romeo et Juliette' had not been performed in the Arena since 1977. The new production was entrusted to Italian director Francesco Micheli, who opted for a personal, highly original version: 'An arena within the Arena, like a blood-red Elizabethan theatre. A senescent world that will not let it's own children live.' Juliette is sung by Georgian soprano Nino Machaidze, in a return to one of her early roles at the Salzburg Festival. Stefano Secco, often heard at the Opera Bastille in Paris and other international venues, is Romeo.

Le Balcon, founded in 2008, is an artistic collective that has made a name for itself with highly original creations (Eötvös, Boulez, Stockhausen, etc.) combining sonic and visual innovations. In this, the very first disc made by Le Balcon and its conductor Maxime Pascal, who recently won the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award, the masterpiece of Berlioz is recomposed – or decomposed – by the young composer Arthur Lavandier and recorded in 3D sound!

Le Balcon takes a keen interest in technological issues related to sound reproduction, and here offers an original approach by superimposing three recording processes (transaural, binaural, 5.1), each dedicated to a specific medium: physical disc, web, video. The recording was made at the Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique in Paris, in the very hall where the Symphonie fantastique was premiered in 1830. For the ‘March to the Scaffold’, Le Balcon, which has a very open-minded attitude to amateur music making, collaborated with a street band from Carcassonne, ‘Tonton à faim’! A final point worth noting: the bronze bells used in the "Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath" (300 and 600 kg) were cast specially for the recording by the Festival Berlioz at La Côte Saint-André.

This is the first release in a series that inaugurates a new type of partnership initiated by Alpha, which presents highly creative musical ensembles like Le Balcon while leaving them in total control of their project from A to Z, from production through to communication.

Classical Music

Garrick Ohlsson scales the heights in this 1996 recording of the Grieg concerto, his prodigious technique more than a match for the demands of the solo part. Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields provide a suitably grand accompaniment, and it’s all brought home on a warm, spacious recording with impressive weight and presence. The main coupling, an exuberant account of the Symphonic Dances, makes an attractive companion piece to the concerto. – Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection.

Classical Music

Hector Sandoval, Norma Fantini, Scott Hendricks, Tania Kross, and Rosalind Plowright star in this production of the Giordano opera performed by the Vienna Symphony, Bregenz Festival Chorus, and Prague Philharmonic Choir conducted by Ulf Schirmer.

Robert Fuchs (1847-1927) is best known today as the composition teacher of Mahler, Sibelius, Enesco, Korngold, Schreker, Zemlinsky, and just about everyone else who happened to be at the Vienna Conservatory from the late 19th century onward. As a composer he earned the respect of Brahms, probably because Brahms didn't feel threatened by him, and was totally forgotten after his death. During his lifetime he was best known for his string serenades, two of which feature on this recording, along with the late (and quite substantial) Andante and Capriccio Op. 63.

Let's get straight to the point: the music is wonderful--gracious, tuneful, not a note too long, and an unalloyed delight from first note to last. Yes, it's not "heavy" or "serious", but really, who cares? If you like Dvorák's or Tchaikovsky's string serenades, or Grieg's Holberg Suite, or Sibelius' Valse triste, then you are going to love this disc. The performances are perfect: flowing, rhythmically clean and snappy, immaculately tuned, and affectionately phrased. It just doesn't get any better, and the sonics are pristine. The Viennese, of course, have always been suckers for light music, but that only made them particularly discerning. They went crazy for Fuchs. Check out this disc and find out why.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

---------------



FUCHS Serenades: No. 1 in D; No. 2 in C. Andante grazioso and Capriccio • Christian Ludwig, cond; Cologne CO • NAXOS 8.572222 (53:52)


His friends called him “Serenaden-Fuchs” (Serenading Fox), a pun on his name, while the sparingly complimentary Brahms praised him as a “splendid musician.” He was Robert Fuchs (1847–1927), an Austrian composer and professor of theory and composition at the Vienna Conservatory whose students comprised an extraordinary roll-call of up-and-coming talents: Enescu, Korngold, Mahler, Melartin, Sibelius, Schmidt, Schreker, Wolf, and Zemlinsky.


As a musical genre the serenade found itself largely neglected after Mozart, at least until Brahms revived it with his two symphonic-scaled serenades in the late 1850s. Despite Mozart’s lending a greater gravity to the form, especially with his so-called “Gran Partita,” the genre continued to carry the stigma of its 18th-century antecedent as a type of lightweight, summer’s eve, al fresco entertainment, at a time when Austro-German Romanticism in particular saw itself as cultural custodian of the serious and the profound. Thus, even after Brahms’s two mid 19th-century examples, it would be another 25 years before composers would enrich the repertoire with serenades that, in content and dimensions, resembled symphonies or symphonic suites in all but name.


When Fuchs came to compose his First Serenade in 1874, his main models were the two efforts by Brahms and the three serenades by Robert Volkmann (1869–70). But by the time he got around to composing his fifth and final serenade in 1894, many masterly and magnificent serenades had already made their way into the world: Dvo?ák (1878), Tchaikovsky (1880), Strauss (1882), Wolf (1887), Suk (1892), and Elgar (1892), and not long after, Reinecke (1898); Dohnányi (1902), Sinding (1902 and 1909), Reger (several between 1904 and 1906), and Stenhammar (1913) would add to the growing list.


If the serenades had been Fuchs’s only contribution to music, it might explain why he virtually vanished from the mainstream almost immediately after his death, even though he’d been highly regarded in his own day. But the fact is that Fuchs worked in all the major musical media and his output, which included symphonies, concertos, a large volume of chamber works, three masses, and two operas, was considerable and diverse. And all of it—at least the works I’ve heard—is nothing but expertly crafted and melodically inspired.


Of Fuchs’s five serenades, the first three are scored for strings only and the fourth adds only two horns to the string ensemble. In the string-only pieces, however, textural richness is achieved through division of parts, so that for much of the time we are hearing six or even seven voices. Sometimes the violas play divided parts; other times, first or second violins are divided; and still other times violins and violas are divided at the same time. This lends both breadth and depth to the writing, allowing for greater fullness and luminosity to the sound as well as greater flexibility to the interplay of voices as they overlap and weave around each other.


As I said, if the serenades were Fuchs’s sole contribution to music, his disappearance from the scene might not be so surprising, for I will be the first to admit that these are not the stuff great reputations are made of. They were popular in their day precisely because they were the popular music of the day. As one listens to these serenades, especially their fast-paced movements, it’s easy to discern how Fuchs’s style was influenced by the polkas and quadrilles of Johann Strauss Jr., another composer, by the way, much admired by Brahms. So associating Fuchs with this type of crowd-pleasing entertainment music is not to denigrate him as a composer. His symphonies, concertos, and chamber works tell us that he was a man of both talent and substance. His serenades are tuneful, occasionally touching, and always enjoyable, reminding me in ways of some of Grieg’s orchestral music, like the Lyric Suite.


In checking all of the usual mail-order sources, I was surprised to find no complete collection of Fuchs’s five serenades. In fact, you would have to hunt down some fairly obscure labels featuring some fairly provincial ensembles to find recordings of Nos. 3 and 5, not to mention other versions besides this one of Nos. 1 and 2. And I had no luck at all finding even a single recording of No. 4. I guess I hadn’t realized when I began this review just how far Fuchs’s serenades had fallen on hard times, for the rest of his output in general is reasonably well represented on disc.


The Andante grazioso and Capriccio that concludes the disc is no insignificant filler. At 17 and a half minutes, it’s longer than the Serenade No. 2, and, written in 1900, it’s a work postdating the last of the composer’s serenades. Harmonically more advanced and complex, and emotionally darker than the serenades, the piece, suggests note author Anthony Short, is an example of Fuchs the teacher being influenced by his students, namely Sibelius.


One can only hope that this new recording of the first two serenades with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra directed by Christian Ludwig is the first in a survey that will bring us the remaining three, for in every respect the performances and recording are excellent. Strongly recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

Classical Music

This double album offers a portrait of violinist Amandine Beyer drawn from recordings she has made for ZZT. The first CD highlights her chamber repertoire, including works by Jean-Fery Rebel, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Nicola Matteis, and Robert de Visee. The second is devoted to the concerto, with compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and Arcangelo Corelli. This program is an ideal introduction to Amandine Beyer's talent and grace of music-making. It also provides an opportunity to discover one of Corelli's Concerti Grossi Op.6.

Classical Music

Finzi’s melancholy, rapture and nobility articulated with fidelity.

The lynchpin here is Dies Natalis. It’s the work by which many discovered Finzi in the 1960s and 1970s courtesy of Wilfred Brown’s perfect recording. There the orchestra was the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by the composer’s son Christopher Finzi. You can hear it on EMI Classics (CDM7 63372 and CDM 565588 2) keeping company with Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi.

Dies Natalis is quintessential Finzi, marrying limpid serenity of musical expression with an ecstatic-philosophical text. The theme of the poems spoke directly to Finzi: childhood as a transcendent religious experience. We can trace Wilfred Brown’s stylistic lineage back, by repute, to Eric Greene (are there any recordings?) and forwards to Ian Partridge who never recorded Dies Natalis and onwards now to James Gilchrist. Their ‘DNA’ is identifiable by intelligent and emotional engagement with the words, sharply delineated syllabic enunciation even at volume, wondrous breath control and steady tonal production. Not everyone likes these qualities; some may find the results too white and mannered. If you prefer other approaches there is no shortage of alternatives. For myself the Brown-Partridge school represents the ideal in Finzi. This disc rates very highly indeed although Gilchrist and Hill have not shaken my recommendation of Partridge and Handley (Lyrita) in the Two Sonnets and Farewell to Arms. This gently breathed Dies Natalis lovingly catches the Tallis hush and wonder of the piece. Taking one example: listen to “the corn was orient and immortal wheat” with gentle breath of the fragile violins as backdrop and played close to silence. The buoyancy and bounce of the playing is spot-on in the more exuberant passages and elsewhere the soloistic violin writing provides a silvery tracery.

Similarly compelling although more modest are the purely orchestral pieces from the warm murmur of the Nocturne to the caressingly shaped Prelude and the autumnal shiver of The Fall of the Leaf (what a title!).

I have a great affection for the two tenor and orchestra diptychs. Finding a home for them in concerts is a challenge but they subsist happily and bestow their blessings on record. Gilchrist is extremely good here but does not supplant Partridge who is softer-toned than Gilchrist when singing at pressurised volume. His identification with the words is never in doubt – listen to the way he tremulously shapes the words ‘I fondly ask’ in When I consider (the first Sonnet) but also how he rises to operatic climax at the end of How soon hath time. Also strongly and subtly done are the songs in Farewell to Arms. The words ‘rustic spade’ are fondly sung and a smile of recognition will come when Gilchrist sings ‘the ventriloquous drum’ – surely a Stanford souvenir. The unison string writing in Aria looks back with affection at Dies Natalis. The piercing ecstasy of transience returns to Finzi campground in the words “Oh time too swift / Oh swiftness never ceasing” with which the piece ends.

As for the liner notes we are in the safe and lucid hands of Andrew Burn. The sung words are not in the booklet but are available at a page on the Naxos website.

There is no direct competition for this particular combination of works on CD. You might consider mixing and matching various Lyritas (SRCD237 and SRCD239) but note that Lyrita never recorded Dies Natalis. Do not forget the Wilfred Brown on EMI.

What do I see in the far distance – is that a Finzi boxed set from Naxos?

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International