With the delightful original LP cover illustrations, this 'original jackets' presentation collects together for the first time the 33 Haydn Symphonies recorded by Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields over a twenty-year period, from 1970-1990. Both the Polish and refinement of these performances, as well as the recording quality "of exceptional vividness and presence" (Gramophone), received widespread critical acclaim. Begun in 1970 with an album of Symphonies Nos 52 & 53, this series of Haydn recordings soon concentrated on symphonies with nicknames (none of them supplied by the composer). They attracted widespread praise for the precision of their playing, the excellence of the Philips engineering and the unassuming Polish and refinement of the readings, the only complaint being made that Marriner and his ensemble could not venture into all those other symphonic marvels which happened not to have attracted a nickname. Only towards the end of the series, in 1981, did they yield to this criticism by completing a set of the Paris symphonies with beautifully pointed accounts of Nos. 84, 86 and 87. However, with 33 individual symphonies eventually recorded, the series covers a substantial fraction of Haydn's legacy. Marriner took a flexible attitude to thorny academic issues such as whether or not to use a harpsichord continuo: 'The most important thing is to be practical, ' he said, and the series conveys a meeting of minds across the centuries between two supremely practical musicians. Some of these recordings last saw the light of day in a 1996 box of the 'named' symphonies. However, the present compilation restores the original couplings with 'original jacket' artwork. The booklet includes many session photographs of Marriner and the Academy in their natural habitat, as well as an enticing array of editorial contributions: from Max Harrison on Haydn's inexhaustible invention as a symphonist, from Philip Stuart on the ins and outs of the ASMF Haydn discography, from Rob Cowan on Sir Neville Marriner as a director of unfailing style and vitality in this repertoire, and a personal memoir from Costa Pilavachi who worked with Marriner in his capacity as A&R manager and later head of the Philips Classics label.

This is BIS's third installment of orchestral music by Gösta Nystroem, and I have to confess that it got lost in the shuffle when it first arrived for review. That was my mistake. Nystroem was a splendid composer, and the previous two releases both were excellent, as is this one. These two symphonies have much in common musically, including Nystroem's habit of beginning a movement in silence, with a slowly building threnody scored principally for high strings, followed by quicker episodes. If this sounds formulaic, it's not. First of all, Nystroem was extremely good at this sort of thing, and second, the two works are quite different in terms of structure. The Fourth Symphony has three movements and is based on incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest, while the Sixth and last symphony follows an original two-movement plan, each of its parts containing highly contrasting material in varying tempos.

Nystroem's orchestration also is very colorful and effective. His evocative use of high strings to open many of his individual movements should not blind us to the fact that he was very much a composer for the whole orchestra. This means full sonorities, plentiful use of winds, brass, and percussion, and beautifully judged, fluid textures. Although there are plenty of good tunes, Nystroem was not a melodist in the conventional sense. But his basic sonorities always fall gratefully on the ear, and his driving rhythms in quicker music produce a great deal of physical excitement. In short, this is really good, solid, characterful symphonic writing, and the performances give the full measure of each work. The only possible missing ingredient might be a bit more assertiveness from the brass at the big climaxes, but I can't imagine anyone being dissatisfied with either the interpretations or the vivid sound.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This premiere release of the two remaining unrecorded symphonies of the half-dozen by the singular Swede Gösta Nyström (1890–1966) represents for this writer the fulfillment of a long-cherished wish list.

Together with Hilding Rosenberg (1892–1985) and Allan Pettersson (1911–1980), Nystroem stands at the pinnacle of Swedish music during the 20th century. His sui generis expressionistic voice (which sounds like no other) seems to embody the brooding but aloof Swedish soul in sound. Spiritually speaking, his only significant parallel, perhaps because of his dozen years of study and experience in Paris, could be that of the Swiss Arthur Honegger. Although Nystroem was an occasional painter—as well as a music critic—and thus quite concerned with questions of orchestral color, there is nothing especially pictorial about his music.

His intensely direct and dramatic idiom—a very personal blend of post-Impressionism and post-Romantic elements—gave rise to some of the most emotionally raw and vulnerable-sounding music of the modern period. Beginning in 1931 with the Sinfonia breve, which was followed shortly by the Sinfonia espressiva for string orchestra, in the late 1940s Nystroem wrote the sublime Sinfonia del mare (“Sea Symphony”), probably his masterpiece in the form; then in 1952 this Fourth Symphony, subtitled “Sinfonia Shakespeariana” followed by the Sinfonia seria in 1963, and finally by the posthumously premiered sixth and last, “Sinfonia tramontana” in 1966. (There is also an unnumbered Sinfonia concertante for cello and orchestra from the 1940s.) All six vary in length from 20 to 30 minutes.

Even though he utilizes a very distinctive blend of modal-diatonic and intermittently very chromatized dissonance—in fact, some of his themes are close to atonal but still lyrically graspable—Nyström’s language is never convoluted or forbidding. He always addresses the listener very forthrightly on a level of almost painfully naked subjectivity. The guiding principal of his work is one of extreme contrast or energetic conflict: in just a single measure or two, he can veer from a threatening tone of violent relentlessness to a piercingly short-lived moment of tenderness, but his basic background is one of unrelieved lugubriousness. He often writes in large instrumental blocks, pitting strings as a group against winds or brasses, with the timpani always closely on call. Formally, the symphonies vary from the single-movement Sinfonia breve to the five interrelated sections of the Sinfonia del mare, but the thematic materials are often derived from a single generating motivic source.

The Fourth Symphony, though subtitled “Shakespeariana,” does not quote from any of the rather functional though appealing incidental scores he wrote for The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice. The Shakespeare reference is probably meant to evoke a sense of tragic humanity that pervades the three movements. As in most of the symphonies, the outer Allegro movement begins as a barely audible Lento before bursting out into full force; at the center, it suddenly drops into an unexpected, secluded oasis of sad serenity before plunging back into its initial turbulence. By the same token, the midpoints of many of his slow movements erupt into quick passages of savage agitation, even though the same or similar themes are present in both modalities.

The Sixth or “Tramontana” Symphony (the subtitle carries an implication of a visionary statement coming from beyond the range of everyday life) is a kind of transcendental diptych, with two panels of almost equal length following the same characteristic expressive arc of Lento–Allegro–Lento (or Andante). In the symphony’s concluding measures, Nystroem attempts a grand resolution, but to these ears the sorrowful reverberations win out.

B. Tommy Andersson offers splendidly charged and maintained readings of these almost schizoid works; he is always careful not to let Nyström’s multiple lines and towering climaxes get out of hand. Typically, the dynamic spectrum of BIS’s engineering is so unusually wide that only the best reproduction equipment will be able to do justice to its shattering power. In short, a major addition to the 20th century Scandinavian symphonic discography.

Paul A. Snook, FANFARE

Classical Music

Patric Standford wrote in a wide variety of forms, from large-scale orchestral and choral music to a cappella, chamber and instrumental pieces. While teaching at the Guildhall School of Music in London he won several major international composition prizes. The First Symphony, each movement of which is named after a season, grew from a string piece conceived as a memorial for the conductor Sir John Barbirolli. Dedicated to and premièred by the soloist on this recording, Raphael Wallfisch, the powerful Cello Concerto is built around a theme from the fifth movement, Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit (You now are sorrowful) of Brahms’ German Requiem.

This is Zig-Zag Territories first collaboration with the great conductor, composer and oboist Heinz Holliger and the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra. This disc brings together pivotal works of two Viennese composers, works written prior to abandoning tonality and still strongly linked to what went before but already offering glimpses of what the atonal adventure would be. With this fine disc, Heinze gives a particularly moving, committed interpretation of works that are sometimes enclosed in useless carapaces.

R. Strauss - Elektra, Chor der Deutschen, Staatsoper Berlin and Saatskapelle Berlin directed by Daniel Barenboim.

NEUJAHRSKONZERT 2025 / NEW YEAR'S CONCERT 2025

Vienna, old and new, meet on this journey from Mozart to Schoenberg and then on to Berg, Weill, Gerhard, and Ligeti, with David Atherton and the London Sinfonietta. Central to this anthology is the pioneering set of music by Schoenberg recorded in 1973-74 critically acclaimed for its 'big line and attention to detail (Stereo Review) and for the "mellow but well-detailed recording' (Gramophone).

The London Sinfonietta is renowned across the world as one of the most adventurous groups commissioning and performing new music. From it's inception, however, the Sinfonietta played the classics alongside new and avant-garde pieces, and this new Eloquence set traces the engagement of the group with the Viennese tradition.

At the center of the set is the 5-LP survey of Schoenberg's chamber music - from the early and Wagnerian Verklärte Nacht to the late Phantasy for violin and piano - which the Sinfonietta recorded in 1973-4 to mark the centenary of the composer's birth. The recordings were bedded in by extensive performing experience, in a comprehensive concert series celebrating the music of Schoenberg and his Catalan student, Roberto Gerhard. The Sinfonietta's co-founder David Atherton had come to know Gerhard at Cambridge, and so these recordings bear the stamp of authority, as well as thorough preparation.

In a new interview for the set with note-writer Peter Quantrill, Atherton explains the genesis of the Sinfonietta as formed around the unique instrumentation of Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony. He and his colleagues shook up the London concert scene in the 1970s with their energy and commitment to modernist classics and living composers. However, the Sinfonietta brought the same incisive musicianship to Mozart's wind serenades and Schubert's sacred music, as these Argo recordings testify.

A further rarity is the album of clarinet concertos by Louis Spohr, with the ensemble's long-standing clarinetist, Antony Pay, as soloist. Recorded after a complete Stravinsky concert series, their version of Agon has long been recognized as a definitive account. The Gerhard album preserves all three of the composer's late and exquisite 'Zodiac' pieces, Gemini, Libra and Leo, the last two named after the zodiacal signs of Gerhard and his wife. The set also includes the 3-LP Weill set that Atherton and the Sinfonietta recorded for Deutsche Grammophon in 1975 and concludes with the Ligeti album recorded that same year by the ensemble for Decca's 20th-century HEAD series with soloists Aurèle Nicolet (flute) and Heinz Holliger (oboe). The set makes a significant contribution to the Schoenberg 150th anniversary year, as well as telling a compelling story of one of the UK's most innovative performing ensembles.

Johann Joachim Quantz, in his handbook for transverse flute written in 1752, wrote of the composer Georg Philipp Telemann: “I wish to especially recommend Telemann’s trios written in the French style, many of which he had already fashioned thirty or more years ago.” Georg Philipp Telemann not only gained the admiration of Quantz, but his pieces are still frequently performed and recorded today. For this album, his Concerto di camera in G minor, Double Concertos in A minor and E minor, and Suite in A minor have been recorded. Performing these timeless works are three outstanding period instrumentalists, Bolette Roed, Reiko Ichise, and Alexis Kossenko.

REVIEW:

As I have noted in connection with other collections of contemporary music, the problem with programs such as this is that they tend to consist of hits and misses--that is, works of unequal quality or composed in styles that won't appeal similarly to most listeners. This release is an exception, in that each piece is well worth getting to know, and even if you don't like everything, chances are you'll come away satisfied. Barbara Kolb's All in Good Time is a rhythmic study almost devoid of melody, but it's harmonically interesting and brilliantly scored. It makes a fun, bubbly curtain-raiser. Aaron Jay Kernis' Sarabande in Memoriam began life as a string quartet and was enlarged for string orchestra as yet another post-9/11 tribute. Happily, however, the work predates that tragic day by several years, and so neither Kernis' sincerity nor his taste are in question. It's a beautiful work given a grave, intense performance under Carlos Kalmar's sympathetic baton.

Michael Hersch's Ashes of Memory is my favorite work on the disc. It has memorable tunes (its two movements are related), really solid symphonic scoring with impressive, powerful climaxes that at the same time never sound as if they're straining for effect, and an impressively dark, quietly gripping conclusion. The title doesn't exactly help in any meaningful way, but hey, who cares? It's terrific stuff. John Corigliano's Midsummer Fanfare, composed for the Grant Park Orchestra in 2004, presents all of its composer's sonic brilliance and skillful use of avant-garde effects in a way that beguiles rather than offends the ear. Once again, the performance is first rate, no doubt helped by the players' familiarity with the work. So many modern music collections are simply sight-reading exercises, and it shows.

Many listeners will consider John Harbison's Partita for Orchestra to be the program's major work. I have to confess, I don't especially like Harbison's music. I find its dissonant, quasi-tonal style monochromatic, like a study in grey. He often reminds me of an updated William Schuman: a composer with a strong sense of gesture but lacking in thematic memorability. That said, I enjoyed the Partita much more than previous experience suggested I would. It has great variety among its movements, some genuinely memorable ideas, and that rarest of qualities, a discernible sense of humor. I think it's one of the finest things Harbison has done, though only here does the orchestra, especially the strings in the rhythmically tricky final Courante-Gigue, sound a touch stressed. In sum, this collection (as so often with this label) works very well as a diverse program very well-suited to continuous listening, and the engineering is about as good as it gets. Terrific! [7/25/2006]

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The transition from the Baroque to the Classical era was largely led by Czech composers, many of whom were affiliated with the "Mannheim School". Their tuneful and imaginative music paved the way for the chamber and orchestral music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. The tenth volume explores the music of Carl Stamitz, Josef Reicha, and for the first time on disc, Pavel Vranicky's Great Characteristic Symphony.

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

In these recordings from Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore, Dvo?ák’s most darkly dramatic and passionate symphony, the Seventh, is coupled with his Eighth, notable for its dramatic contrasts, Bohemian lyricism, and a seemingly spontaneous flow of thematic ideas. ‘Alsop’s Baltimore orchestra parades a refined tonal profile that pays its own special dividends…Alsop should please both the eager newcomer…and the seasoned collector. There’ll be no disappointment on either score.’ (Gramophone) ‘This splendidly recorded performance [Symphony No. 7] stands very high among available readings.’ (BBC Music Magazine)

Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1

Includes work(s) by Sergei Rachmaninov.

MARTINU: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4

Aaron Copland was often referred to as "The Dean of American Music" and his compositional style has come to define what is considered the American sound. For the first time in one collection, and originally on Everest Records, Alto is pleased to release three works conducted performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Aaron Copland himself.

4 SYMPHONIES • Thomas Dausgaard, cond; Danish Natl SO • C MAJOR 710508 (DVD: 168:00) Live: Copenhagen 2009

BRAHMS Symphony No. 1. DVO?ÁK Symphony No. 9. SIBELIUS Symphony No. 5. NIELSEN Symphony No. 3

If, as I did, you were to begin your examination of this release with disc 1, track 1 (the Brahms symphony), you might well conclude that there was little need to continue. There is something rather too cool and casual about Dausgaard’s interpretation of this powerful music. It lacks inner tension. There is not enough contrast between ideas. Accents are in the wrong places. Short notes are cheated of their value. And that’s not all. The second movement just plods on, the third is charmless, the fourth frantic and lurches from one tempo change to the next. Listening to the complete symphony several times could not induce me to alter my initial unfavorable observations. Adding visual insult to aural injury, sight and sound are not synchronized, and the difference between the two is disturbing, to put it mildly.

But then came the Nielsen symphony. What a difference! Right from the opening moments it had all the vigor and élan and determination lacking in the Brahms. Rhythms were tight and crisp. The music bristled with enthusiasm and commitment. The finale positively beamed with Elgarian nobility and breadth, rising to an absolutely thrilling climax. What a joy! Nielsen’s Third had hitherto never been one of my favorite symphonies, but Dausgaard nearly made it so in this performance.

Does Dausgaard work his magic on the two remaining works as well? The answer, I’m glad to say, is yes. Furthermore, the synchronization problem that affected the Brahms symphony is only minimal in the Nielsen and nonexistent in Dvo?ák and Sibelius. The “New World” Symphony receives one of the finest performances I have heard. Dausgaard’s approach is no romantic wallow but rather a clean, purposeful traversal filled with taut rhythms, precise attacks and releases, glowing sound, and architectural strength. Dausgaard likewise makes a strong case for the Sibelius Fifth, never allowing momentum to sag, carefully propelling the music forward with masterly control. I am particularly impressed with the ease in which he handles the tempo change for the second part of the first movement. By the time the grand climax of the finale arrives, one feels a great journey has been completed.

All four performances were recorded live in Copenhagen’s Koncerthuset in 2009. The personnel changes from symphony to symphony, but both principal horns, both principal trumpets, and both timpanists are star players. Generally the woodwinds are excellent, but violins seem a bit thin for an orchestra that is otherwise so assured and well balanced. However, the basses make up for this deficiency with their huge, rich sound, heard at its best at the quiet endings of three of the Brahms movements and in some of the more powerful moments of the Dvo?ák symphony. Aside from the basses, the orchestra plays with a bright sound, textures are clear and clean, balances are well controlled.

The camerawork is devoted about 20 percent of the time to Dausgaard and his facial contortions, 10 percent to views of the full orchestra from afar, and 70 percent to the business of jerking the viewer’s eyes from one instrumental close-up to another—two seconds of a horn player’s embouchure, a second of flute keys, two notes from the timpani, etc. Who determined that this is what we want to see? I find it annoying to the point where I simply can’t bear to watch.

On ArkivMusic the price for these four symphonies is $27 ($40 for the Blu-ray version)—just under $7 a symphony, a good buy even without the inferior Brahms symphony, especially for performances as fine as the other three.

FANFARE: Robert Markow

The city of Prague was a cultural hotspot in the 1920s and 30s. Three population groups, enriched by emigrants from Russia, the Ukraine, Germany and Austria, competed with one another but also inspired each other. This was the city of the composers on this recording by Werner Herbers and the Ebony Band, long known as champions of unknown or forgotten music from the first half of the 20th century. In the repertoire on this album we hear the old and the new, tradition and renewal, but above all, imagination and talent. When the border between East and West opened up in 1991, this music had hardly been heard in the West for some fifty years, having been suppressed first by the Nazis and then by suffocating communist rule.

Handel's Messiah is one of the best known and most performed works in Western music. Alto is pleased to offer Handel's Messiah in full performance by King's College Choir, Cambridge.

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

Szymanowski’s Symphony No. 3 ‘Song of the Night’ creates a potent atmosphere of Persian mysticism in its rich blend of voices and exotic orchestration. His Symphony No. 4 is largely extrovert in character and has a prominent rôle for piano. Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 can be found on NBD0021. The CD release of Symphony No. 3 was Gramophone Editor’s Choice and given 5 STARS by ClassicFM (8.570721), and Symphony No. 4 an ‘unbeatable’ 10/10 from ClassicsToday.com ( 8.570722); the complete cycle acclaimed as ‘revelatory’ (ClassicalCDReview.com).

Reviews of the CD versions of these recordings

"Antoni Wit almost always can be relied on to deliver very thoughtful, beautifully musical, even inspired results, and there's no question that he conducts these works extremely well. The performances of both symphonies have a confidence and warmth about them that bespeaks a thorough understanding of Szymanowski's richly textured idiom. The Song of the Night (a.k.a. Symphony No. 3) has many of the same qualities that made Wit's Mahler Eighth so special: terrific choral singing, a bigness of conception that never precludes physical excitement, and very natural balances between vocal and instrumental forces."
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

"As previous issues in this series have shown, when Antoni Wit and his forces are in top form in the music of Szymanowski, they're pretty much unbeatable...The performance of the Symphonie Concertante, one of Szymanowski's greatest works, is superb. Pianist Jan Krzysztof Broja plays the solo part beautifully. He's got the chops for the big moments in the outer movements, but it's his delicacy at the start of the central andante that's most memorable. Wit, typically, directs the orchestra with remarkable clarity as well as power. The finale in particular never has sounded less "clogged" texturally, while the very natural engineering always leaves plenty of room for the sound to expand and fill the hall at those ecstatic climaxes that are such a hallmark of this composer. A splendid release!"
-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Tchaikovsky: The Masterworks

Also available on Blu-ray

Based on a Romantic tragedy by Zacharias Werner, Attila is set in the 5th century AD. The opera takes as its starting point Attila’s plans to storm Rome with his army of Huns and the Roman’s attempts to prevent him. As with Nabucco and I Lombardi, Verdi spiced up the action with a number of patriotic choruses, guaranteeing that – against the background of the Italian movement for unification – the opera was a great success.

Giuseppe Verdi
ATTILA

Attila – Giovanni Battista Parodi
Ezio – Sebastian Catana
Odabella – Susanna Branchini
Foresto – Roberto de Biasio
Aldino – Cristiano Cremonini
Leone – Zyian Atfeh

Parma Teatro Regio Chorus and Orchestra
(chorus master: Martino Faggiani)
Andrea Battistoni, conductor

Pier Francesco Maestrini, stage director
Carlo Salvi, set and costume designer
Bruno Ciulli, lighting designer

Recorded live from the Teatro Verdi di Busseto, 2010

Bonus:
- Introduction to Attila

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese
Booklet notes: English, French, German
Running time: 118 mins (opera) + 10 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

R E V I E W:

VERDI Attila • Andrea Battistoni, cond; Giovanni Battista Parodi ( Attila ); Sebastian Catana ( Ezio ); Susanna Branchini ( Odabella ); Roberto De Biasio ( Foresto ); Cristiano Cremonini ( Uldino ); Zyian Atfeh ( Leone ); Teatro Regio di Parma O & Ch • C MAJOR 721608 (DVD); 721704 (Blu-ray) (118:00 + 10:00) Live: Busseto 10/2010


Attila (1846) was Verdi’s ninth opera, preceding Macbeth by almost exactly one year. It had a slow start, but became quite popular through the 1860s, after which interest in it began to diminish. Though not again a repertory piece, it has had a number of modern revivals and there are a number of recordings of it.


Its libretto is a bit confused, almost certainly because the writer of the first part, Temistocle Solera, departed for Spain before he had finished and Francesco Maria Piave was recruited to finish it. Solera and Piave had almost opposing ideas of what an opera libretto was and so, what some have called the “oratorio” style of Solera ends in the more enclosed style of Piave. Its two principal characters, however, Attila and Odabella, his captive, wife, and assassin, are drawn with some force.


Briefly, the Huns arrive at the gates of Rome and Odabella, whose father the Huns have killed, is brought in and announces how brave she is and Attila, impressed, strikes off her chains and gives her his sword. The Roman general Ezio arrives and offers Attila the entire empire if he will just leave Rome alone. Attila refuses and we meet Foresto, who is leading a band of refugees from the Huns. This is the easy part, and it’s all in the prologue. After framing the situation and the characters, we might expect that there would be a series of actions which might cause something to happen. What we get is a series of arias and duets, with occasional choral support, in which the principals either talk about what they are going to do or bemoan the fact that things have gone badly. This dramatic stasis is brought to an end only just before the final curtain, when Odabella kills Attila. That leaves the music.


This is good Verdi. If it doesn’t have the edge of, say, Traviata , or the power of Otello , there are many good moments. Yet, one of the interesting things about it is that it is fairly even all the way through. Though each of the principals gets at least one big musical moment, there is none that overpowers the others, though Ezio’s lament over Rome comes close.


This production comes from the Teatro Verdi in Busseto, Verdi’s hometown. The theater was opened in 1868, but Verdi apparently never set foot in it. Though he gave money to finish its construction, he called it “small, indecent, and almost unusable.” Nonetheless, Toscanini conducted many of Verdi’s operas in it, and Riccardo Muti and Plácido Domingo have also led Verdi there. It has been thoroughly restored and is a shining jewel, with one huge drawback. It is absolutely tiny. Its main floor and three balconies can seat in total 300 people. How Franco Zeffirelli managed to put Aida into it in 2002, I cannot imagine.


As one can imagine, the space constraints on the stage are considerable, and the director, Pierfrancesco Maestrini, has opted for one high-tech solution, a bare stage with a bit of a hump on one side and films projected onto the screen at the back. For some reason, though, Attila makes his first entrance descending from the flies on a platter. There is almost no space to move around much and the singers mostly just stand, or recline on the helpful hump. Maestrini has one bizarre convention in the arias with cabalettas, during which the singer rushes off the stage after the first verse only to rush on again for the second. Oddly, perhaps just because the director cannot do much on this stage, he is forced to let the singers be singers.


It sounds as if I did not like this production, but that is not the case, for the singing is well done. If this is a sample of the current state of singing in provincial Italian opera houses, then opera in Italy is in good shape, indeed. Susanna Branchini is a fine and spirited Odabella and she always gets the fires going (and she has a lot of fires to keep going, which may be why she and not Attila is on the cover). The Attila of Giovanni Battista Parodi is good without being particularly exciting. Ezio has almost nothing to do, but his aria, “Dagl’immortali vertici,” is a fine one and Sebastian Catana was generously applauded. The conductor, Andrea Battistoni, kept the small orchestra moving along, though I wished there could have been a bit more energy now and then. All of this said, there was an evenness about this production that I appreciated.


This DVD is one part of a project called “Tutto Verdi,” apparently centered in Parma, to publish visual recordings of all of Verdi’s operas by the end of this (Verdi) year. It is of at least passing interest, therefore, to ask how many operas Verdi actually wrote. The surveys by Roger Parker and Julian Budden insist there are 28: The “Tutto Verdi” project asserts there are only 26. The disagreement comes over the status of Stiffelio , which Verdi reworked as Aroldo , and Jérusalem , his reworking for Paris of I lombardi . The project has apparently decided not to include Aroldo and Jérusalem (for both of which ArkivMusic tells me there is a DVD). As near as I can tell, of the 26, four have previously been reviewed here ( Ernani , James Miller, 29:6; Macbeth , Raymond Tuttle, 31:2; Otello , James A. Altena, 34:1; and Forza , Bill White, 35:6).


As I write, there are two other DVDs of Attila available, under Santi (Kultur) and Muti (Opus Arte), and one coming, under Sangiorgi (Dynamic). I have seen none of these. Of the CD versions, I rather like that under Muti (EMI), where Samuel Ramey brings Attila into his own. (NB: This is not the same performance as in Muti’s DVD.)


FANFARE: Alan Swanson

Drawn from the worldwide catalog holdings of Sony Classical, which includes both the Columbia/CBS and RCA Victor label imprints, the SONY Classical Originals, SONY Classical Masters Singles and Box Sets, and SONY Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible EU (Germany) pressed import editions, smartly-designed and graphically-pleasing, featuring the most sought-after recordings by the world’s preeminent, legendary artists both past and present, with many titles newly re-mastered in 24bit High Resolution Audio.

This is Volume 1 of Tempesta di Mare’s two-disc project of late seventeenth century French instrumental music. Suites of music were often compiled from stage works that were performed at the time and presented in the form of instrumental excerpts and dances. These suites contain some of the most tuneful, appealing and striking music of the period with works by Lully, Marais and Rebel.

-----

The group seem genuinely at home in the 18-th century music ... The tempos are well chosen – dignified in the overtures and marches, lilting and swaggering in the airs and dances – and command of dynamics and ornamentation are superb throughout.

– Gramophone [April 2015]

Classical Music

This release is Erwin Stein's chamber arrangement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4. In 1921, Arnold Schoenberg organized a series of private concerts, performed by small ensembles. Schoenberg and Stein combined their ingenuity and created "sophisticated versions" of important orchestral works. These arrangements were usually for a few woodwinds, a string quintet, percussion and piano. Stein also added a harmonium, which was quite rare at the time but the organ adds a unique timbre to this arrangement.