The famous pastoral music in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and in Handel’s Messiah are central parts of a development which spans two hundred years, from about the second half of the seventeenth century until well into the nineteenth. Connoisseurs and experts still disagree on whether the stimulus came from the secular pastoral music of the Renaissance, or whether the Shepherds In Adoration provided the initial inspiration for the composers.

Arcangelo Corelli’s (1653—1713) Christmas Concerto is the oldest of the works. His concerto op. VI No. 8 fatto per la notte di Natale appeared in 1714 a year after the master’s death, in Amsterdam. It undoubtedly belongs to the last period of Corelli’s work and is among his most famous — not only by virtue of its festive Christmas spirit, but more specifically because it constitutes one of the most impressive and accomplished examples of the Concerto grosso. The balanced beauty of the many movements of the ecclesiastical work is in happy concordance, as can be felt in the depth of the sentiment, the vigour of expression, the enchanting sounds of the strings, the supreme virtuosity of the arrangement of the solo parts, and the classical harmony. The Pastorale exhibits in its unique perfection the combined stylistic features of pastoral music: the swaying Sicilian rhythm, the tender, peaceful interval of the thirds and the imitation of the bagpipe’s drone. As J. N. Forkel understands it, Corelli in composing this work had a vision of the Angel on High over Bethlehem. Whatever the case may be, one readily agrees with Einstein who called this Pastorale "the musical companion-piece to Sandro Boticelli’s Nativity".

Johann Christoph Pez (1664—1716) was a contemporary of Corelli. Despite his studies in Rome, his whole professional life was spent in South and West Germany, in Munich, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf. Pez underlines the festive and pastoral character of his Concerto through the treble parts which are intended for the two flutes. He acquires a delightful textural contrast by his masterly juxtaposition of violin with two viols or violas.

Two of the movements are designated as Pastorale; the others (with the exception of the Chaconne) are called Aria by the composer, who thus freely concedes a secular and in parts popular character. Francesco Manfredini‘s (ca. 1680—1748) opus III appeared in Bologna in 1718, where the composer had finished his apprenticeship under Torelli. Manfredini too designated his three-movement Concerto fatto per la notte di Natale,that is, for performance at the Christmas Mass. The transition from the Concerto grosso to the purely instrumental concerto can be traced in this work. In some sections the two solo violins have to master tasks which can be attributed to a solo violin in a violin concerto. In style too, this late Baroque composition foreshadows a possible future gallantry and sensitivity of expression, without meanwhile sacrificing the gravity and elevation of an authentic sonata da chiesa to the sweetness and pleasance of the sound.

Giuseppe Tartini’s life (1692 1770) reads rather like a novel. Throughout his life he was very closely connected with the Franciscans; his teacher was the famous Bohemian master, Cernohorsky, a Franciscan monk from Prague who lived a long time in Assisi. It seems almost inconceivable that the same master who envisaged “the devil’s trill” in a hell-like vision, could also have composed simple Franciscan church music. In this three-movement symphony for strings, the transition from Rococo to true Classicism can already be noted.

Carl de Nys

Classical Music

The ability of record companies to spring surprises on the public is always pleasant, and here Toccata Classics gives us the opportunity to hear what must be one of the very first American symphonies. Leopold Damrosch is almost unknown nowadays, but his son Walter was for many years the principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and the father himself also conducted that body giving the American premières of the Brahms First Symphony and the Berlioz Requiem. Damrosch left Germany for the USA in 1871 and remained there for the remaining thirteen years of his life, during which time he wrote this four-movement symphony; but he never heard it played, and it remained unpublished and in manuscript until 2005 when it was finally edited for performance. This recording was made immediately following the première on 8 February 2015, and it reveals a fascinating if uneven work.

It is unfortunate that the disc begins with the Festival Overture written immediately before Damrosch’s departure for America and dedicated to Georg II, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. The booklet note discerns some influences of Wagner, especially Die Meistersinger; but any Wagnerian overtones are less than immediately apparent, bearing comparison (if at all) to some of the overblown marches that Wagner wrote for cash towards the end of his career. The tone is unremittingly loud and overblown; and that impression is reinforced by a closely observed recording in a claustrophobic acoustic which serves only to emphasize the thick brass writing and Damrosch’s reliance on busy string figuration which sometimes fails to achieve an ideal balance, shading into pure decoration. After the symphony the disc concludes with Damrosch’s orchestration of Schubert, a piece which the booklet informs us was popular with American audiences during the composer’s lifetime, but which rarely rises about the workaday.

No, the real piece of interest on this disc is the unpublished and previously unperformed symphony, and I mean no disrespect to the young players here when I say that one can imagine a better case being made out for the work. I have already noted the claustrophobic acoustic — like a confined broadcasting studio. We should also note the questionable balances which bring out the heavy brass at the expenses of the strings (and especially the violins), although these are not as serious in the symphony as in the more stridently scored other items on the disc. The playing is not always impeccable — there appears to be a split horn note very near the opening of the first movement, or at least an appoggiatura which fails to sound convincing — and although one can hear that the violins are working hard and achieving commendable degrees of accuracy they remain overshadowed by the sonorous trumpets and trombones. The woodwind playing, on the other hand, is superbly executed and well observed by the recording. Add to this the committed conducting of Christopher Russell, and booklet notes which are both informative and substantial, and we have here an issue which is of rather more than purely documentary interest. I am amazed that the composer’s son failed to program the symphony with the New York Philharmonic when he was their conductor – maybe he was unaware of its existence – but its revival is decidedly welcome. Perhaps American professional orchestras might care to look at it now that Azusa Pacific have broken the trail.

The conductor’s own booklet essay makes much of the parallels between the music of Damrosch and that of Wagner and Brahms, but the echoes seem to me to be much closer to Bruckner especially in the more atmospheric pages. The opening quiet string tremolos conjure up a definitely Brucknerian feel, and the episodic construction of the rest of the movement also has traces of that composer — but would Damrosch have heard any of the symphonies? The short second-movement Intermezzo is charming; and the solemn march of the third movement builds to a tremendous climax, crowned by a stroke on the gong, and including some positively manic episodes. After this lengthy movement, the most extended in the symphony, the finale is comparatively brief and conventional. As I have already observed Christopher Russell, whose explorations of rare repertory have included first American performances of symphonies by Havergal Brian and Robert Simpson, clearly relishes the music and manages to make it cohere even when it is at its most waywardly rhapsodic.

One more minor cause for complaint in this disc is the ridiculously short breaks between individual tracks – not just between movements in the symphony, but at the beginning and end of that work as well. The result is that the atmospheric slow introduction sounds almost like an odd sort of continuation of the raucous Festival Overture; and even more seriously, the arrival of the Schubert arrangement comes as a real shock immediately after the closing bars of the symphony’s finale. The listener will need to stand by the pause button at these points, but otherwise Toccata’s presentation is impeccable. This label’s restless exploration of the outermost fringes of the repertory is always fascinating, and the Damrosch symphony here deserves rather more than polite intellectual interest.

– MusicWeb International (Paul Corfield Godfrey)

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This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.

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AMERICAN SALUTE

Includes work(s) by Mark-Anthony Turnage. Ensemble: B. B. C. Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Leonard Slatkin. Soloists: Evelyn Glennie, Peter Erskine, Christian Lindberg, Timothy [horn] Brown, Michael Murray, Christopher Larkin, Andrew Antcliff.

This "on demand" reissue from Arkivmusic.com offers bright and bubbly performances of an odd but curiously apt coupling. Both works are neoclassical in style as well as rich in humor. Mata's performance of the Strauss has none of the usual Viennese "flagellated cream" (as Hoffnung put it). Rather, the playing is sharp-edged and the conducting rhythmically precise, particularly in the extended finale. Textures are extremely clear, and balances favor the winds and percussion. It's a very different take on the work, and one that offsets the all-strings Wirén Serenade quite well. Playing time is only a bit more than 50 minutes, and the early digital sonics aren't entirely free from glare, but this is a very enjoyable recording, yet another worthy memento of the late Eduardo Mata. I was very pleasantly surprised, and if the coupling suits, you will be too.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

York Bowen has a distinguished reputation as a composer and was considered to be one of Britain's finest pianists. In his day he was known as 'The English Rachmaninoff', and Saint-Saëns described him as 'the most remarkable of the young British composers'. The works of York Bowen tend to display a blend of romanticism and strong individuality, and although his influences include the likes of Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Grieg, and Tchaikovsky, his music is also strongly defined by textures and harmonies that are uniquely 'Bowen'. This recording presents the only two surviving symphonies by Bowen: Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 2, which are performed here by the BBC Philharmonic under the exclusive Chandos artist Sir Andrew Davis. Symphony No. 1 was written in 1902 when Bowen was an eighteen-year-old composition student at the Royal Academy of Music. The work is laid out in only three movements (unusual for the time), and requires a relatively modest orchestra. It is a deeply impressive achievement - the beauty and lyricism of the second movement and its myriad of orchestral colourations, together with a unique and often surprising sense of well-being in the finale, demonstrate that here is a genuinely symphonic composer who was not content just to copy established models and appease his professors. At least one movement of this symphony was performed during Bowen's time at the academy, but this recording may well be the first time that the work has been performed in its entirety. When Bowen composed his Symphony No. 2 just seven years after completing his first, much had happened in the world of modern music, not least in instrumental terms with the acceptance of large orchestras as standard. As a result this work is much larger in scale than his first symphony, and performed with significantly larger instrumental forces too. The finale in particular is spectacular in the way it develops from the tiniest semi-tonal seed into a fiery and almost unstoppable flood of 'Bowen-esque' inventiveness. This symphony is the work of an assured composer who was completely certain in his music's sense of direction and in the positive and life-affirming nature of his compositions.

KOZELUCH Clarinet Concertos: No. 1 in Eb; No. 2 in Eb. Sonata concertante in Eb • Dieter Klöcker (cl); Milan Lajík, cond; Prague CO • ORFEO 193 061 (69:21)


With Jan Antonin Koželuh (1747–1818), we find that—like many Bohemian subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Jan Waczlaw Stamic (Johann Stamitz) and Anton Rössler (Antonio Rosetti)—the spelling of his name was altered and usually was written as Leopold Kozeluch, although there are instances where it is seen partially in Latin, i.e., Iohannes Antonius Kotzeluch. Kozeluch—to adopt the form generally used in the musical world today—was one of many Bohemians whose desire for fame and fortune took them to Europe’s great musical centers, including Mannheim, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Paris, and London. There is an 18th-century map showing lines radiating from Bohemia to these and other cities and the lines are so numerous that they resemble a spider’s web. It was Bohemia’s national musical fecundity that prompted Dr. Charles Burney, the well-known 18th-century traveler and writer on music, to refer to Bohemia as the conservatory of Europe.


Among the little country’s musical progeny was Kozeluch, termed in The New Grove’ s Dictionary of Music and Musicians “one of the foremost representatives of Czech [Bohemian, to be politically correct] music in 18th-century Vienna.” It appears that Kozeluch was a declared adversary and critic of Mozart, as contemporary accounts indicate that Kozeluch—with the help of Antonio Salieri—tried to establish himself as Mozart’s rival. Nine years after Mozart’s death, Friedrich Rochlitz noted in the Allemeine Musikalisches Zeitung , “Kozeluch expressed his mind too volubly,” and further on we read, “envy and obsessive criticism are not the way to surpass a great man.”


First and foremost, Kozeluch was a secular composer. His musical legacy extends to some 420 separate works, including arrangements of his and other composers’ works. The bottom line though, is a catalog of some 250 original compositions, including 11 symphonies, 22 keyboard concertos, and two for the clarinet, the last not listed in TNG.


There are four concerted works for clarinet that bear Kozeluch’s signature, but the Czech clarinetist Jirí Kratochvil maintains that one was written by Leopold’s cousin, Antonin, so it has been eliminated from this recording. Of the three works on this Orfeo release, the Sonata concertante in Eb is almost one-of-a-kind, joining a similar work by one Franz Bühler (1760–1823). The first concerto is indebted to the Mannheim School, while the second, written for the German virtuoso Josef Beer, is (according to Dieter Klöcker’s copious and erudite annotations) based upon the popular Clarinet Concerto No. 3 in Bb by Kozeluch’s countryman, Carl Stamitz, but the Kozeluch concertos are far superior to anything Stamitz wrote for the instrument and along with the concertos of Franz Krommer, run a close second to Mozart’s lone clarinet concerto.


Dieter Klöcker’s musical instincts are unfailing; he has continuously and consistently brought forth a great deal of lovely and neglected—not negligible—music for his chosen instrument and each new release is a musical epiphany. Much of the repertoire he has chosen, including music of Soleré, Bärmann, and Schacht, still exists in only his recordings and where other works have seen additional recordings since Klöcker’s premieres, his remain benchmark.


The first concerto of Kozeluch is included with works by Krommer and Crusell on a well-played ASV CD of 18th- and early 19th-century concertos played by Emma Johnson (ASV 763). A search of the Sanctuary Classics Web site reveals that the 1997 disc is still available, so if one is in search of a broader picture of the late-Classical and early-Romantic clarinet concerto repertoire, then this would be the way to go. But the decision of Orfeo and Klöcker to issue an entire disc of Kozeluch is wholly in keeping with the way they go about things and should not be overlooked by those with the slightest curiosity. I should also point out that Klöcker plays a clarinet fitted with the Oehler fingering system (standard, I believe, in the German-speaking countries) and a wooden mouthpiece with the reed held in place in the old-fashioned manner by string, the combination of these most surely accounting for his unusual tone quality.


Both recordings are lively, well played, and equally well recorded, with Klöcker’s Orfeo offering a more distant perspective and therefore a hint of concert hall realism. Violinist Milan Lajcík and his colleagues in the Prague Chamber Orchestra are more than up to the tasks offered by these works. The orchestral support is beyond reproach, with unforced directness, poise, and verve that is totally void of metrical stiffness. Another star in the crowns of both Orfeo and Dieter Klöcker.


FANFARE: Michael Carter

This CD is currently available as RCA Gold Seal 61414.

Includes march(es) by George Frideric Handel. Ensemble: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Sir Charles Groves. Soloist: E. Power Biggs.

V2: GEWANDHAUSORCHESTER LEIPZI

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This selection contains both DDD and ADD recordings.

This new release, the fourth volume of the Alwyn film music series, has been long anticipated. This series began seventeen years ago with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Richard Hickox, and continued with Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic, who released volumes 2 and 3 in 2001 and 2005. Rumon Gamba also got involved in other series, exploring the music of d’Indy, Rozsa, and British composers of the twentieth century, as in two volumes of Overtures from the British Isles. This latest album brings new recordings of music from the prolific decades of the 40s and 50s, during which Alwyn scored a number of famous films. These scores show to perfection Alwyn’s supreme skill in providing music totally attuned to the subject matter, which ranges from the dramatic to the exotic, from comedy to the factual. Much of the music recorded here had to be reconstructed by Philip Lane from the soundtracks, as written scores had not survived.

KONZERTE FOR HORN & ORCHESTER

Weber and Brahms Clarinet Quintets

The special interest here is the ''world premiere recording'' of Schumann's first Piano Quartet in C minor, completed in March, 1829, when he was still only 18. Though his Leipzig piano teacher, Friedrich Wieck, and other discerning music-loving friends found much in the work to praise after a domestic performance by Schumann and some fellow-students, he himself lost faith in it and the score remained unpublished until the Schumann scholar, Wolfgang Boetticher, prepared a performing edition in 1979. The gem of the four movements is the nimble Minuetto, with a trio (its leading theme reappears in the fourth of his Op. 4 Intermezzos for solo piano) subsequently picked out by him as the moment when he first recognized himself as a ''romantic... departing from the former musical style''. The tenderly spun Andante is winning too, and even though the Beethoven-cum-Schubert-inspired faster flanking movements (the last dominated by an obsessively reiterated dotted rhythm) need—and I think in this performance receive—some pruning, both have an irresistible youthful elan. Andre Previn and his three colleagues cannot be over-praised for coming to the Quartet's rescue with such immediacy and warmth of sympathy.

Though never enjoying the popularity of the Piano Quintet, the E flat Piano Quartet, written some 13 years after the C minor work, has rarely lacked dedicated protagonists. These players hold their own with them all, especially the very lively pianist with his keen ear for textural clarity.

-- Joan Chissell, Gramophone [5/1993]

Richard Stoltzman's continuing exploration of the clarinet repertoire has yielded some uniquely enjoyable concerto recordings for RCA, of which the current issue is just the latest example. The disc opens with Lutoslawski's Dance Preludes, a brilliant and lively work of highly varied moods and styles ranging from somber chant to frenzied dancing. Stoltzman sounds as comfortable in each of these witty preludes as he would playing Mozart or Gershwin.


Nielsen's concerto always has been a formidable challenge for clarinetists, and, through its discursive one-movement form, for the listener as well. Happily, Stoltzman's pointed shaping of the musical material aids in the recognition of the various melodic lines, while his freewheeling virtuosity consistently commands attention. Still, Olle Schill's stunningly recorded daredevil performance on BIS remains the Nielsen concerto of choice.


Probably the most interesting item on the program is Kent Kennan's recasting of Prokofiev's Flute Sonata as a concerto for clarinet and orchestra. Kennan succeeds admirably in approximating a real Prokofiev orchestral sound and his arrangement sheds new light on the work's subtle beauties. Indeed the finale, with its judicious use of timpani, seems to improve upon the original. Stoltzman certainly sounds convinced, and you can appreciate in his performance that sense of satisfaction at discovering a new classic. Lawrence Leighton Smith and the Warsaw Philharmonic provide handsomely played and truly collaborative accompaniments. RCA's recording is rather flat in perspective, but allows all of Stoltzman's infectious playing to be clearly heard. A desirable disc, and not just for clarinet fans.
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com