Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is the second Takemitsu disc to appear in recent months: the first, from Virgin Classics (9/91), was of works for chamber ensemble. The focus here is the guitar—the ideal vehicle, it might be guessed, for Takemitsu's dreamy, introspective yet far from austere musical manner. And so, to a large extent, it proves.

The earliest music is in the solo pieces. Folios (1974) is unobtrusively characterful, with the unexpected appearance of the Bach St Matthew Passion chorale, "Wenn ich einmal soil scheiden", in No. 3. A very different hymn melody is the source of Takemitsu's transcription of What a Friend, which dates from 1977. What a friend we have in Jesus is inoffensively recast as a decorous piece of light music, along with Gershwin's Summertime and two other songs. John Williams makes the best of these miniatures, the immaculate recording catching the full range of the instrument's delicate colours.

The other compositions date from the 1980s. Toward the Sea takes risks in combining alto flute and guitar, the music often seeming too small scale and inturned for its own good. Though it is performed with the utmost refinement, the many pauses and silences almost come to seem more essential than the actual sounds. Vers, l'Arc-enciel, Palma is another mood piece; languid but not wholly soft-centred. There is a brilliant account of the oboe d'amore cadenza from Gareth Hulse, and no denying the skill with which Takemitsu himself sketches the outlines of a satisfying form on a canvas inspired by the paintings of Joan Miro.

Another painter, Paul Delvaux, inspired the strongest music on the disc, the guitar concerto To the Edge of Dream. Appropriately, in view of Delvaux's work, a distinct sense of menace emerges here to offset the more tranquil moods, and the orchestral contribution serves to control the guitar's improvisatory tendencies. We probably hear more of the guitar relative to the orchestra than would be the case in the concert-hall, but there is nothing unreasonably artificial about the result.

-- Gramophone [1/1992]

Includes work(s) for orchestra by various composers.

Classical Music

This truly fantastic live set of the complete Beethoven symphonies plus select overtures as played by the Philharmonia Orchestra in Vienna in 1960 under the direction of the legendary conductor Otto Klemperer has now returned to the Andromeda catalog in completely re-mastered, superb 24bit/96kHz sound, taken directly from the original master tapes. It always a fascinating pastime to compare Klemperer’s live performances with his studio recordings of the identical works from the same period, as these come from around the time of his famous EMI late-‘50s recordings with the same orchestra.

In 1926 Hindemith encouraged the composition of a new kind of original music for wind ensemble (military band) for chamber music performances at Donaueschingen and helped raise the genre to a level of achievement which continues today. Three of these works from 1926 are published on this CD, together with Hindemith's famous masterpiece Symphony in B flat and Ernst Krenek's Dream Sequence.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 18 & Rhapsody on a T

•Volume Seven of the Auryn Quartet's complete cycle of Franz Joseph Haydn's String Quartets is a double-disc affair containing the six quartets of op. 50. Completed and published in the late 1780's, they were dedicated to Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia, hence their being known as Haydn's “Prussian” Quartets. TACET's technically impressive and impeccably recorded sonics once again come to the fore and beg for your consideration of this and the other volumes in this series.

VIVALDI: 6 CONCERTOS GALWAY,

Her performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto in the early 1950s, under Ferenc Fricsay, was pervaded by a delicate lyricism and a romantic sorcery rarely encountered elsewhere. Joachim Hartnack about Gioconda De Vito Gioconda De Vito, one of the great violinists of her time, was considered a Brahms specialist. The only evidence to date of her work with Ferenc Fricsay and the RIAS Orchestra is the above mentioned quote. Precisely this collaboration was captured in a superb monaural recording by the RIAS broadcasting company in Berlin - a stroke of luck, for De Vito had an aversion to the recording studio. Gioconda De Vito, Ferenc Fricsay and the RIAS-Symphonie Orchester produce an exemplary realization of the concept of the "symphonic concerto". A great deal of the cogency of this realization is owed to the precise dovetailing of soloist and orchestra, even in those passages in which De Vito grants herself a liberal use of rubato. With wonted translucence, Fricsay allows the solo instrumentalists in his orchestra to share the limelight with the violinist. The recording reveals all of Gioconda De Vito's strengths. She unfolds a large, singing tone, at once brilliantly radiant and warm. This accurate, crisply recorded performance by the RIAS-Symphonie-Orchester under Fricsay also brings out the very deliberate rhythmic organization with which she shaped her cantilenas. Under Fricsay, the RIAS-Symphonie-Orchester also succeeds in turning their recording of Brahms's Second Symphony into a touchstone of Brahmsian "orchestral chamber music." " "Sales Inventory

Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14 - Rimsky-Korsakov: Ca

Continuing the recording series of instrumental music by Eduard Franck which already includes his Violin Concertos Op. 30 and Op. 57, and also his Symphonies Op. 42 and Op. 47, now presents Franck's orchestral works. Once again, we hear music of the highest technical quality as well as a characteristic idiom. All were written during the 1840s when Franck set out on his career as a composer, attracting the interest of the music critics who from this time onwards were increasingly to influence musical history. The works recorded here reveal an attractive amalgamation of classicist and progressive trends, referring on the one hand to Schumann and Brahms, and on the other to Wagner and Liszt. They more than hold their own as original contributions to nineteenth century instrumental music.

The WDR Sinfonie Orchester and the Norwegian conductor Eivind Aadland continue their survey of Edvard Grieg's orchestral works with this selection from the composer's orchestral repertoire which he liked to conduct across Europe.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Recorded in a 1955 concert at Carnegie Hall, the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos with the New York Philharmonic was an advocate and champion of Gustav Mahler. Said by some to bring a radical perspective to Mahler's scores, this re-issue of the so-called "Tragic" symphony enables us to appreciate the much talked about and legendary 1955 performance with superb sound acoustics but has suffered the fate of going in and out of print over the years.

Since 2011 Marcus Bosch has been General Music Director of the Nuremberg State Theater. He is attracting new audiences with a range of innovative concert formats. He is continuing the orchestra's series of CD releases with a complete recording of the symphonies of Antonín Dvorák. The symphonies no. 3 and no. 7, which are not so famous and in their substance very contrary, start the series. Bosch elaborates the sensitive differences in both symphonies and he conveys the fascinating transparence once again.

Of the works performed here by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under the prominent Delius interpreter Sir Andrew Davis, the first three (Paris, the Piano Concerto, and Idylle de printemps) offer a fascinating insight into the early years of the development of Delius as a composer, when he was slowly and painstakingly honing his craft, and assuming the characteristic personal voice that is evident in more mature works such as Brigg Fair.

Paris, sub-titled ‘The Song of a Great City’, is strongly inspired by the composer’s many years of living and working in Paris. With large-scale orchestral forces, Delius paints opulent pictures of a city that he obviously loved. The slow opening portrays the still darkness falling over Paris; then the music changes pace and takes us through the teeming and intoxicating nightlife of the city, with impressions of exuberant dance music coming from the many cafés and music-halls. The opening material returns, culminating in the sounds of the awakening streets.

Until recently Delius’s Piano Concerto has been know exclusively in its final, one-movement form, which was first performed in London in 1907. The version recorded here, however, represents the composer’s earlier thoughts, from 1897. Performed by Howard Shelley, the work is brimming with full-bodied romanticism while showing the influences of Grieg and Liszt throughout.

The airy mood of Idylle de printemps points to later depictions of nature in Delius’s music, as in Brigg Fair, which Delius categorised as ‘An English Rhapsody’. Cecil Gray, the Scottish music critic and composer, described the opening of Brigg Fair as ‘evoking the atmosphere of an early summer morning in the English countryside’. The work is based on a folk-tune which came to light in a competition instigated by Percy Grainger in 1905 to find ‘the best unpublished old Lincolnshire folk song or plough song’. Grainger was immediately taken with the folk-tune, and having arranged it himself for solo tenor and chorus, he approached Delius to write orchestral variations on it – urging him on as the only composer worthy of the task. Delius was soon persuaded, and Brigg Fair became one of his best-loved works.

- Chandos Records