Selections recorded at Philharmonic Hall, Bratislava and Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City.
The orchestral adaptations were made by Philip Traugott, Richard Stoltzman and Arthur Fagen.

Miloslav Kabelac (1908-79), a highly original and individual musical thinker, enjoyed considerable renown during the 1950s and 60s as the leading Czech composer of his generation. However, around 1970 he apparently offended the powers that were, and his many recordings and publications disappeared. Now, after more than two decades of what seemed to be total obliteration, Kabelác's music has, during the past year, made its first appearances on CD, mostly with reissue of broadcast performances from his period of prominence. For comment on those releases, together with further background information, see Fanfare 17:2, pp. 280-81, and 17:3, pp. 214-15. In both those reviews I cited The Mystery of Time as perhaps Kabelác's most distinctive and compelling work, in urgent need of representation on disc. And now its sole previous recording returns to the catalog, bringing to eight the number of works by this composer currently available, although only one is a newly recorded performance.

The Mystery of Time, composed in 1957, is a work of tremendous power and originality. In some ways it is comparable to the Sinfonia Sacra of Andrzej Panufnik, although its aesthetic impact is quite different. But it shares with the Polish work a number of characteristics, among them a ready accessibility, despite the renunciation of most traditional formal and harmonic procedures, and of the sophisticated nuances, embellishments, qualifications, and other devices associated with “expressive“ music. There is little sense of vulnerable humanity in Kabelác's music—of a subjective point of view. Rather, it seems to suggest an impersonal landscape, governed by a supreme order far removed from the judgments or concerns of living creatures. The Mystery of Time represents Kabelác's unusual metaphysical attitude in its most fully and successfully realized manifestation, conjuring the vast expanse of time that stretches from the infinite past to the infinite future, its unwavering forward momentum suggesting the inexorable motion of the heavenly bodies.

The form has been described as a sort of passacaglia, but only in a loose sense: It is not based on contrapuntal development over a recurring bass line, but it does involve a gradual accumulation of energy through the evolving development of simple motivic elements. The work begins with an ominous murmur strongly reminiscent of the opening of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony (which dates from the same year), with regard to both mood and actual content. Basic, elemental intervallic material is introduced into a static void, slowly building momentum through a process of imperceptibly altered repetition that must be described as proto-Minimalist. The effect suggests the implacable passage of time viewed from the perspective of a dispassionate eternal consciousness. With great deliberateness the twenty-five-minute work gradually builds in intensity through motivic metamorphosis and interlayered levels of rhythmic acceleration in a grim, inexorable crescendo that eventually culminates in a revelatory cosmic orgasm, before finally returning to the static void.

Karel Ancerl was a close friend of Kabelac and a consistent champion of his music, introducing The Mystery of Time throughout Europe and even in the United States. This recording dates from 1960, and the performance is sympathetically conceived and solidly executed. Of course, a new recording, in modern sonics, would be most welcome, but this reissue provides a valuable opportunity to discover one of the most unforgettable European works of the mid-twentieth century.

Hamlet Improvisation was composed in 1963 and represents a later development in Kabelác's musical language—more terse, angular, dissonant, and gestural—but with much the same underlying metaphysical outlook. The title is enigmatic, as the work has no improvisational elements and its connection with Shakespeare's play or the hero thereof is tenuous at best. The composer's own explanation suggests the obfuscatory philosophical doubletalk that passed for musical commentary in Eastern Europe during the Soviet period. However, the piece, in which angry, dissonant passages alternate with moments of eerie mystery, might have been less misleadingly entitled Contrasts for Orchestra or some such. It make a strong impact as an abstract statement and is another of Kabelác's most important works. This is music of far greater competence and depth than that of other figures from Eastern Europe who have momentarily seized the popular fancy.

With Hamlet Improvisation we have the unlikely case of two currently available recorded performances, each conducted by Ancerl. The other recording (Praga PR 255 000) is taken from a live performance in 1966; this new Supraphon reissue is from a studio recording made the same year and is much better.

- Walter Simmons, Fanfare

Classical Music

A few decades ago, Franck’s Symphony in D minor was standard repertoire, and every major conductor recorded it. Now, the work’s high romantic sentimentality seems to have fallen out of fashion, and new releases are far less common. Interpretations run the gamut from reasonably strict and “classical”, to totally demented (think: Stokowski). Monteux’s falls decidedly into the “classical” category, but never to the detriment of expressivity.

Consider how he handles the luscious second subject of the first movement, with a singing tone and real urgency, the ensuing accelerando done with passion, excitement, and yes, taste. The Chicago Symphony plays gloriously (this was the Reiner era, let’s not forget), responding to Monteux’s every perfectly judged nuance. It has become fashionable lately to disparage this performance, in addition to dogging the work, but as Tovey once wrote, “All’s not false that’s taught in the public schools.” This recording was the best in its day, both interpretively and sonically, and so it remains 50 years on.

The coupling of Pétrouchka might seem odd–there’s only so much Monteux material available in stereo to RCA, but it’s equally wonderful. Indeed, if I had to choose a single CD to represent the conductor’s art at its best, this would probably be the one. Again, he has a great orchestra at his disposal, one fully at home in the idiom, and he leads a performance at once lovingly detailed but also brilliant and glittering. In the Danse Russe Monteux captures the music’s mechanical, cartoonish qualities to perfection, while the folk dances in the concluding tableau have all the rhythmic bounce and gaiety that one could ask. The sonics are superb even by modern standards. What a joy this disc is!

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Selection includes Vaclav Talich speaking during a recording session.
All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

VERDI: BALLET MUSIC ROBERTO A

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

Rubinstein Collection, Vol. 71: Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2

Classical Music

Leonard Slatkin conducts the briskest Belshazzar in years. When we have had so recent a reminder of the composer's own very first wartime recording, far faster in most of its speeds than has become the custom, Slatkin's approach would have certainly pleased Walton himself... The choral ensemble is generally first-rate... What is superb is the singing of the baritone soloist, Thomas Allen, covering the broadest tonal and expressive range... Slatkin directs a splendidly rumbustious performance of the opening Toccata... [The final Giga burlesca of] the Pastorale Siciliana (with David Theodore sounding glorious on the oboe)...with its snappy cross-rhythms is exuberantly done...

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [9/1992]

Mozart's last three symphonies carry within them the aesthetic ideal of their composer. Orchestre des Champs, using period instruments, reveals the richness and visionary complexity that prepared the way for the Beethovenian revolution. Led by Philippe Herreweghe, the orchestra explores the sonority and motor rhythms of Mozart's symphonic writing at the height of his powers.

Karlowicz: Symphony in E minor, "Rebirth", Op. 7

Rubinstein Collection, Vol. 69

"I enjoyed this performance enormously. Davis's Mahler is perhaps too restless, too blatantly 'conducted' for some tastes, but his occasionally heavy-handed manipulations of tempo are at least symptomatic of a desire to communicate a personal vision of and affection for Mahler's score. Both playing and recording are of exceptional standard, even if the lack of ironic edge to the sound lends the music-making a somewhat old fashioned air (strikingly at odds with RCA's strident, pop-inspired packaging). Davis's scherzo is warm and characterful in a rather cumbersome Sort of way, but his slow movement is a marvel -elevated in feeling and blessedly free of the intrusive inflexions which mar an otherwise refreshing account of the opening movement. No more affecting account has appeared for a decade and only Maazel's Vienna Philharmonic produce such glorious string tone. After this, the finale disappoints just a little. The 'operatic' soloist does not really point her words with sufficient poignancy -nor does she seem willing or able to sing quietly in her upper register - and Sir Cohn again insists on playing up the composer's expressive hesitations, adding one or two of his own. This may not be wholly idiomatic Mahler and yet, like so many recent discs from this source, it has abundant humanity and an extraordinary lack of artifice. The sympathetic acoustic of the Herkulessaal, well caught, is great asset.

-- Gramophone [7/1996]

THE HEIFETZ COLLECTION VOL 6 -

MOZART: PIANO CONCERTOS 17 & 1

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony is primarily regarded as the composer's reaction in the summer of 1908 to the diagnosis of a heart ailment, which he received just before writing the first sketches for the work. Mahler was deeply distraught and cannot have known how few years he still had left to live. His processing and exploration of his life experiences, and of valedictions, the meaning of life, death, salvation, life after death and love, always took playce in and through his music. The Ninth Symphony was composed between 1909 and 1920 in Toblach, in a kind of creative frenzy, and was first performed in Vienna on June 26, 1912 by the Vienna Philharmonic, under the baton of Bruno Walter. Mahler had already died on May 18, 1911, and was no longer able to experience the premiere of his last completed work. Willem Mengelberg, the first ardent conductor of the composer's works, wrote in his score: "Mahler's soul sings its farewell!" Mahler's Ninth Symphony represents the culmination of a development process. The progressive chromaticism and maximum utilization of the tonal are here taken to their limits - and, for the first time, beyond them. Indeed, the two movements that fram the work, in particular, depart from the tonal entirely, pointing clearly to the dawn of a new musical epoch. Alban Berg even called this symphony "the first work of New Music".

The Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks can be heard here performing highlights of sacred choral music dating from the Baroque period to modern times. Even today, three hundred years later, the large oratorio choirs by Bach and Handel are as vivid, realistic and captivating as ever. Haydn succeeded in preserving this for the sacred music of the Wiener Klassik era, which reached its peak in Beethoven's Missa solemnis. The heartfelt masses composed by Schubert are typical of early German Romanticism, Gounod's St. Cecilia Mass is the French equivalent here, and Dvořák's Stabat Mater represents Bohemian Romanticism of the mid- to late 19th century.

Verdi's famous Messa da Requiem testifies to the close relationship between Italian opera and Italian church music. The Mass written just before the end of World War II by the Hungarian composer Kodály is still Late Romantic in its musical language, while in his Berlin Mass, written shortly before the start of the 20th century, the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt maintains the Tintinnabuli style that informs and inspires his work. This representative cross-section of well-known and some less well-known choral numbers spans a period of almost three hundred years, impressively demonstrating not only what gives choral music its special character and aura, but also what has changed over the centuries and what has remained largely similar. Furthermore, it testifies to the unique choral culture of the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks and to the "crystal clear sound" and "immense plasticity" of its performances, which are regularly praised in the highest terms, along with supreme artistic quality of its interpretations.

Dvorák's haunting 'Stabat Mater' for solo voices, chorus and orchestra is not only the most famous work of church music by the Bohemian composer, it is also one of the most impressive ever settings of the medieval hymn in which Mary, the mother of Jesus, gives vivid expression to the pain she feels at the sight of her crucified son. The terrible misfortunes that befell the composer in his private life during the creation of this work may have been a reason for this. It is the continuous expression of deep piety, above all, that gives this music its special dignity. It was precisely this intensity that was conveyed by the concert on March 26, 2015 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz, where the four renowned soloists were in fine voice, and the Bavarian Radio Chorus once again delivered the "crystal clear sound" and "incredible three-dimensionality" for which it is highly praised time and again. and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mariss Jansons, performed Dvorák's deeply moving music authentically, in keeping with the composer's intentions: sensitively felt, yet with a resonant, magnificent sound.