TCHAIKOVSKY Manfred Symphony. The Voyevoda • Vasily Petrenko, cond; Royal Liverpool PO • NAXOS 8.570568 (68:51)


This latest entry to Naxos’s Tchaikovsky series introduces the young and extraordinarily gifted conductor Vasily Petrenko (b. 1971), whose only previous exposure on discs seems to be a performance of Prokofiev’s The Gamblers (Avie), highlights from Tchaikovsky ballets (Avie), and the two Liszt piano concertos and Totentanz (Naxos). Remember you heard it here first: this is a conductor of the very first rank. In another world, with the right publicity behind him, he would be another Karajan or Markevitch. He would sell records.


I’ve been a fan of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred for decades, having first heard the recording by Toscanini. At the time I wasn’t aware that, for reasons known only to himself, he made numerous little one- and two-bar paper cuts in the first three movements, then excised a whopping 118 bars from the last movement, but I quickly discovered this when I heard the original recording by Fabian Sevitzky and the Indianapolis Symphony (Victor, 1942). I’ve also heard the recordings of Mariss Janssons, Andrew Litton, Riccardo Muti, Mikhail Pletnev, Michael Tilson Thomas, Constantin Silvestri, and Paul Kletzki. I never heard Raymond Leppard’s recording, but I heard Leppard conduct it in person with the Cincinnati Symphony many years ago. It is etched in my mind as one of the finest, most lyrical versions I’ve ever heard, much like a performance of Guido Cantelli (I told Leppard as much; he admitted that as a young musician working in England, Cantelli’s work with the Philharmonia Orchestra subconsciously influenced him a great deal).


Yet all of these performances, even Toscanini’s (ignoring his cuts in the score), tended to let me down in an overall assessment of the work. The only one I currently own is the Muti, so I will make a direct comparison of him to Petrenko. Muti is actually quite good for a non-Russian; he follows the score tempos and most (but not all) of the phrase markings closely. But, like all the conductors whose versions I’ve heard, even the Russian Pletnev (who is, in my view, vastly underrated), there is an essential life-force, you might say a “soul of Russia” feeling, missing from their recordings.


You can hear it in the way Petrenko conducts the very first movement, taken at quarter note = 66 rather than the score tempo of quarter note = 60. This may seem a radical shift, but in practice it’s not so great. The principal reason why the music sounds much faster is that Petrenko keeps nudging the beat forward, even in the Lento lugubre section, as well as strictly observing—as even Toscanini did not—the phrase marks that are clearly meant to bind the phrases together. This even extends to the dragging notes in the lower strings (violas, cellos, and basses) where Tchaikovsky very clearly marked these notes with long accents (>) rather than alla breve markings (^), which is how they are normally phrased. In addition, he moves the music forward even after pauses that follow agitated passages and introduce more lyrical ones. In this way, he creates a sound picture in the manner of such great Russian conductors as Markevitch, Coates, Svetlanov, Temirkanov, and Gergiev, a style that combined forward propulsion and subtle rubato with a peculiarly Russian string tone, warm yet edgy. In Petrenko’s hands, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic suddenly becomes, by a startling form of alchemy, the Moscow State Orchestra. This performance doesn’t just speak Tchaikovsky; it speaks Russian, with all its visceral earthiness and thick consonants. The soul of Tchaikovsky is laid totally bare. We are deep in his subconscious.


Yet another example of this is the way he conducts the second movement. Here he is not as fast as many conductors, certainly slower than Muti; but whereas Muti conducts in a rather choppy Italianate fashion, Petrenko phrases in a legato fashion, even when scrupulously observing the staccato markings in the flute and piccolo passages. The result, if one does an A-B comparison, is that Petrenko actually sounds faster than Muti, even though his tempo is more relaxed, taken at the score tempo of quarter-note = 120, while Muti cranks it up two notches to 132. His third movement is very Svetlanov-like, an Andante with plenty of con moto , and his last movement is the most fiery I’ve heard since Sevitzky’s original 1942 recording. (The rest of Sevitzky’s reading was rather static to my ears, but in the last movement he is even more exciting than Toscanini is, and he does not chop out 118 bars as the Italian maestro did.)


There are a few other recordings of the tone poem Voyevoda available (10, to be precise), including good ones by Claudio Abbado (who “speaks” Russian pretty well for an Italian), Antal Dorati, Markevitch, and Leonard Slatkin (Russian by heritage). Petrenko pushes them all into oblivion. This Voyevoda is musically erudite, to be sure, but it also displays almost the same passion and intensity as Pique Dame or this version of Manfred.


If you’re a fan of Manfred, you simply cannot pass this disc up. If you’ve never been a fan of Manfred, you must hear this performance before you make your final decision on the work.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

John Knowles Paine was one of the ‘Boston Six’, a group of important American composers active in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. His German training equipped him with considerable formal skill and he soon rose to become a pioneer of the symphonic tradition in America. Paine’s Symphony No 1 received a tremendous reception at its première on account of its attractive themes, skilful orchestration and accomplished design. The Overture As You Like It is notable for its graceful and tuneful themes, whereas Shakespeare’s Tempest is a more adventurous and powerful Lisztian tone poem.

As a result of his varied activities inside and outside the concert hall, as composer, conductor of professional and amateur ensembles, lecturer on television and radio, author of books on music, and a visible supporter of the anti-nuclear movement, Yasushi Akutagawa (1925–89) might be considered the Japanese equivalent of Leonard Bernstein. Thanks to Morihide Katayama’s thorough program notes, we learn that Akutagawa’s compositional career can be divided into three periods: early, in which he attempted to integrate the rhythmic impulses learned from his main teacher, Akira Ifukube, with a lyrical strain identified with another teacher, Qunihico Hashimoto (who himself had studied with Egon Wellesz in Vienna), while also absorbing musical influences from Russian composers like Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and Shostakovich (he conducted the Japanese premiere of the latter’s Fourth Symphony); middle, exploring avant-garde tendencies as Akutagawa aligned himself with fellow composers Toru Takemitsu and Toshiro Mayuzumi; and late, attempting a populist combination of elements from the first two. Helpfully, on this disc we are given one work illustrating each of these respective periods.

Listening to these attractive works, however, one can hear commonalities that run consistently through Akutagawa’s music—a rhythmic vitality, colorful orchestration, and ability to paint a mood, all of which may be attributed to Akutagawa’s childhood love of Stravinsky’s early ballets. Occasional echoes of The Firebird and The Rite of Spring emerge and quickly recede—so quickly, in fact, that they sound less like an influence and more like a brief, subconscious, unattributable memory. Much more substantial, primarily in the earliest of these compositions, the Trinita Sinfonica (1948), is the post-Stravinsky Russian influence. There is a playful tone and flair unheard in the later works, especially in the jubilant roller-coaster finale, and a hint of dark undercurrent to the otherwise romantic flow of lullabies in the slow second movement.

Even though the Ellora Symphony (1958), a product of Akutagawa’s exploratory period, was originally designed to allow an aleatoric re-ordering of its 20 (now reduced to 15) concise movements from performance to performance, the alternately tranquil passages and turbulent outbursts (heavy on percussion) contain a motivic and symbolic unity that keep their dramatic logic intact. Built from Akutagawa’s primary compositional method of manipulating small units, each movement’s close-knit intervallic motifs represent masculine and feminine characteristics. Katayama states that the symphony is “a hymn to primitive reproduction,” but the fantasy and power of the music—especially those Stravinskyan ostinatos—suggest sources and a setting more mythic than merely primitive.

From the period of his greatest popularity, the Rapsodia (1971) fluidly mixes these propulsive rhythms, via small energetic units and ostinato figures, with long-lined counterpoint and tone painting. Despite his occasional use of indigenous dance melodies and pentatonic scales, if these three works are typical, Akutagawa’s compositions contain less specific Japanese musical references than many of his contemporaries. But his fluency in the mid-century modernist vocabulary—especially in the hands of an experienced conductor like Yuasa—makes his music worthy of attention.

Art Lange, FANFARE

If Maurizio Arena's lively and sympathetic account of Adriana Lecouvreur for RCA demonstrates that the opera still has stageworthy potential, and not just as a vehicle for an old-fashioned prima donna (for to tell the truth his donna, Raina Kabaivanska, is a rather small-scale Adriana, the voice not always under perfect control), James Levine's sumptuous CBS reading makes an even stronger case for it, and his donna is decidedly prima. It is Levine's Adriana Lecouvreur as much as Renata Scotto's, indeed, and some listeners may find his affectionate moulding of the score, his underlining of its every expressive detail and his leisurely speeds (he adds a full 15 minutes to Arena's timing) rather over-done.

His approach strikes me as an admirable one, rooted in a real love for the score (he has a distinct talent for making you think again about supposedly second-rate Italian operas: he is a first-rate conductor of Zandonai, for example) and in great consideration for his singers. I suspect that Kabaivanska would have made more of the title-role with support from Levine's supple phrasing, so well attuned to the way Cilea's phrases lie for the voice and to a singer's need to breathe, to approach a climactic note at the voice's own pace. Scotto certainly responds to this, and makes a part that might have seemed a size too large for her (there are one or two brief moments of strain) thoroughly her own, with a range that extends from caressed murmur to splendidly melodramatic hauteur.

Domingo is in ardent voice and fills out the rather thinly sketched Maurizio admirably (Arena's elegant tenor, Alberto Cupido, is rather over-parted) and both baritones, Milnes for Levine and Arena's Attilio d'Orazi make a sympathetic figure of the soft-hearted Michonnet. Obraztsova's fans will not mind too much that she makes the haughty Princesse de Bouillon sound like Azucena or Ulrica (one quite expects her to offer balefully to tell Adriana's fortune) but Arena's Alexandrina Milcheva, a very similar Slavonic voice, does much the same. nut this opera stands or falls on whether the soprano can convince you that she is both a grande dame and touchingly vulnerable, and on whether the conductor realizes how much more than an accompanist he needs to be (Cilea was a cunning builder of dramatic tension, and an imaginative orchestrator). On both counts this set succeeds finely, and it is beautifully recorded.

-- Gramophone [3/1990]

POULENC: COMPLETE MUSIC FOR SO

These performances are also included on Sony's 10-disc set "Bruno Walter
Edition Volume 3" - Sony Classical 66248.

"[A]dmirers of this conductor will certainly want the mono rehearsal disc, for this demonstrates how he prepared the final performances of Symphonies Nos. 4, 5, 7 and 9." -- Gramophone [8/1995]

This disc contains recordings of rehearsals.

If there is one sensation aroused today in the listener to Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's operas it is delight: How attractive they are! The composer seems to have achieved the perfect unity of straightforward Italianate lyricism and the orchestral style of the German school. His operas are supreme examples of eclecticism in the best sense of the term...

(The Secret of Susanna), first performed at the Hofoper, Munich, on November 4, 1909, was outwardly a departure from the composer's usual eighteenth-century settings, but in fact it is clearly modelled after Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona with its three roles for soprano, baritone, and mime servant. The overture "in miniature" is a masterpiece of engagin melody and marvelously controlled counterpoint - each of the four themes upon which it is built are able to hold their own when played separately, yet work perfectly when played together in the coda.

Here and there during the course of his one-act opera, one may recall Donizetti - as in the piano solo that returns as the duet finale - or wagner, Liszt, Debussy - a faun flits about the tobacco smoke as the clarinet weaves its sinuos chromatic arabesques during Susanna's aria - and others, but in no way can this score be construed as derivative. The harmony is predominantly diatonic, enriched when necessary with Wagnerian chromaticism. Nevertheless, unlike the music of Humperdinck, Wilhelm Kienzl or Alexander von Fielitz, to name but three of the many Wagnerite composers, it is free of the pervasive flavor of Bayreuth. On the other hand we do not come away from hearing the music with the impression that Wolf-Ferrari was a follower of twilight Verdi - though the excitement ad panache of Falstaff is there - Massenet, or a rival of Puccini or Richard Strauss. Clearly Wolf-Ferrari set out on his own mission; he was influenced by many, but a disciple of none; he was inspired by the past but sought to beautify the present. above all, for all his eclecticism, ermanno Wolf-Ferrari remained his own man.

- Barrymore Laurence Scherer
excerpted from album liner notes

Michael Tilson Thomas’s first version [of Symphony no 3] with the LSO on Sony boasted the best contralto of all in Janet Baker and a wonderful coupling of Baker singing the [Rückert-Lieder].

-- Tony Duggan, MusicWeb International

Includes work(s) by Aaron Copland, Maurice Ravel, Joaquín Rodrigo, Sergei Prokofiev, Virgil Thomson, Gabriel Fauré, Jacques Ibert, Percy Aldridge Grainger. Ensemble: Philharmonia Virtuosi. Conductor: Richard Kapp.

SIBELIUS: FINLANDIA, VALSE TRI

There will be listeners who have come across the Paris string quartets in the so-called quatuor cancertant manner, that is to say with a soloistic firstviolin part that turns the work into something of a chamber concerto. This is something more unusual; a set of quintets in which a cello is the concertante instrument with a string quartet in attendance. Written in Paris in the middle of the first decade of the nineteenth century, the heyday of the quatuor concertant, they are typical of the ingenious Reicha in his use of the unexpected. He was a clever composer, as his pupils Berlioz and Liszt (among many other famous men) discovered to their benefit. These pieces find him in a more relaxed mode: no quirky fugues here. The minuets have been dropped, accentuating the chamber concerto manner; but the style is closer to the intimacies of chamber music without the intellectual subtleties of Haydn or Beethoven. They are really for cellists with a curiosity about the byways of their repertory; but others could enjoy this easy-going, undemanding music, nicely played by a group clearly out for enjoyment, and well recorded too.

-- Gramophone [10/1993]

In December 1740, a notice in the Mercure de France announced the imminent publication of six ‘Sonates Violoncello Solo col Basso’ by Antonio Vivaldi. He composed at least ten cello sonatas; one has vanished, but this extremely rare Paris print encompassed the greater, and much the best part of a corpus of work which might have been significantly larger than we now know.v These sonatas have been recorded fairly regularly; the catalogue features creditable versions from Pieter Wispelwey (Channel Classics) and David Watkin (Hyperion), both accomplished periodists offering much to enjoy and admire in their contrasting performances. If Wispelwey is the more mercurial, surprising and unconventional, then Watkin’s more scholarly approach tends sometimes toward drabness, regardless of its authority.

Veteran Dutch authenticist Anner Bylsma, however, plays with greater imagination and fervour than either. Questions of phrasing, articulation and ornamentation will always remain largely conjectural; Bylsma’s solutions are reassuringly plausible, but never pedantic in their application of received historical wisdom. Sony’s fine recording is richly detailed, whilst never over-resonant, and continuo playing is discreetly effective throughout. Highly recommended.
Performance: 5 (out of 5); Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Michael Jameson, BBC Music Magazine

Part, A.: Berliner Messe / Fratres / Collage Uber B-A-C-H /

The Columbia Symphony may not have been a first-class orchestra, but Bruno Walter trained to do the right things, and it responded with first-class accounts of the Brahms symphonies. While there are instances of less-than-crack ensemble, there is also some very fine first-desk playing, and the performances as a whole are marked by a natural feeling of movement, phrasing, and expression. Walter’s approach to the music is kindly, caring, wonderfully whole – sunny but not overly brilliant, warm but not overly heated, sincere but not overly impassioned. Anyone who thinks that means the conductor was slow, shapeless, or indulgent should listen. There is thrust here, and plenty of momentum. The recordings are closely miked and somewhat bass-heavy, but in Sony’s 20-bit remastering the sound is wonderfully alive and direct. – Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection

Easily the best mono disc thus far in this series was made by Walter with the NYPO in 1956, and largely comprises of music by Johann Strauss II: it really is remarkably fine. The sound is spacious and full, in fact almost as good as stereo. To have Walter's accounts of the An der schönen, blauen Donau, the G'schichten aus dem Wienerwald and the Kaiser waltzes is treasure indeed, especially as the readings are so idiomatic. However, the conductor reserves his special affection for Wiener Blut, the introduction coaxed with loving care, the violins ravishing. In addition there are volatile performances of the Fledermaus and Zigenunerbaron Overtures. These Strauss items are coupled with four of Brahms's Hungarian Dances (Nos. 1, 3, 10 and 17). They are given a Viennese air and are filled out with charming detail. The concert ends with Walter's 1941 version of Smetana's "Vltava" (Ma vlast). This opens delicately and the moonlight sequence is also quite lovely. Unfortunately the restricted range of the recording prevents the St John's rapids episode from providing any sense of dynamic expansion, although the work's closing section comes off well.

-- Gramophone [8/1995]

This recording is also available as a mini disc.
This CD includes a multimedia portion.
THE GUITARIST could be described as a record of brooding reflection and pastoral solitude with echoes of ancient Greece a recurrent motif. It also demonstrates that one can plan a wonderfully varied yet coherent guitar recital without recourse to the usual Bach transcriptions and Spanish chestnuts.
No one is better equipped to do this than John Williams. As much an ambassador of the guitar as a player, he puts his commitment to new music for the instrument to good use here, the major dividend being the 'Koyunbaba' of Italian composer Carlo Domeniconi. Inspired by Turkish themes and landscapes, the four-movement suite employs an unusual C sharp minor tuning to haunting, original effect.
The 'Stele' of Australian Phillip Houghton are moody evocations of the Greek coastline and ancient monuments to gods, demons and sailors lost at sea, while the 'Epitafios' of Mikis Theodorakis eulogize the more recently departed with the direct simplicity of folk music. Rounded off with a suite of medieval tunes and a particularly successful arrangement of Satie's third 'Gymnopedie,' THE GUITARIST leads one down a darker, less traveled road full of drama and beauty.

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO 3, KINDERT

KODALY: HARY JANOS SUITE PROK

One might have thought that the exceptional nature of this opera, lull of vague thoughts and understated music, would prove elusive on disc, but Boulez's much praised 1970 recording, made after his performances of it at Covent Garden, reappears amid a positive welter of recommendable versions of the work, making choice increasingly difficult. His long introductory essay that accompanied the original LP issue, setting out his ideas on the opera and its casting, has unfortunately now been dropped; but in particular he made a point of the importance of the orchestra — "to reduce the score to an accompanied recitative is conspicuously to betray it" — and under his direction the orchestral sound is truly splendid, reflecting his reaction against the "bloodlessness" with which the drama is often presented.

The French of his completely non-French cast (contrasting with those of Dutoit and Jordan Decca, 3/91 and Erato, 12/91 respectively) is let down only by George Shirley—I am surprised that Boulez did not insist on something being done about his poor vowels—and though, as a tenor, he conveys Pelléas's youthfulness, his tone is rather unyielding for much of the time. The other slightly disappointing piece of casting is David Ward, who makes old Arkel sound merely glum (though that seems to have been the reading Boulez wanted). But the strength of this performance lies with the intelligent and vocally assured Sdderström and with Mcintyre's superb character study of Golaud, against his will eaten up with a jealousy that drives him to near-madness; and exceptionally good is the boy Anthony Britten as little Yniold. The recording, always very satisfying, is now "enhanced using 20-bit technology", if you know what that means: at any rate, it sounds fine to me.

-- L.S., Gramophone [4/1992]

Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms, Concerto for Piano and Wind

Although there is no lack of drama, this reading is refreshingly unmannered and free from overstatement.

The Third was among the first and most successful of Bernstein's Mahler recordings. Leonard Bernstein's reading is refreshingly unmannered and free from overstatement. There is no lack of drama or tension in the long first movement: the inner movements are done with great charm and the second in particular is quite winning. Matha Lipton is occasionally a shade under the note in the fourth movement, "0 Mensch, 0 Mensch!" but her voice has excellent quality and she sings with great feeling. The singing of the boys' choir in the fifth movement is fresh and vigorous and only an occasional note of over-sweetness, not wholly unavoidable in this music, is found in the finale. Apart from one or two minor points of balance that are of small account, the recording is well engineered. The acoustic is warm and open, detail emerges clearly and the perspective is for the most part truthful. The surfaces are smooth. Strongly recommended.

-- Gramophone [6/1974, reviewing an LP reissue of the Mahler 3]

It may surprise some, but this particular coupling is actually quite rare. The two pieces make interesting partners, the bite and drama of the Symphony contrasting well with the mellow warmth of the Serenade. There are literally dozens of versions of both pieces in the catalogue, many of them in modern digital sound. This Sony disc sounds its age in places, particularly the New World, which has a rather hard edge and glare in the upper registers (showing its CBS origins), but it is always worth hearing great conductors in familiar music.

Ormandy certainly coaxes playing of great character and spontaneity out of the 60s vintage LSO. The strings throughout have marvellous bite and cohesion. Sample the soaring violins at 3.32 in the first movement, or the rich cellos and basses later in the same movement. Ormandy seems fairly content to play things ‘straight’, which suits me to a degree, though some conductors, most notably Kubelik (DG) and Kondrashin (Decca), are willing to take a few more risks to bring out the life and drama beneath the notes. Nevertheless, Ormandy makes sure that precision and adherence to the score is paramount, and this brings many rewards. The great Largo is never sentimentalised, and the Scherzo has real flair and panache, with the LSO wind particularly fine. The Finale has a sense of grandeur and breadth that is very satisfying, and while there may be more individual accounts in the catalogue, this performance has a lot going for it.

Kempe’s unforced, eloquent reading of the wonderful Serenade also has its own special magic. He takes a relaxed view of the opening, shaping the lyrical first theme in a slow, affectionate way that then contrasts with the slightly sharper rhythmic point for the second subject. There is real concentration in every bar, and though the Munich strings may not be world class, they respond enthusiastically to their great conductor. The Valse movement has a lovely lilt, as well as dramatic impulse, and the engaging Scherzo is matched by the warmth of the Larghetto. I’ve heard the Finale played with a touch more Slavonic bite and precision, but Kempe keeps a firm grip on proceedings and achieves a genuinely exciting climax. The recording is also warmer and slightly more focused than the older Ormandy.

This disc enters a very crowded field but has its rewards. I found myself hearing details in both performances that marked them out, and anyone who is more interested in genuine music-making rather than state-of–the-art sound will not be disappointed.

-- Tony Haywood, MusicWeb International

SCHUBERT: SYMPHONY NO 9 GIULI

Caprice Viennois: Music of Fritz Kreisler