LUMBYE: Orchestral Works, Vol. 4

From one of the most famous 19th-century families of musicians and known as “The Strauss of Berlin”, Hungarian-born Josef Gung’l toured widely with his orchestras, and the series of 61 concerts they gave at Hasselbacken, Stockholm in 1871 became one of the greatest events in the history of music in Sweden. This programme recreates such an evening at Hazel Hill, with waltzes such as Gung’l’s memorial to Johann Strauss I, Die Immortellen, dances by celebrated contemporaries, and nephew Johann’s famous march En Avant! - Naxos

Bach's concertos for multiple harpsichords and orchestra are beloved by some and drive others crazy. Perhaps no other music so graphically illustrates Beecham's famous description of the sound of the solo instrument as "two skeletons copulating on a tin roof." The performers must exercise great care in selecting instruments that are not too "clangy" sounding, and the recording has to balance a need for warmth and roundness of tone with contrapuntal clarity. In fact, most of this music was originally composed for melody instruments (violin and oboe, principally), and Naxos has obligingly reconstructed the original versions on another disc in this excellent series. One of the nicest things about this particular disc is the presence of the original version (by Vivaldi) of the Concerto for Four Harpsichords, an impossible work that is performed here about as well as it ever has been. In fact, all of these performances are uniformly propulsive, tasteful, and above all genuinely comfortable to listen to. A good listen, then, but best enjoyed one work at a time. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Vital and individual readings.

There’s really not much to say about this one. Sir Andrew Davis in an all-Elgar programme ought to be a safe pair of hands, and so it turns out, and more besides.

The programme opens with the Enigma Variations, the phrasing of the theme as loving as one has ever heard it. The end of the first variation, C.A.E., depicting the composer’s wife, may be a little too drawn out for some tastes, but Elgar often expressed his affection for her in language at least as sweetly sentimental as this. The showy variations are splendid, but the more intimate ones are even more successful, and one comes away, perhaps more than in many performances, with the idea that some of Elgar’s friends were a melancholy lot. The cellist, Basil Nevinson, in a highly expressive reading, has rarely sounded as sad as he does here. The solo part is beautifully played, and this seems the moment to praise the outstanding orchestral playing throughout the disc, and the brilliantly characterful solo playing in particular. The Enigma Variations has been recorded many, many times, and each listener will have a favourite. I am very attached to Barbirolli in this work, though I sometimes wonder if this is not as much for sentimental reasons as for musical ones. The present performance is as fine as any I have heard, and I don’t think anyone who acquires it will be less than delighted. The recording is particularly detailed, bringing out a few points of orchestration I had never heard before, though you have to turn up the volume a fair bit to get enough punch in the louder passages, which means that the softer ones lose a little of their intimacy.

The performance of In the South is, if anything, even finer. The opening is surely the most exuberant music Elgar ever composed, and this comes over wonderfully well in this performance. Once again the orchestra is in inspired form, and this extends to the gentler, more atmospheric passages too. The work, always a winner in the concert hall, is nonetheless not one of the composer’s more coherent creations from a formal point of view, but Sir Andrew’s subtle control of tempo between the different sections disguises that very successfully. There are passages in the work where the composer runs the risk of overstepping the boundaries of taste, too, and it is a mark of the conductor’s skill that they are totally convincing. I’m thinking in particular of the passage based on hammered, repeated falling fifths (beginning at 7:12) where the listener is not sure whether Sir Andrew is moving the music on or not, only that the pulse never drags, successfully avoiding any suggestion of bombast. It’s a very fine performance and, like the Enigma, is greeted with enthusiastic applause.

This performance of the adorable Serenade will not appeal to those who want to indulge themselves, but is likely to please those who feel that Elgar knew what he wanted as regards tempo. Even so, the first and last movements here, amongst the briskest performances I know, still fall short of Elgar’s markings which do seem very fast indeed. The music is gracefully phrased, skipping rather than lilting, and is full of affection despite the conductor’s unwillingness to linger. The central slow movement, at a similarly flowing tempo, is very moving, wistful and passionate by turns, just as it should be.

The name “Philhamonia Orchestra” - albeit in trendy all lower case fashion - is given greater prominence on this disc than “Signum”, and the back cover of the booklet carries information about other Philharmonia performances on the same label. As a collaborative effort it can only be welcomed, especially at mid-price. There are very readable and informative notes by M. Ross. Newcomers to Elgar and seasoned listeners hoping for vital and individual readings of these particular works need not hesitate.

-- William Hedley, MusicWeb International

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Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

This first-ever recording of the original version of Anton Bruckner's sweeping Symphony No. 1 marked the final great achievement of the acclaimed Bruckner conductor, Georg Tintner, who died in 1999. Following the premiere of the symphony in 1868, Bruckner's devoted conductor friends, all of whom were die-hard Wagnerians like Bruckner himself, championed the work (and Bruckner's other compositions) while subjecting it to their own modifications in order to make Bruckner sound more Wagnerian! Regrettably, the trusting Bruckner sometimes allowed and even abetted these interventions. With the advantage of twenty-twenty hindsight, one can see that Bruckner was, from the beginning, a majestically individual composer and should have been left to his own devices. Under the knowing hand of Tintner, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra reveals this symphony's sprawling orchestral architecture as it was first conceived. The first two movements are surprisingly novel for a fledgling essay in the genre. The second movement already sets the standard for those otherworldly adagio movements, with their glacially unfolding melodies, that populate Bruckner's symphonies.

For this monumental four-disc release, Lyrita has chosen the most influential and best loved symphonies by British composers, taken from previous Lyrita recordings. The best English ensembles are all included on this release, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra. All are conducted by the most respected interpreters of British music, such as Nicholas Braithwaite, Vernon Handley, Sir Adrian Boult, Myer Fredman, Sir Lennox Berkeley, and more. Over five hours of music is included in this box set. The booklet contains fascinating and detailed liner notes by Paul Conway which give a brief biography of each of these composers, as well as a detailed history of their featured work. This release is a must have for any aficionado of British symphonic music.

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James Sinclair is always an excellent guide to this music, even through Ives' most complex textural thickets. The Fourth of July has real celebratory fervor and a sense of fun, while the climax of Thanksgiving, so often a muddle, here achieves real transcendence, with the choir perfectly integrated into the ensemble. I have to confess that I love this piece particularly, even though it's often considered the weakest part of what would later become the "Holidays" Symphony. I attended Hopkins Grammar in New Haven, as did Ives, and every Christmas the Glee Club gave a concert on the New Haven green at Trinity Church, right next to Center Church at which Ives served as organist. One of the hymns we often sang was "Duke Street", which forms the climax of Thanksgiving. So it has personal resonance, and it's also a great tune.

For this reason, and because of the similarities in tone and structure among the other three movements, I see no reason why the movements of "Holidays" should not be enjoyed separately, as they are presented here (the first, Washington's Birthday, already has been released). Interspersed between the better-known works are some real novelties. First, The General Slocum, a brief portrait of a tragic shipwreck, followed by two student works that sound totally Romantic, and completely unlike Ives: the Overture in G minor, and the Postlude in F. Finally, the Yale-Princeton Football Game, a two-minute riot of a piece that will make any fan of (American) football smile.

As already suggested, Sinclair's conducting gets everything right: tempos, textures, balances, and colors. He allows Ives' boisterous high spirits to emerge naturally, effortlessly, and where necessary, raucously. The Malmö orchestra plays all of this music with complete confidence, and the sonics are unaffectedly crisp and clean. An essential release for Ives fans.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

SCHUMAN Symphony No. 6. Prayer in Time of War. New England Triptych • Gerard Schwarz, cond; Seattle SO • NAXOS 8559625 (60:51)


I was working as office administrator for a church at the time of 9/11, and can still remember the shock and angst following the attack and its aftermath. The minister came to me one day and mentioned how horrible things were. I remarked that at times like this I thought of Olivier Messiaen and his three fellow musicians, held prisoner in a Nazi POW camp, thinking that not only their own ends were near but the end of the world, and how Messiaen responded, artistically, with his masterly Quartet for the End of Time. The minister looked at me as if I had just said I came from Mars and said, “Well, I don’t know how to rock and roll any more!”


Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. I respond more to Messiaen and those other works written as a response to the angst of a war that shattered mankind to the very depths of its soul. William Schuman’s response was his 1943 Prayer in Time of War and, afterwards, his abstract but darkly soul-shattering Symphony No. 6. The Prayer met with good critical response when it first appeared, the symphony with antipathy bordering on outright hostility. Its premiere with the Dallas Symphony conducted by Antal Dorati on February 27, 1949, incensed the audience so much that, in Schuman’s words, “They questioned whether they should even complete payment of the commission.”


The symphony, following the dark music he wrote for ballets by Antony Tudor ( Undertow ) and Martha Graham ( Night Journey ), is similarly black and angst-ridden. Like Vaughan Williams’s own Sixth Symphony, it is a highly personal reaction to a postwar world in which so many thousands of lives were ended or disrupted, a world dominated by power struggles with the Soviets, the atomic bomb, and the intense effort it took to pick up shattered lives and move on. The fact that Vaughan Williams’s work was understood and appreciated in England while Schuman’s was vilified in America probably has something to do with the level of property destruction the former country suffered. America itself was largely protected, at least physically, and like the onset of the Depression, the postwar years created a market for soft, soothing music. Schuman’s existentialist bombshell was not what audiences wanted to hear.


Even today—perhaps especially today, in an uncertain world caught between Islamic jihads on one side and an economic freefall on the other—Schuman’s symphony and Prayer speak to us deeply unless, of course, you are one of those who just don’t know how to rock and roll. The Prayer is gentler in expression. Despite a dangerous-sounding Più animato section in which the storm of war is depicted, its overall mood is soothing in its multitonal, Ives-like expression. The second outburst, consisting of brass fanfares and animated strings, is more hopeful than nihilistic, and it ends with the same soft chord with which it began. Conversely, the symphony is consistently dark, a tunnel with no light at its end but only the quietude of resignation and emotional defeat. One of the more furious outbursts at about the 20-minute mark didn’t seem to me as well composed as the rest of the work, but even this somewhat spurious moment seemed to me to indicate our powerlessness against forces too strong to fight.


Gerard Schwarz has developed over the years into an outstanding conductor, with only a few of his recordings sounding emotionally shallow. This music is very much his métier as, apparently, was the Mahler Seventh he recorded a while back. These performances lack nothing in drama, feeling, or outstanding orchestral balance. Schwarz’s only rival in the symphony with which I’m familiar is the recording by American conductor Hugh Keelan with the New Zealand Symphony (Koch 7290), a fine performance as well if, to my ears, a little less seamlessly joined than Schwarz’s. The Prayer is combined with Schuman’s Fourth Symphony and Judith on First Edition 11, played by Jorge Mester and the Louisville Symphony, but the splendidly professional polish of the Seattle Symphony surpasses Louisville’s playing capacity of that time.


After two such melancholy works, Schwarz ends this CD with one of Schuman’s most popular pieces, the New England Triptych , three pieces for orchestra after William Billings. Here the language is also bitonal but the overall mood more positive. It’s a wonderful way for the disc to end and, again, Schwarz gives a performance comparable to the best available, including Howard Hanson’s classic account for Mercury Living Presence (432755) and Leonard Slatkin with the St. Louis Symphony (RCA 61282). Their versions have, perhaps, a trifle more swagger, but Schwarz is not eclipsed; and, when combined with these shattering performances of the symphony and Prayer, it makes for an indispensable disc for those who admire Schuman’s unique musical aesthetic.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley


If we set to one side the disavowed first two symphonies Gerard Schwarz has now completed recording the Schuman symphonies. Only the Schwarz-Seattle-Naxos Eighth awaits issue. The series began with a handful of Schuman symphonies recorded by Delos in the 1990s. Naxos has picked up the baton dropped when the gloriously ambitious Delos project stumbled and fell. That they are doing this at bargain price is remarkable as with so much that Naxos does. Naxos have reissued all the Delos session symphonies and continued and completed the cycle in Seattle. This disc mixes the Delos-originated 1990 session for the Triptych with newer Naxos fixtures in 2005 and 2008. The transcript of an interview with Gerard Schwarz can be found on the Naxos website.

The Sixth Symphony was first recorded by Ormandy in the 1960s on CBS AML 4992 and reissued on Albany TROY256. It’s a work of nocturnal reclusion; not at all restful. Although Schuman has his lyric heart on display it is not close to his sleeve. The song is sweet but haunted and darkly clouded with Bergian strands – even a touch of Allan Pettersson about it. Barber in his most introspective brown study comes to mind and the tension never lets up. Kinetic fury has usually been part of the Schuman palette and so it is here (try. 20:00 onwards) although occluded lyricism dominates and acts as an indefatigable magnetic pull. The work is presented in a single half hour track. The Sixth was commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra League and the Dallas orchestra premièred it with Antal Doráti conducting on 27 February 1949. It’s an impressive piece if without the compulsive concentration that bowls over listeners to the Third Symphony and the Violin Concerto.

Prayer in a Time of War first saw light of day with Fritz Reiner and the Pittsburgh Orchestra on 26 February 1943. It’s a substantial movement of symphonic bearing and unyielding seriousness as befits the subject. The language is touched with some bleakness but it is less convoluted than that of the Sixth Symphony. This is the Schuman of the Third Symphony admitting and radiating facets that recall Roy Harris and Aaron Copland. The brass writing is gaunt, statuesque and excoriating; the drum-taps and cold fanfares referencing Lincoln and Whitman. It’s is a grand statement to put alongside his works of similar concision: Credendum, In Praise of Shahn and American Hymn. This is not its first recording; that honour goes to the Louisville and Jorge Mester – still to be had on Louisville First Edition.

New England Triptych is in three movements: I. Be Glad Then, America [5:05]; II. When Jesus Wept [7:53] III. Chester [3:08]. The outer movements are redolent of Tippett in zest, springiness and riotous exuberance. The Triptych was premièred in Miami on 28 October 1956, with Andre Kostelanetz conducting the University of Miami Symphony Orchestra. The next month Kostelanetz took it to the New York Phil. It is one of Schuman’s most accessible works despite its date. The three movements are based on hymns by the Revolutionary period figure, William Billings (1746– 1800). Schuman refers to “a fusion of styles and musical language”; acidic-epic Schuman meets devout Hanoverian. The middle movement recalls RVW’s Tallis and Bliss’s Blow Meditations.

Let’s not write off those first two symphonies (1935, 1937). I have heard the Second Symphony in a 1930s broadcast by Howard Barlow and the CBS orchestra and it’s by no means negligible. Then there are other works which will be worth revival – principally theConcerto on Old English Rounds and the spectacular symphonic cantata Casey at the Bat, superbly revived by Dorati in Washington as part of the American centennial event diary.

It’s a pleasure to report that this disc was generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts who seem to have moved away from a policy that appears at one time to favour only the work of the adherents of academic dissonance.

The notes are by Joseph W. Polisi, currently sixth president of The Juilliard School and author of “American Muse: The Life and Times of William Schuman” (Amadeus Press, 2008).

Keep watching for the Naxos Schuman Eighth secure in the knowledge that Schwarz and his Pacific Edge orchestra are fully equal to the challenges set by Schuman. Naxos will again, I am sure, provide a stunning recording as they have done here across a span of eighteen years – session to session.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Hovhaness has found a strong advocate in Gerard Schwarz, and about time too. This prolific and at times prolix composer's music, with its expressively limited mixture of bell sounds, modal and Eastern harmonies, and simple counterpoint, can sound naïve and even irritating in large doses. What is so often missing from many performances is committed playing, giving the music the strength, beauty, and confidence that so often makes all the difference between "getting through the notes" and the quality of response that these pieces need and deserve. This disc, all premiere recordings, does the latter, and even if you dislike Hovhaness you might well be impressed by the results.

Khrimian Hairig is a short, pretty work for solo trumpet and strings much like the composer's Prayer of St. Gregory. It makes a very nice program opener even though it tells us nothing especially new. That certainly isn't true of the larger works. The Guitar Concerto must be numbered among the more successful works in its genre. It has all of the composer's hallmark fingerprints, but it also reveals an astutely judged understanding of how to pit such a weak-toned instrument against a large orchestra. In terms of color, texture, and contrast, the music is wholly beguiling and never overstays its welcome.

The same holds true for Symphony No. 60. At a bit more than half an hour, this is a long work for Hovhaness, but the inclusion of some American folk music makes an interesting contrast with his usual Eastern modes, while the four movements once again offer an unusually broad range of contrast and sonority. Best of all, the entire program is extremely well played, from guitarist David Leisner on up. This isn't difficult music technically, but it must never sound tired or lazy, and here it doesn't. The disc offers what in effect is an entire mini-concert--overture, concerto, and symphony--and you can listen to the whole thing straight through without fear of monotony. Sensitive and coherent notes by the late composer's wife add to the overall appeal, as does the excellent sound, particularly in the difficult-to-balance Guitar Concerto.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

[I]f you can play with the skill and musicianship of Andrew Lawrence-King, then the fact that you are offering up transcriptions quickly becomes an irrelevance. Combining the technical possibilities of a harpsichord with the dynamic flexibility of a lute (though over a wider range), the harp emerges here as an almost ideal solo instrument, able to escape its inevitable Celtic associations and stand as an interpretative tool of real power. . . . The results are completely successful, particularly the Partita, every one of whose complex moods and gestures Lawrence-King seems able to conquer with surprising vigour. It is unlikely that you will ever hear much of the music on this disc played more expressively . . . [which] is really saying something when it applies to music as well known as Bach’s for solo violin. . . . [T]his is outstandingly sensitive and musical playing.

-- Lindsay Kemp, Gramophone

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Naxos' exciting and important American Classics series now includes music of the present day, in this case three recent works by Philip Glass. The Violin Concerto, a work that (surprisingly) adheres to classical conventions, lures us in with beautiful, seductive harmonies. Glass relies both on his trademark arpeggiated technique (sounding in the first movement somewhat like Vivaldi's "Winter" concerto) and on his favorite harmonic progressions to suggest a sustained melodic line. In the first two movements Glass' carefully timed harmonic and rhythmic shifts keep you in a happy daze. He breaks the mood in the finale, however, leaving the soloist to practice arpeggios at length until the quiet, serene coda steals in. Adele Anthony, who plays with the kind of skill and grace we would expect in a Mozart concerto, brings off Glass' work with consummate, convincing musicianship. Company (music for Becket's prose) for string orchestra is in four movements, characterized by stimulating changes in time signature and rhythm. The Prelude and Dance from Akhnaten, Glass' third opera, sound exceedingly repetitious without the opera's spoken dramatic narrative, but of course, this won't bother committed Glass fans who will find much to cherish in this recording. Newcomers, too, will enjoy this tuneful if unchallenging music, which benefits from the characterful playing of the Ulster Orchestra under Takuo Yuasa's keen leadership. The sound is excellent. Another home-run from Naxos.--Victor Carr, ClassicsToday.com

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2 CDs with over 2 hours of music Illuminating essay by Stephen Johnson Illustrated with photographsWell over half a century after his death, Bela Bart k is held up as one of the twentieth century' great musical moderni.

The celebrated young Colombian maestro Andres Orozco-Estrada continues his critically acclaimed series of recordings for Pentatone with this release of the evocative tone poems Macbeth and Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss, performed here with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. These gripping works, with their intricate scoring and compelling narratives, are orchestral tours de force, demonstrating Strauss's gift for filling a huge orchestral canvas with vivd and exquisite details while maintaining a sense of drama. And they are stunningly brought to life in this recording with Pentatone's state of the art multi-channel surround sound. Strauss's brooding tone poem Macbeth is a psychological portait of the main protagonists in the play, the insecure and vacillating Macbeth and his wife, the ambitious but deranged Lady Macbeth. Strauss's often highly charged score suggests the mounting horror and dread of the ill-fated couple and their domestic unease, the work ending on a sombre ntoe following their deaths and the triumphal march of Macduff. In Strauss's striking and florid masterpiece Ein Heldenleben, there's little doubt who the real hero is but Strauss himself. While he was roundly mocked at the time for his audacity, there's also little doubt that this bold and dramatic tone poem is no mere cornucopia of orchestral effects - it's a life-affirming work which ends not in a triumphal blaze, but in a mood of quiet resignation.

Reviews:

The moments of hustle and bustle are wonderfully easy-going, while the Berlin RSO's corporate virtuosity is often breathtaking - I can't remember when I last heard the finale's final couple of minutes, from the outrageous whooping horns to the finish line, rattled through with such apparently nonchalant ease.

– Gramophone

Those who don't know the least often heard of the symphonic poems should be amazed by Marek Janowski's sympathetic, detailed interpretation; but even Straussians don't often get to hear Die Tageszeiten. I fell in love with the work, contrary to all previously held common wisdom on its not being very good, and have played it over and over. This would be worth the cost of the disc alone, but Janowski's Domestica is also up there among the best, as you get to hear more inner detail than on any other recording.

– BBC Music Magazine

Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams—it is my prediction that, 50 years from now, it will be the last composer’s music that is played most frequently. I am not sure that Adams is the “best” composer of the three (frankly, Reich’s work is more interesting to me), but he is the one who has motivated the most performers to program and record his work. For example, apart from Alsop, three other conductors have recorded Short Ride (de Waart on Nonesuch, Rattle on EMI, and Mosko on Chandos), and there are alternative recordings on Nonesuch of the other three works as well. The Nonesuch discs are important documents, but not necessarily the last word. Despite their explicit or implicit approval by the composer, they can and will be bettered, as time goes on. Consider The Wound-Dresser. I remember being impressed by this work when Nonesuch released the CD with baritone Sanford Sylvan, and the composer conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke’s—I still was in graduate school, and various commentators were quick to draw parallels between Walt Whitman’s injured and dying boys and the current victims of the AIDS epidemic. There’s nothing wrong with Sylvan and Adams, but I find Gunn and Alsop more moving—almost too much so, as the text’s homoaffective subtext is moved closer to the foreground. (It strikes me now that the vocal line at “Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested” could have been written by Stephen Sondheim.)

Alsop makes a good case for Short Ride and for the Berceuse élégiaque. The latter work is an arrangement for chamber orchestra of a work by Ferrucio Busoni—a fact that is not mentioned anywhere in Naxos’s documentation, shamefully enough. Adams, in his Nonesuch recording, is a little more weird and abrasive than Alsop in Shaker Loops—to good effect. All in all, the availability of the Nonesuch recordings does not make this Naxos release superfluous. Alsop is a fine conductor, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra plays well for her, and then there’s that Naxos price! If you’ve been curious about Adams’s music, but have not been willing to pay Nonesuch prices to hear it, here are four of Adams’s best works in competitive performances at a fraction of the cost.

Raymond Tuttle, FANFARE

Four of the six symphonies by the Swedish composer Gösta Nystroem (1890-1966) have already been released by BIS in performances by Malmö Symphony Orchestra. The two discs were variously described in American Record Guide as music 'of very high quality, beautifully judged, scored with an expert hand, with a spontaneous, yet controlled flow' and on the website MusicWeb International as 'important and highly individual works superbly performed and recorded'. The cycle is completed with the present CD, on which the German conductor Christoph König makes his first appearance on BIS. The opening work on the disc is Nystroem's first symphony, Sinfonia breve, which he composed just before his return to Sweden after having spent the 1920's in Paris. With a duration of close to 20 minutes, the work is in one movement with a symmetrical arc-shape, features which also characterize the third, and perhaps best-known of Nystroem's symphonies, Sinfonia del mare. Dedicated to 'all the sailors upon the seven seas' the latter work expresses Nystroem's lifelong fascination with the sea and the coast. This fascination he shared with the Swedish poet Ebba Lindqvist, whose poem Det Enda ('The One Thing') he incorporated in the central section of the symphony. The soloist on the present recording is the internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Malena Ernman.

RESPIGHI: FONTANE DI ROMA, PIN

All the elements for a great recording are present here. Each of the three works is a masterpiece by one of the great composers of the 20th century. Each exploits the potential of a virtuoso string orchestra, and each includes brilliant solo- as well as ensemble-writing. Gordan Nikoli?, violin virtuoso and conductor, and the excellent Netherlands Chamber Orchestra are powerful interpreters of these scores, and PentaTone has delivered their performances in rich, resonant, and, where appropriate, biting surround sound. Thanks to the two-channel layer on the disc, those with conventional CD players can also find sound and performances of the highest quality.

All three composers were working under the gathering shadows of the century’s greatest catastrophe. Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), the youngest of this trio, composed his Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge in 1937, in time for its performance by the Boyd Neel String Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival. As Austria had not yet fallen to the Nazis, there is no political significance to this; Bela Bartók (1881–1945) composed his Divertimento on commission from the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher in the summer of 1939. This also was free of political inspiration; yet both Britten and Bartók would soon sail to the United States, escaping a Europe suddenly torn by war. By contrast, Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905–1962) had withdrawn from the musical life of Germany after the Nazis took power in 1933. He sent his haunting Concerto funèbre for solo violin and string orchestra (1939) abroad, as a musical protest against the cynical division of Czechoslovakia accomplished in Munich, his hometown, in 1938.

Britten’s masterpiece shows amazing skill and originality in orchestration. His variations encompass several styles and periods of music, but each also is charged with original musical thought and observation—there is no mere imitation here. One becomes aware of a certain debt to Stravinsky, but perhaps most of all to Frank Bridge himself, a complex and gifted composer and teacher. Bartók’s piece is considerably more profound and complex than the name divertimento implies. The outer movements both begin in a folksy, cheerful way, but both contain more serious passages, unexpected dynamic shifts, and moments of considerable profundity. The Adagio begins in a veiled, mysterious fashion, and goes on to be an altogether serious and perhaps tragic statement. One might more properly think of this work as Bartók’s Concerto for String Orchestra. Finally, Hartmann’s work is written in (for him) a rather conservative musical language, while remaining uniquely original in its effect. The composer’s penchant for atonal or trans-tonal composition is present, if at all, in the angry third movement. But even there, firm tonal foundations are almost always evident. The brief introduction, the following Adagio, and the final Chorale/Slow March are deeply sorrowful, but also quite lovely, and the music ends with a full chord in D Major, as if to say that truth and beauty, however derailed in the turmoil of the time, would someday prevail.

Robert McColley, FANFARE

Sibelius, J.: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 6 / The Swan of Tuonela