Classical Music

VICTORIA Sancta Maria succurre miseris. Salve Regina. Super flumina Babylonis. Seniores populi. Vidi speciosam. Q quam gloriosum. Misericordiae Domini. Lux aeterna. Congratulamini mihi. Kyrie • Harry Christophers, dir; The Sixteen • CORO CORDVD 6 (DVD: 60:00)


This hour-long program was produced for BBC together with Spanish and German television to mark the anniversary of the composer’s death. The singing was filmed in the Church of San Antonio de los Alemanes in Madrid, a lavishly ornate Baroque church built by Philip III soon after coming to the throne and before Tomás Luis de Victoria’s death. Simon Russell Beale narrates the life of the composer and Harry Christophers has some comments to add. The video format allows the integration of music, painting (El Greco), architecture, and spirituality into one presentation. St. Teresa of Avila was also born in Victoria’s home town, where he knew her as a boy. She reformed the Carmelite order along with St. John of the Cross, and both contributed immensely to the spirit of the times by their writings in mystical theology. We also see the chapel of the Carmelite convent where Victoria spent the last 25 years of his life as chaplain to the dowager empress Maria, Philip II’s sister, and the chapel of El Escorial, the palace that Philip II built outside Madrid.


The music is a sampling of Victoria’s output, including excerpts from his two masterpieces, the Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae and the Officium Defunctorum . Christophers argues that Victoria is the greatest composer of the Renaissance, a claim that has been made for Palestrina and Lassus, but one that has led him to a fervent interpretation of the composer’s music on six CDs (including the Tenebrae Responsories on Virgin). There are several video features added to the main program. Sometimes the music seems subsidiary to the unfolding story, but the whole is greater than its parts. This disc is a worthy tribute to mark the quatercentenary of a great composer.


FANFARE: J. F. Weber


NTSC, Region 0, 16:9 (Widescreen), Color, English w/ Spanish Sub (Stereo), Not Rated, Run Time: 60 min.

ARGENTA: ZARZUELA AND SPANISH

Despite charitable funds raised by the Fortune and Viennese Kreutzer polkas revolutionary Habsburg insurgencies became a dangerous fact of life in the Vienna of 1848. Strauss (the Elder) demonstrated solidarity through his Austrian National Guard March lampooning the old order with his March of the Legion of Students. Heard on this recording in it's original more transparent orchestration and without the drum roll the irrepressibly festive Radetzky March celebrated military victory in Italy and became his most famous work. Viennese citizens filled the carnival season ballrooms and the escapist Stress Relievers waltzes which conclude this recording roused frenzied cheering.

Du Mingxin: Violin Concerto, The Goddess of River Luo & Autu

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Standards strongly maintained– giving a budget price injection to a notably well curated series.

This is another emigrant from Marco Polo [8.570184] and joins the Naxos Film Music Classics series, a burgeoning one that reflects well on the company’s steady devotion to the art on disc. The music is by Max Steiner and was written for two Bette Davis vehicles, All This, and Heaven Too and the post-War A Stolen Life.

One thing that distinguishes the series, apart from the purely musical values embodied by the Moscow Symphony’s performance under the experienced John Morgan, is the nature and quality of the supporting notes; you won’t necessarily want to plough through the purely theatrical-dramatic ramifications, nor – if you’re not much of a cineaste – will you much be exercised by what Bette Davis thought, or didn’t think about her roles in these films; but it’s good to know that these details are here.

All This, and Heaven Too has a hundred minutes of music, which is here condensed to under half that length by means of eliminating repetition and such like. The orchestration is by Hugo Friedhofer, whom Steiner held in the highest professional esteem for his work – and no wonder. The result is a kind of through-composed Wagnerian approach, rich, vibrant, exciting and fully up to the expected Steiner Standard.

There are twelve cuts and some run scenes together. The Carriage Ride scene, for instance, lasts a mere 1:32 whilst track eight holds All Hallows Eve, the Lotis Song, Springtime and the Carousel and consequently lasts 5:42. The Duke’s Dying and finale lasts an even longer 7:28. In other words there is plenty of variety both musical and in terms of cutting.

That Carriage Ride is written in Steiner’s best light and airy style whereas A Night To Remember for Louise is full of rich, verdant and gorgeous lyricism. A feature of the writing is the opposition between the open-hearted lyricism of the love music and the more eerie, malevolent writing; for such things Steiner reserves percussion and here we find him using two pianos and celesta and more besides. Romance and portent hover over the final scene before the End Cast – always a good feature of the series in presenting an "authentic" listening experience.

The companion work is a more sparsely and simply orchestrated affair lasting twenty-six minutes in this reconstruction. Best to pass over the note’s reference to a "sea chanty" and better to concentrate on the precision of the writing and its effective realisation. A Stolen Life has a central storm scene which is the opposite of grandiose in its orchestration – instead the clever use of the piano effectively evokes the hubbub without undue exaggeration. There are some splendid little dance moments and some cod Nauticalia that amuses.

Standards are strongly maintained in this release – giving a budget price injection to a notably well curated series.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Glazunov never published his incidental music to Lermontov’s Masquerade, perhaps because it consists of so many very short numbers. There are a couple of larger bits: a mazurka, a gallop, a polonaise, and a Valse-Fantasia. The music is typically tuneful, beautifully crafted, and the use of the chorus, both wordless and normally, adds immeasurably to the effect. The remaining items have been recorded previously on occasion, and they are also more substantial than their titles might otherwise suggest (the Romantic Intermezzo particularly). These are excellent performances, warmly and vividly played, and boldly engineered, though as usual from this source the sonics are a touch “studio bound”. This is volume 18 in Naxos’ ongoing series of Glazunov orchestral works, and it’s certainly one of the most interesting. Give it a shot, if you’re curious.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The Naxos mission to record all of Glazunov’s orchestral legacy has reached volume 18. Almost by definition that fact alone makes this review redundant. If you are a Glazunov acolyte you will have pre-ordered this disc as soon as it was advertised, but if you are new to his music I cannot imagine this disc being a point of entry of choice. Even though it proves to be a hugely charming disc few would claim that this music is central to one’s appreciation of the composer – there are other places to start for that. As with many of the other discs in the series Naxos make use of their Russian ‘house’ orchestra – The Russian Philharmonic this time under the baton of Dmitry Yablonsky. This is an orchestra whose playing can range from the inspired to the positively pedestrian so I’m pleased to report that on this occasion it is neat and alert with some aptly characterful solos taken when required. The recording too is clear and warm without some of that glassy resonance that occasionally afflicts the engineering from this source. Most interestingly added to the mix is the Gnesin Academy Chorus. More of their role in the music later but enough to say that they sing well and blend into the musical textures effectively.

The main work here is the thirty-six or so minutes of incidental music Glazunov wrote for a 1917 staging of Mikhail Lermontov’s 1835 play Masquerade. Keith Anderson’s detailed liner-note explains that this significant score by Glazunov existed only in manuscript. Confusion is compounded by the fact that the exact musical sequence and how they relate to the play is unclear. Hence we have a detailed synopsis of the play and in parallel a musical sequence that is satisfying in itself but not necessarily one that follows the action of the play. The problem arises from the fact the much of the score provides music for the various balls that constitute many of the scenes. Glazunov has composed a score that is both practical – as in the dance sequences above and emotionally illustrative, seemingly underlining the prevailing mood or emotion of a scene. The score is divided into twenty-six tracks running from a miniature fife and drum march lasting just seventeen seconds to a full blown Valse-Fantasie at five and a half minutes. The latter is authentic Glazunov, very much in the style of the similar movement from Raymonda or the Concert Waltzes. It could be argued that this continuity/similarity is both Glazunov’s strength and his weakness. Really it could date from any point during his compositional career and certainly as a piece dating from 1917 breaks no musical frontiers – although why should it if the requirement is for a romantic waltz. Glazunov’s fabled orchestral mastery is on display throughout – the previously mentioned fife and drum is a perfect example how just two instruments are used to perfect effect (track 14 – Pantomime 8). Elsewhere the greatest musical interest is provided in the movements featuring the chorus. The very opening track is instantly atmospheric and full of foreboding - the synopsis makes it clear that this is a dark and tragic play with echoes of Eugene Onegin and Othello. This is sung to great effect by the Gnesin Academy Chorus with a definite Russian colour to their sound that feels absolutely right although lacking that last ounce of deep implacable resonance. Apart from the cantatas used as fillers on Valery Polyansky’s cycle of the Glazunov Symphonies on Chandos there have not been many opportunities to hear Glazunov’s writing for voices. I particularly like the way he uses them colouristically on occasion. Elsewhere they sing a text in traditional style. Act IV of the play depicts the final descent into madness and death of the Othello-like character Arbenin. The music accompanying Act IV Scene 1 here (track 22) is a marvellous unaccompanied chorus. Sadly there is no text given in the liner notes. It is sung with a beautiful tonal blend and sensitivity – a real highlight of the disc – but I have no idea what they are saying. The tracks have been well sequenced so that the movements flow one to another – very important with many short cues. This is an excellent addition to the Glazunov discography. One interesting and diverting thought; Khachaturian’s suite Masquerade is also incidental music written for a 1941 production of the same play. Given the synopsis outlined by Keith Anderson I am even more at a loss as to how Khachaturian’s riotously good humoured music - at least as far the suite is a sample - fits!

The rest of the disc is filled with judiciously chosen pieces. Naxos has consistently shown considerable care and imagination with the couplings in this series and this disc is no exception. None of the music is revelatory or startling but in style and mood they match well. The two pieces forming Op. 14 are slight and charming and beautifully played here. Likewise the dance fragment that is the Pas de caractére Op.68. The largest single piece on the whole disc is the Romantic Intermezzo Op.69 which in turn is also the most familiar piece. It has appeared as a filler for part of Gennadi Rozhdestvensky’s symphony cycle on Olympia as well as Evgeny Svetlanov’s similar traversal on Melodiya. The title says it all – a lyrical slow movement in all but name it receives another sympathetic performance here although one that tends to the lugubrious. It runs about a minute longer than either of the other named versions.

To summarise: an automatic purchase at this price for anyone with an interest in this composer or the byways of theatrical music. The comparison with Khachaturian’s suite is quite fascinating – two such varying responses to literally the same text. It is better engineered than some in this series and is conducted and played with sympathy and insight.

Appealing yet very rare music performed with great aplomb.

-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

Praised by the New York Times for his "polished orchestration" that "glitters, from big-shoulders brass to eerily floating strings," Michael Ippolito's music has been performed by leading musicians in venues around the world. Drawing on a rich musical background of classical and folk music, and taking inspiration for visual art, literature and other art forms, Ippolito has forged a distinctive musical voice in a body of work spanning orchestral, chamber and vocal music. This recording highlights works for string quartet by Michael Ippolito, a composer who has risen to the challenge and has honed his distinct musical voice through a broad array of experiences. These experiences range from studying Croatian folk music, influences of which can be heard in the circle (scored for string trio); to absorbing and being inspired by diverse literary sources, as exemplified in his String Quartet No. 3 "Songlines" and Smoke Rings. An iconic Ansel Adams photograph serves as the inspiration for big sky, low horizon, while trace builds off of a series of crescendos to a wild conclusion.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

It takes an impressive performance for Elgar to come alive for me, as he does in this recording by Edo de Waart and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, both subtle and fiery. The First Symphony, in particular, burns under a surface sheen, and “The Dream of Gerontius” is intensely played and firmly sung.

– New York Times

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Production values high, recordings full and spacious, performances totally committed.

Just when you thought it was safe to leave the shelter of the world behind the sofa here come not one, not two, but three monsters – Dracula, The Wolf Man and the Frankenstein Monster! And with them comes the most preposterous plot of all! Mad scientist Boris Karloff escapes from prison thanks to a thunderstorm; with a hunchback assistant he takes the persona of the owner of a travelling chamber of horrors. Within days he has got his hands on the three monsters already named, finding the Frankenstein Monster and the Wolf Man encased in ice in a cave, and he punctuates his desire for revenge with experiments in brain transplants! In the end, everybody dies.

Whether or not the plot is silly, to say the least, the music is superb!

Hans J Salter was another refugee from Nazi Germany, a man who studied with Alban Berg and Franz Schreker, who made his career in Hollywood. His collaborator, Paul Dessau, had arrived in America in 1939 after a career in Europe as both composer and conductor. He was made more politically aware through wartime collaboration with Brecht and joined the American Communist Party in 1946, returning to East Berlin two years later. His collaboration with Brecht continued, and after the writer’s death took to writing using Schoenberg’s twelve note technique and supporting the growing West European avant-garde.

This disk gives us the complete score for the film – 55 minutes of the most eerie and atmospheric music, with the most evocative titles – Rendezvous with Dracula, Death of the Unholy Two and Liquefying Brains. What a score it is and what marvellous work John Morgan has done in his reconstruction from a three line piano score – Universal having destroyed all their old horror film scores. The orchestration is fully 1940s horror and the music sounds incredibly modern – so much so that when the Moscow musicians were recording the score they wondered if it was from a modern film. This is music for film which was truly ahead of its time.

Having already written about seven of these disks in the Naxos Film Music Classics series there is little new I can say. The production values are high, the recordings full and spacious, the performances totally committed, the booklet helpful and detailed and the standard of scholarship without peer.

How about giving us some David Raksin? I’d put The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), The Big Combo (1955) and Al Capone (1959) on the list for a start. Am I being greedy? Of course I am, but Naxos cannot, after what we’ve already heard, stop giving us such quality recordings.

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

"PentaTone has done it again. It's another splendid SACD reissue in Direct Stream Digital of a quadro recording from the 70's. Eliahu Inbal - to my mind, a much-underrated conductor - leads the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra in persuasive accounts of Camille Saint-Saëns' Symphonies No. 1 & 2, under-recorded works that deserve a hearing."

--Dr Phil Muse, Atlanta Audio Society

This new release is the first recording to feature the Casavant Frères organ built during the early 1990s for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Orchestra Hall. The beautifully produced recording highlights four substantial and worthwhile American works written between 1943 and 1990, in brilliant performances by organist David Schrader with the Grant Park Orchestra (which offers summer concerts in Chicago), conducted by the Uruguayan-born, Viennese-trained Carlos Kalmar. Hence, this disc will be of great interest to aficionados of organ music, as well as to those with a special interest in American music or in these four Pulitzer Prize-winning composers.

Samuel Barber’s Toccata festiva was composed in 1960 to commemorate the installation of a new organ donated by Mary Curtis Bok Zimbalist to Philadelphia’s Academy of Music. (At a cost of $150,000, the Aeolian-Skinner was the largest movable pipe organ in the world at the time.) Her gift also included the commissioning of a celebratory piece of music for the occasion. Barber’s Toccata is one of his very few works that have the ring of a “potboiler” (although, in fact, Barber declined the fee offered by his devoted, long-time patron). That is, its fabrication of hearty good cheer seems a tad forced, as it works through material strongly reminiscent of previous successes, most notably, Knoxville (the justly beloved vocal work whose deeply reflective nostalgia is almost diametrically opposed to the extroverted character of this showpiece). Nevertheless, Barber’s workmanship was never less than meticulous, and the resulting composition fulfills its requirements with impeccable panache. As fine as this performance and recording may be, however, those listeners whose interest is limited to the Barber will probably be happier with the original recording that featured E. Power Biggs with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy. I believe that this rendition is still available on an all-Barber CD reissue.

Speaking of Biggs, Walter Piston’s Prelude and Allegro was commissioned in 1943 by the esteemed organist for one of his weekly radio broadcasts. The Prelude offers a warmly expressive, long-lined polyphony that calls Barber’s own style to mind; the Allegro cuts less deeply than the opening, and displays the briskly vigorous, syncopated counterpoint generally associated with its composer.

The music of Leo Sowerby (1895–1968), a prolific composer based for many years in Chicago, has never gained a strong foothold with the listening public, although there have been recent efforts to prompt a reconsideration of his output. From my perspective, Sowerby’s music, like that of many mid-Western composers, suffers from a neutrality of affect, untroubled by either spiritual or emotional conflict. This 18-minute Concertpiece, dating from 1951, is representative of such a characterization: a robust, full-throated fantasia-like piece that falls loosely into three sections. Simple modal thematic material is developed into rather elaborate, chromatic textures. Post-Romantic in its musical language, but abstract in structure, the work is unavoidably comparable to Howard Hanson’s Concerto for Organ, Harp, and Strings, completed just ten years earlier. The works cover very similar terrain, expressively and stylistically, although Hanson’s offers a stronger personal profile.

The most recent composition is Snow Walker, written in 1990 by Michael Colgrass. Colgrass, who turned seventy this year, lived for some time among the Inuit in northern Canada. “Snow Walker” is apparently an Inuit image that represents death and resurrection. In five movements, this 22-minute work was inspired by Inuit mythology and by the composer’s impressions of the Arctic. Like much music of the 1990s, Snow Walker is oriented around gesture and sonority, rather than by the dynamics of harmonic melody, meter, or tonality. For me, a little of this sort of thing goes a long way; each time I listened to the piece, my interest had waned by the fourth section. (Actually, I suspect that Colgrass’s interest waned by the fourth section.) However, the first three sections are quite compelling in their preternatural way. The first movement, “Polar Landscape,” is enormously evocative; the second attempts to simulate a type of Inuit singing that resembles an unearthly sort of laughter; the third, entitled “The Whispering Voices of the Spirits Who Ride with the Lights in the Sky,” is almost terrifying in its eeriness.

In summary, this will be a welcome acquisition for those whose interests embrace this repertoire.

-- Walter Simmons, Fanfare

RIES Piano Concerto in A, “Farewell Concert for England.” Grand Variations on “Rule Britannia.” Introduction et Variations brillantes • Christopher Hinterhuber (pn); Uwe Grodd, cond; Royal Liverpool PO • NAXOS 8.570440 (66:02)


Ferdinand Ries has been receiving lots of attention on record and in these pages of late. Fanfare ’s own Susan Kagan has been working her way through the composer’s piano sonatas for Naxos, and this is the label’s third volume of his concerted works for piano and orchestra, numbering eight concertos and two sets of variations, the latter of which are included on the present disc. My reaction to the sonatas in a 32:3 review—not to Susan’s playing of them—was lukewarm, leading me to conclude that while “good, solid musical ideas aplenty fly by, one senses that something more significant would be made of them by a composer of a more gifted muse; but in Ries’s hands tuition never quite seems to achieve fruition.”


Ries’s chamber works, with which I am admittedly more familiar, and these works for piano and orchestra, however, tell a rather different story. Perhaps the mother of Ries’s invention was the necessity of mass appeal. Writing to accommodate the tastes of the less musically sophisticated middle-class audiences that were increasingly finding the means to attend public concerts required a different approach. I hate the term “dumbing-down,” but we see it even in Beethoven, whose solo piano sonatas and string quartets, which were aimed at a smaller, more musically cultivated and elite audience, were more experimental and listener challenging than his concertos and symphonies, although here, too, he pushed the envelope. Likewise, Ries’s concerted works are immediately engaging, melodically and harmonically fluent, and filled with wonderfully imaginative and memorable turns of phrase.


The grand orchestral tuttis clearly take Beethoven as their model, but the piano-writing is something else. In the A-Minor Concerto there is an exquisite prefiguring of Chopin and Mendelssohn, with its arabesques and filigree anchoring and sustaining the pivotal notes that constitute the melodic arc. This is gorgeous stuff that you will never tire of listening to. All three works on this disc date from Ries’s London period, the concerto—the seventh in order of publication and obvious from its title—was written in London in 1823 and marks the end of the composer’s period in England. The Introduction and Variations brillantes bears a higher opus number than the concerto only because it wasn’t published until later. This and the Grand Variations on “Rule Britannia” show Ries to be a thorough master of the variations style and technique.


At present, there is little to no competition on CD in this repertoire, so Christopher Hinterhuber pretty much has the field to himself—all the more reason then to rejoice at his lively and beautifully turned performances. Uwe Grodd and the Royal Liverpool band accompany and complement him admirably. If you add to the equation over an hour’s worth of really enjoyable music, excellent playing, an outstanding recording, and Naxos’s budget price, you have a gold star winner.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

HARTY: Irish Symphony (An) / With the Wild Geese / In Irelan

SOUSA Music for Wind Band, Vol. 7 • Keith Brion, cond; Martin Hinton (cnt); 1 Royal Artillery Band • NAXOS 8.559247 (57: 26)


America First. The Presidential Polonaise. The Rifle Regiment. Congress Hall. El capitan. Intaglio Waltzes. Golden Jubilee. The Bride Elect. Sounds from the Revivals. 1 The Charlatan. Sheridan’s Ride. The Black Horse Troop. The Naval Reserve


Keith Brion, one of the foremost authorities on the music of Sousa, has been building an extensive library of Sousa’s music for Naxos since 1998, beginning with the first release (“On Stage,” Fanfare 22:1), which first appeared on marco polo in 1997. This is planned to be the most comprehensive collection of Sousa assembled, currently consisting of these seven volumes of wind band music, in addition to an earlier three volumes of Sousa for orchestra. In terms of wind music alone, Brion has so far released 86 works: marches, suites, waltzes, and novelty numbers. The current largest collection is by the Detroit Concert Band, which recorded all 116 published marches on five CDs (Walking Frog 300). The U.S. Marine Band’s set of four CDs, available as “A Box of Sousa” on Altissimo 5571, has 56 works. In terms of performances, the Marine Band is probably my favorite, with the Naxos set a very close second. Both compare favorably with the best single-disc releases, including Junkin with the Dallas Wind Symphony (Reference Recordings 94), Fennell with the Eastman Wind Ensemble (Mercury 434300), Foley with the American Main Street Band (EMI 54130), and Keith Brion with his own New Sousa Band (Delos 102 or Walking Frog 217), which includes seven restorations of recordings conducted by Sousa himself. The relative completeness of the Detroit release recommends it, but the performances often lapse into the routine. Besides, the Naxos set will eventually include 20 additional marches and dozens of concert works.


This seventh volume is as good a place to start as any, as it continues the series pattern of presenting a satisfying mix of the familiar ( El capitan and The Black Horse Troop ) and the unfamiliar ( Congress Hall and The Naval Reserve ), of marches derived from Sousa’s stage works ( El capitan , again, The Bride Elect and The Charlatan ), of Strauss-inspired waltzes ( Intaglio Waltzes ), of historical scenarios à la Wellington’s Victory , complete with battle sounds, racing horse hooves, and cheering ( Sheridan’s Ride ), and novelty numbers like Sounds from the Revivals , an arrangement of late-19th-century hymns which may have been written for Offenbach’s orchestra when they appeared at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.


James Camner has reviewed three of the earlier releases in the series for Fanfare : Vol. 2, 25:5, Vol. 3, 27:3, and Vol. 4, 28:1. In each he has pointed out the essential rightness of Brion’s performances. I concur. They are not so fast as to make them overbearing or cheaply exciting, but rather taken at a comfortable march tempo that allows the music to unfold naturally. The Royal Artillery Band, formed before the American colonies declared independence, plays with style and verve. Those who have learned their Sousa with (or in) larger concert bands may initially be surprised by the somewhat smaller sound of this ensemble, but in fact, this is the instrumentation that Sousa used in his own touring band. Sousa-lovers will want the whole series. The uncertain risk little, at Naxos’s bargain prices, by diving in here.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames

Classical Music

This lovely recording includes works for strings by Aurthur Benjamin (1893-1960), Bernard Stevens (1916-1983), Andrzej Panufnik (1914-1991), Arnold Bax (1883-1953), and Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989). The recordngs by Benjamin, Stevens, Panufnik, and Bax were broadcast originally on the BBC on January 31, 1961, and the Berkeley was broadcast on March 20, 1961. The recordings are performed by the Boyd Neel Orchestra, and the London Chamber Orchestra.

In his 1996 Fourth Symphony, Philip Glass reworked six out of the ten tracks from David Bowie's Heroes album into orchestral pieces that function both as independent entities and integral symphonic components. It isn't necessary to know the original Heroes in order to appreciate how Glass manipulates the essentially simplistic melodic content by way of striking harmonic juxtapositions, rhythmic vamps laced with unpredictable accents from the percussion, and orchestration that's cannily varied yet clear enough to take down by dictation. In The Light, Glass also generates considerable textural and dramatic mileage from the simple, undulating motives heard at the work's outset. What prevents the signature repetitive modules from running into the ground or sticking in the mud is the composer's unerring sense of when to introduce a new idea, slightly alter a chord voicing, or vary the instrumentation.

One main difference between Marin Alsop's interpretations and Dennis Russell Davies' premiere recordings on Nonesuch concerns engineering philosophy. On Naxos, the Bournemouth Symphony emerges in a more natural, concert-hall perspective as you might perceive from a dead-center orchestra seat in a vibrant but not overly resonant hall. The Russell Davies recordings reproduce their orchestras (the American Composers Orchestra in the Symphony, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in The Light) at relatively close, detail -oriented range and pack a more immediate punch. For example, in Alsop's slightly faster rendition of the symphony's fourth-movement Sons of the Silent Age, the antiphonal cross-rhythms midway through the work converge to more fluid and blended effect. By contrast, Russell Davies' slower, more heavily accented version beefs up the harps and low brass. And while Alsop begins V 2 Schneider (the final movement) at a bright clip that ever-so-slightly slows down within the first minute, Russell Davies is rock steady. Although I lean toward Russell Davies' recordings (which result from the composer's production team), Alsop's equally world-class interpretations unquestionably convey their own character and validity.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.