This recording is based on the edition of Prof. William Carragan (Version 1878), which is oriented towards the Nowak Edition. It is shorter and much catchier than the usually performed version. The strings have the upper hand here instead of the brass, but the four horns do resurface with reminiscences of the first movement. Gerd Schaller leads the Philharmonie Festiva. Live recording.

A massive asseveration of confidence, staggering scale and substance by an outsider to the musical establishment.

I recently re-read the book on Sibelius by his secretary Santeri Levas. It presents one of the most personal and personable portraits of the composer. Amongst the many anecdotes and observations was one relating to the long silence from Järvenpää. Levas made the point that Sibelius was 61 by the time he completed his last major works and that the vast majority of composers had completed the bulk of their oeuvre by that age anyway or had died. Whether or not there is illumination in that point there are always exceptions: take Haydn, Hovhaness and Havergal Brian. Brian's old age was alive with challenging symphonic invention. The Brian Naxos series has reminded us of that point but has also looked at the works of his ‘younger age’. The Gothic was completed when Brian was 51 at about the same age as Brahms when he wrote his first. Thus while Brian was astonishing productive of symphonies well into his eighties he started late (we’ll ignore a false start or two).
 
Has there ever been a First Symphony as ambitious in intention, grasp and achievement as the Gothic. There have been remarkable firsts; I think of those by Enescu, Prokofiev and Shostakovich yet none of these have stormed the heavens or stared unblinkingly at eternity in the same way. Across its almost two hours it never falters. Violence and peace stand close to each other throughout. Try the last section of the first movement for the seraphic voice made eloquent in the solo violin. For Violence we can cite the Mars-like dynamic established by the rapped-out timpani attack that impels the work forward at the start of the first movement. The layout of the Symphony some may find disconcerting. However it does work. The first three movements are entirely orchestral. In fact they work as a 'conventional' symphony and have been played in that form. The second part is a massive setting of the Te Deum for multiple soloists, choirs, full orchestra and brass ensembles.
 
You may well think of other composers. For example in the second movement you will encounter a 'ticking' figure which for me links with the snowy ambience of Bax’s later Fifth Symphony. Gloriously glowing horns call out above the magnificent din put up by the rest of the orchestra in music that defines heroic. The Judex (tr. 1 CD2) features yet more extraordinary writing. The wheeling choral passage is like Holst's Hymn of Jesus. Tr. 2 CD2 has a brutal lumbering march with raw fanfares and brass bands rolling and echoing around the great space of the Slovak Concert Hall. Once again however Brian leaves us in awe with the Mother Goose iridescent delicacy and joyful glitter of the women's voices and silvery tinkling percussion (tr. 10 CD2). The mood then switches in tr. 13 to a jaunty, slightly Mahlerian, march for nine clarinets. The work finds consummation in words intoned with deep reverence: 'Non confundar in aeternam'. The singing is rich and resonant in bass definition. Not that Alexander Sveshnikov and the USSR choir would not have made even more of a dream-team ending.
 
As a recording it is amongst Gunter Appenheimer's best and it was captured in the exemplary grand acoustic of Bratislava's world-standard concert hall.
 
The more than just useful notes for this Naxos set, reduced by Keith Anderson from the original Marco Polo issue, are by Brian and Foulds champion, Malcolm Macdonald.
 
The sung Latin texts are printed in full with parallel translations. The work is liberally tracked so that you can follow the structure, incident by incident.
 
The Gothic has had quite a blooming of late. It was performed in Brisbane, Queensland, on 23 December 2010 with John Curro conducting the Queensland Youth Orchestra and many other artists. The performance was dedicated to the memory of the late Sir Charles Mackerras who himself conducted a number of Brian’s symphonies. This performance was said have been filmed for an ABC documentary The Curse of the Gothic Symphony which will debut at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2011. Then on Sunday 17 July 2011 it will have an extraordinary Proms premiere conducted by Martyn Brabbins who recorded Brian’s Symphonies 10 and 30, the Concerto for Orchestra and the English Suite No. 3 with the RSNO for the magnificent Dutton.
 
Brian’s Gothic is a massive asseveration of confidence by someone who stood as an outsider to the musical establishment unblessed with private resources or a public school education let alone a formal musical training. It is a work of staggering scale and substance and is not let down in any way by the present recording.  

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

From the very first notes, with their tolling bells, Casella’s Symphony No. 2 is deeply indebted to its model, Mahler’s own Symphony No. 2, whose Parisian première was championed by Casella during his years in the French capital. A notte alta (‘In deepest night’), which Casella described as ‘the only piece of programme music I have ever composed…inspired by emotional events in my personal life’ (Casella’s love for his Parisian student Yvonne Müller), is a work of intimate self-revelation and sombre meditation on ‘the utter indifference of Nature to human passions’.

Includes work(s) by Ottorino Respighi. Ensemble: Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

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At what point does a recording become ‘historic’? Anyone remembering some of the very earliest and sometimes highly dodgy period instrument recordings with young Harnoncourt and others in the 1960s and 1970s might approach this kind of early authentic instrument project with some trepidation. The 1980s was a boom period for period performance recordings, and the symphonies of Beethoven were and still are something of a pinnacle for any orchestra. The Hanover Band was one of if not the earliest to record a complete cycle on authentic instruments, alongside Roger Norrington’s Beethoven cycle with the London Classical Players originally on EMI Classics Reflexe from 1987-1989 and now available on Virgin Classics (see review). Also from the 1980s comes Christopher Hogwood with The Academy of Ancient Music on Decca’s L’Oiseau Lyre label. In fact, the experience with these and Roy Goodman’s Hanover Band is by no means the hair-shirt one you might expect. We’ve come a long way since 1983, but this pioneering bunch of musicians can still speak to us even from all those years back in the 20^th century.
 
Criticism has been levelled at these recordings in the past for their excess of resonance, and indeed the church acoustic used is a major feature in each. The Nimbus label used ‘ambisonic’ recording techniques, and these CDs are labelled as being UHJ encoded. I’ve become something of a fan of SACD of late, but have seldom heard any of the Nimbus releases actually de-coded and presumably heard as they were originally intended. The stereo effect is always good enough, and I must admit to having a soft spot for the old Nimbus releases with their single ‘soundfield’ microphone technique. These Beethoven symphonies are quite a rich listening experience, but the first disc with Symphonies 1 and 2 suffers most from acoustic ‘smoke’ around the sound, and the timpani are also rather boomy compared to the rest of the recordings, which were made in All Saints Tooting rather than St. Giles, Cripplegate. What you do notice almost immediately is the relative softness of the winds against the strings. True, period winds are softer than modern instruments where string instruments are still almost exactly the same, metal as opposed to gut strings aside. The beginning of the Symphony No. 1 does immediately show up this contrast though, the needle sharp daring of Beethoven’s pizzicato opening in the strings accompanied by a mellow band of woodwinds and horns who are somewhere ‘way over there’.
 
The quirky qualities in the recording are something you can get used to, and one has to accept that you just won’t hear absolutely everything. Having tried to get used to John Eliot Gardiner’s Archiv recording from the 1990s with the Orchestre Révolutionaire et Romantique I can also report that being able to hear absolutely everything is not necessarily always the Holy Grail when it comes to Beethoven symphonies. Gardiner is pretty much the reference in these works when it comes to period instrument recordings, but these can also be something of a rough ride as well – rather uncompromising in some ways, to the extent that I’ve not played them much, and certainly haven’t trawled them out when referencing modern instrument recordings. Goodman’s Hanover Band is a little softer edged, not so much in the performances but certainly in recordings which you can listen to for longer periods without feeling you are constantly having to feel ‘impressed’. I’m afraid the first two symphonies are a bit too ‘far out’ as recordings to be regarded as truly successful, Listen to those upward scales in the winds in the final section of the last movement of the Symphony No. 1 and you have to strain sometimes to make out what’s going on. The opening of the Symphony No. 2 also reveals some strain in intonation in some wind sections, and the strings can be shown to be a bit scrappy when exposed. There is a great deal of verve and excitement in the performances and I can find much to enjoy in them, but in isolation they wouldn’t receive much of a recommendation.
 
A few years later, a different location, and everything snaps into crisper focus with the Symphony No. 3. The drums are played with harder sticks and are much better in proportion, the winds and brass are still backed up a bit, but cut through the strings more effectively and have a better definition. This is the kind of recording which brought the value of period instruments to the fore, with lither textures, a more chamber-music footprint on the score when compared to the likes of the Berlin Philharmonic, and a set of timbres which revealed the music in unexpected and refreshing ways. Not everything is perfect, but the sense of expectancy and discovery outweigh occasional weaknesses and the mild foibles of the recording. There are delights everywhere, from the weight of the Marcia funebre to the squirty natural horns in the Scherzo and massive tumult mixed with big holes of Haydnesque strangeness of the Finale, you can imagine something of what the crowds must made of it all the first time it was played. An attack of newness had indeed broken out, and the Symphony No. 3 is magnificent and extraordinary in this recording. The Symphony No. 4 is more neo-classical and optimistic in its outlook, but this performances scholarly examination of dynamics, tempo and articulation makes it another bracing listen. The Adagio in particular is something of a trot with a long-legged steed than a real slow movement, but I like it, and the musical narrative of all of these movements is a path to savour. Some slightly sour violin moments on occasion take a little away from good wind solos, but again the sum is greater than the parts, and this is a performance which would hopefully still grab wild applause even today.
 
The Symphony No. 5 is always going to be a crucial work, and I’m not entirely convinced by the opening here in this, another one of the earliest recorded in the set. Sustained notes in the strings are undecided whether to vibrato or not, and the lead violin is distractingly up-front. If you can stand back from this a bit, there are good horn moments and the pace and drama are all there, but that string mix is troubling throughout. The extreme contrast between really quite close and fairly distant instruments also makes ensemble coherence that much more difficult. There is still plenty of good playing here and some remarkable moments, such as the hushed and surreal opening to the final Allegro, but real enjoyment is something of an uphill struggle in this case. The Symphony No. 6 is a good deal more entertaining though the generalised sound and large acoustic fights against the detail and chamber-music aspect of the playing in the tuttis. This is a strange set of contradictions, but what I mean is that it sounds more symphonic and grander than it needs to or perhaps even should be. This is however not a small-scale performance, and the dynamic shading is as well observed and constructed as one could hope for, with the antiphonally placed violins a nice touch which adds to the sense of openness in the music, if making headphone listening a tad disorientating at times. The muted strings in the Szene am Bach are lovely, and those exquisite harmonic changes later on are very nicely turned. Lyrical expressiveness turns out to be a strong feature of the Hanover Band as well as their punchy rhythmic drive as the peasant’s merrymaking moves into a fearsomely potent Sturm. The joyful song is gorgeous, though the accompanying figures in the strings are sometimes a bit over-present. In all, this is a Pastoral which can be relished.
 
The last three symphonies are all from 1988, the last phase of recording, and less prone to the troublesome sense of danger which inhabits some of the earliest. The lyrical against dramatic qualities in this symphony work very well in this case, with the wind sonorities having sufficient impact to steer the harmonic pace. That funeral-march Allegretto moves forward with a satisfying momentum, and builds towards some tremendous sonorities. The swiftly urgent Presto crackles with energy, and has to be topped by the Allegro con brio and is, though the greater extremes of volume result in some less usual acoustic effects, some of the wind notes being heard more through their reflection than from the original attack. The Symphony No. 8 is also very good, with plenty of theatricality through its lighter textures. Roy Goodman manages some nice moments of ritardando as well, heightening certain expressive corners to great effect. This is sunny but also seriously weighty music making, creating an eighth which is imposing as well as generously warm hearted and boisterous.
 
If I appear to skim a little over these last symphonies it is only because they are less problematic in terms of performance and recording quality than some of the others. Not without their usual minor momentary problems, I’m still happy to endorse them without going into minute detail. The monster Symphony No. 9 does however demand greater attention. Ambitious music demands scale and stature, and the recording here does rise to the challenge, providing decent enough balance and filling the acoustic better than in some cases. There does appear to be some spot miking now, so for instance the horns pop up in your left ear more closely than previous experience would lead you to expect. The bass section is less powerful in the balance which is a shame, as a firm bottom is something you really need to carry this work properly. The first movement is good enough, though its vast canvas sometimes lacks clear direction – perhaps as much an artefact of Beethoven’s deafness as Goodman’s leadership. The Molto vivace second movement extends a vaguely unsettling feeling that we’re hearing a product of encroaching madness as well as genius. The music is driven on with a consistency of pace and within fairly narrow expressive parameters, giving the mind little chance to hook itself onto moments which are normally pointed out with greater expressive contrast. I remember one of my lecturers at the RAM pointing out what a ‘bad’ piece of music the 9^th Symphony was, and I think hearing this version makes me realise what he meant for the first time. It’s truly eccentric and not less than crazy, but all done so gloriously and with such daring panache that we’re all left agape with a kind of awe of disbelief – we can’t really ‘get’ it, so it must be wonderful.
 
Well, there are wonderful things about Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, but this is one of those recordings which challenges preconceptions and forces a re-evaluation. The final Presto-Allegro assai throws down the gauntlet one last time, making the low strings ‘sing’ that recitatief before the vocal entry, and this is done with great declamatory style here. With a relatively hectic pace established, the first quiet entry of that famous tune takes us more by surprise. It pops out like a sketchy doodle. We all know what it’s going to grow into, but in this case it has a good deal of work needed before achieving adulthood – an effect I admire. As for the singers, Michael George is a bit jowly in tone colour in the solo but is a fine bass, and the members of the quartet blend well enough together. The choir is very fine, but perhaps a little recessed in the sound. More recent research has the Allegro assai vivace a good deal swifter than we get it here, and it sounds bizarre now to go back to that now discredited tempo of one beat per half bar rather than one beat per bar – twice as fast in effect. Being used to John Eliot Gardiner’s generally faster tempi makes the first choral Freude, schöner, Götterfunken sound a bit clunky by comparison, and the rhythmic emphases enhance the vertical rather than the horizontal, although there are some remarkable moments. The brass in general tends to sound a bit isolated, and doesn’t mould too well into the general orchestral picture, but this is still a performance which leaves an exhaustingly intense and powerful impression.
 
This is indeed a ‘historical’ recording, in the sense of its being a milestone – or at the very least part of a significant moment in recording history, when the period instrument movement came of age and proved itself capable of challenging the old order of symphonic orchestras. There is much to be enjoyed in this cycle, and much which frustrates. I don’t think by any standard it can make a claim to be anyone’s first choice for a set of Beethoven’s symphonies, but that’s no longer the point with this recording and probably never was. This is a version which can live next to your box sets by Karajan or anyone else, and be brought out when you feel the need for a change of sonority and a different angle on familiar music. To be frank, I hadn’t expected it to have stood the test of time as well as it has. We have indeed moved on, and performance techniques, instruments and aspects of interpretation have all been refined and adjusted as the years have progressed. Just as with modern instrument recordings, there is no one option with period instrument versions of these symphonies. Roy Goodman/Monica Huggett and The Hanover Band can however still make a splash.
 
-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International [11/2011]

Classical Music

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This performance goes right to the top. Not since the amazing mono Ancerl recording has there been a version of this work of such intensity, such expressive urgency, and (yes, believe it or not) such incredible orchestral playing. It's impossible to praise the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic enough: they put their London colleagues to shame. The cellos and basses have a dark, tactile presence in pianissimo not heard since the old Kondrashin Melodiya recording. The horns play the daylights out of their solos in the first and third movements, while Petrenko has the violins sustaining, articulating, and phrasing the climax of the first movement with a passion and grit that's beyond praise.

Indeed, as an essay in Shostakovich conducting alone this performance deserves an honored place in every collection. Petrenko has the players digging into the second movement with unbridled ferocity at an ideally swift tempo. He ferrets out every subtle detail of scoring in the crepuscular Allegretto while never permitting the music to drag. His finale has just the right manic high spirits, and he clarifies the DSCH motive in the timpani at the end better than anyone else ever has. It's all captured in gloriously vivid, present sonics by the Naxos engineers. Thrilling, perfect, essential--a magnificent achievement and hands down the modern reference recording.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

GOUNOD Symphonies: No. 1 in D. No. 2 in E? • Patrick Gallois, cond; Sinf Finlandia • NAXOS 8.557463 (68:14)


Charles Gounod (1818–1893), internationally famous for his grand opera Faust, composed both these symphonies in 1855. By that time, he was an accomplished and well-traveled musician, but not famous, and the symphonies went unperformed and, before the LP era, unrecorded. All the critics I read are unanimous that this is a shame. Though not among the towering masterpieces of the genre, both are perfect within their modest intentions. Among words and terms that fairly describe them are cheerful, polished, attractively scored, deftly organized, melodious, and economical. Now that they are available, listeners seem to like the First (here 29 minutes long) a bit better than the Second (almost 40 minutes), if they show any preference at all.


Gounod’s Symphony No. 1 is most often discussed as the model for the Symphony in C of his 17-year-old student, Georges Bizet. The two works are similar in length, mood, orchestration, and faithfulness to classical models. Furthermore, both remained unknown until modern times. But Gounod as a symphonist sounds like a French Mendelssohn, whereas his student, subsequently world-famous for Carmen, already sounds like himself. However, if the student’s essay deserves greater fame than its model, that is no reason for neglecting the fine work of the older composer.


Conductor and flautist Patrick Gallois recorded these symphonies with the Sinfonia Finlandia of Jyväskylä in May 2004. The performances are alert, disciplined, expressive, and beautifully recorded, making a highly recommendable disc. The leading current competitor is a widely praised Philips disc with Neville Marriner conducting the ASMF Orchestra. That costs more than this Naxos release, but has the bonus of including the ballet music from Faust. One assumes that Marriner either plays the symphonies faster, or skips repeats—possibly both. Finally, one should mention an ASV disc of the Gounod symphonies featuring John Lubbock and the Orchestra of St. John’s, which has its partisans.


FANFARE: Robert McColley

This fascinating disc presents the young Georges Bizet' first composition after having won the prestigious Prix de Rome, the grandiose Te Deum, which remained unpublished until 1971, and his Prix de Rome cantata Clovis et Clotilde.

MAXWELL DAVIES The Boyfriend: Suite. 1 The Devils: Suite. 1 Seven in Nomine. 1 The Yellow Cake Revue: Excerpts 2 • 1 Nicholas Cleobury, cond; 1 Aquarius; 2 Peter Maxwell Davies (pn) • NAXOS 8.572408 (71:02)


After listening to much of Maxwell Davies’s “regular” music, the suite from The Boyfriend, written for the Ken Russell movie, certainly sounds a bit strange to say the least, being a take-off on 1920s “Jazz Age” music. The interesting thing about it is that both the music and its orchestration are not only more subtle but better both as music and scoring than a great deal of real “Jazz Age” pop, particularly the majority of Paul Whiteman’s output. It has a wonderful charm about it, and as a suite it holds together extremely well, something you might not at all expect from movie music specifically crafted to tie into a certain period. In a way, it almost sounds like a suite of early Gershwin tunes arranged by a master. Or, to put it another way, the music is “bound” organically, despite its allusions to 1920s songs, in a way that even some modern music is not properly tied together. Moreover, the chamber orchestra Aquarius is having an absolute ball with this music, playing it with a verve and a kick one might never expect from a British chamber orchestra (a dance band, yes, but a chamber orchestra, not necessarily). I was absolutely enchanted from first note to last with the Boyfriend suite, though I didn’t expect to be. Bravo!


The suite from The Devils, a score for a film based on Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudon, is quite the opposite: dark, moody, often ominous-sounding music. An uncredited soprano sings very well in a portion of the Sanctus during the second piece, “Sister Jeanne’s Vision,” and here we encounter the type of “madness” music that Maxwell Davies reworked so effectively in his song cycle, Eight Songs for a Mad King (written around the same time). One certainly couldn’t imagine a sharper contrast in styles than between these two film scores—except for, believe it or not, a bit of 1920s-style music in the midst of track 10, “Exorcism.” The soprano returns, after which we inexplicably get another short bit of 1920s dance music. (Apparently, those devils of Loudon liked to do the Charleston.)


Seven in Nomine, dating from 1965, quotes the tune of John Taverner’s Gloria Tibi Trinitas in four of the seven pieces, only one of which actually bears Taverner’s title. Written for the unusual combination of a wind quintet, string quartet, and harp, it reveals yet another side of the composer, the ability to paraphrase earlier music while taking it to a new level. I found it interesting, considering that this is technically a modern work, that the solo strings of Aquarius play with straight tone. You just can’t break the British of that nasty habit. Yet the music itself is evocative, atmospheric, and very beautifully scored, with Maxwell Davies’s unusual modern harmonies creeping in such that they almost seem to have been part of the original piece, so organic do they sound. Since the music maintains a soft volume level and generally slow tempos (one notable exception being the low-volume but cheerful outburst of winds on track 16), it also generates a feeling of calm and well-being.


A similar calm, albeit more syncopated in places, emerges from his two piano solos from The Yellow Cake Revue. This was Maxwell Davies’s contribution to a campaign against mining uranium discovered on the Orkney Islands, where he lives. Both pieces here, the slightly jaunty “Yesnaby Ground” and the reflective “Farewell to Stromness,” are built around a repeating chords pattern in the left hand with undulating melodies in the right. The latter piece almost sounds like Minimalism, but is much more attractive than any American Minimalist piece I’ve yet heard.


All in all, a good if unusual album in Naxos’s Maxwell Davies collection, and one that you will probably want if you are a fan of this composer.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Respighi’s unfinished First Violin Concerto in A major (1903) was revised and completed by composer/conductor Salvatore Di Vittorio, who directed its première in 2010. Harking back to the masterful writing of Vivaldi and Mendelssohn, the Concerto also foreshadows the orchestral technicolour of the great Italian composer’s ‘Roman Trilogy’. The lyrical Aria and graceful Suite, newly transcribed by Di Vittorio, embody Respighi’s abiding love of Baroque music, while Rossiniana is a delightful reworking of Rossini’s piano music, Les riens (Trifles), much enhanced by Respighi’s contribution of new melodies and innovative orchestration.

Classical Music

A winner.

This is, in race horse parlance, another Nimbus ex MusicMasters production. The recordings are now, amazingly, over twenty years old but they certainly bear the new and somewhat austere, though evocative, livery well.

Music for the Theatre dates from 1925 and owed its genesis to a Koussevitzky commission. The composer took incidental music for a projected play and utilised it for the new work. There are five movements with the Prologue, and its brisk quasi-reveille calls, setting the scene with its quiescent material that leads inexorably to a jazzy and luminous coda. The muted trumpet and clarinet that haunt the Dance suggest a post-Ragtime sensibility and Hot Dance music rather than the Jazz that Copland suggested. It certainly has more of a tightly rhythmic New York feel than the more curvaceous insinuation of a Chicago beat. In the warmly lyric Interlude the cor anglais is the star and this ushers in a cheeky Burlesque where the trombone's cocky call over a walking bass adds greatly to the fun. The finale revisits the first and third movements and adds some restful stasis to end a happy, snappy work, tautly and sympathetically played by the forces of the Orchestra of St. Luke's under Dennis Russell Davies.

Quiet City is naturally better known but again trumpet and cor anglais are to the fore. Stephen Taylor is the cor anglais player here and I assume he was in Music for the Theatre as well. He and trumpeter Chris Gekker play with fine tone and measured cantilena. The strings turn lush when needed; no astringent aspersions are cast. Music for Movies dates from 1942 - the quartet of compositions is presented chronologically. This is a vital, energising piece of work, one of his breeziest and zestiest. It flies kites for serious composers and film music, whilst ensuring that colour, rhythmic flair, localised characterisation, and convincing orchestration are all surely realised. To end we have the Clarinet Concerto. It's not such an odd bedfellow as it may seem, especially when the playing is so consonant and William Blount so highly effective a soloist.

Of course you will have your own Numero Uno to play against each of these four recordings. Probably you'd go for Bernstein, Levi or Litton in Music for Theatre, or Copland himself (or Marriner - excellent) in Quiet City. The composer or Slatkin are probably best for Music for Movies and you have a whole Appalachia full of choices with the Concerto, according to how jazzy or straight you want it - Goodman, Meyer, Stoltzman - best with Tilson Thomas on the rostrum - or maybe Drucker - and there are plenty more.

As a single disc however this one, excellently recorded, finely played, and well annotated (by Vivian Perlis) is a winner.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Nearly 80 minutes of Elgar in march tempo many be a bit much at a single sitting, but this disc fills a useful niche. The most interesting work here is the symphonic prelude Polonia, dedicated to Paderewski, and composed during the First World War. Making use of various Polish melodies (including music by Paderewski and Chopin), at nearly fifteen minutes it's a major statement for a mere "occasional" work, and the only reason I can think of that it isn't better known is that it's not about England so no one especially cares. James Judd and the New Zealand Symphony play it very well, as they also do the Pomp and Circumstances Marches. Frankly, you can have your Boults and Barbirollis: compared to Judd they sound far less involved. He actually has interesting ideas about phrasing (listen to how he drives the opening of March No. 2), and makes a persuasive case for this music as music, rather than as a high school graduation exercise or some other mundane event.


The Coronation March and the Funeral March from Grania and Diarmid are also bigger than their titles might suggest, the first as reflective as it is opulent, the second really a brief, elegiac tone poem. It's a bit hard to get excited about either the Empire March or the March from Caractacus, and the March of the Mogul Emperors (from The Crown of India Suite) could crash and bash with more abandon (where is the tam-tam?), but there's certainly enough here to whet the appetite of committed Elgarians. The sonics are also quite good: a touch low-level, perhaps, but easily adjustable, with plenty of room to expand and good bass separation between timpani, bass drum, and organ pedals (which are well caught but not overbearing). In short, this is another successful collaboration between Judd and the New Zealanders--long may they continue.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

HOVHANESS Lousadzak. 1 Symphony No. 2, “Mysterious Mountain.” HARRISON Symphony No. 2, “Elegiac” • Dennis Russell Davies, cond; Keith Jarrett (pn); 1 American Composers O • NIMBUS 2512 (67:00)


This is a reissue of a recording originally released on the Music Masters label in 1989. It brings together the music of two composers who, as Tim Page’s program notes point out, first came to public attention as kindred spirits, linked together with John Cage, interestingly enough. Readers may be aware that Lou Harrison was one of the composer-critics whom Virgil Thomson ushered in as associates to the New York Herald Tribune during the mid 1940s. This was the period when Alan Hovhaness, until then an impoverished eccentric struggling to gain attention in the Boston area, attempted to cast his lot in the broader arena of New York City, after having essentially been ridiculed out of Tanglewood by Aaron Copland and his coterie. Both Thomson and Harrison were among the first with access to an influential forum of opinion to champion Hovhaness’s music, and their enthusiastic advocacy contributed significantly to establishing his early reputation. Of course, as the years passed, each of these figures—stubborn individualists themselves—proceeded in his own personal direction, and each ended his career at quite a different point from the others on the American compositional matrix.


Lousadzak , composed in 1944, is certainly one of the most unusual piano concertos ever written (neither a single chord nor sequence of octaves appears in the piano part). The music assigned to the solo instrument imitates a number of Armenian folk instruments, especially those in the dulcimer family, while the string ensemble plays the role of a folk orchestra, providing an accompaniment of primitive polyphony. Both Harrison and Cage were present at the work’s New York premiere, and evidently it really took the audience by surprise. Harrison later recalled that it “was the closest I’ve ever been to one of those renowned artistic riots.” From the standpoint of some six decades later, when Hovhaness is no longer alive, having left behind a legacy of hundreds upon hundreds more compositions, Lousadzak stands as one of his indisputable masterpieces. Somehow the work evokes—as its name, meaning “the coming of light,” implies—a haunting and mysterious sense of the beginning of time. It also has a real sense of drama—not drama in the romantic, climactic sense, but a gradual accumulation of passion and intensity as the work unfolds. No one who has written off Hovhaness after having heard only the over-inflated, endlessly soporific compositions of his later years should fail to acquaint himself with this important representation of one of the composer’s most fertile periods. One is hard-pressed to name another work of his that is as consistently compelling and inspired.


That a pianist with the varied interests and talents—not to mention the distinguished reputation—of Keith Jarrett turned his attention to Lousadzak has served to attract the notice of listeners unlikely otherwise to have encountered such a work. And Jarrett’s performance has much to recommend it. But there are also aspects of his reading that I find wrong-headed. The ethnomusical context from which this work derives is one of individual improvisation alternating with passages in which the ensemble comes to the fore. The improvisational passages tend to be rhythmically free and rhapsodic (an approach of which Jarrett—in other contexts—is a consummate master). Though thoroughly notated, Lousadzak emulates this style, and should be performed in a manner that is in keeping with it. But for some reason Jarrett approaches this profoundly non-virtuosic music as if trying to press it into service as some sort of technical showpiece, with overly driven, frenetically rushed tempos. Conductor Davies seems of the same mind as Jarrett, constantly pressing the piece forward, squaring off its phrase rhythms, and sacrificing much of its depth and subtlety. A performance that better captures the work’s spirit was released in 2005 on the Black Box label (see Fanfare 29:3), featuring pianist Martin Berkofsky. Although the Russian Globalis Symphony Orchestra lacks the precision and refinement of the American Composers Orchestra, pianist Berkofsky evinces a deeper understanding of the mode of expression represented by Hovhaness’s work.


“Mysterious Mountain” has loomed as Hovhaness’s best-known and most popular composition ever since it first appeared on recording during the late 1950s. (The fact that this work is identified as Symphony No. 2 should not be taken to mean that it was the second symphony Hovhaness composed. In fact, it was not given this appellation until a number of years after it was composed. To summarize briefly, toward the middle of his career, Hovhaness revised, retitled, destroyed, or partially or completely recast many of his compositions, leaving “holes” in his opus number listings and, in some cases, his numbering of symphonies. He would often “plug up” these “holes” with works composed either earlier or later than the numberings would suggest.) The great success of “Mysterious Mountain,” composed in its final form in 1955 (although portions date back to the 1930s), can be attributed to two factors: (1) Just two or three years after its completion, Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra recorded it for RCA Victor; (2) It is a beautifully tranquil and euphonious work in a neo-ecclesiastical vein almost entirely devoid of harmonic dissonance. Readers may be interested to learn that in a letter written in May 1961, the composer wrote, “As to my ‘Mysterious Mountain’ my feelings are mixed—I am happy it is popular but I have written much better music and it is a very impersonal work, in which I omit my deeper searching.”


The Reiner/Chicago recording set a performance standard for “Mysterious Mountain” that is hard to surpass, although even that performance is marred by a blemish or two. But its overall pacing and phrasing seem little short of ideal. By now there have been at least half a dozen recorded performances of this work. Most tend to take the first movement, Andante con moto, at tempos much faster than Reiner’s 7:25. Of them, Davies’s 5:09 may be the fastest. Andante con moto is a very vague tempo indication, leaving much room for interpretation, even more than most such designations. The expressive content of the music must be the determinant, and at Davies’s tempo, this quintessentially tranquil movement sounds brusque and rushed—clearly against the grain of the music. The more actively polyphonic second movement, which happens to be my favorite, is done magnificently. The mysterious opening of the third movement is again disconcertingly hasty, while the remainder of the movement proceeds lovingly, the pure, consonant harmony exquisitely in tune.


It is perhaps not too much of a stretch to observe that the “Elegiac” Symphony plays a similar role within Lou Harrison’s œuvre that “Mysterious Mountain” plays in Hovhaness’s: that is, they both attempt to integrate the spirit, as well as some of the exotic usages, of Eastern music within a Western symphonic context. This makes Harrison’s piece, in particular, especially unusual. A large work (longer than both Hovhaness pieces together), the “Elegiac” Symphony comprises five movements, and reportedly occupied Harrison intermittently from 1942 until 1975. Perhaps its dedication to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky accounts for the symphonic approach. Harrison’s familiar fingerprints—modal melodies of somewhat Balinese cast presented in unison or with a heterophonic or simple polyphonic treatment—are clearly evident (especially in movements 1, 3, and 5), but are here expanded to symphonic proportions—not solely a matter of duration, but also of a certain grandeur of both gesture and sonority. This very aspect of the work may alienate some of the composer’s more extreme admirers, while others are likely to find it all the more appealing for the same reason. The symphony is scored for a large orchestra, which is approached with considerable subtlety and delicacy—especially the use of the tack piano, a specialty of the composer, somewhat related to Cage’s “prepared piano.” The three odd-numbered movements—entitled “Tears of the Angel Israfel,” “Tears of the Angel Israfel II,” and “The Sweetness of Epicurus” respectively—are indeed “elegiac,” but not in the highly personal, Samuel Barber-like sense, but rather, in a more abstract, cosmic, contemplative sense, conveying a feeling of serene acceptance. The last movement is especially warm and poignant, concluding the work with deep, heartfelt beauty. The second movement, Allegro, poco presto, is scherzo-like and more Western in style, with some chromaticism, although gamelan-like effects clearly identify the composer. The fourth movement, “Praises for Michael the Archangel,” presents a stark contrast. Its harsh, aggressive harmonic dissonance and 12-tone material remind us that at one point Harrison studied with Arnold Schoenberg. Altogether, Harrison’s Symphony No. 2 serves as an excellent introduction to, and consolidation of, the many facets of this unique composer, presented in a fashion accessible to the more traditionally oriented listener.


FANFARE: Walter Simmons

WEINBERG Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes. Symphony No. 6 • Vladimir Lande, cond; Glinka Choral College Boys’ Ch; St. Petersburg St SO • NAXOS 8572779 (61:02)


Mieczysaw Weinberg’s sad and tortured life is described in the liner notes. The fate of his impressive and unjustly neglected music is explained by the fact that he was kept under wraps by his Soviet masters while others were given all the international glory. Naxos’s series of Weinberg releases, which so far includes three CDs of his cello music, is augmented here with this release of his wonderful Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes and innovative Symphony No. 6.


The Rhapsody begins softly, mysteriously, but builds into an impressive musical structure in which the music almost morphs from one section to another rather than sounding forcibly juxtaposed. These Moldavian themes have a certain Sephardic quality about them, a soulful minor-key tendency that influences one’s emotional reaction to the music even in the most energetic passages. Wisely, too, Weinberg does not over-write, so the piece doesn’t overstay its welcome.


The Sixth Symphony, composed in 1963, is a more mature and reflective work. Divided into five movements, it begins quietly, but this initial Adagio sostenuto does not stay quiet for long; rather, it breaks out into louder, yet no less somber, moods in which the brass and winds combine with the strings in a mode that tends toward the minor. Basses (and possibly cellos) sustain quiet chords while a solo flute plays with great anxiety above them; the solo role then passes on to horn and clarinet. A group of winds, including clarinets, plays a mysterious and restless melody above growling basses; another, quieter eruption with horns ensues; then it ebbs into a soft, unresolved dissonance for the finale.


The second movement includes the chorus of boys’ voices, singing a Lev Kvitko poem about a boy who makes a violin from scraps which he then plays to an audience of animals and birds. (Unfortunately, no texts are included, nor does Naxos direct you to a translation on its website.) The music is bitonal and polyrhythmic, in fact producing at times an almost purposefully uneven, galumphing gait. The music for the boys’ chorus is almost a chant, covering perhaps six tones that are played against the ever-changing harmonies of the orchestral background. A solo violin, emulating the boy’s homemade violin, plays plaintively, then the chorus returns while low wind, string, and brass chords play below them.


The third movement, marked Allegro molto, sounds almost hectic in its fast-forward motion, brass and percussion dominating the soundscape in a more mature and advanced sort of Khachaturian style. An almost klezmer-style clarinet solo interacts with glockenspiel and woodblocks, slurred trombones, and tubas. The fourth is described as a subtle reworking of one of Weinberg’s Jewish Songs from 1944, a rather ominous poem by Samuil Galkin in which the place where a home once stood is now a graveyard for murdered children, which will serve in the future as a memorial. The movement begins in a loud and ominous mood, with crashing timpani, but the chorus enters here in a softer, more conciliatory mood. Its song is a little more involved melodically here, written in C Minor and with the boys often singing in their lower range. Even the clarinet is pitched low, and the basses continue to pursue an ominous mood with occasional outbursts by the horns and low trumpets over percussion. Eventually, what sounds like very low, soft trombones underscore the boys’ song, occasionally colored by glockenspiel and oboe. Oddly, Weinberg ends the symphony with yet another slow movement, marked Andantino. It is based on a poem by Mikhail Lukonin in which “children of the present and future, from the Mississippi to the Mekong, are bid sleep in the confidence of a bright and productive tomorrow.” Appropriately, the music itself is like a lullaby, with wistful choral passages sparsely accompanied, first by the winds and then by lower strings. Certain elements heard earlier make tentative reappearances here, then the choir stops singing in order to give way to a solo violin playing a plaintive melody. The ending is a quiet, unresolved dissonance.


This is remarkable music, excellently played and sung by the various forces involved. As usual, Naxos’s over-reverberant sound blurs the clarity of certain instruments, but in the more atmospheric movement of the symphony this works to its advantage. There’s another recording of the Rhapsody available, conducted by Gabriel Chmura with the Polish National Philharmonic on Chandos 10237, which received a good review in these pages from Barry Brenesal, and both the excellent Kiril Kondrashin and Vladimir Fedoseyev have recorded versions of the Sixth Symphony that I haven’t heard, but taken on its own merits, Vladimir Lande’s performance is very fine.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

The first complete recordings of the original versions of the Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5 by Anton Bruckner.

Classical Music

While many historic editions focus on a performer, a less obvious but sometimes more artistically resonant choice is to focus on a conductor, one of those musical minds which shapes so much of what we hear. The Genter Wand Edition focuses on that great personality of the German music world, and this recording of Wand over the NDR Sinfonie Orchester and Jorge Bolet in his final years is filled with great musical moments. Wand once said "The older one gets, the clearer one's vision of perfection becomes," a sentiment befitting his masterful interpretation of Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky.

Arthur Bliss is a hard composer to place. He maintained a very high standard of craftsmanship throughout his long career (he died at 84 in 1975, and wrote music for more than half a century), but his idiom was more "20th-century tonal English" than overtly personal. He became Master of the Queen's Musick, a position difficult for non-British listeners to take seriously, but evidently he enjoyed the job. There is, in fact, a certain heraldic quality to his writing, most evident in A Color Symphony, and there's an aristocratic fastidiousness that's quite evident in the two pieces on this disc, even when they rise to passionate climaxes.

The Meditations on a Theme by John Blow may well be Bliss' orchestral masterpiece. It's a gravely beautiful piece, well-contrasted, frequently touching, and unforgettably scored. The actual tune doesn't appear in full until the end, when it emerges with unforced majesty as the inevitable culmination of the half-hour's prior journey. Metamorphic Variations, a very late piece written just a couple of years before Bliss' death, is a touch less richly colored, and it takes a while to warm up; but the work's latter half (the sequence running, in order, Polonaise, Funeral Procession, Cool Interlude, Scherzo II, Duet) is marvelous, and the gently affirmative ending is unaffectedly poetic.

David Lloyd-Jones has made several fine Bliss recordings for Naxos, and this is another. The Bournemouth Symphony plays beautifully throughout and is very well recorded. Indeed, Naxos' Bliss series represents one of the label's more noteworthy efforts on behalf of any British composer--but is anyone noticing? This series remains somewhat "under the radar", but it surely deserves the attention of all serious collectors.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Classical Music

This re-release is one of CAPRICCIO’s most famous recordings which has been remastered for optimal quality and offered at a special price. The first work chosen for this release is Johannes Brahms’ String Quintet in G Major. The piece, scored for two violins, two violas, and cello, was intended to be the composer’s last piece of music. The one movement string sextet Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night) is considered Schoenberg’s earliest important work. The piece is inspired by Dehmel’s poem of the same name, and was written in just three weeks.