WALTON: SYMPHONIES NOS. 1 & 2; ORB AND SCEPTRE

Annika Treutler & Aris Quartett - Sibelius: Piano Quintet & Miniatures / A true discovery: Annika Treutler and the Aris Quartett turn to Jean Sibelius's early Piano Quintet in G minor - a rarely performed gem seldom heard in the concert hall. Powerful, bold, and rich in expressive intensity, the work reveals a surprising side of the Finnish composer beyond his celebrated symphonies. Complemented by selected piano miniatures, the album unfolds a multifaceted portrait ranging from Nordic clarity to lyrical intimacy. This recording invites listeners to rediscover Sibelius - beyond the familiar repertoire and with a fresh perspective on his early chamber music.

ELEGIE: CHAUSSON BABAJANYAN RACHMANINOFF

PETER MAXWELL DAVIES: STRATHCLYDE CONCERTO NO. 4

Gondwana Records is pleased to announce 'Interlude', the second album from Estonian-born, London-based composer and pianist Hanakiv. Showcasing an expanded sound, the compositions trace a journey of overcoming the past, unfolding into a seductively unconventional style imbued with hope and a therapeutic quality.

Few concerts in the world are awaited with as much excitement as the New Year's Concert from Vienna. Under the direction of Riccardo Muti, the Vienna Philharmonic ushers in the New Year with a concert in the magnificent Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. Marking his seventh time conducting this prestigious event, Riccardo Muti leads the orchestra in a program that celebrates the 200th birthday of Johann Strauss II, exploring new perspectives on the musical world of the Strauss family. Riccardo Muti has played an exceptional role in the history of the Vienna Philharmonic for over 50 years. The artistic collaboration with Maestro Muti began in 1971. Since then, he has conducted over 500 concerts with the orchestra, including six New Year's concerts, Philharmonic subscription concerts, memorial concerts, annual orchestral concerts at the Salzburg Festival, guest performances and tours, and numerous opera productions. He has been an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic since 2011.

Colors of Bach

Many collectors will have heard these performances one way or another, but Music & Arts isn't kidding when it tells us that these performances were remastered in 1998 "from the best available sources." The live sound is great, considering its age. (Credit goes to Maggi Payne.) Furthermore, six and a fraction Mahler symphonies on six well-filled CDs, and for the price of four, is a bargain. But all this good stuff would be as useless as a preacher in a house of ill-repute if it weren't for the blazing nature of the musicianship. Our Editor usually passes Mitropoulos discs my way because he knows I sympathize, so perhaps my opinions are biased. Nevertheless, I think I am speaking reasonably when I say that all good Mahlerians will want these discs. No, they will need them. That Mitropoulitans such as myself will have to have them is predictable, and only right. In short, this is a fabulous collection: an orgy of great music interpreted greatly.

Context is needed. In the late 1950s, Mitropoulos was being driven out of New York in favor of the younger, more photogenic, more glamorous, and publicly heterosexual Leonard Bernstein. (Bernstein's role in Mitropoulos's downfall is traced in William R. Trotter's Priest of Music: The Life of Dimitri Mitropoulos, which is published by Amadeus Press.) Lest it be thought that I am about to engage in Lenny-bashing, let me reassure readers that I believe him to be one of the century's great conductors. His reputation, however, has come to eclipse Mitropoulos's. There is an unfair tendency, particularly in America, to regard Bernstein as the conductor who single-handedly brought Mahler's music back to life, proving it was playable by orchestras and listenable by audiences. This set shows that Mitropoulos was performing the music too, and his interpretations were not those of an also-ran. Bernstein's Mahler, then, didn't just appear out of nowhere, and it wasn't until the last decade of his life that he had the maturity to be a deep conductor of Mahler, rather than simply an entertaining one.

Here, Mitropoulos was at the end of his life. In fact, all of these performances but one find him less than 15 months from death. (The Third, recorded in New York, is from 1956. I'm not sure why Music & Arts didn't use the Third recorded in Cologne three days before his death. It's been available on several "pirate" labels and is regarded as superior to the one offered here.) There's nothing sickly about this Mahler, though. Like Bernstein, Mitropoulos was a dramatic conductor, and his intensely physical response to the music was communicated to the orchestra and to the listeners. Unlike Bernstein, though, Mitropoulos's Mahler never is self-indulgently neurotic, and the Greek conductor never strains for effect, never neglects to look for the light and the shade. There are some stretches of conducting (try the first two movements of the Fifth) where the effect produced is positively nerve-wracking, but they are balanced by other stretches of such tender, consoling beauty that Mahler's muse comes to seem more Classic than Expressionistic.

Turning to individual performances, it is interesting to compare the "live" New York First with the studio version he recorded with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra for Columbia Records in 1940. (It's now on Sony Masterworks Heritage MHK 62342. Incidentally, it was the symphony's first recording ever.) Twenty years later, Mitropoulos took slower tempos in all the movements, but most dramatically in the finale (19:58 vs. 17:18). The bulk of the difference comes from the movement's last third, where the added breadth pays a big emotional dividend. Perhaps because his New York orchestra was so much better, Mitropoulos finds delicious subtleties that were beyond the Minneapolitans. Try the stealing in of Spring—it's a little comic, and it's oh-so-very tender.

In 1956, it had been 34 years since the Third Symphony had been conducted in New York (by Mengelberg). It almost tums into a different piece in the performance preserved here. Most conductors take 33 or 34 minutes to traverse the massive opening movement, the composer's longest non-vocal stretch. Mitropoulos's idea is to show that it can be done in 25 without seeming rushed. Incredibly, he succeeds—try the boisterous "Rabble" section to see what benefits he brings to it. The audience breaks into spontaneous applause after this movement. The other movements are fast too; some of the passages in the Third approach the alarming. This certainly is a potent performance, one that left me feeling better about the symphony as a whole than I sometimes do. But there's no denying that the instrumental and vocal balances are odd, and that the orchestra has its rough times. For me, what really throws this performance into left field is the fact that it is sung in English! The fourth movement isn't too bad, but when the fifth begins with—I kid you not—childish cries of "Boing! Boing!" you know you've wandered into the Twilight Zone. And what about the same movement's fade-out? The choruses aren't identified. Perhaps this is just as well, because they have problems with singing in tune.

The Fifth Symphony was performed just one week before the First reviewed above. As with all of the performances dating from January 1960 (this includes the Ninth and the Tenth), this is very strong Mahler. My first impression of this performance was that it is neurotic as all hell, but subsequent listens moderated that impression somewhat. What does characterize this performance, for me, is its sensitivity to the music's emotional ebb and flow. Of course. Mahler divided the symphony into three parts, the first part comprised of the first two movements, the second part comprised of only the third movement, and the last part comprised of the last two movements. Mitropoulos's is the only performance 1 know of that finds a different sound, a different temperament, if you will, for each of the three parts. The effect is striking. The first part is tense, even vicious, but then there's a sea change in the Janus-faced Scherzo. The Adagietto (11:03) takes on erotic proportions, and the Rondo-Finale is perhaps the only relative disappointment, not building to the triumph one ideally wants as an end to this symphony. Some noise, not unlike that of a slightly mistuned AM radio station, creeps into the fourth movement. Otherwise, all goes well.

The Sixth Symphony, recorded in 1959 with the Cologne Radio Orchestra, is relatively traditional, but hardly dull. It gets stronger as it progresses: the Scherzo—terribly bitter, in this performance— has a singularly menacing, grotesque trio, and the third movement heaves with a heavy passion. While remaining within traditional parameters of tempo, Mitropoulos's Finale is unwontedly coherent... and fatalistic. Perhaps surprisingly, the German orchestra is a little more reliable, even if it does reach the heights of inspiration heard in the New York tapings. The quality of the sound is A-OK.

Probably the most familiar of these performances is the Eighth, which was recorded in Vienna in August 1960. (Again, remember this was only a few months before the conductor's death.) It has been released on several different labels. It was the first Mahler Eighth I owned, before I was old enough to know what I was doing. (It was coupled with a "live" recording of Mahler's Second, conducted by Klemperer. Call it beginner's luck.) In his book, Trotter recounts how Mitropoulos, uncharacteristically, was beside himself with frustration during rehearsals. The concert, however, was regarded as a triumph. The first movement unfolds with unhurried glory; the female soloists are especially radiant. In the second movement, Prey distinguishes himself in his long solo, but overall, I just don't find the voltage to be very high. The sound is only middling, apparently having been spliced together from two or more different sources. In this symphony, my affection lies with Bernstein's first commercial recording of the work, still available in the "Royal Edition."

One begins to suspect that, at least at the end of his life, Mitropoulos became a different conductor whenever he was in New York—almost as if he had to prove something to the orchestra, the critics, or the audiences. Once again, the Ninth Symphony, and the torso of the Tenth, are given white-heat performances in the latter half of January 1960. Mitropoulos so moved the New Yorkers with the Ninth that he said, "Perhaps Gustav Mahler led my baton from the beyond," a ghoulish statement, given the conductor's failing health. But Mitropoulos does not go gentle into that good night—there is anger mingled with the resignation in the Adagio. And, in the Rondo, Mitropoulos predictably finds the darkest colors in Mahler's superficial high spirits. Just listen to the opening bassoon scales and you'll hear communicative musicianship of the highest order.

I believe Mitropoulos conducted all of Mahler's symphonies, with the exception of the "Resurrection." He conducted the Fourth in Minneapolis and the Seventh in New York—how exciting it would be if tapes of those performances were to surface. Also, how exciting it would have been if the present symphonies had been recorded in the studio, and in stereo. It should have been so. Nevertheless, this set contains more than one can digest quickly, and it can create nothing but support for Dimitri Mitropoulos's still-rising reputation. How ironic that it has taken more than 35 years for that resurrection to take place!

-- Raymond Tuttle, FANFARE

Gilels's playing is leonine and fiery, and his virtuosity is never less than imposing. There is much poetry, too...

-- Gramophone [6/1983]
reviewing the first CD release of the Gilels/Mehta Piano Concerto, CBS 36660


David Oistrakh plays...with the total skill and musicianship which seem as rewarding today as they did 20 years ago... [T]he Philadelphia strings are both very strong and very impressive.

-- Gramophone [12/1982]
reviewing an LP release of the Oistrakh/Ormandy Violin Conceto, CBS 60312

It is thought that Bach’s Suites for solo cello were written between 1717 and 1723, at about the same time as his works for solo violin, but no original manuscript remains. The cello suites are less flamboyant than the violin works, so present the greater challenge in communication; like Shakespeare’s texts, understanding depends on the subtlest of phrasing, rhythm and intonation.

The Dutch baroque cellist Anner Bylsma brings to this new set (he recorded the suites 11 years ago for RCA Seyon) a remarkable range of expression – vigorous, playful, impetuous and elegant, with extraordinarily fine articulation and elasticity of phrasing within the framework of each movement. Bylsma here records on one of Stradivarius’ great cellos, the ‘Servis’ dating from 1701, which is an extremely rare example of the ‘bassetti’, a large instrument 3 cm longer than the modern cello. For this recording, he uses a plain gut A string, with the three lower strings metal-overspun, which gives a particularly full, muscular sound, unusual for a baroque instrument.

-- Annette Morreau, BBC Music Magazine

THE ROYAL EDITION - STRAVINSKY

THE ROYAL EDITION - SCHUMANN:

Teaming composers as disparate as Bloch, Foss and Ben-Haim on the basis of shared ethnicity seems a slightly dubious exercise. On the other hand, since these three performances may be considered definitive, this is a real opportunity to discover some worthwhile new music. Bloch's Sacred Service is perfectly approachable in idiom, although, in echoing 'colourful' scores like Schelomo rather than anything more astringent, Bloch does not avoid an impression of rhythmic squareness. Those familiar with the more avant-gardiste utterances of Lukas Foss will scarcely recognize the composer from his early Song of Songs, at last getting a proper UK release. The manner is postHindemith, pre-Bernstein; Tippettian pastoral, with an exotic element intensified here by the cosmopolitan delivery of Jeannie Tourel. The orchestral accompaniment is not technically beyond reproach but the playing has total conviction and Tourel's is a performance to treasure. Only the post-Stravinskian eclecticism of Ben Haim's Sweet Psalmist of Israel is a little hard to take over half an hour.

-- Gramophone [11/1992]

CORRETTE Symphonies des noëls: No. 2 in D; No. 4 in D; No. 5 in a; No. 6 in A. Concertos comiques: No. 4, “Le quadrille”; No. 7; No. 19, “La Turque”; No. 24; No. 25, “Les sauvages et la Furstemberg” • Arion (period instruments) • EARLY-MUSIC.COM 7768 (67:32)


What a delightful disc this is! These examples of light, humorous music still amuse us nearly 300 years after they were written. Michel Corrette may have been more important for his work in fields other than composition. He published 15 methods to instruct students in all of the common instruments. He was active as a publisher of his own works and the music of others. But he also was very active as a composer of, among other things, cantatas, ballets, motets, organ pieces, harpsichord sonatas, and symphonies. He was the first composer in France to compose concertos for wind instruments and for organ.


Today Corrette is probably best remembered for his 25 Concertos comiques , published between 1733 and 1760. The concertos are based on well-known songs and popular tunes. Corrette performed these delightful works during the intermissions of performances of the Opéra-comique at the St. Laurent and St. Germain fairs. The Symphonies des noëls are suites of variations based on popular noëls, which are “profane airs, dance tunes, drinking songs, and New Year’s pieces” according to one description. The melodies are immensely pleasing, and Corrette’s variations testify to his enjoyment in working with them.


The music is performed by seven members of the Canadian period-instrument group Arion. Their tempos are lively but not rushed. The performers are obviously very talented and expert.


This recording was issued on the Atma label in 1999; it does not seem to have been reviewed in Fanfare . Two of the Noëls and Concerto comique No. 25 are available elsewhere, but there is no other collection that allows us to hear so many of these splendid works. I cannot imagine anyone whose spirits would not be lifted immediately on hearing this disc. My only regret is that Arion did not follow up with recordings of the other works from these two collections. Highly recommended.


FANFARE: Ron Salemi

Bach’s D minor Harpsichord Concerto BWV 1052 stands as a landmark both in Bach’s own output and in the history of the keyboard concerto. While J.S. Bach is often given credit for “inventing” the keyboard concerto, the fact is that during the period when he was in charge of the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, two of his oldest sons (W.F and C.P.E.) were also involved both as performers and composers. C.P.E. Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto Wq. 1 was likely composed for the Collegium, and it is in any event exactly contemporaneous with the elder Bach’s works in the form. The invention, then, of the keyboard concerto was very much a family affair, and it is probably correct to say that the two sons were at least as responsible for this innovation as was their father.

BWV 1052 held a special place in the heart of C.P.E. Bach, who knew it intimately and made his own manuscript copy. This disc, featuring the younger Bach’s D minor Concerto, composed at Potsdam in 1748, offers a splendid opportunity to compare the music of father and son. J.S. Bach’s concerto begins with a famously compact ritornello full of pregnant musical figures, lasting only about fifteen seconds. C.P.E.’s ritornello lasts more than a minute, and is full of those dissonant jagged phrases alternating with more lyrical ideas typical of this composer particularly, and of the Sturm und Drang ethos more generally. It sounds decidedly more modern, but the fact is that both works are masterpieces and it’s a joy to be able to hear them paired together.

Gustav Leonhardt recorded BWV 1052 at least three times, if not more, but this version from around 1981, featuring an unidentified string ensemble (The Cantus Germanicus Academica Anonymous?), remains perhaps his finest for the playing of the ensemble, the rich timbre of the harpsichord, and the warmth of the recorded sound. Leonhardt finds an especially natural, flowing pace in each movement, one that never turns mechanical. Hardly the most flamboyant of artists, he also doesn’t put on his monk’s robe of austerity here to the point where the music loses its natural brilliance. This is particularly important in the C.P.E. Bach concerto, with its strong contrasts between solo and orchestra.

This current reissue contains no notes, no recording information–in short, nothing but the disc. In fact, you’d be just as was well off downloading the performances for less money, but however you source them you owe it to yourself to listen, and listen often, to these two magnificent works as played here, so splendidly.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***

This double-CD set from RCA Japan (courtesy of Arkivmusic.com's on-demand reprint program) preserves what presumably is the best of Mieczyslaw Horszowski's December 9 and 11, 1987 Casals Hall Tokyo recitals, along with the encores from each date. Listen blindly and you'd guess that an older yet quite well preserved and highly experienced pianist was at work, someone between 60 or 75. Try the 95-years-young Horszowski, who's on top form.

True, he doesn't exactly sprint through the Chopin B minor Scherzo's outer sections as he did back in 1940, but he makes a virtue out of necessity by leisurely unfolding and consistently sustaining the music's polyphonic interest. This also holds true for the C-sharp minor Polonaise. The A-flat Impromptu amounts to a bel canto masterclass, while Horszowski requires only dabs of pedal to project the Mozart K. 332 sonata's first movement to such texturally differentiated effect.

The Bach Fifth English Suite is full-bodied and virile yet sensitively delineated (the Prélude's effortlessly conversational flow between hands, each of the Passepied's bouncy, delightfully ambidextrous qualities). Perhaps the fountain of youth kicks in strongest with the two Villa-Lobos miniatures, served up with red-blooded élan. The encores abound with memorable moments. Horszowski plays the Op. 25 No. 2 Etude's opening statement as if he were kneading the triplet passagework into a seamless legato line, yet upon its reiteration he lightens the tone and mostly eschews the pedal.

Force and finesse are the yin and yang elements that anchor the three Nocturnes. The elusive yet palpable give and take of Horszowski's rubato in the B minor Op. 33 No. 4 Mazurka is easier for to you hear than for me to describe. Horszowski played Mendelssohn's Spinning Song on both concerts; the second version is more fluent and relaxed. He also repeated the Mozart sonata's Adagio, or, more accurately, sang it out in full operatic splendor. The slightly distant microphone placement accurately depicts Horszowski's tone from the perspective of an audience member sitting in the best seat of the house. Notes in Japanese only.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

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

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

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

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

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

Art Lange, FANFARE

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

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

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

-- Gramophone [3/1990]

Tchaikovsky & Arensky: Piano Trios

This is the Hindemith so many listeners and commentators love to hate—earnest, workaday neo-classicism based on cardboard harmonic progressions and squared-off rhythms, conveyorbelted via an apparently inexhaustible supply of wrong-note marches, sicilianos and pastorales. And yet these sonatas can be great fun to play, and when the players are masters of their instruments they are fun to listen to as well. Moreover, when the accompaniments are in the hands of a recreative personality as strong as Glenn Gould's they assume an entirely new and unexpected range of character.

Gould's fundamental insight into Hindemith's world was his identification of its "true amalgam of ecstasy and reason". These were the very qualities which fused in Gould's own artistic make-up, and it should not be surprising that his empathy with Hindemith is strong. Only in a rare eccentricity of tempo (such as the dead slow opening to •the finale of the Trumpet Sonata) or in a tendency to peck at lines marked with slurs (in the finale of the Tuba Sonata at a point actually marked molto legato) does the perverse side of his nature assert itself; and even here the sensation of intense commitment overrides all. The added vocals are of course something that every Gould-listener has to learn to take in their stride.

The soloists were members of the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble and all thoroughly distinguished musicians. Hornists could no doubt fault Mason Jones's steadiness of tone and intonation, particularly in the Alto Horn Sonata. Otherwise the playing is consistently well-focused and alert (Hindemith gives the tubist an especially severe examination in rhythmical awareness).

As with other issues in this series, the recordings (from 1976) are clear and forward, though instrumental perspectives do appear to vary slightly from sonata to sonata. It does seem a pity, though, that Sony Classical did not include Gould's accounts of the three piano sonatas in this set, rather than issuing them separately (they would still have fitted onto the two discs).

-- Gramophone [3/1993]

POULENC: COMPLETE MUSIC FOR SO

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

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

This disc contains recordings of rehearsals.