There are pages here to rival even Bernstein. Come the finale, Slatkin well and truly throws down the gauntlet: his "Fanfare" is impressive, and within bounds—the right side of credibility— but it's the contrapuntal jubilance, the dance of life at the heart of the movement that really begins to set the adrenalin flowing. And nowhere more so than at the moment when we see this raunchy music for what it really is: counterpoint in search of its theme—namely, the "Fanfare" itself. Slatkin forges a toughly syncopated climax in its wake, driving home the halting dissonance which by now seems somehow inevitable—a moment of truth. The most moving pages of all then ensue, and Slatkin is still unassailable weaving Copland's piccolo-led tracery (woodwind, harps, piano, celeste) towards a tremendous peroration. Ihe anvil and xylophone hammer through terrifically at the close, heavy brass, bass drum and tam-tam ensuring a formidable pay-off.

So where are the drawbacks? Are there any? One or two: I am not entirely happy with the sound. Warmth, perspective and weight (handsome bass extension) are not a problem, but there is what can only be described as a curiously 'covered', unfocused quality which makes for a degree of opaqueness, particularly in the more densely scored tuttis. You need plenty of volume for the best effect. Not that Bernstein's live recording (DG, coupled with Quiet City) was ideal. Best for sound so far has been the 1987 EMI Mata/ Dallas Symphony Orchestra disc (nla). Sound apart, though, I don't think Slatkin quite catches the sheer audacity of the scherzo. Bernstein is second-to-none here: the raucous trumpet cackles and side-drum rim-shots—their effect in the Slatkin is somewhat muted, though he does pull off a swaggering climax as the trio tune reappears unexpectedly in canon. Again, though, I should like to hear it in more sharply focused sound.

Slatkin's first and third movements seem to me ideal. He certainly honours Copland's instruction "with simple expression" as the New England/ Quaker hymnody unfolds at the outset (Bernstein is inclined to burden these bars with 'significance'). The Saint Louis orchestra play very sweetly indeed as the words dolce, sonore and intensivo begin to appear on the page. The archlike superstructure is surely drawn, its two climactic edifices like great pillars of support. In the slow movement, Bernstein achieves a greater sense of dream-like remoteness in the opening bars though Slatkin is by far the subtler of the two as solo flute spirits us into nostalgic reverie. The texture is gorgeously light and airy, even as the dancing grows more boisterous (Bernstein does rather rush his fences here), and Slatkin's control of the long, slow wind-down (the dream fading gradually into the deepest recesses of the mind) is masterly. I only wish he had held the pause on the final diminuendo in the strings just a shade longer (lunga, Copland marks) so as to heighten the moment at which the flutes so magically announce both "Fanfare" and finale. This is a performance of real distinction, though. Bernstein's burning conviction, his unique electricity, set him apart, but there's always room for more than one view.

Slatkin's coupling might sway some collectors. Copland's own 1966 CBS recording of Music for a Great City, his reworking (for the LSO's sixtiethbirthday season) of the score for Jack Garfine's 1961 film Something Wild, has not yet resurfaced on CD. But Slatkin's reading is a winner: gritty and urgent in Copland's suitably frantic evocation of the New York City "Skyline" with its jazz and latino explosions, not least the movement "Subway Jam"—a kind of angry Rumba, fractured brass and percussion to the fore. "Night Thoughts" is Edward Hopper/Quiet City territory: now languid, now anxious, now wistful—a telling reminder of just how well Copland understood the soul of both rural and urban America.

-- Gramophone [2/1991]

These songs respond to the sheer beauty of Stutzmann's singing like grass to rainfall.

The performances here are distinguished throughout by the evident intelligence as well as the assured technical ability of singer and pianist; but probably the feature that will single out this recital in memory, say a couple of years hence, is the depth, the contralto quality, of the voice. It is not simply that it makes a change (though it surely does that), but that the deep colouring of the tone gives a rather different aspect to several of the songs, particularly the Ariettes oubliees, and often serves them well. The third of the ariettes, ''L'ombre des arbres'', for instance, responds to it like grass to rainfall: there's a glow that wasn't there before. The ending of ''Green'' (''puis que vous reposez'') and, in the Baudelaire settings, the evening-scene of ''Recueillement'', are also lovely examples.

Not that there is any sense of luxuriating. It is not sensuous singing; not, as it were, inviting to stroke the velvet. Attention is very much focused on the words. Yet there is a sheer beauty of sound to enjoy as well, sometimes lovely in itself (as in the last line of Baudelaire's ''Harmonie du soir'') but often as a subtle reflection of mood, as in the diminuendo so finely achieved in ''Il pleure dans mon coeur'' (''Le dueil est sans raison'') from the Ariettes oubliees where the note trails away in quiet thoughtfulness. Sometimes one would welcome more of a smile in the voice, and perhaps in the Histoires naturelles there is opportunity for a little more showmanship, especially in the first, ''Le paon''. But this too has its compensations: the jokes, such as they are, are not killed by coyness, and in the first of the Bilitis songs there is none of that cute wide-eyed-innocence act over the ''ceinture perdue''.

Though recordings of the songs have not been in notably short supply, many of the best are currently unavailable. This new disc is as attractive in its programme as in its performances; presentation and recorded sound likewise. In case a lingering doubt remains, perhaps I should add that Stutzmann is not another of those American girls in Paris, but was born there (in 1965).

-- Gramophone [7/1992]

STRINGS - THE DEFINITIVE COLLE

...[A] first-class performances of the inventive Eighth Symphony – Slatkin’s reading of the Tallis-like Cavatina is radiant. Slatkin also gives an inspiring and sensitive account of RVW’s enigmatic, undervalued Ninth Symphony, rich in associations with Salisbury, Stonehenge and Hardy’s Tess.

-- Ian Lace, BBC Music Magazine

Slatkin breathes a big sigh of appreciation into one of my all-time favourite American, or should I say Spanish, tunes: the ''Tango of the Merchant's Daughters'' from The Incredible Flutist. If ever a tune and a suite have one yearning to hear the complete ballet, this is it. Yet rest assured that these 16 or so eventful minutes do constitute the best and brightest of the Flutist (roughly half)—and that Slatkin and his orchestra in no way sell them short. Everything here is properly sun-drenched from the heat-hazed opening at siesta-time to the flashing tambourines and castanets of the catchy up-beat dances. The St Louis 'flutist' proves to be a real spellbinder and the Merchant's chosen daughter duly succumbs in a gorgeously sultry account of the clarinet and oboe-led ''Siciliana''. Slatkin taxes the entire orchestra in the sustained accelerando of the final ''Polka'', but a good time was obviously had by all. This, of course, is the score where members of the orchestra (and anyone else to hand) get to voice their approval in cheering and whistling as the circus hits town; even Slatkin's dog gets in a solo—brief but auspicious.

Piston, the accomplished fine-artist, surfaces in the Three New England Sketches, though no specific locations are envisaged or intended. ''The audience shouldn't try to find special places in this music,'' he was quoted as saying, ''but I won't mind if they smell clams in the air.'' Well, I smell clams. But for one sudden squall, his opening seascape is all calm, open waters and reflected light (upper strings, harp, muted trumpets) with the rustling shingle of cymbal and side-drum. The scherzo, ''Summer Evening'' at once put me in mind of the fleet nocturnal will-o'-the-wisping of the Vaughan Williams Fifth Symphony Scherzo, while the ''Mountains'' are, for sure, American through and through. I particularly warmed to the central pastorale—an unexpected pleasure with strings, then flute and harp and some engaging canonic detail from the other woodwinds distilled into a few moments of repose before the hike recommences.

This kind of bare-faced contrast is the very essence of the Sixth Symphony's first movement. When reviewing Gerard Schwarz's recent Delos recording, I spoke of the arresting dynamic tensions between Piston's 'rocky road' music—toughly syncopated, impulsive—and his sudden departures to Elysian fields. Boston's French connection (Munch conducted the 1955 premiere) would seem to be acknowledged in these fleeting daydreams for harp and Debussian woodwinds. Boston's virtuosity is certainly celebrated in the scherzo—an impish, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't creation which Slatkin and his orchestra have honed to a fantastic level of precision. There's marvellously keen articulation from his strings, and to say that his percussion are quick-witted is almost to spoil the fun of the last few bars. Solo cello and oboe lead the quest of the slow movement—sad yet determined music through which Slatkin communicates a fierce intensity; the finale is essentially a lap of honour for the entire orchestra—well earned on this occasion.

I'm not going to express a clear preference between Slatkin and Schwarz in this symphony. Both are impressive, both exceedingly well recorded and besides, choice may well be governed by coupling. Schwarz gives us the outgoing Second Symphony; with Slatkin you get the pictorial Piston—and that gorgeous Tango.

-- Edward Seckerson, Gramophone [1/1992]

WAGNER: ORCHESTRAL HIGHLIGHTS

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 21 & 26

MENDELSSOHN: SCOTTISH & ITALIA

Embraces its historical lineage...luminous and pulsing.

This isn’t a new release. Maw’s Violin Concerto was written with Joshua Bell specifically in mind in 1993; the recording followed in September 1996. In the very enthusiastic sleeve-notes – I’m not sure how Maw feels about being described as a “genius” – great play is made of the work in relation to the Brahms Violin Concerto. Certainly it has a complex romantic affiliation but the composers’ names that occurred to me were those of Prokofiev and Walton. Not that Maw could be remotely taken to be either of them – but in its cultivation of an almost Italianate lyricism it does summon up the memory of Walton’s Mediterranean work and in its fusion of melodic beauty and scherzo drama it must pay at least oblique, tangential historical homage to Prokofiev.

The Concerto is cast in four movements. It opens with ruminative slowness but then opens out into a flourishing, rich and luminous sound world, bedecked by manifold orchestral and solo felicities; those little orchestral lurches toward the end for instance. The second movement is indeed Walton-like in its vivacity but Maw’s control of lingering lyricism, finely woven into the work’s fabric, ensures seamless warmth from the current-swell of dynamism that he generates. The lodestones here are Prokofiev and Barber but they’re securely absorbed into Maw’s lyric modernist world. The powerful cadential passage over a sustained orchestral chord is followed by a muted upwards drift into orchestral nothingness, a Cherubini-like stroke of translucent and mysterious beauty.

Maw’s predilection for major chords – the C major especially – permeates the third movement. Harmonies are richly complex and there are elements of post-impressionism in the writing, as well glimmers of Berg; but over and above such composer-spotting moments, which are essentially incidental, is the sense of luminous quiet, the rapture, the specific and yet endless personal landscape that Maw evokes. And when he unleashes the finale it comes brimful with tunes, vibrant and exciting, richly orchestrated.

Throughout Bell plays with the romantic ardour that Maw identified – and so admires – in him. His playing manages to balance scrupulous cleanliness of attack with tonal warmth and pliant phrasing. Norrington marshals the LPO in assured, colouristically aware fashion and the recording does full justice to the enterprise.

The Maw is a concerto that embraces its historical lineage without being shackled by it. If you admire the Berg, Barber, Walton and Prokofiev concertos, and like orchestration that is both luminous and pulsing then this is the work for you.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

This is one of the most exciting "New World"s I've ever heard... [C]laims were made that it was a 1941 recording made by Wilhelm Furtwängler... It wasn't until the 1990s and detective work by German discophiles that the truth came out... The "Romantic" is remarkable for the flexibility that Kabasta builds into his brisk tempos; his Bruckner breathes... In short, this is a fascinating issue, and one well worth exploring for anyone who admires Furtwängler's athleticism.

-- Raymond Tuttle, www.classical.net

THE HEIFETZ COLLECTION VOL 38

Much heralded as the auspicious beginning of a new--and now defunct--recording contract with RCA, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony's Romeo & Juliet remains a stunningly good Prokofiev disc. This particular arrangement (compiled by the conductor) follows the sequence of the ballet, providing more narrative continuity than Prokofiev's three suites. Thomas' vibrant and insightful conducting, employing some highly effective and idiosyncratic rubato in many passages, powerfully enhances the drama's ebb and flow. The Balcony scene fairly flows with passion, while light and breezy pacing enlivens the Folk Dance and the Young Juliet. The intense drive of Romeo's Revenge (augmented by bass drum and tambourine at the climax) also rivets the attention.

Underlying all of this is the exceptionally high-caliber playing of the San Francisco Symphony, with its bracing energy, virtuosity, and rhythmic vitality. RCA's warmly spacious, wide-dynamic recording makes a powerful impression (even if it cannot match Telarc's recent SACD version for spatial realism). Considering that Thomas' arrangement contains virtually all the main thematic material from the ballet (minus Prokofiev's many repetitions), for many listeners this hugely enjoyable disc will be the one Romeo & Juliet to have and hold. [6/10/2004]

--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

Track Listing

Disc 1:
1. Sweetie Dear
2. I Want You Tonight
3. I've Found a New Baby
4. Lay Your Racket
5. Maple Leaf Rag
6. Shag
7. Ja-Da
8. Really the Blues
9. When You and I Were Young, Maggie
10. Weary Blues
11. Indian Summer
12. One O'Clock Jump
13. Preachin' the Blues
14. Preachin' the Blues
15. Sidney's Blues
16. Sidney's Blues
17. Shake It and Break It

Disc 2:
1. Shake It and Break It
2. Old Man Blues
3. Old Man Blues
4. Wild Man Blues
5. Wild Man Blues
6. Nobody Knows the Way I Feel Dis Mornin'
7. Make Me a Pallet on the Floor
8. Shake It and Break It
9. Saint Louis Blues
10. Blues in Thirds
11. Blues For You, Johnny
12. Blues For You, Johnny
13. Ain't Misbehavin'
14. Ain't Misbehavin'
15. Save It, Pretty Mama
16. Stompy Jones
17. Muskrat Ramble
18. Coal Black Shine

Personnel includes: Sidney Bechet (vocals, soprano saxophone, clarinet), Rudolph Adler (tenor saxophone), Henry "Red" Allen, Tommy Ladnier (trumpet), Sandy Williams, Teddy Nixon (trombone), Mario Janarro, Sonny White, Henry "Hank" Duncan, Cliff Jackson, James Tolliver, Earl Hines (piano), Bernard Addison, Teddy Bunn (guitar), Wilson "Serious" Myers (bass, vocals), John Lindsay, Harry Patent, Elmer James, Wellman Braud (bass), Kenny Clarke, Morris Morand, J.C. Heard, Manzie Johnson (drums).

Recorded in New York between 1932-1940 and Chicago in 1940. Includes liner notes by Don Waterhouse.

This is part of RCA's Jazz Tribune series.

Of all the overlapping Bechet reissue series, this series of two-LP sets released by French RCA is easily the best, with all of the Victor sides by the great soprano-saxophonist and clarinetist (including the valuable alternate takes) being issued complete and in chronological order. The first two-fer is highlighted by the blazing session by The New Orleans Feetwarmers from 1932, four selections from the "Really the Blues" date with trumpeter Tommy Ladnier and clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow, and such Bechet classics as "Indian Summer," "Old Man Blues" and "Nobody Knows The Way I Feel 'Dis Mornin'." ~ Scott Yanow, AllMusic.com

RIGHT AS THE RAIN - LEONTYNE P

Giulini goes his own sweet way, showing masterly judgement and control. Top honors go to Ruth Ziesak, faultless throughout.

More than most works regularly cited as pinnacles of western music, the B minor Mass is open to vagaries of interpretation. The vogue is for playing fast and flat, reducing forces and stripping the opulence and opaqueness that used to characterise Bach performance.

Giulini goes his own sweet way, which is not quite like anyone else’s. His choir is big – a far cry from the Joshua Rifkin approach of using solo voices in multipart choral writing – and his tempi slow. At least on paper they are slow: this B minor Mass is such a well-measured, coherent vision that even a Sanctus nearly a third longer than other recorded versions makes perfect sense. After all, Giulini is keeping time, not the clock. Indeed, frequently slowness is strength, as the masterly judgement and control of a gradually unwinding ‘Dona nobis pacem’ and a perfectly plotted ‘Qui tollis’ bear witness.

Among the soloists, Roberta Alexander sounds uneasy in a laboured ‘Laudamus te’ where the solo violin’s hesitancy is transmitted to the singer. Top honours go to Ruth Ziesak, faultless throughout. The live recording from Munich’s Herkulessaal is a shade reticent, but chorus and orchestra nonetheless come across as highly responsive and a credit to their maestro.

-- Christopher Wood, BBC Music Magazine

Poised and patrician interpretations that concentrate on lyricism, warmth, and spacious breadth rather than incipient tension.

Walter’s 1960 B flat recording hasn’t Beecham’s geniality or élan but it does have an unhurried and patrician affection that is hard to gainsay. The generosity of the phrasing never descends to Casals’s rather heavy-handed loving kindness; the sectional balance is fine, the direction remains crisply understated but affectionate. The wind and horn principals distinguish themselves in the slow movement where Walter brings out detail with candour but without any kind of finicky over-scrupulousness. Genial and leisurely – and without any crunching tutti weight – the finale is of a piece with Walter’s mature perception of the symphony. It’s a young man’s work but seen somewhat through avuncular and retrospective eyes.

The Unfinished was recorded two years earlier, this time in New York. Poised and patrician once more this is a reading that concentrates on lyricism rather than incipient tension or internal dynamic contrasts. The orchestra sounds notably fine and Walter’s direction retains a grand seigniorial approach, one that will perhaps disappoint those who might have missed the spirit of his fiery wartime performances with this orchestra, a time when he seemed on occasion hell bent on recreating Toscanini’s sweeping dynamism. Nevertheless his later approach certainly makes up in warmth and spacious breadth – especially the second movement – what it lacks in velocity and power.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International [reviewing Sony 78741]

The well-known painting of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach reproduced on the cover of this CD must be one of the most immediately attractive composer portraits ever made. The wide-brimmed hat, the fur-lined coat, the wisp of steely hair and, above all, the reddened but unmistakably genial face (displaying, if I’m not mistaken, his father’s nose) suggest a man one would want to accompany straightaway to the nearest coffee-house. But Friedemann was actually a little more complex than that, both as a person who could be lazy and argumentative and as a talented musician torn between the styles of the late baroque and early classical periods, so it is perhaps no surprise to find that there is considerable variety in the music on this disc. The opening Sinfonia in D major is one of those sunnily optimistic works that revel in the splendid new sound of the classical orchestra, but the D minor Sinfonia which follows is a highly serious piece for church use, containing a solemnly drooping fugue. There is also an Ouverture-Suite once attributed (pretty implausibly) to Johann Sebastian which, though undeniably attractive and individual, is now thought unlikely to be by Friedemann either; a quirkily expressive but perhaps rather rambling harpsichord concerto; and a by-now familiarly protean and surprise-filled Sinfonia in F major.

Tafelmusik are the perfect ensemble to perform this music. Like much of it, they delight in sheer orchestral sound, enjoying the advantage themselves of being able to turn it out in particularly pleasing and well-finished form. I would not hesitate to recommend this disc to any lover of eighteenth-century orchestral music.

-- Lindsay Kemp, Gramophone [2/1998]

This recording was nominated for the 2000 Grammy Award for "Best Opera Recording.

György Ligeti's only opera, 'Le Grande Macabre,' after a play by Michel de Ghelderode, concerns itself with nothing less than the end of the world. This is promised by the evil Nekrotzar but, despite dire warnings and ominous foreshadowing, the whole thing is something of a bust and in the end the only casualty is Nekrotzar himself. In between are any number of lascivious and criminal goings-on in fictional Breughelland, a place of infinite corruption, socially, morally and politically (and enormously funny in the bargain). Ligeti's brilliant, delightful, infinitely difficult music ranges from preludes and interludes scored for automobile horns and doorbells to the breathtaking coloratura flights of Gepopo, the soprano chief of the secret police. The performance under Esa-Pekka Salonen is beyond praise.

Volume 8 of Sony's Ligeti Edition presents the revised score of 1997, taken from live performances in Paris. There are numerous changes and the opera is shorter by some ten minutes. The revision also changes the language from German to English. The German original is available on Wergo in a fine performance. The Sony recording preserves a performance of even greater brilliance of what is now one of the great comic operas in English.

PIERRE MONTEUX EDITION VOL 6 -

Track Listing
1. Soul Station
2. Speak No Evil
3. Winelight
4. After the Rain
5. Dust Kicker, The
6. Monk's Hat
7. Cozy
8. Face I Love, The
9. Point of Many Returns
10. Voice of the Saxphone, The

Personnel includes: Don Braden (tenor saxophone); Vincent Herring (alto saxophone, flute); Hamiet Bluiett (baritone saxophone, clarinet, contra-bass clarinet); Randy Brecker (trumpet, flugelhorn); Frank Lacy (trombone); Darrell Grant, George Colligan (piano); Cecil Brooks III (drums); Jimmy Delgado (congas); Bill Cosby (percussion).

Includes liner notes by Benny Golson.

Personnel: Don Braden (flute, tenor saxophone); Vincent Herring (flute, alto saxophone); Hamiet Bluiett (clarinet, contrabass clarinet, baritone saxophone); Randy Brecker (trumpet, flugelhorn); Frank Lacy (trombone); Darrell Grant (piano); Dwayne Burno (acoustic bass); Cecil Brooks III (drums).

Audio Mixers: Richard Clarke; James Nichols.

Recording information: Systems Two Studios, Brooklyn, NY (02/15/1997-03/04/1997).

Arranger: Don Braden.

Don Braden's The Voice of the Saxophone is, for the most part, impressive. His quartet arrangements of "After the Rain" and the title track should turn heads. His big-toned tenor sax carries the octet in covers of hard bop gems like "Soul Station" and "Speak No Evil." He's also making headway as a composer, especially on "Cozy," which features both him and Vincent Herring on flutes. Less successful is the pseudo-Monk TV theme from The Cosby Show, which is called "Monk's Hat." ~ Ken Dryden

Legendary for his accomplishments, musical, scholarly and beyond, Camille Saint-Saëns created an astounding collection of compositions. These pieces for cello and accompaniment must surely rank among his finest achievements.
The composer wrote more than mere pleasant melodies. The demands of Cello Concerto No. 2 are extraordinary, and yield results quite profound. Baroque lyricism and a penchant for drama make Saint-Saëns' orchestral work a delight. The more intimate Cello Sonata No. 2 takes advantage of the rich tonal power of both instrument and soloist.
Renown cellist Steven Isserlis performs with panache befitting his reputation as one of the world's leading cellists. His technique, both technically precise and deeply passionate, brings out the most of Saint-Saëns difficult works.

CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO: GUITAR CO

TOSCANINI COLLECTION VOL 28 -

SCHUBERT: ARPEGGIONE SONATA, P

VIOLIN SHOWPIECES ERICK FRIED