Walter Piston's lovely Fourth Symphony certainly deserves greater exposure than it gets, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be popular. It begins with a lovely, pastoral opening that leads to a rambunctious scherzo with some elegant waltz music interludes. The slow movement is one of the composer's finest: it builds to a superb climax of Brucknerian intensity, while the amiable finale closes the work in high spirits. Really, what's not to like? This is the work's only stereo recording (Ormandy's is screechy mono, but wonderful all the same), and it's a very fine one. Schwarz keeps rhythms crisp in the fast movements, and phrases the "Comtemplativo" very broadly and affectingly, with some excellent solo work from the winds of the Seattle Symphony.


The couplings are also very well done, the Capriccio's naturally dry string textures and bracing harmonic idiom providing an excellent stylistic foil to the solo harp. Three New England Sketches, one of Piston's very few "titled" works, also has impressive atmosphere, though Slatkin's out of print version on RCA was better still. No matter: these are fine performances very well recorded, and deserve your attention. Thanks to Naxos for keeping them in the catalog (and to the Seattle Symphony, which understood the necessity of not leaving the master tapes to molder in some closet or basement storage room once Delos deleted the original issues).
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The re-launch of a really impressive modern Hanson symphonic cycle.

Naxos have stood shoulder to shoulder with Hanson’s music. They have recorded his piano music, a miscellany of his non-symphonic orchestral music two sets of the opera Merry Mount (Serafin; Schwarz) and even started an earlier Nashville cycle of the symphonies with one disc. The latter fell by the wayside when conductor Kenneth Schermerhorn died. Now Naxos picks up the guttering torch through licensing recordings issued originally by Delos. They have done the same thing with Diamond, Schumann and Piston. It is clear that these discs are not going to be crammed to the CD limit. Even so this series will breathe new life into the cycle and at bargain price. Nor is this an also-ran. Schwarz finds the vital spark to ignite these works to make them glow and flame. The Symphony No. 1 is effulgently passionate and lives up to its name though without quite as many Sibelian touches as its reputation would suggest. Still, this is out-and-out romantic music and instantly enjoyable. Hanson’s own Eastman/Mercury recordings are vied with though their super-virile close-up grainy analogue impact compares ever so slightly unfavourably as against these refined yet full-blooded fresh recordings. That said they are now verging on a quarter century old. The second movement of No. 1 is the epitome of tenderness in Schwarz’s hands as is the second in the Romantic complete with its pre-echoes of the Born Free theme. The Second Symphony under Schwarz also has the prescribed electricity and lusty euphoria though he still falls just short of the ecstatic abandon conveyed by Charles Gerhardt in his 1967 Chesky recording with the National Philharmonic. The high fast trilling strings of the finale and the rampant horns are gloriously confident. The Second was recycled into the Seventh Symphony in much the same way that Elgar re-ran material from earlier works in his The Music Makers. Schwarz delivers an estimably atmospheric, stern and driven Lament for Beowulf where the voice he might have been attending was that of Holst – listen to the parallels with The Hymn of Jesus (1917). The words are legibly reproduced in the admirable booklet. Lux Aeterna, a tone poem for viola and orchestra dates form the year after the Nordic. Its plangently sounded and undulating smooth contours and peppery dialogue with the viola and solo woodwind show the influence of his teacher Respighi. The grand orchestral scores of Respighi afflatus is very much in evidence and a real pleasure it is too. The Hanson of the later 1920s is also more than hinted at. Mosaics is a much later score written for Szell and Cleveland. It’s attractive and varied but lacks the intensity of the works of the 1920s and 1930s.

We are still much in need of premiere recordings of the symphonic poems Before the Dawn (1920) and Exaltation (with piano) (1920); North and West with chorus (1923); Heroic Elegy for wordless chorus and orchestra (1927); Streams in the Desert for chorus, orchestra (1969) and New Land, New Covenant, oratorio (1976). When Naxos have reissued the complete Delos-originated cycle I hope they will look for opportunities to present these works to us. Perhaps Schwarz would be interested in doing the honours or maybe John McLaughlin Williams.

Meantime if you are curious about Hanson and or are seeking a really impressive modern cycle of the Hanson symphonies look no further.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Franz Clement's name has come down to us as the dedicatee of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, but a year previously, in 1805, he wrote his own Concerto in D, and it's a major find. This is no orchestrally challenged, formally dysfunctional, tasteless virtuoso vehicle, but rather is a full-blown classical concerto nearly as long (40-plus minutes) as the Beethoven. The melodic material is consistently attractive--and just as importantly, equally interesting harmonically. Deftly scored, and of course wonderfully written for the violin, its lyricism clearly anticipates Beethoven's own work of 1806. If it has one defect, it's that the phrasing turns a little bit square now and then in the outer movements. But let's face it--by the standards of your average early-Romantic concerto (think Spohr and his crowd) this is a masterpiece.

It goes without saying that Rachel Barton Pine plays the work with the style and elegance that it deserves. While attentive to the opportunities for fireworks (and she plays her own excellent cadenzas both here and in the Beethoven), what stays most in the mind is her beautiful singing tone. It's the sort of sound that Beethoven must have had in mind when he wrote--as he so often did--"cantabile", and it makes both slow movements particularly memorable. Both here and in the Beethoven, however, I can imagine a bit more muscle in the first movements, a touch more oomph from trumpets and drums, and more fire in the Beethoven finale (the Clement strikes me as just about perfect). José Serebrier is one with Pine in adopting her highly lyrical, somewhat dreamy approach, though it's to both artists' credit that the music never bogs down or turns self-indulgent.

As we heard in Pine's previous, superb coupling of Brahms and Joachim concertos, the sonics are ideally warm and natural, and Cedille offers this set at two discs for the price of one (85 minutes of music in all). I would dearly love to give this release a highest rating simply for the discovery of the Clement, which every violin lover should hear both for its historical and real musical interest; but competition in the Beethoven concerto is just too stiff. Then again, no other label or violinist offers such an attractive and innovative coupling. So buy for the Clement, and consider the Beethoven a very serious bonus.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The reputation of Franz Clement (1780–1842) has come down to posterity on the two legs of his having been the dedicatee and first performer of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and of his having performed, between the first and second movement, a composition of his own devising, on the violin turned upside down (a “myth” that Clive Brown, who edited his Concerto for publication and has provided Çedille’s notes, puts to rest: the program mentions this trick having taken place during the program’s other half). The triviality of the one underpinning of his reputation balances the other half somewhat unfavorably. The emergence of his Violin Concerto in D Major therefore sheds new direct light on Clement as a composer, indirect light on Clement as a violinist, and lots of light of both kinds on Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. If some commentators have noted a connection between the style of writing for the violin in Beethoven’s Concerto and that of Giovanni Battista Viotti, the precise nature of that connection will almost certainly be reexamined as Clement’s Concerto becomes more familiar. Moments in the first movement will seem like déjà vu, even for those only passingly familiar with Beethoven’s Concerto, although similarities with Viotti’s détaché still abound. That first movement, although it’s marked Allegro maestoso, may lack Beethoven’s high moral seriousness and monumentality, but in the self-confident strutting of its first movement and in the cheerful gaiety of its finale (with solo passages erupting suddenly from the orchestral texture, as in Beethoven’s work), it is still obviously a country cousin, not at all unrelated. Brown notes that the two composers employed the same instrumentation (although not throughout). That might account for some of the similarity in sound; but the interrelationships penetrate farther below the surface, and aren’t limited to a few passages that might be taken as echoes. Clement’s second movement, longer than Beethoven’s, engages in rapid passagework in its central section. In eschewing outright display, Clement’s Concerto seems less like a violinist’s virtuoso showpiece than a forerunner of the symphonic concertos that would dominate so many pianists’ concerto-writing for the violin.

Rachel Barton Pine plays this newly published Concerto with an aplomb equal to its own, drawing a consistently strong and attractive tone from the 1742 ex-Soldat Guarneri del Gesù, a tone that the engineers have set a bit in front of the orchestral mass, without disturbing the overall still balance. Her own boldly violinistic cadenzas enhance the first movement especially, and also the finale (a Rondo, like Beethoven’s), although some might find that cadenza somewhat long for its context. However much light Clement’s Concerto may shed, then, on Beethoven’s, it’s attractive enough to hold the stage on its own, especially in a performance as convincing as Pine’s, with enthusiastic collaboration of Serebrier and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Pine and Serebrier change gears for Beethoven’s Concerto, in which the same instrumentation sounds more massive and similar passages for the violin more like definitive statements. Serebrier seems to make fairly frequent rhetorical micro-pauses in the tuttis and to energize their already stormy majesty. Pine plays the first movement with a lyricism that complements Serebrier’s more brooding orchestral pronouncements. (A related balance of musical ideas may be heard in Vadim Repin’s performance with Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic, 31:4.) Once again, Pine provides her own cadenza, in this case a long, sonorous, technically complex, and by the standards of the later 19th century, an idiomatic one. She’s also written a brief, transitional one between the second and third movements and an ingenious, more developed one for the finale, which she plays with aplomb. If Pine’s performance of Beethoven’s Concerto lacks the drive of Heifetz’s, the geniality of Francescatti’s, the nobility of Milstein’s, or the convincing rhetoric of Stern’s, it nevertheless offers mellifluous, sweet-toned violin-playing and thoughtful musicianship throughout.

For those who know Beethoven’s Concerto well, and for those who wish to explore its origins, the combination of these two Classical concertos should prove well nigh irresistible. Recommended.

-- Robert Maxham, Fanfare

Franck: Symphony in D Minor - Le Chasseur Maudit - Symphonic

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

REVIEW:

Kenneth Fuchs' An American Place is a bright, big-hearted, neo-romantic work in the style of John Adams' Harmonielehre. Adams' finale is an unmistakable influence as both works open with motor rhythms chugging along in the strings while woodwinds and high percussion chirp and tingle above as the music builds to a spirit-lifting sunrise. Fuchs pretty much goes his own way from there as the piece travels through a series of engaging episodes--some featuring wonderful brass writing--and closes in a similar atmosphere to its opening. Eventide is a concerto for English horn, harp, percussion, and strings inspired by Negro spirituals such as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Mary Had a Baby", though Fuchs does not quote them directly, at least not in a manner that's easily recognizable. The work is reminiscent of the pastoral mood-music of Vaughan Williams, though the English horn writing occasionally brings to mind jazz saxophonist Kenny G--a tribute perhaps to the free spirited, highly virtuosic playing of soloist Thomas Stacy.

The pleasantries end with Out of the Dark, which is a set of three pieces based on works by expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler. Heart of November begins in thorny string paroxysms, while Out of the Dark moves somewhat away from the gnarly harmonies of the previous piece. Summer Banner gradually reintroduces consonance, and the work ends in a blissful, subdued atmosphere (with fine solo work by hornist Timothy Jones). Jo Ann Falletta leads first-rate performances with the London Symphony Orchestra, captured in excellent sound--another fine addition to Naxos' American Classics series.

--ClassicsToday.com (Victor Carr Jr.)

The latest entry in Cedille's very worthy African Heritage Symphonic Series offers the most interesting repertoire yet. The four works included here, all by living composers, demonstrate a wide range of styles and compositional techniques that place their respective authors squarely in the mainstream of contemporary music. Whereas earlier issues focused on the process of "assimilation", of artists coming to grips with a musical culture that labeled them outsiders and aliens, and while even here prejudice and stereotyping to some extent determined the career options open to the two older composers (David Baker and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, born in 1931 and 1932 respectively), these works all project the feeling of having been written from the "inside".


The reason for this impression probably results from two factors: increased acceptance of African American composers as writers of "classical music", and probably more importantly, acceptance of African American popular music idioms (especially jazz) into the language of so-called "art" music. Baker's Cello Concerto and Perkinson's Sinfonietta No. 2 make this process very clear. The first work, written for the composer's friend and teacher Janos Starker and commandingly performed by Dutch cellist Katinka Kleijn, remains a gritty and harmonically dense piece in which the soloist communes with various sections of the orchestra in sustained dialog. It's chamber music writ large, its improvisatory feel pointing more powerfully to the composer's extensive jazz credentials than to his facility for more overtly popular elements. On the other hand, Perkinson's piece combines various folk songs with the famous BACH motive to create a Bartókian synthesis quite unlike anything else.


William Banfield's Essay for Orchestra reveals a touch of Sibelius in its accumulation of incident over long-held pedal tones, but its thematic material and interesting orchestral garb, with extensive percussion commentary accompanying all of the other instruments, create a very distinctive impression. The first work on the disc, Michael Abels' Global Warming, refers both to the environmental phenomenon and to the emotionally contrasting idea of improved relations among nations, and the music illustrates this dichotomy beautifully, with an opening (and concluding) evocation of heat and stillness enfolding a dance section in which imitation Irish folk music rubs shoulders with something vaguely Middle Eastern. It's delightful. The Chicago Sinfonietta's amazingly assured performances of this wildly diverse assortment enjoy perfectly balanced, warmly focused recorded sound. This is a very satisfyingly executed project that makes its points in the only way that ultimately matters: by offering excellent interpretations of interesting, thoughtful, and enjoyable music. [2/8/2003]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Ravishing performances of Stokowski's sumptuous take on Wagner. Don't miss it!

It would be hard to imagine a more sumptuous disc. Stokowski, in these "symphonic syntheses", enhances Wagner's already opulent orchestration with shrewdly added instrumental lines and with the vocal parts usually given to the strings. Then at times he thins the orchestration down for more transparent textures. José Serebrier conducts the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in thrilling performances, passionate in a genuinely Stokowskian manner and treated to orchestral sound of demonstration quality.

Stokowski's aim was to provide more satisfying orchestral items in concerts than the popular "bleeding chunks". So in the most ambitious item, on Tristan und Isolde, we have between the Prelude and Liebestod a rich orchestral version of the 2nd Act Love Duet. Where the end of the duet builds up to that chilling interruption from King Marke, Stokowski has it lead seamlessly into the equivalent passage in the Liebestod. It works superbly.

The selection starts excitingly with the Entry of the Gods into Valhalla and it is good to find Serebrier splendidly adding an anvil when Donner brings his hammer down. The Parsifal synthesis is limited to music from Act 3, thus ignoring the Good Friday Music. From Die Walkure comes the Magic Fire Music and, most excitingly, the Ride of the Valkyries. This is Naxos third Stokowski orchestrations disc and is the finest yet.

-- Edward Greenfield, GRAMOPHONE

This new release follows on last year’s brilliant album of Stokowski Bach transcriptions (Naxos 8.557883) produced by the same team. The opening track sets the tone of the album. It will come as no surprise that Stokowski’s view of Das Rheingold’s final scene is gutsy and spectacular – out-Wagnering Wagner. The conductor’s enriched brass and percussion heighten Wagner’s colouring. The Bournemouth players must have had so much fun recording its sweep and grandeur, and the vivid evocations of the rainbow bridge across the valley of the Rhine. Throughout this album, they are backed by excellent engineered sound.

Tristan was one of Stokowski’s favourite works. His expressive symphonic synthesis accents all the lovers’ despair and ecstasy. The symphonic synthesis consists of Wagner’s own concert version of the Prelude and Liebestod interpolating between them the music of the Liebesnacht from the second act; Stokowski’s intent to create an extended seamless symphonic poem. He did not alter Wagner’s scoring but limited his input to transferring the vocal lines to instrumentation: cellos for Tristan and violins for Isolde. The Liebesnacht occupies some 21 minutes of the 36½-minute whole and embraces music of the hunt nicely caught in distant perspective and a lovely nocturnal evocation of trees swaying gently in the sylvan woodlands underlining the lovers’ awakening and mounting passion. Serebrier invests a fragrant and voluptuous sensuality to match the unbridled passion of the celebrated Liebestod that follows and where its mounting excitement is literally edge-of-the-seat stuff; little wonder that this music is so often regarded as the sexiest in all the classical repertoire.

In spite of his life-long championship of the music of Wagner, Stokowski conducted only one Wagner opera in its entirety, a concert performance of Parsifal during Easter 1933. He spoke of his synthesis of Act 3 thus: “I have tried to [communicate] the idea of [the] profound perception on Parsifal’s part of the mysteries of which the Holy Grail is a symbol and of which the outward manifestations are, first, Parsifal’s initiation, and then his acceptance by the Knights, and finally the acknowledgement of him as their leader.” The synthesis excludes the Good Friday Spell music - Wagner had already made a concert version of it - but includes the transformation music from the conclusion of the final moments when Parsifal heals Amfortas’s wound by touching it with his spear. This is a spellbinding and uplifting treatment.

From Die Walküre comes familiar music, magnified in colour and thrills. Need I say more!

José Serebrier, who contributes the concise, readable and erudite notes, was, for five years, Stokowski’s Associate Conductor at New York’s Carnegie Hall and was hailed by Stokowski as “the greatest master of orchestral balance”. Serebrier’s readings are studied: meticulous attention paid to orchestral colour, detail, perspectives, clarity, transparency, dynamics, accents and phrasing.

Repeating the assertion in my review of Serebrier’s recording of the Stokowski Bach transcriptions, this album is one of the best packaged of Naxos’s releases mostly, I suspect, because the recording was “made possible through generous grants from the Leopold Stokowski Society and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Endowment Trust”. In addition to Serebrier’s notes, there is a contribution, “Stokowski and Wagner” by Edward Johnson of the Leopold Stokowski Society, and reproductions of three letters, dating from 1964/65, from Stokowski to Serebrier, one of which includes this cheeky remark: “Thank you also for sending a very pretty flute girl. More please!”

Ravishing performances of Stokowski’s sumptuous take on Wagner. This album will undoubtedly figure in my list of outstanding releases for 2007. Don’t miss this one.

-- Ian Lace, MusicWeb International

This selection is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording.

This selection is a Super Audio CD; it is playable on both regular and Super Audio players.

This very fine Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto will come as a surprise to those who view Arcadi Volodos merely as a barn-storming virtuoso with few ideas and even less subtlety. His attack on the opening chords is big and bold, to be sure, but he never bangs, and once the first movement proper gets going he's noteworthy for the smoothness and flow that characterizes the first subject, and the very relaxed wistfulness with which he shapes the work's more reflective moments. In truth, Volodos and Ozawa have a tendency to let the tension sag a little in the movement's later stages, particularly just before the coda, but only very slightly.


The second movement has an exquisite, gossamer delicacy that's quite entrancing, aided in no small degree by some very sensitive wind playing from the Berlin Philharmonic and a middle section that moves with quicksilver abandon. Lightness and rhythmic point also characterize Volodos' view of the finale, so much so that the extremely fierce orchestral contributions from Ozawa (reputedly a wimp in this department) come as something of a shock. It's a reading of high contrasts, and when Volodos finally cuts loose just before the reprise of the big tune, the effect is overwhelmingly exciting. In short, in a crowded field, there's plenty here to stake this reading's claim to your attention.


The Rachmaninov encores also are impressive, particularly the Moment Musical Op. 16 No. 2, in which Volodos throws up huge geysers of notes with effortless fluency. His own Concert Paraphrase on the Polka italienne is lots of fun as well, an uninhibited romp that closes the program in very satisfying fashion. The live recording of the concerto reveals microphones a bit too close to the piano (we really don't need to hear Volodos' fingernails clicking on the keys), though with little sacrifice in clarity even if the orchestral tuttis sound a bit harsh. Still, the excitement of what must have been a thrilling live event comes over vividly, and that's what matters. A very enjoyable release.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Zino Francescatti recorded Mendelssohn’s and Tchaikovsky’s concertos twice, possibly to take advantage the second time of stereophonic sound: the first recording of each with Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic in 1954 (both reissued in Sony’s Masterworks Heritage series, 62339—which regrettably seems no longer to be available). He made his second recording of Mendelssohn’s Concerto in 1961 in Severance Hall and his second of Tchaikovsky in 1965 at the Manhattan Center; they appeared together on LP as Columbia ML 6158 and its stereo twin, MS 6758.

Natty Francescatti seemed ideally suited to Mendelssohn’s Concerto. His tone possessed the bright and edgy individuality to highlight the flashing pyrotechnics in a personal way; and without pressing the tempos unduly, he could strike sparks in the cadenza’s off-the-string passagework and in the elfin finale. The uniqueness of his approach seems clearest, however, in the slow movement, to which he brings a fresh, chaste ardor to the familiar soaring lines, and in the lyrical episode in the finale, which he plays as though he had written it. And Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra (billed as “members of the Cleveland Orchestra in the original LP release), provided genial support.

Henry Roth didn’t consider Francescatti’s way with Tchaikovsky sufficiently urgent; in fact, the very qualities that enhanced Francescatti’s reading of Mendelssohn’s Concerto might seem diametrically opposed to those Tchaikovsky’s Concerto required. Francescatti certainly didn’t play with the propulsive intensity of Auer’s students, Jascha Heifetz and Nathan Milstein, nor with the glowing warmth of David Oistrakh, any of whom might almost have claimed the Concerto as his own. Yet it’s hard to think of just what it might be that Francescatti’s performance lacks. While remaining his dapper self, he soars in the Concerto’s frequent lyrical passages, plays with commanding brilliance in the first movement’s cadenza (into which he inserts Auer’s famous—or infamous—but nevertheless electrifying thirds), and generates overwhelming virtuoso excitement in the movement’s coda. The slow movement, taken deliberately, smolders with exotic Slavic hues, a showcase for Francescatti’s distinctive tone production, even though muted. And he realizes the excitement of the finale, both in its pounding first theme and in the moody episodes, anticipated piquantly in the introduction. The original engineers reproduced clearly the clearer orchestral textures and gave body to Schippers’s and the orchestra’s explosive tuttis.

Those who admire Francescatti should find here a compendium of his art spanning colossally the range of expressive possibilities and mastered with Sony’s DSD and SBM techniques. Urgently recommended, of course, to Francescatti enthusiasts, but with equal enthusiasm to general listeners as well.

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Bach: Keyboard Concertos (Expanded Edition)

This album received the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance with Orchestra.
Violinist Hilary Hahn made her mark on the musical map not simply as a 12-year-old prodigy possessed of dazzling technical ability, but as an intelligent, insightful, and confident artist with a determination not to play it safe. As such, she's eschewed the tried and true programming choices from the standard repertoire in favor of more challenging and provocative fare. On this recital disc, her fourth for Sony Classical, she offers the juxtaposition of the seemingly disparate concertos of Brahms and Stravinsky.
Despite the obvious stylistic differences between the two works, there is an undeniable and prevailing commonality--both compositions are grounded in the traditions of the form, yet each in its own way stretches the boundaries of the genre and strives to move beyond accepted conventions. Hahn's expert reading of these demanding scores, lucid and intense with a sophistication and maturity that belies her youth, goes a long way toward proving this to be an inspired pairing, the lush lyricism of the Brahms balanced by Stravinsky's sprightly, neo-classical approach. Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields provide fine support for Hahn throughout this satisfying program, one that fuels the anticipation of her future musical explorations.

In conjunction with the Orchestra's 30th Anniversary Season, Music Director Nicholas McGegan and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra announce the launch of the ensemble's own recording label, Philharmonia Baroque Productions. The label's d�but release showcases the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in a live 1995 recording of Berlioz's Les Nuits d �t� and a live 1991 recording of arias from Handel's Giulio Cesare, Ottone, Arianna, Radamisto, and Agrippina. Hunt Lieberson had a long and fruitful relationship with McGegan and Philharmonia Baroque. The Berlioz is the last of seven acclaimed recordings she made with the orchestra and the first time she ever sang the full Berlioz song cycle in performance. Lorraine was in her element, and the result was splendid. These incredibly moving performances are now available to a wide audience for the first time.

ADAM: GISELLE ERMLER, ROYAL O

It is amazing to think that Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, knighted in 1998 for his services to music has written so much music: orchestral works, quartets, concertos, symphonies, operas, ballets, songs, madrigals, jazz pieces and much more - all totalling over 600 items! He has scored over 50 films (including some documentaries in the earlier part of his career). This album comprises a fair cross-section.

Usually we only hear Bennett's celebrated waltz from Murder on the Orient Express so the eleven-minute suite from the 1974 Academy Award nominated score is most welcome. Gamba, aided by Chandos's superbly dynamic and detailed sound, gives a thrilling reading of this glittering, sophisticated music for the smart set travelling on a mission to kill, on Europe's premier train. The music reflects the styles of that hedonistic era between the two world wars: waltzes, tangos and music played in the salon style. There is, as to be expected, an element of murky mystery and swift violence; but there is appealing elegiac material too. But overall, there is the glamour and urgency of the great powerful train itself.

From international sophistication, the prograame turns to a smaller world of rural romantic tragedy and to John Schlesinger's 1967 film of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd starring Julie Christie, Peter Finch, Alan Bates and Terence Stamp. Although the film had mixed reviews, Bennett's score was Oscar-nominated. Bennett wrote some beguiling pastoral themes, notably the poignant Bathsheba love theme. Opposed to this delicacy, is some very astringent, harsh, dissonant folk-like material that underlies the cruel reality of rural life like the loss of the shepherd's (Bates) flock of sheep (they throw themselves over the edge of a cliff) leaving him penniless and unable to pursue his love, Bathsheba. There is also bravado music for the proud, womanising soldier (Stamp), counterbalanced with elegiac material and music that, in its sense of chill isolation, recalls Holst's Egdon Heath.

Bennett has arranged his music for the 1972 film Lady Caroline Lamb as an elegy for orchestra and that Cinderella of the orchestra, the viola. His music for this film, which was about Lady Caroline Lamb's disastrous obsessive love for the poet Lord Byron, is distinguished by a very appealing tender romantic melody that is redolent of the Lady's yearning. The work is presented in two movements. Before the love theme is stated in the first of these, there is headlong skittish, neurotic music portraying the rash, foolish woman. Afterwards comes some comically ironical military music of some pomposity which includes (Lady Lamb's?) sighs before the mood darkens - perhaps signifying Lady Lamb's encroaching madness. The second movement reprises the love music, which becomes the theme for a set of variations: some dreamily nocturnal, some passionate, some troubled. Philip Dukes is a sensitive and refined soloist.

Cynthia Miller adds an ethereal touch, playing her ondes martenot for Bennett's Enchanted April score. This 1991 Merchant Ivory production dealt with the lives and loves of a handful of English ladies spending an idyllic month in an Italian villa. Accordingly, Bennett responded with a mellow nostalgic score, in which the ondes martenot transports the characters, and us, away from the ordinary, everyday world - to somewhere that is extraordinary and enchanted. His music is very delicate, atmospheric and impressionistic; and very reminiscent of both Debussy and Ravel (Ravel in Chinoiserie mode). At one point this delicate fantasy is grounded by the strains of Elgar's Chanson de matin played on a cor anglais but the peaceful idyllic mood is soon reinstated. A lovely work that perhaps is too fragile for its 19-minute length.

The concert is completed by two shorter works: the Nicole's haunting theme from the 1985 TV production, Tender is the Night, although I would argue that this is not its premiere recording for I remember hearing it the soundtrack recording I purchased at that time. I would also argue that Nicole was rehabilitated by the man she married and it was the strain of that work which caused his destruction! The concluding item is the touching and plaintive love theme for Four Weddings and a Funeral that tended to be overshadowed by more familiar pop source music.

Gamba leads the BBC Philharmonic in committed, romantic performances. A delightful album and strongly recommended.

-- Ian Lace, MusicWeb International

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 4 & Rhapsody on a Them

Dimension Vol. 18: Holst - The Planets

Stéphane Denève's Roussel cycle is shaping up to be the finest available--not that there's a lot of compelling competition. All of the symphonies are shockingly neglected, but the First might be the least-familiar of them all, God only knows why. It's a gorgeous, impressionistic piece with evocative titles (Forest in Winter, Renewal, Summer evening, Fauns and Dryads) and shimmering, atmospheric music that lives up to its expectations. Denève leads a thoroughly committed, even inspired performance, sensitive to Roussel's detailed scoring but also fluent, lively, and attentive to each movement's symphonic architecture. It's a wonderful performance, excellently played and recorded.

There's very little "minor" Roussel. Even his short works have a certain seriousness and substance. This is certainly true of Résurrection, a symphonic prelude after Tolstoy, while the four-movement suite from Le marchand de sable qui passe reveals Roussel's expert scoring for small ensemble (flute, horn, clarinet, harp, and strings). Really this is an essential acquisition for anyone who loves French music and the late Romantic school in general. Don't pass it up.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Williams: An American Journey

Czech composer Jan Vorišek (1791-1825) was a talented musician just beginning to make a name for himself, particularly as a composer of piano music, when he died prematurely of tuberculosis. The excessively enthusiastic notes to this release take full advantage of speculative historical hindsight and describe his orchestral style as an amalgam of Beethoven's (which he may have known) and Schubert's (which he certainly didn't), asserting in passing that "Beethoven was never a great melodist...(!)" This hardly corresponds to the reality of what you actually hear on the disc, but it represents the only questionable aspect of this otherwise splendid production.


Vorišek's style arises directly from the classical language of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Of incipient Romanticism or the Schubertian long melodic line there's nary a trace, and the music is none the worse for that. His single symphony might pass for early Beethoven: indeed, the end of the first movement exposition apparently lifts a famous passage directly from the finale of the older composer's Fourth Symphony, but this doesn't diminish Vorišek's modest originality. You can hear this at work, among other places, in the characterful use of timpani at the very beginning and in the wonderfully passionate minor-key opening of the slow movement. For some time now, the reference recording of this piece has been Charles Mackerras' reading on Hyperion with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Paul Freeman does him one better, having a superior orchestra, more tactile recorded sound, and slightly broader tempos that, combined with punchier accents (especially in the first movement), give the piece an appropriately grander stature. Let's just say that Freeman evidently views the work as closer to Beethoven while Mackerras places it closer to Haydn and Mozart.


Mackerras couples the Vorišek symphony with another singleton effort, by Arriaga. Cedille gives us more Vorišek, his marvelous Mass in B-flat, which (I believe) receives its CD debut recording here. This piece really is a find. Close in style to the language of Haydn's late masses, it contains numerous original touches, such as the thrilling augmentation of the fugue subject toward the end of the Gloria, an almost violent Crucifixus characterized by syncopated rhythms and jagged interjections from trumpets and drums, a sweetly lyrical second Hosanna following the Benedictus, and a startling ending scored for pianissimo timpani and brass. Its stylistic provenance may be clear, but there's no other mass setting quite like it, and fans of choral music really owe it to themselves to give it a listen.


Once again Freeman turns in an excellent performance (though he should have had a soloist intone the opening lines of the Gloria and Credo, as Vorišek, designing the work for a genuine liturgical setting, leaves these to the officiating priest). His soloists manage their assignments capably, the Prague Chamber Chorus sings with appropriate fervor, and the recording copes with the vast reverberation of the Rudolfinum in Prague very well. At the loudest moments the textures tend to thicken a bit, but this seems primarily a result of Vorišek's tendency to keep all of the parts close to their middle register, creating a certain density of sound (and I suspect making the work easier to perform by early 19th century church choirs). This is, in any case, a major release and a very pleasant surprise. Good work, Cedille.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This selection includes the spoken track "Portrait of Stravinsky: Stravinsky in Rehearsal; Stravinsky in His Own Words (narrated by John McClure)."

Mahler: Symphony No. 5

The Graffman/Szell recordings of Prokofiev's First and Third Piano Concertos gained "classic" status almost from their original release, and they still hold up very well. While the First Concerto may not have quite the glittering edge that Martha Argerich brings to it, there is certainly no want of virtuosity on Graffman's part, and it practically goes without saying that Szell and Cleveland are terrific. They are particularly wonderful in the Third Concerto's central variations, whose dry wit seems tailor-made for these performers. The two sonatas are equally impressive, with Graffman's unfailingly intelligent shaping of the Second Sonata's big opening movement and his romp through the single-movement Third Sonata obstinately memorable. The sonics have dated a bit in the four decades since original release, but hardly so as to distract from the interpretive excellence on hand, with the DSD remastering very sensitively accomplished.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Award-winning composer Adolphus Hailstork is a vibrant communicator whose music speaks directly and subtly. His Symphony No 1 was commissioned for festival performance and is imbued with the lyrical and vivid qualities of which he is a master. The Three Spirituals are richly affecting orchestral settings originally written for pipe organ. Fanfare on Amazing Grace is nobly conceived and An American Port of Call evokes the bustle inspired by Norfolk, Virginia. Whitman’s Journey is a hymn of hope for those setting out on ‘the seas of life.’