GREATEST HITS

A useful adjunct to the Kodály Quartet's budget Haydn series, the disputed Op. 3 works attributed to Pater Romanus Hoffstetter plug one of the last remaining gaps, with attractive readings of Quartets Nos. 3-6. The playing is very fine indeed; outer movements, such as No. 3's brilliant concluding Presto, display tremendous verve and enthusiasm. First violinist Attila Falvay plays with imagination, accuracy, and panache, even in complex passagework above the staff, as in No. 5's Presto. The players also get comic moments totally right (such as the minuet of the same work), letting the music make the jokes obvious, without the need for exaggeration. But they also play with utmost finesse and tonal beauty, the best moments of all coming in the Largo of No. 3 and in the Adagio of No. 4.


The famous Serenade from No. 5 has been very widely recorded, but apart from the mono 1951/52 Vienna Konzerthaus Quartet recordings of Nos. 1, 4, 5, and 6 (reissued by Preiser), there are no modern alternatives to this admirable Naxos production. Truthful, well-balanced sound and faultless musicianship makes this another winner. [9/28/2002]
--Michael Jameson, ClassicsToday.com

GOULD PLAYS BACH: PIANO CONCER

"Harvested by Bartók, Kodály and a few others from 1904–5 on, [the authentic folk music of the Hungarian peasant], with its characteristic melodic contours, provided the leaven for a generation of Hungarian composers to create an entirely new musical ethos. There were other influences upon Bartók, among them those of Debussy, Stravinsky and Schoenberg; he also investigated and allowed his music to be colored by folk music other than Hungarian, especially Romanian, Slovakian and Arabic. But it was from Hungarian music itself that he drew the strongest sustenance, Hungarian peasant music that had for generations rubbed shoulders with, influencing and being influenced by, the music of neighboring peoples. “Race purity” in music, he believed resulted in musical poverty: the richest hoard of folk music is fructified by the music it comes into contact with...

Notable in the quartets from No. 2 on is an unprecedented interest in extending stringed-instrument techniques. Before Bartók composers had been content to write mainly within the traditional virtuoso limits, and even Paul Hindemith, a string player himself, had little interest in going beyond the normal or conventional bowing and fingering procedures. These did not satisfy Bartók, who demanded unusual multiple stops, unorthodox fingerings, several different types of pizzicato and glissando and a whole arsenal of special effects that have revolutionized the string player’s approach to his instrument – all despite Bartók’s never having played any but keyboard instruments.

But the importance of his achievement lies not in the ingenuity of the writing or the novelty of the style but in the strength and persuasion of the works that resulted. In all these quartets musical logic prevails; the materials are distinctive and memorable, their manipulation magisterial, and the combination produces an unparalleled series of masterpieces, each with its individual delights – and its individual problems for players and listeners alike."

— excerpt from the original liner notes from ARL3–2412 by Halsey Stevens

Prophets of the New is a series from Sony focusing on classic recordings of the 20th century's most revolutionary works. Among the most beautiful of modern masterpieces, Rothko Chapel was written to be performed in, and perfectly reflects, the spiritual environment created by painter Mark Rothko.

Ozawa's Carmina Burana confirms Orff’s own view of the music: 'The simpler and more significant the utterance, the more direct and striking is the effect.' The performance is thoroughly idiomatic, while the preference for slower tempi in many sections emphasises the detail and colour of the scoring, features which are aided by a recording which has transferred well from its analogue original. With full documentation, including texts and translations, this disc is a real bargain.

Performance: 5 (out of 5); Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Terry Barfoot, BBC Music Magazine

Sibelius, J.: Symphony No. 4 / Pohjola's Daughter / Finlandi

Richard Pillbrow and Harold Prince’s production of "The Beggar’s Opera" opened September 1968 at the Apollo Theatre in London. Starring Peter Gilmore, James Cossins and Jan Waters, the production was first performed at the Cambridge and Edinburgh Festivals and later for London Weekend Television. The story of Macheath and his band of beggars and thieves (and the basis for Kurt Weill’s more frequently performed "The Threepenny Opera"), John Gay’s classic eighteenth century ballad opera still delights audiences centuries later.

TRACKS:
1 THROUGH ALL THE EMPLOYMENTS OF LIFE 4:18 - Peachum and Company
2 VIRGINS ARE LIKE THE FAIR FLOWERS 1:12 - Polly
3 OUR POLLY IS A SAD SLUT 0:52 - Mrs. Peachum
4 CAN LOVE BE CONTROLLED BY ADVICE 0:48 - Polly
5 POLLY, YOU MIGHT HAVE TOYED AND KISSED 0:57 - Polly and Mrs. Peachum
6 THE TURTLE THUS WITH PLAINTIVE CRYING 1:22 - Polly
7 THROUGH ALL THE UNEMPLOYMENTS OF LIFE (Reprise) 0:39 - Company
8 MY HEART FOREBODES 1:09 - Polly
9 MY HEART WAS SO FREE 0:21 - Macheath
10 PRETTY POLLY 0:44 - Macheath and Polly
11 OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 1:38 - Macheath and Polly
12 OH, WHAT A PAIN IT IS TO PART 1:06 - Polly
13 THE MISER THUS A SHILLING SEES 0:32 - Macheath
14 FILL EVERY GLASS 2:14 - The Gang
15 LET US TAKE THE ROAD 1:29 - The Gang
16 IF THE HEART OF A MAN 1:05 - Macheath
17 YOUTH’S THE SEASON MADE FOR JOYS 2:14 - Macheath, Jenny and Ladiesv 18 WHEN GOLD IS IN HAND 0:58 - Jenny
19 BEFORE THE BARN DOOR CROWING 2:39 - Jenny and Ladies
20 IN PIMPS AND POLITICIANS 2:25 - Peachum and Company
21 MAN MAY ESCAPE FROM ROPE AND GUN 1:22 - Macheath
22 HOW CRUEL ARE THE TRAITORS 1:32 - Lucy
23 WHEN YOU CENSURE THE AGE 2:59 - Peachum and Lockit
24 HOW HAPPY COULD I BE WITH EITHER 1:06 - Macheath, Polly and Lucy
25 WHY, HOW NOW, MADAM FLIRT 1:08 - Polly and Lucy
26 NO POWER ON EARTH CAN ’ERE DIVIDE 2:24 - Polly
27 WHEN YOUNG IN THE ’FORE 1:19 - Lucy
28 MY LOVE IS ALL MADNESS AND FOLLY 1:00 - Lucy
29 GAMESTERS UNITED IN FRIENDSHIP ARE FOUND 1:11 - Lockit
30 THE MODES OF THE CITY 1:02 - Macheath and Gang
31 LET US TAKE THE ROAD (Reprise) 1:48 - The Gang
32 IN THE DAYS OF MY YOUTH 3:32 - Mrs. Diana Trapes
33 COME SWEET LASS 2:45 - Lucy and Polly
34 OH, CRUEL, CRUEL, CRUEL COST 1:11 - Macheath
35 WOULD I MIGHT BE HANGED 1:17 - Polly, Lucy and Macheath
36 ALL YOU WHO BEHOLD THIS TERRIBLE SIGHT 2:52 - Clergyman and Company
37 THE RICH OF TODAY MAY BE BEGGARS TOMORROW 1:28 - Company

This selection is available for a limited time as a special import.

Classical Music

Since 1939, the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert has become a tradition and the world’s most famous classical music event. The list of names of leading conductors who have led the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concerts reads like a veritable who’s who of great maestros: Herbert von Karajan, Lorin Maazel, Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Muti to name a few. For the New Year’s Concert 2016 world-renowned conductor Mariss Jansons returns to the podium for the third time for this extraordinary event. Ever since their first concert together in 1992, Mariss Jansons has belonged to the circle of conductors with whom the Vienna Philharmonic feels a special bond. His first New Year’s Concert in 2006 was widely acclaimed by both audiences and the media. Jansons won a Grammy Award® in 2006 for Best Orchestral Performance and ECHO Klassik honored him in 2007 as Conductor of the Year.

The Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert is unique and has often been imitated, but not equaled, with a live broadcast on television in over 90 countries around the world with over 40 million viewers. PBS aired the 2015 concert on over 181 stations and will broadcast the 2016 concert nationally. The repertoire for the New Year’s Concert features works by members of the Strauss Family – Johann Strauss, father and son, as well as Eduard and Josef Strauss. Old favorites from their works are played alongside others that have never been recorded or are rarely heard. All of them programmed around two fixed points in the concert, The Blue Danube Waltz and the Radetzky March.

Meyerbeer was a precocious composer and this album traces some of his very earliest works. Der Fischer und das Milchmädchen was his first stage work, a charming rural vignette that contains all the essential features of a ballet-divertissement couched in writing that enchantingly evokes the 18thcentury. Collaborating with his teacher, the Abbé Georg Vogler, Meyerbeer composed DerAdmiralin1811. The following year saw Wirt und Gast with the vivid Oriental exoticism of its Janissary music, while Romildae Constanza, his first Italian opera, shows his complete assimilation of Rossinian models.

REVIEWS:

Convincing performances of some delightful, largely unknown, scores.

I have had cause to praise the players of the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice on this website before...On this occasion their skilled sensitivity to the demands of the music is again well to the fore and they give us completely idiomatic accounts that are characterised, as appropriate, by delicacy or finely controlled energy. Several passages, especially in the earliest works, offer considerable opportunities for solo woodwind players and, whether from the flautist, oboist or clarinettist, those are invariably finely delivered. To employ a well-worn but nonetheless very useful cliché, all 34 musicians perform as real chamber players who are constantly listening intently to each other – as well as taking their musical lead from their conductor. Dario Salvi is, of course, something of a specialist explorer of the lesser-known byways of music composed in the second and third quarters of the 19th century and, by skilful control of orchestral colour, orchestral balance and dynamics he creates performances that could hardly, I think, be more idiomatic.

-- MusicWeb International

Ives’ Sets for Chamber Orchestra are largely based on his songs, and display a panoply of style and technique. Set 9 includes The Unanswered Question in its original form, and this recording contains world premiere recordings of new realisations and editions, as well as being the first recording of the complete edition of the Sets. The three Orchestral Sets conducted by James Sinclair can be heard on 8.559370.

REVIEW:

The Sets for Chamber Orchestra by Charles Ives (1874–1954) are, in a sense, songs without words, based on songs whose texts are printed in the booklet. Although some sets do not have descriptive titles as others do (Three Poets and human Nature, From the Side Hill, Water Colors) most parts of the sets do have a name that describes their character. Set 9 includes The Unanswered Question in its original form.

For this recording, James Sinclair, Kenneth Singleton, and David Porter have thoroughly revised the scores and weeded out errors.

The interpretations are refined, clearly structured, and expressive. Unlike other conductors, Sinclair does not play to the fullest the aggressiveness of the compositions, but strives for a fine portrayal of the grotesque, the ironic, and the nostalgic.

-- Pizzicato (Norbert Tischer)

Baroque works for oboe have long been fertile ground for transcription to the trumpet and there are several examples here of this refashioning. The sequence of concertos and sonatas include examples from Handel’s Italian years, and from Johann Gottfried Stolzel, who was strongly influenced by Vivaldi. Telemann’s marvelously inventive Concerto in D Major is performed on the modern flugelhorn. In addition, there is the only known surviving work from Johann Michael Fasch, younger brother of the more famous Johann Friedrich.

“At just 9 years of age Luca had already toured the world with Libera Boys Choir. A featured soloist on Aled Jones' track Vespera and Kurt Bestors' Ave Maria he has also been invited to perform at many charity events. In 2022 Luca was Runner Up in BBC Young Chorister of The Year. He has a large following on social media and high praise from industry professionals including Katherine Jenkins, who claimed he "has a God-given voice". This debut album directed by Robert Lewis with The Hennessey Brown Music Collective includes many fresh arrangements of Luca’s favourite music.”

Sir Arthur Sullivan called Edward German ‘the one man to follow me who has genius’. Notwithstanding German’s success in operetta, especially with Tom Jones and Merrie England, orchestral music was always central to his life. Stylistic affiliations with French and Russian music – not that common in British music of the time – are often evident. German, like Elgar, was a stylistic cosmopolitan whose music is, paradoxically, quintessentially English, and the ‘Norwich’ is indeed an outstanding late 19th-century British symphony. German gave us another superb symphony too, albeit in miniature, with his Welsh Rhapsody, a brilliant orchestral showpiece that remains his most performed extended orchestral work.

REVIEW:

In the mid-1990s, Marco Polo set about recording much of Edward German’s orchestral music. This programme was issued in 1995, and is now one of four discs re-released on Naxos.

I have not heard German’s 1st Symphony. His four-movement 2nd Symphony subtitled ‘Norwich’ is apparently even finer. It was commissioned by the Norwich Festival Committee. It has assured orchestration and inventive colours, and its material is often memorable and always clearly presented. There have been other recordings over the last fifty years, but none is now available.

The second movement Andante con moto, the real star for me, is overwhelmingly enchanting. But we start with a sonata-form Allegro preceded by a dark, slow introduction marked Andante maestoso. This powerful movement compares interestingly with the lighter touches of the later Allegro scherzando and the boisterous finale. The last movement at times brought to my mind anything by Dvořák and, possibly less surprisingly, Eric Coates. To me, this is the finest British symphony before Elgar; some of you might even prefer it. David Russell Hulme’s excellent, detailed booklet notes remind us that Elgar thought very highly of Edward German.

German’s most performed orchestral work may be the Welsh Rhapsody, written for the Cardiff Music Festival of 1904. The booklet writer calls it symphonic, and I know what he means. It falls into four distinctly different movements of varying tempi and mood. German uses several traditional melodies. The third part is a whirling Scherzo. The finale begins with a chorale-like idea, and moves into the famous ‘Men of Harlech’ tune developed with much enthusiasm. You might think it’s a little over the top, but it brings the work to a great climax, so it often gets a standing ovation.

The Valse gracieuse was originally part of the Leeds Suite written for the Leeds Festival in 1895. This beautifully scored piece proved so popular that German revised it twenty years later to make an independent concert waltz. If you know German’s famous Tom Jones or his Merrie England with its waltz-songs, then the main melody of Valse gracieuse may remind you how good a tunesmith he could be.

I have known this music for over twenty years, and it never fails to please. The performances and recording are a joy, and do the music proud.

-- MusicWeb International (Gary Higginson)

The sixth volume in this series features three fine examples of Paul Wranitzky’s incidental music for Vienna’s court theatres, with these world premiere recordings fully demonstrating his compositional diversity. These often symphonically conceived works feature battle music, solemn polyphonic elements and the popular Turkish style with its characteristic janissary percussion. (Vol. 5: 8.574399, Vol. 4: 8.574290, Vol. 3: 8.574289, Vol. 2: 8.574255, Vol. 1: 8.574227.)

"This collection of recordings is especially meaningful for me because it charts my growth as an orchestral composer from my years as a student – when the Marimba Concerto was composed – to more mature work such as Moonlight. It also reflects the wonderful relationship I have enjoyed over the years with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop. The Marimba Concerto, which reflects my love of Mozart’s piano concertos, also represents my most direct and unguarded voice as a composer. The City was originally intended as a portrait of the city of Baltimore and more generally of the American city, but the death of Freddy Gray while in police custody and the subsequent unrest in Baltimore sent me in an unexpected direction with the piece." -- Kevin Puts

REVIEW:

Marin Alsop, as well as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, have contributed significantly to this composer’s prominence, as they do here. Their playing reveals the diverse aspects of the works. Thus they do not overload the Marimba Concerto with unnecessary context, and in The City they show the demanding bustle of American cities with concisely figured playing. They offer the soloists colorful panoramas on which to develop.

Ji Su Jung was very interested in the marimba concerto and thus offered it for recording. Personally, the instrument is not particularly close to me, but Ji Su Jung elicits wide spectrums from the work with superior technical execution that proves the stylistic possibilities of use despite a unified sound.

With this fresh addition to the solo repertoire, oboist Katherine Needleman has found a rich field of activity for her instrument that she fills with virtuosity and creative inspiration.

-- Pizzicato

The celebrated violinist Francesca Dego is joined by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and her regular collaborator Dalia Stasevska for this recording of the violin concertos by Brahms and Busoni.

A cornerstone of the repertoire, Brahms’s Concerto dates from 1878, a year after the Second Symphony, and was composed for (and dedicated to) the virtuoso Joseph Joachim. The Concerto takes the standard three-movement form, and as in Beethoven’s Concerto (considered by many as Brahms’s inspiration for the work) the first movement is significant in its length and its complexity.

Busoni’s Violin Concerto in its turn is inspired by both Brahms and Beethoven, and like both previous works it is in the key of D major. Premièred in Berlin in 1897 by the Dutch violinist Henri Petri, the Concerto is dazzlingly virtuosic. Francesca Dego writes: ‘To be able to record Brahms’s Violin Concerto is a dream and a milestone for every violinist and I feel that with “my” Brahms I do not want to compete with the many gorgeous versions out there but instead to declare my own love and history with my favorite violin concerto. Busoni’s Concerto, however, is a rarely performed work, brought to the studio only a handful of times. It represents a different kind of responsibility, one that pushed me to want to rediscover every detail of this music as if it had never been played before.’

Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5; Fantasia On A Theme By Tho

Robert Spano, newly appointed Music Director for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, selects music that showcases the orchestra and it's principal players for his thrilling debut disc recording on DSD sound!

Honegger: Le Roi David

Bach’s contemporary German lute virtuoso and composer Weiss left a huge literature for lute. Lutenist Viggo Mangor has studied his instrument and music at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen and at the Schola Cantorum in Basel. Unlike most of the early music instruments which are copies of the original instruments, the lute recorded here is the 17th century original piece.

Dyveke's Songs & Romances

This CD is a historical sequel to “The Danish Golden Age-Works for Mixed Choir a cappella” KPT 32068 documenting the rather forgotten period of the first three decades of the 20th century. The works presented here are by the Romantic composers who, in spite of the high quality of their achievement, sunk into obscurity due to the reformist movement in that period initiated by Carl Nielsen.