In the summer of 1781 Mozart described his new home Vienna as 'the land of the piano'. He soon set about presenting his own subscription concerts, offering the three newly-composed concertos on this disc for publication 'either with a large orchestra.

Classical Music

Classical Music

In 1737 at age 71, after more than four decades serving in numerous positions as a Court violinist, orchestra director, and part-time composer, Jean-Féry Rebel composed his profoundly unique ballet-suite Les élémens (the elements). In his description of the opening movement (included in the notes to Musica Antiqua Köln’s 1995 DG Archiv recording of the work) director/violinist Reinhard Goebel offers a telling assessment as to just how unique, if not important Rebel’s achievement was: “He [Rebel] discarded all formal fetters: neither concerto nor overture, neither sonata nor sinfonia, his ‘Le cahos’ [chaos] is the first free orchestral composition in the history of music, more tone-poem than programme music.”

Indeed, it’s doubtful that anyone new to or even familiar with this remarkable work won’t be shocked (and shocked again) by Rebel’s intention, as he states in his preface to Les élémens, to “dare to undertake to link the idea of the confusion of the elements with that of confusion in harmony”…to depict “Chaos itself, this confusion which reigned between the Elements [earth, air, fire, and water] before the instant when, subject to invariable laws, they took their prescribed place in the order of nature.” Imagine, as Catherine Cessac puts it in her insightful notes to Les Musiciens du Louvre’s 1993 Erato recording, “…a daring ‘cluster’ involving the simultaneous attack of every note in the D minor harmonic scale…”. Of course, by now you realize my point: Rebel’s Les élémens must truly be heard to be believed.

This recent 2014 CPO release featuring L’Orfeo Barockorchester directed by Michi Gaigg was originally issued on Capriccio’s Phoenix Edition in 2008. It’s an excellent performance (that brooding diminuendo and lengthy pause between the initial sustained “cluster” and the remainder of the first movement rivals Musica Antiqua Köln’s intensity) and sometimes quirky, as when the ensemble plays up the wide array of rhythmic and dynamic contrasts for dramatic effect. The tempos by and large are quicker than most, with the exception of the seventh-movement Tambourins where, like The Academy of Ancient Music (L’Oiseau-Lyre), the ensemble favors a more measured pace before gradually gaining momentum near the end. All in all, this is a beautiful and at times spectacular offering.

Rameau’s Castor et Pollux suite also receives an exemplary performance, in some respects bettering my reference recording by Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra of the 18th Century (Philips). Gaigg has better instincts in shaping the suite as a whole, as well as an ability to better draw out instrumental texture and detail (compare their renderings of “Troisième air pour les athlétes” and the “Premier passepied pour les ombres heureuses”, for instance). This makes a nice, fitting choice to conclude the program.

The sound is remarkably good with excellent transparency in the woodwinds, strings, and percussion. Given Les élémens’ relative obscurity, there have been a few wonderful recordings (including a chamber version by the Palladian Ensemble that David Hurwitz favorably reviewed here). The one not to be missed, however, remains the previously mentioned Academy of Ancient Music performance directed by the late period-instrument visionary Christopher Hogwood. It was recorded in 1980, and every performance since that one is still very much indebted to Hogwood’s ground-breaking undertaking. Kudos to CPO for reissuing this worthy successor. Highly recommended.

-- John Greene, ClassicsToday.com

Can one ever tire of the dancing inspiration that animates these four portmanteau collections which have delighted both serious and casual listeners ever since Bach compiled them for use in social occasions as the 30-something Kapellmeister at the briefly enlightened court of Prince Leopold of Cöthen, exulting in the multifarious influences which he had absorbed and could place at the service of a compositional mind of unequalled intellectual brilliance yet always conscious of his music’s need to entertain, to give delight as well as accompany the sober thoughts of his congregations?

Not, at any rate, in these performances from a virtuoso German ensemble hailing from Bach’s own part of the world and masterminded by a superb trumpeter-turned-conductor who well understands the exuberant, public character of these suites, their occasional purposes, for all that in such moments as the famous Air from the G major Suite, No.3, they appear to take on a more confiding aspect, drawing the listener in before dispelling the tension with another jolly minuet or charming sarabande.

This generously filled CD presents the complete Orchestral Suites (Overtures) by J.S. Bach. Bach’s Suites count among his most popular and most frequently performed works, they are quintessential Bach: majestic, noble, tender and full of energy. They contain some of Bach’s evergreens: the Air from the 3rd Suite and the Badinerie from the 2nd Suite.

Played by the Virtuosi Saxoniae conducted by trumpeter-conductor Ludwig Güttler, modern instruments in Historically Informed Performance Practice, the best of both worlds. - Brilliant Classics

Classical Music

Aynur is the best-known Kurdish singer of our time and stands for modern Kurdish folk music. Like very few artists, she reaches people of all ages with her music and connects the younger generation with the roots of Kurdish music by sensitively and imaginatively combining the heritage and treasures of her homeland's musical past with a musical language of today that has been praised internationally. The successful album Rabe, released in 2023, is now also available as a high-quality vinyl version.

Robert Kahn (1865-1951) and Johannes Brahms formed a mutual admiration society; each respected the other’s work. +For decades he taught at the Berlin Royal Academy until his expulsion by the Nazis in 1934. +Wilhelm Kempff and Arthur Rubinstein number among his most famous students. Kahn’s peak years of creativity, prior to 1918, saw the writing of all four original piano trios. +These works, distinguished by their comprehensibility and concise design, are filled with charm, color and verve.

Robert Kahn was a German pianist, teacher and composer, who wrote a prolific amount of music for chamber ensemble. This release explores his output for violin and piano. Kahn’s style is lyrical and intimate, and resembles the styles of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms. Finnish violinist Elina Vahala made her concert debut at age 12 with the Lahti Symphony. She was nominated as “Yong Master Soloist” for the 93/94 season with that same orchestra. She is also a founding member of Violin Academy, which is a master class based project for talented young Finnish violinists.

The symphonist Felix Woyrsch (1860-1944) shouldered the burden of the mighty symphonic legacy that preceded him; a tradition he did not aspire to break with but rather seek a negotiable path for its continuance in his own personal manner. His Three Bocklin Fantasies belong to the group of works preparing for his symphonic style, drawing on coloristic instrumental and harmonic resources as in hardly any other work by him. The Third Symphony’s thoroughly chromaticized, frequently dissonant tonal idiom justifies its claim to the status of an ‘Apocalyptic Symphony’ in the context of his oeuvre.

Marienvesper

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Grammont Portrait: William Blank

The playing throughout is sensitive and glowing in this meditative and glistening work that recalls Vaughan Williams and Hovhaness.

The composer Jon Lord rose to fame in the 1970s as a member of Deep Purple. Celebrity collaborations between the group and Malcolm Arnold included Concerto for Group and Orchestra written and scored by John Lord and conducted by Malcolm Arnold. Lord has over the intervening years increasingly extended his reputation into the classical field. The Durham Concerto is the latest and most ambitious example to date. In this he is not alone, witness the various classical pieces by Paul McCartney - the latest being Ecce Cor Meum and the orchestral work Seven by Tony Banks of Genesis – a work recorded on Naxos. All are individual in their own way but a sign that some musicians with a rock-popular reputation felt the siren call of classical eternity even if we ignore the blurring of ‘boundaries’ represented by the work of Frank Zappa, Soft Machine and Tangerine Dream.

At the most meagre level this is a beautifully packaged delightful musical souvenir of Durham University's 175th anniversary in 2007. The concept might remind you of John Scott’s Colchester Symphony but this is in fact a seriously-intentioned extended orchestral suite of six movements grouped in pairs.

At the start long-held Tallis-like string chords speak out of the mists of antiquity. This is music that takes a slow-shifting shading from Hovhaness. The glistening murmur forms a backdrop to meditative solos from the wind instruments. Then at 3.10 comes Ruth Palmer's Lark-like violin solo speaking as a fragile human voice against the downward remorseless tread of time. Given the accent of this first movement it is some surprise that Lord was not among those pop-contemporary world musicians interviewed for Tony Palmer’s recent RVW film-biography. As this movement, entitled Cathedral at Dawn, rises to its peak it is the notable ecstasy of Vaughan Williams that is most closely echoed.

The composer's Hammond organ is featured in four of the six movements. It ushers in the second (Durham Awakes) with its atmospheric solo for Northumbrian Pipes. The pipes are played by that doyenne of the instrument Kathryn Tickell. Matthew Barley's solo cello acts as orator and encourager in this Copland-inflected music but ancient and melancholically serene voices from the Pipes – unable to escape celtic connections - and the solo violin are there too. The Hammond also intercedes at several points. This movement proves a fine example of the successful interweave of pipes, cello and violin.

Those first two movements form Part 1: Morning. Then comes Afternoon in the shape of another two movements. The first reflects the spiritual journey of St Cuthbert and the physical journey of his mortal remains to interment in the Cathedral. It communicates as a slow revelatory sunset much in the same atmosphere as the Dawn. This is followed by the equally introspective, cello-led From Prebends Bridge. Here the composer had in mind the view from the Bridge and the innumerable people who have stood and taken in that view down a thousand years.

The cello solo once or twice seems rather meandering before it gathers itself for a more direct and emotionally hard-hitting address. The music here reminded me of the Elgar concerto, Rubbra's Soliloquy and Holst's Invocation. Then comes a much needed rowdy movement in which students on a rag day and a miners gala meet head on. The brassy whoops here reminded me of Arnold. Again Lord's Hammond is to the fore, lending dynamism to its usual watery discourse - it's the nature of the instrument. There's plenty of forward pulse here and the orchestra have fun with the pizzicato writing. The Arnold accent appears strongly at 4:12 onwards with something of the Commonwealth Christmas Overture to be heard as well as a nicely burred and brassy Gaudeamus Igitur at 6:21. History takes hold again at the end of the movement and those sustained string chords reassert the long view. The Pipes invoke the sorrowing melancholy of heritage morphing without break into the long meditative finale: Durham Nocturne.

I hope we will hear more of Lord's classical compositions including the suite for strings, Disguises (2004) and the piano concerto Boom of the Tingling Strings (2003). Both are due out from EMI later in 2008. What else remains to be recorded?

The concept of the present piece and the use of an 'ethnic' instrument recall, as an idea, Shaun Davey's works – especially The Relief of Derry Symphony and The Brendan Voyage.

The playing throughout the Durham Concerto is sensitive and glowing with much accomplished and thoughtful work for the solo instruments. The recording produces an almost tangible effect without embracing an in-your-face pop balance.

Here is an extended work of continuity across six substantial movements. The predominant meditative character will instantly mesh with those who love John Barry’s Beyondness of Things, Tavener and Vaughan Williams.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Written almost two centuries ago by Saverio Mercadante, coveted by many theatres of the day, Francesca da Rimini was, in fact, never staged. Every time it was scheduled for performance, something happened and it got canceled. A long series of incidents prevented it from reaching the stage for as many as 185 years. Its forgotten manuscript, which was only known for its ill-starred fate, suddenly re-emerged five years ago in Madrid, teh city where it was to have been premiered in 1831. The soprano Leonor Bonilla is quite impressive in the part of the protagonist: she portrays the character's psychological frailty as well as her determination wtih a steely vocal technique, spinning out incredible modulations, displaying strong and dazzling vocalizations, easily soaring into the high register and flaunting such an attractive, casual and poignant stage presence that she even dares moving some dance steps with the corps de ballet. Aya Wakizono is an admirable Paolo: endowed with a superb mezzo voice, she seeks and achieves consistency throughout the range, is virtuosic in the coloratura, and fluent. No less demanding is the part of the tenor Lanciotto, with its fearful leaps and ornamentation worth of the Neapolitan Rossini: Mert Sungu might in time get rid of a touch of harshness here and there, but already now he can tackle all the difficulties of the part with a timbric quality and an expressively worth of note...

Bridge has the admirable philosophy of concentrating on a few composers in which the label believes, and then issuing a series of discs that begin to give us listeners a sense of the scope of their work. It’s an invaluable service, which one could only wish were more widely imitated. Not only does the label support such obvious masters as Carter and Crumb, but the Dane Poul Ruders (b. 1949) is an instance of its taking a chance on a younger composer just hitting his prime. The works on this program come from three different points in the composer’s career. The Piano Sonata No. 2 is the earliest (1982); De Profundis dates from 1990; and the two orchestral works are the most recent, with Concerto in Pieces composed in 1994–95 (and one of Ruders’s biggest “hits”), and Fairytale in 1999.

The sonata is a brilliant work in four movements, lasting 25 minutes. It comes from the period when Ruders had just found his voice, which combined the astringent spikiness of modernist gesture with a more cyclic flow and a “pitch-centricity” suggestive of minimalism. Like his compatriot Per Nørgaard, Ruders found ways to spin out his music so that it seemed to be constantly regenerating itself (though the models he chose to follow had more to do with change-ringing than Nørgaard’s “infinity series”). As a result, the music moves from a dark, more dissonant and taut world towards ever-greater radiance. If I think of a point of comparison, it might be the Copland Piano Variations, though far more expansive in its scale. The pianist, in a live performance from the Aldeburgh festival, is none other than Thomas Adès, the great young hope of English music, who plays this very difficult music with bravura. One hears a tiny bit of strain in the rendition, especially in the climax of the first movement, but overall I find myself even more open to Adès’s own compositions on the basis of his obviously overwhelming musicianship. This recording is a rare instance of that wonderful thing, when one major artist takes the time and effort to devote himself to the work of another.

De Profundis is scored for two pianos and percussion. It’s conceit is simple: a slow and inevitable rise from low to high in every manner—from bass to treble register, from spare to prolix texture, from slow to fast tempo, from dark to blinding color. Ruders handles the task with a great sense of dramatic pacing. Of course, the progression sounds similar to what I described above in the sonata, but here it is far more continuous in its transformations (though from a different Scandinavian country, Ruders seems to have learned a lot from Sibelius).

The two orchestral works are colorful and occasional. Fairytale was commissioned by the Nordic youth orchestra that performs it here (stunningly). It is non-stop, ostinato-driven, breathless. The Concerto in Pieces was commissioned as a double tribute, to both the tercentennial of Purcell’s birth and the 50th anniversary of the Britten Young People’s Guide to the Orchestra. The idea was to create a modern analogue to the Britten, and as such, it had to be an incredibly intimidating commission, perhaps even more so for a foreigner. But Ruders seems to have relished the challenge. The work exudes a sense of athletic exuberance, a delight in discovering new ways to tweak its source (a different Purcell piece than Britten’s choice, by the way), and a constant pleasure in sonic and structural invention. While all the orchestral sections get a full workout, the music makes its point more from distinctive color-combinations than exposure of separate choirs. Tuba, muted trumpet, harp, and saxophone get extended solos in different variations. And one hears a very strong Sibelian reference in the horns in the final variation.

In the end, this is an extremely successful release, and one can’t help but be impressed with Ruders’s mastery of whatever medium he puts his mind to. Having said that, I must close with one reservation. The recent works, despite their confidence and technical bravura, somehow feel a little hollow in comparison to the composer’s earlier pieces. To take one example, his orchestral piece from 1982, Manhattan Abstraction, is absolutely thrilling and overwhelming in its energy, but there’s also something profound there, a linkage between the sonically brilliant surface and a rigorously logical architecture. Of course, these newer orchestral pieces are lighter by virtue of their commissioning circumstances, so I don’t want to rush to a judgement based solely on them. I was sensing this same unease in my review of the previous release in this series (Fanfare 26:6). Indeed, it may be that Ruders’s imagination has moved more into the world of music drama and these instrumental works are partaking thereof, relinquishing that more Germanic devotion to the transcendentally abstract. I said in that earlier review I probably needed to hear the recording of his opera The Handmaid’s Tale, and I’m ashamed to say I still haven’t. This review makes it particularly obvious I have to do so.

But this more general critique doesn’t take away from the worth of this release, which is recommended, nor from my admiration and encouragement to Bridge to stay their course and their continued advocacy of composers in whose mastery they trust.

Robert Carl, FANFARE

The recording of music from the Middle Ages entitled "Crossing the Channel" already awarded the "Supersonic" by Pizzicato, is now also available on SACD with a version in 5.1. The midnight, medieval mood in the unique Romanesque church of Beaulieu sur Dordogne touches the heart even more deeply in TACET Real Surround Sound.

Annie Fischer enjoys a singular reputation within the great tradition of Hungarian pianists due to her deeply moving and romantically intimate performances. She became famous and admired on account of her uncompromising spiritually absorbing interpretations. Like many other musicians, Fischer only left behind a few studio recordings however the few that were left became benchmark interpretations.

Classical Music

Paul Lansky's Contemplating Weather is a new choral cantata commissioned on the occasion of Western Michigan University School of Music's 100th Anniversary. The text of the composition consists of poems by the American poet Jonathan Greene, all of which focus on aspects of our planet's meteorology. This recording was made following the premiere of the composition in February of 2014 and is movingly performed by WMU students, led by conductor Kimberly Dunn Adams. Travel Diary continues Lansky's series of pieces for percussion ensemble, and is performed by the work's dedicatees, the Meehan/Perkins Duo. It All Adds Up was composed for the piano duo team Quattro Mani, and is a six movement suite that ranges from the contemplative, to a finger-busting finale that brings this program to a brilliant conclusion.

Classical Music

Classical Music

JARMILA NOVOTNÁ OPERA RECITAL • Jarmila Novotná (s); Ezio Pinza (bs); 3 Raoul Jobin (t); 5 Jan Peerce (t); 7 James Melton (t); 9 Martial Singher (bar); 11 Arturo Toscanini 1 , Paul Breisach 2 , Bruno Walter 3 , Frieder Weissmann 4 , Thomas Beecham 5 , Morton Gould 6 , Ettore Panizza 7 , Maurice Abravanel 8 , Frank Black 9 , Alfred Wallenstein 10 , Donald Voorhees 11 , Wilfred Pelletier 12 , cond; Gibner King (pn); 13 Vienna PO; 1 Metropolitan Op O; 14 Victor O; 4 Bell Telephone O 11 • SUPRAPHON 4158, mono (79:02) Live, film, and studio performances 1930–1956


ROSSINI Il barbiere di Siviglia: Una voce poco fà (in Czech). MOZART 1 Die Zauberflöte: Ach, ich fühls. 2,14 Le nozze di Figaro: Non so più; Voi che sapete. 3,14 Don Giovanni: Ah, che mi dice mai; Fuggi il traditor. OFFENBACH Les contes d’Hoffmann: Les oiseaux dans la charmille (in German); 4 Belle nuit,ô nuit d’amour; 4 Elle a fui; 5,14 Voyez l’étrange fantasie … C’est un chanson d’amour. VERDI La traviata: 6 Tra voi; 7,14 Ah, fors’ è lui … Sempre libera; 8 Addio del passato; 9 Parigi, o cara. PUCCINI La bohème: 10 Si mi chiamano Mimi; 11 Mimi! Speravo di trovarvi qui. 12,14 Tosca: Vissi d’arte. SMETANA 10 The Bartered Bride: Ten lásky sen. 4 The Kiss: Hajej, m?j andílku. 13 Rusalka: O lovely moon


Despite a long, distinguished career of 30 years, 16 of them at the Metropolitan Opera, Jarmila Novotná is known largely to record collectors and students of archive performances. Her one and only intersection with popular culture was an appearance in the M-G-M film The Great Caruso (1951), whose big star was tenor Mario Lanza. In Germany, where she appeared for several years and made some fairly popular films ( Fire in the Opera, The Beggar Student, The Bartered Bride, Song of the Lark ), she is perhaps better known, and in her native (now former) Czechoslovakia she is considered to be on a par with Emmy Destinn and Maria Jeritza. In her early years, when she was a high soubrette, the voice was ear-ravishing lovely, even sparkling in sound, but by 1937 her tone was becoming a bit heavier and her upper range less easy; thus, by the time she made her Met debut (January 5, 1940, in La bohème opposite Jussi Björling), the voice had become darker. But she was an excellent stage actress, an outstanding musician (she had already sung such offbeat works as Ravel’s L’heure espagnole, at Otto Klemperer’s Kroll Opera, as well as Krenek’s The Life of Orestes, and Schoenberg’s Die glückliche Hand ) and a fine stage actress. She was a favorite soprano of such conductors as Zemlinsky, Erich Kleiber, Walter, Szell, and Toscanini.


One thing you can’t miss from the opening track—Rossini’s “Una voce poco fà” sung in Czech—was that she sang with her high range too “open,” much the same way Bidú Sayão did in her “coloratura” years, and with similar results; both had to come down to the lyric range because they blew it out. You can hear the difference immediately after the Rossini aria, in her the “Ach, ich fühls” from Die Zauberflöte in Toscanini’s ill-fated Salzburg performance (ill-fated due to the overloud singing of his Tamino, Helge Rosawenge, and the botched, out-of-key performance of the Queen of the Night, Julie Osvath). Yet you can also hear her phrasing becoming tighter and more musical, less scatter-gun in her approach to producing notes. To modern ears, more used to mezzo Cherubinos, Novotná sounds rather light and very girlish (even Christine Schäfer, one of our few soprano Cherubinos nowadays, sings the music with a darker tone than this), but once again she is very fine, particularly in “Voi, che sapete.” Despite a slightly slower tempo than we are used to today, this performance could pass muster in our modern opera houses. But one does sense a loss from her earlier voice with its bright, open tone: The sound, now slightly covered, is no longer as distinctive. In Donna Elvira’s “Ah, che mi dice mai,” the voice no longer has any “bite” up top, despite splendid singing (and Bruno Walter’s tempo is much too fast for this music), but both soprano and conductor sound better in “Fuggi il traditor.”


The three excerpts from Les contes d’Hoffmann point out the differences well: the very early (1930) “Doll song” in German sung with light, pointed tone (and good trills), the “Barcarolle” and “Elle a fui” (now in French, from 1945) sounding more covered and bit muddy in tone, as is the 1944 duet with Jobin (a rather plain, ugly-sounding vocalist who was the Met’s preferred French tenor of the 1940s). By this point in her career, Novotná was also breaking her phrases a bit more frequently for breath than she had just a few years earlier.


The four Traviata excerpts, ranging in date from 1940 (“Addio del passato”) to 1950 (“Parigi, o cara”) are interesting in showing how Novotná built a character up throughout an opera. She was not the equal of an Olivero or Mattila, but in some moments she was interesting in a general way. In “Ah, fors’ e lui” she sings the descending opening line with the rests between the notes, the way Verdi wrote them, but after the tenor’s lines in “Sempre libera” she makes a mistake, correcting herself quickly. There is, however, no feeling in her “Addio del passato,” which is also conducted much too quickly by Abravanel. The voice is so dark by the time of her 1950 “Parigi, o cara” that it is almost unrecognizable as the same singer, and there is no feeling of loss or desperation in her voice. She might as well have been singing about her missing dog. (To be fair, however, her partner in this duet, James Melton, sings with no expression whatever.) There is a bit of expression in her “Si, mi chiamano Mimì” from 1943, but again, it’s just a sort of “generic Puccini sound,” nothing particularly personal in her tone or expression. The Mimì-Marcello duet with Singher (a rather gray-sounding and uninteresting baritone who was the Met’s French baritone counterpart to Jobin) shows, once again, Novotná’s generic, all-purpose acting style.


Although Novotná does not give out any more emotionally in the Czech operatic excerpts, the voice does sound more comfortable than in Italian or French. Hers is one of the better performances I’ve heard of the Bartered Bride aria, and the best I’ve heard of the aria from The Kiss. But I still have to rate Elfride Trötschel, Zinka Milanov, and Renée Fleming better in “O lovely moon” from Rusalka. (Novotná’s performance is also cut, missing one section.)


All in all this is an interesting cross-section of performances by a now-neglected soprano, though I’d much rather have had one of her excerpts from the German Bartered Bride film in place of the Tosca aria.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Includes work(s) by Julius Röntgen. Ensemble: Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: David Porcelijn.