A towering and majestic performance.

Slatkin gives a towering and majestic performance of the Sinfonia Antartica (No. 7), which evolved from RVW’s score for the film Scott of the Antarctic. It must be regarded as the best modern choice, eclipsing even Haitink’s impressive EMI recording. Slatkin’s Antarctic wilderness chills you to the bone. You smile at the comic dignity of the penguins, are awed at the immensity and weight of the ice wall and thoroughly involved in the human tragedy. A glowing account of the lovely Dives and Lazarus Variants completes a very attractive issue.

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

-- Ian Lace, BBC Music Magazine

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

LS had almost unqualified praise for the live 1953 Carnegie Hall recording of Don Quixote. "Nothing," he wrote "more clearly demonstrates Toscanini's true quality than the fact that it is possible to take one of his ordinary (one cannot use the word 'routine', for obvious reasons) broadcast performances and issue it in permanent form on record to complete satisfaction". He noted a momentary slip in the first variation; equally, one might like the two concluding chords of the work to have been re-made. But what a tour de force this is of orchestral wizardry and musical characterization in one of the repertory's most difficult works. What's more, Toscanini honours Strauss's original plan by having the orchestra's own front-desk cellist and viola player as the soloists. (Only a week later Carbon Cooley would distinguish himself as viola soloist in Toscanini's broadcast from Carnegie Hall of Berlioz's Harold in Italy—RCA 0 RD85755, 2/88.) I think it is reasonable to prefer this performance musically and sonically to Toscanini's 1938 NBC recording (Toscanini Society—nla) and to Strauss's own version with Mainardi recently reissued by DG (11/90), where the playing of the Staatskapelle Berlin is frankly not in the same league as that of the NBC musicians.

-- Gramophone [1/1991]

The works compiled on this CD emphasize, in a richly varied manner, Bernd Alois Zimmerman's conception of music as the ultimate "art of time" in which different temporal layers permeate each other, thus eliminating historicity. Zimmerman served in World War II and was discharged for a chronic skin problem as a result of exposure to poison. Those experiences characterize his oeuvre.

Like Brahms, Bernstein lived his life in the shadows of masters who came before him. Yet both men, despite their tendency toward self-criticism, created their own legends. Bernstein's extraordinary talent as a conductor made him so much more--he became an ambassador of music, bringing vitality and excitement to audiences young and old, from all walks of life.
Though his Symphony no. 1 is one of his most well-known compositions, Brahms was not always comfortable with the idea of writing symphonies. His deep respect for Beethoven's work is evident, and even Brahms admitted the composer's profound influence on his first symphony. This did not prevent Brahms from creating a piece that is distinctively his own, however. His sense of melody and humor infuse the composition with a lighter tone without sacrificing decorum.
Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic provide a delightful performance, as they always did. Remastered from recordings made in 1960 and 1968, the album is rich and clear while preserving the warmth of the analog originals.

Sony are now reissuing the earlier New York recordings of the Bernstein symphonies in the Bernstein Century Edition. In the case of No. 2 this is the very first (1950) mono version, with Lukas Foss as the piano soloist. Subtitled The Age of Anxiety and based on Auden's poem, this concertante work shows the composer at his most eclectic, with the stylistic contrasts emphasized by the clear, forward mono sound, the "Dirge" stridently dissonant, and the jazzy exuberance of the "Masque" contrasting boldly with the closing "Epilogue". Foss is dazzlingly idiomatic but he is too forwardly recorded; and the same has to be said of the coupled (1956) mono performance of the Serenade after Plato's "Symposium", with the violin soloist Isaac Stern on top form and naturally attuned to the score, but with the solo violin balanced way out front and the orchestral sound unrefined.

-- Ivan March, Gramophone [12/1998]

Pieces are like seismographs says Adriana H�lszky about her own work - but it could well be applied to all the works recorded on the present CD: Music as a seismograph for a composer's aesthetic premises, musical ideas, and the circumstances of composition or, beyond the period of composition, to provide information about the approaches that musicians and listeners, respectively, adopt toward it, about our changing understanding of music. The combination of works recorded here by Julius Berger and Stefan Hussong demonstrates that for all the historicism of our musical life, the most recent music and older music do not contradict each other, but instead the perspective and experiences provided by the most recent music can provide surprising approaches to older music.

Persuasive performances that exhibit the true essence of the old trumpet.

From the opening strains of Stradella's wonderfully invigorating Sonata for solo trumpet (placed midway between a richly scored accompaniment of two string choirs), it is immediately apparent how the limitations of the natural trumpet provide it with the freedom to produce its own special range of tonal characteristics. This is the canvas Steele-Perkins has been championing for years: the scope in colour, articulation and subtle timbral nuance which characterize 'natural' trumpet playing at its most honest—in other words without all the modern paraphernalia which may make the instrument easier to play but destroys the capacity for expressive variety.

This is, then, a notable release, not least because there are so few current recordings of this type for solo natural trumpet (let alone for the slide trumpet whose mellow tones grace the Handel selection of 'airs' at the end of the disc). Steele-Perkins figured prominently on a Hyperion disc entitled ''Italian Baroque Trumpet Music'' recorded in 1987, though this latest project reveals more of the fibrous quality of the natural trumpet, sounding especially wholesome on David Edwards's copy of a 1667 instrument by Simon Beale of London. The accompaniment, too, is altogether more cultivated and immediate from Tafelmusik. A comparison of the Stradella sonata (the only work common to both discs) shows a greater resonance in the earlier recording but less vitality overall, and also less of a distinction between the two string groups.

Of the other works, the Biber sonatas are a joy (again, Steele-Perkins has already recorded them for Hyperion—1/86, nla—but the same observations apply here as with Stradella) and the Telemann Concerto for trumpet and two oboes is a paragon of homogeneity between instruments, which in their original form have more in common than is usually supposed. John Thiessen makes a fine impression as the co-principal in the two-trumpet works and there is a pleasing blend here too. The work described as Albinoni's Concerto for trumpet and three oboes is spurious (published erroneously as such by Sikorski in 1966) and sounds remarkably German to my ears. 'Attrib.' at the very least, please. A tiny gripe in an otherwise excellent release. I am not aware of a solo recording at present which exhibits so persuasively or musically the true essence of the old trumpet.

-- Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, Gramophone [4/1995]

SHOSTAKOVICH: FILM MUSIC, VOL

Mahler: Symphony No. 4

The Eastern Wind Symphony present a program of 20th century works for winds, including Vincent Persichetti’s Serenade, op. 85 and Joaquin Rodrigo’s first work for winds, the 1966 Adagio. +The Eastern Wind Symphony’s professional members are accomplished and talented musicians who volunteer their time and talents to present the best in wind symphony repertoire. +Artistic Director Todd Nichols and Assistant Conductor Adam Warshafsky currently guide the ensemble.

This disc received the 1997 Grammy Award for "Best Classical Album."
It was recorded in November 1995, and April & July 1996.
Written in 1989 at the height of the AIDS crisis, John Corigliano's Symphony no. 1 is very much a product of its times, an anguished response to the mounting epidemic which communicates the numbing terror felt by so many. That the terror has struck close to home for the composer is evidenced by the symphony's rhetorical devices, such as the offstage piano in the first movement or the cello's song in the third, both representing the music of departed friends. The air of anxiety is underscored by a barrage of coloristic effects, tone clusters, screeching strings and percussive outbursts against which tonal, almost sentimental melodies stand in stark relief.
This widely performed and much honored work has known no greater champion than Leonard Slatkin, who leads the National Symphony Orchestra in this forceful performance, captured with great clarity by RCA Victor. The value of the disc is further enhanced by the inclusion of Corigliano's cantata 'Of Rage and Remembrance,' which gives voice to the words of poet William Hoffman that inspired the symphony's first movement while borrowing musical material from the third movement's Chaconne.

...Another later release, the 1962 Zarathustra, suggests greater spaciousness and dignity than its predecessor [Reiner's 1954 Zarathustra] due partly to the freed-up string sound, partly to Reiner’s broader tempi. On the same disc, he argues his own gaudy arrangement of the Rosenkavalier waltzes with tremendous panache and Byron Janis glitters with Lisztian transcendentalism in the Burleske.

-- David Nice, BBC Music Magazine
reviewing these performances previously reissued as part of RCA 68635

RACHMANINOFF The Bells. 1 PROKOFIEV Alexander Nevsky 2 • Evgeny Svetlanov, cond; 1 Daniil Shtoda (ten); 1 Elena Prokina (sop); 1 Sergei Leiferkus (bs); 2 Alfreda Hodgson (mez); 1 BBC SO & Ch; 2 Philharmonia O & Ch • ICA ICAC 5069 (78:30) Live: London 1 4/19/2002, 2 1/30/1988


Sometimes, archive recordings have the air of, “Well, as long as we have access to it, let’s release it on CD.” Some of ICA Classics’s BBC discs have presented fairly unexceptional music-making, to say the least. Here, though, we have one absolutely fabulous performance ( The Bells ) and one very good one ( Alexander Nevsky ), and I would even give them preference over Svetlanov’s studio recordings of these same works.


With gorgeous live sound to boot, this version of The Bells really rings my chimes, so to speak. This is a work that stands or falls with the quality of the chorus. When I first auditioned this disc, I was unaware that I was not hearing a native Russian group; that’s how good the BBC Symphony Chorus is here. Furthermore, some recordings of this work content themselves with wimpy or emotionally anonymous soloists. Tenor Daniil Shtoda, on the other hand, displays brilliance of both sound and temperament, and the first movement, depicting the silver sleigh bells of youth, has great élan. Sergei Leiferkus is appropriately mournful in the funereal fourth movement; as with Shtoda, familiarity with the language and the style pays off. I am less impressed with soprano Elena Prokina, who is affected by what used to be called a “Slavic wobble,” but even she convinces this listener with the involvement of her singing. Svetlanov tended to get slower as he got older. Here, though, he never drags, and he points up the contrasts between the four movements with vivid color and attention to mood. The booklet note indicates that he looked frail on this occasion, and in fact, he died just a few weeks later. There’s nothing infirm about his conducting here, though.


The sound in Alexander Nevsky is more recessed and even a little muffled, although not fatally so. It doesn’t shoot the performance in the foot, but of course this is music that benefits from as much sonic realism as engineers, live or in the studio, can muster. Svetlanov is more introspective here. I get the feeling that he was trying to purge the score of its inherent vulgarity without cutting down on its excitement. If that was the case, he largely succeeded. The Philharmonia Chorus can’t hide its Englishness (for better or worse) and mezzo Alfreda Hodgson is rather maternal in her sixth-movement solo. Still, there is a lot to like here. In some ways, this is like André Previn’s EMI studio recording in its refusal to confuse weight with ponderousness, its avoidance of bombast, and its rather sensitive demeanor. (I recently discovered the Previn on an English EMI LP, and it immediately moved to the top of my list, so my comparing Svetlanov to Previn is meant as high praise.) It’s better than Svetlanov’s harshly recorded and only superficially exciting Soviet-era studio recording.


No sung texts are included, but do you really need them? The booklet note includes an interesting bit of trivia: As a child, Svetlanov appeared onstage in the role of Trouble in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly . He also made, according to annotator Colin Anderson’s reckoning, more than 3,000 recordings for Russian, Japanese, French, British, and Dutch companies. And you thought Neeme Järvi made a lot of CDs!


I’d get this if I were you.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

Franck, Debussy & Enesco: Violin Sonatas

Recorded in 2006 and 2008 in Leamy Hall Auditorium and the U.S Coast Guard Academy, the Coast Guard Band under conductor Cap. Kenneth Megan presents American Journeys. The CD features compositions from American composers Williams, Gould, Daugherty, King, Grantham, Buckley and Cheetham.

This CD contains a spoken word track with excerpts from a talk Busoni gave at Harvard in 1965.
In commemoration of the 75th anniversary of Ferruccio Busoni's birth, in 1941 the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York performed and broadcast an all-Busoni program. For the first time in any format, this program has now been released. The conductor, Dimitri Mitropolous, and the two soloists, pianist Egon Petri and violinist Joseph Szigeti, had all been professionally and personally associated with Busoni, and their knowledge and commitment to his music make for some first-rate performances.
This is not a disc for those intolerant of historical recordings--the sound quality, while never unbearable, is highly variable. Still, the high level of the performances does shine through, with Szigeti's playing in the Violin Concerto especially fine. The program makes for an interesting cross-section of this eclectic composer's music. From his arrangement of a Mozart overture we proceed to the 'Indian Fantasy' with its attempt to represent both noble and "barbaric" elements in his interpretation of Native American culture. The solid late-romantic Violin Concerto is preceded by the wholly personal and idiosyncratic "Sarabande and Cortége," reflective and ambiguous orchestral studies drawn from his opera 'Doktor Faust.' As a composer, pianist, conductor, teacher and theorist, Busoni was an influential figure, and this program remains a fitting tribute to him.

GREGORIAN CHANT, Vol. 2

This is a very sprightly Trout. The first movement, a true Allegro vivace, gives a joyful feeling of onward momentum, but poised and well in control so there's no sense of undue hurry. The lively yet easygoing style persists in the Scherzo and finale. The quintet's bright textures suit the clear, picturesque sounds of period instruments admirably: I especially enjoyed the light, seemingly effortless brilliance of the piano's upper register — the third variation in the fourth movement shows this off to perfection — and the way the characteristic 68 Gramophone February 1999 sonorities of the lower strings emerge so clearly. But there are some disappointments; Schubert's many pianissimos rarely sound soft or mysterious enough, and I felt often that the string phrasing should move further away from classical elegance towards romantic breadth. In the two slower movements particularly, the best modern instrumental versions, such as those led by Brendel and Curzon, achieve a more intense expression of Schubert's unique lyricism.

Bylsma plays the Arpeggione Sonata on a five-string violoncello piccolo. The result is wonderfully convincing; the light, reedy tone, often with minimal vibrato, is very appealing, and the high-register passages sound entirely natural and unforced. Immerseel's Viennese-action instrument, too, is especially evocative and sweet-toned here. The Notturno, however, despite some fine playing, slightly misfires, missing the mystery and excitement of La Gaia Scienza (also on period instruments), or the tranquillity and grandeur of Schiff, Shiokawa and Perenyi (their two-disc set of the piano trios also includes a warmly expressive account of the Arpeggione Sonata).

This well-recorded disc is certainly a recommendation for a period-instrument Trout, and as authentic-sounding an Arpeggione as one is likely to hear.

-- Gramophone [2/1999]

Classical Music

Bruckner: Symphony No. 4, WAB 104 "Romantic"

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

"Sony's new transfer boasts greater definition in the treble and bass, with extra bloom in the strings. What's more, the finale no longer spills over to a second disc, enabling the listener to hear Bruno Walter's Bruckner 7th uninterrupted on one CD...Walter communicates his kinder, gentler vision of this music with love, authority, and conviction." -- Jed Distler

Classical Music

Brahms: Symphony No. 3, Op. 90 - Liszt: Les préludes, S. 97