Clifton Parker was a prolific composer in the British film industry during the 1940s and 50s. Originally singled out by legendary music director Muir Matheson, he went on to enjoy a twenty-year career in the movies. Inexplicably, hsi work, distinctive for its lively, symphonic style, is little known today, despite having written the scores for a number of classic movies.

Mozart: Concerto for Flute and Harp - Violin Sonatas Nos. 17

"One of the great things about Jascha Heifetz," said violinist Aaron Rosand in a recent interview, "... is that, musically speaking, he always got straight to the point." Quite so. And with that pertinent remark very much in mind, let me first of all put my own critical cards on the table: Jascha Heifetz was, for me and for most violinists I've spoken to, the greatest twentieth-century exponent of his instrument. In saying that, I don't necessarily mean, 'the greatest violin-playing musician' (Busch, Szigeti and Huberman are prime contenders for that particular accolade) or even 'the most lustrous-sounding violinist' ( where Kreisler and Elman could perhaps take equal laurels). Heifetz represented a potent manifestation of musical integrity combined with tonal and intonational purity, technical discipline, virtuosity and intellectual honesty. And yes, he did invariably 'get straight to the point', whether in unaccompanied Bach,...or in the countless miniatures that he infused with a wealth of wit and feeling, making Kurt Weill dance, Gershwin sing and Cyril Scott lose himself in nostalgic reverie.

-- Gramophone [11/1994]
reviewing the Heifetz Collection box set, RCA 61778

This coupling offers two youthful concerto works and a solo interlude. The most substantial work is the Britten Piano Concerto (placed last on the disc), written in 1938 when the composer was 25. It is a boisterous piece, unstintingly virtuosic and with clear overtones of Prokofiev. It suits Douglas well, and he tackles the relentless passagework with spirited enthusiasm. His tone is rather hard, particularly in the fortes, but this is not entirely unsuitable given the steely, driven quality of the music. The first-movement cadenza is genuinely exciting, and the point when the orchestra re-enters in a moment of calm retreat (track 7 at 9'21''), with Douglas providing a rare beauty of tone and colour in the following lyrical passage, is beguiling... The Debussy Fantaisie (1890), which despite the composer’s efforts remained unperformed during his lifetime, receives a strong performance with crystalline clarity in the passagework... His playing breathes with natural phrasing and articulation, and has a sure-footed integrity...

-- Tim Parry, Gramophone [10/1997]

THE HEIFETZ COLLECTION, VOL.27

Classical Music

STALIN COCKTAIL VLADIMIR SPIV

Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra follow their Grammy-nominated volume 1 and Editor's Choice winning Volume 2 with four rare orchestral works from Vincent D'Indy's legacy. The previous volumes have obtained such comments as '...superbly realised by the excellent Iceland Symphony Orchestra under Rumon Gamba and the state-of-the-art Chandos recording; definitely a key record of d'Indy's orchestra output' (Gramophone) and 'this series is going to be virtually definitive' Musical Opinion Composed in 1916-18 at the climax of the Great War, d'Indy's last symphony is a valid reflection of his intense patriotism. In its dramatic theatric and tonal conflicts it well portrays the heightened emotions of exaltation and terror experienced by the French nation. D'Indy's seven-variation programmatic work, Istar, Op.42 is a beautiful, flowing work set in the underworld and inspired by the sixth canto of an ancient Assyrian epic poem called Izdubar that was probably written around 2000 B.C. The unconventionally conceived yet well integrated work Choral Varie for Saxophone Solo ans orchestra, Op.55 employs an eclectic variety of styles. Like certain other French composers such as Bizet, D'Indy well understood the saxophone's expressive potential. The solo role is taken by one of Iceland's most prominent musicians, Sigurður Flosason, who has twice been nominated for the Nordic Music Prize, and four time winner of the Icelandic Music Awards. Volume 3 is completed by D'Indy's last orchestral work, Diptyque Mediterraneen, Op.87. It reflects the Indian summer which his happy second marriage brought him in his final decade. There is a certain similarity with the earlier Ardeche-inspired Jour d'ete a la montagne in its illustration of the sacred rhythms of nature during the course of the day, but here the influence of Debussy is clearly apparent in its superb Mediterranean-like clarity of texture.

V72: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

This disc was nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (with Orchestra)."
Joseph Schwantner's early years were devoted to jazz guitar and arranging for small jazz ensembles. But on receiving his doctorate in composition in 1968, Schwantner shifted musical gears and has proven to be a precocious and adventurous composer. This disc, representing Leonard Slatkin's debut with the National Symphony Orchestra, consists of three works by Schwantner, all of which feature the percussionist Evelyn Glennie. The brief opening piece, appropriately titled "Velocities," consists of a dazzling, nonstop "Moto perpetuo" for marimba. The Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra is an extravagant and colorful work which not only recalls Schwantner's Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Aftertones of Infinity' from 1969 but also has faint echoes of Bartók's classic work, 'Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta' because of its wide range of colors and effects, especially the moody second movement. 'New Morning for the World was not-so-coincidentally premiered on January 15, 1983, the day and year in which Martin Luther King Day was declared a national holiday. It is a searing and explosive work and one that is made all the more stirring by the recitation of King's words by Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.

HOMAGE TO EDMOND BAEYENS

Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

SUPPÉ Overtures: Leichte Kavallerie; Boccaccio; Pique-Dame; Dichter und Bauer; Das Modell; Isabella; Die schöne Galathée; Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Aband in Wien. Boccaccio-Marsch. Humoristische Variationen. Marziale nach Motiven aus der Operette “Fatinitza.” Über Berg, über Thal. Juanita-Marsch • Neeme Järvi, cond; Royal Scottish Natl O • CHANDOS 5110 (SACD: 79: 42)


If your familiarity with Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppé Demelli (Franz von Suppé to most of us) is limited to the Overtures to Light Cavalry and Poet and Peasant , then this disc is for you. It can be summed up in two words: GREAT FUN! Thirteen numbers spanning half a century (1844-1895) make up this 80-minute program, and few will disappoint. Right from the opening trumpet fanfare of Light Cavalry —bright, boisterous, splendidly assured—one senses that this disc is going to be a total delight. Tight rhythms, crisp articulation, immense verve, and Chandos’s vividly brilliant sound inform every number.


Unless you are already a die-hard Suppé fan, there are bound to be joyful surprises at every turn. The coda to the Queen of Spades Overture will have you positively jumping out of your seat and cheering with exhilaration. The March after Motifs from Fatinitza (arranged by the 20th-century Max Schönherr) is curiously reminiscent of the March from Beethoven’s Ruins of Athens . Listeners who know Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture will recognize one of its themes in the Humorous Variations , although it should be remembered that Suppé’s overture preceded Brahms’s by more than 30 years. And make no mistake, there is humor aplenty in Suppé’s work.


Exclusively Suppé discs are not common. Those that exist are almost all devoted only to the overtures, and I haven’t found any released since 2001, when Marco Polo issued Vol. 6 of its Suppé Overtures series (Volumes 1, 2, 4, and 5 have been reviewed in Fanfare 18:4, 18:6, 19:4, and 22:6). That makes the present item under consideration all the more welcome as it includes four marches and a variation set in addition to eight overtures, some well known, others not.


Extensive program notes by Calum MacDonald about each work add further sparkle to this outstanding release. Definitely a Want List candidate.


FANFARE: Robert Markow

The second disc of this release includes interviews.

William Kapell Edition, Vol. 5: Beethoven: Concerto No. 2 -

CHABRIER Joyeuse marche. Gwendoline: Overture. Habanera. España. Lamento. Bourée fantasque. 1 Suite Pastorale. L’Étoile: Overture; Two entr’actes. Le Roi malgré lui: Féte polonaise; Danse slave • Neeme Järvi, cond; Suisse Romande O; 1 Alexandre Emard (eh) • CHANDOS 5122 (SACD: 78:12)

The orchestral works of Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) have always made a neat program for an LP or CD. Most of us got to know this high-spirited music through the recordings of Ernest Ansermet; now Neeme Järvi returns to Ansermet territory with the same band, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, although I daresay today’s orchestra contains none of the same personnel. (Ansermet’s final recording sessions took place in 1969.)

Järvi’s brisk, energetic style suits this music perfectly. He brings exuberance to the Joyeuse marche , which the composer himself described as “crazy,” finds all the myriad colors in the popular masterwork España , and paces the “Féte polonaise” from Le Roi malgré lui with such brio that it sounds like a freshly refurbished carousel.

As with several French composers of his generation, Chabrier was overwhelmed by the music of Wagner. He spent six years working on a Wagnerian opera, Gwendoline , and the overture clearly displays that influence. (The sleeve note likens it to Die Meistersinger but to my ears it is early Wagner, particularly Der fliegende Holländer , that informs this particular piece.) Järvi takes this work no more seriously than the rest of his program; he launches into it with exhilarating gusto and never lets up. It is an exciting performance that definitely surpasses Ansermet, whose rendition has always struck me as too sluggish.

Chabrier, a native of the Auvergne region, proved to be a strong influence on the French composers who followed him. His music was admired by Debussy, Poulenc and, especially, Ravel. The latter was devoted to Chabrier’s opera Le Roi malgré lui , a work full of marvelous set pieces, saddled with a virtually incoherent libretto. Ravel’s piano style was influenced by Chabrier’s Dix piéces pittoresques of 1880, and Chabrier himself orchestrated four of these piano pieces eight years later to create the Suite pastorale. In this work the composer’s sunny disposition encompasses an added vein of nostalgia—Chabrier looking back through rose-colored glasses at his Auvergne boyhood—and Järvi conveys the tender atmosphere sympathetically without romantic over-indulgence.

The late piano piece Bourée fantasque (1891) is played here in the usual orchestration, made by the composer’s conductor friend Felix Mottl in 1897. Mottl’s hand is heavier than Chabrier’s, though the scoring sounds less muddy in this performance than in some others, thanks to Järvi’s clarity. An interesting and much quirkier orchestration by Charles Koechlin recently appeared on a Hänssler disc (along with Koechlin’s orchestrations of Debussy’s Khamma and Fauré’s incidental music for Pelléas et Melisande ). In the Bourée fantasque , Mottl gives the opening motif quite sensibly to the cellos, whereas Koechlin gives it to the timpani! Needless to say I prefer Koechlin, and can recommend the Hänssler recording, which was reviewed in Fanfare 36:2 by Adrian Corleonis. About Koechlin’s scoring of Bourée fantasque , Corleonis commented: “Hearing this after the frequently performed rule-of-thumb orchestration by Felix Mottl is to grasp the distance between workmanlike utility and genius.” Extra works in Järvi’s program that are not usually included are the Overture and two brief interludes from the comic opera L’Étoile (1877), and the even earlier Lamento for orchestra. The latter piece is more conventional and less identifiable as Chabrier, but a pleasant interlude nonetheless.

The new disc is certainly recommendable on its own terms, but how does it stand up to the competition? Järvi maintains the authority of Ansermet in this repertoire, and it must be admitted that the latter’s recordings are sounding a little elderly these days. For a still great sounding old disc and vital performances, Paul Paray is one to hear (recently reissued in the Mercury Collection Vol. 2), though his program does not include the selections from L’Étoile, Lamento , or the Habanera . (Paray’s performance of the Gwendoline Overture is even brisker than Järvi’s: 8:44 as opposed to 9:23!) A 1996 DG disc from John Eliot Gardiner and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is also competitive: it has been reissued recently in a cheap series, and includes a beautifully played Larghetto for French Horn and Orchestra that does not appear in other collections. Gardiner’s program is more cleanly recorded than the new Chandos disc, which, despite its spectacular range and Super Audio sound, places the Suisse Romande orchestra in a somewhat reverberant acoustic. Michel Plasson’s Chabrier recordings with L’Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse have been reissued many times by EMI, but how often we will see them in future is in doubt. EMI’s extensive catalog has been purchased by Warner Music, whose classical reissue policy has been inconsistent and piecemeal in the past. Plasson’s performances are authentically French and vibrant, and his program uniquely contains Chabrier’s vocal works with orchestra. The big EMI box of his recordings of French orchestral music (including his Chabrier) is highly recommended: see my review in Fanfare ’s Hall of Fame (34:6). However, if it’s just one disc you require, then the new Järvi program is worth the outlay, and you definitely won’t find yourself straining to hear the bass drum.

FANFARE: Phillip Scott

Three lovely but rarely performed cello concertos are featured on this new release. These works are among the earliest in the genre by German composers. Cellist Alexander Rubin is not only a multi-prize winning soloist, but also a respected conductor. He fills both roles on this recording. Musica Viva is one of the best-loved chamber orchestras in Russia. The musicians are known for their refined but unconventional programmes, where they frequently perform rare works.

GOOSSENS Kaleidoscope. Tam O’Shanter. Three Greek Dances. Concert Piece 1. Four Conceits. Variations on “Cadet Rouselle.” Two Nature Poems. Don Juan de Mañara: Intermezzo • Andrew Davis, cond; Melbourne SO; 1 Jeff Crellin (ob, Eh); 1 Marshall Maguire (hp); 1 Alannah Guthrie-Jones (hp) • CHANDOS 5119 (SACD: 74:16)


Chandos’s Goossens series began promisingly under Richard Hickox with a recording of the First Symphony and Phantasy Concerto for piano and orchestra, but stalled after the conductor’s unexpected death in November 2008. Andrew Davis has since taken over as the company’s house conductor of English music. Having given us fine recordings of Delius, Elgar, and Holst, he now turns his attention to Goossens in this second volume of the series. Unlike the first it concentrates on shorter pieces.


Eugene Goossens (1893-1962) came from a musical family; both his father and grandfather were conductors. He studied composition with Stanford, and as a conductor was mentored by Beecham. (Later he himself was mentor to Richard Bonynge.) Young Eugene played violin in Beecham’s Queens Hall Orchestra during the years of the First World War, and may well have been a part of that orchestra when they premiered Holst’s Planets in 1918. Certainly Goossens’s orchestral finesse recalls Holst’s masterpiece in respect of clarity and sonority. The short tone poem Tam O’Shanter is the earliest orchestral work in this collection: Vigorous and deftly scored, it predates Malcolm Arnold’s better-known overture of the same name by 36 years. The sprightly children’s suite Kaleidoscope (so reminiscent of the work of another composer/conductor, Gabriel Pierné) and the Four Conceits were originally written for piano in 1918 and orchestrated much later. The Three Greek Dances , the Nature Poems , the Variations on the French folk song “Cadet Rousselle,” and the Intermezzo from his opera Don Juan de Mañara all date from the decade 1927-1938 when Goossens was a resident conductor in America, first with the Eastman Orchestra, then from 1931 on as successor to Fritz Reiner in Cincinnati. The composer’s handling of orchestral forces is even more assured here. The effects he achieves in the second of the Nature Poems (entitled “Bacchanal”) are so striking it is hard to imagine this work started life as a piano piece. (In this, he recalls another major influence: Maurice Ravel.) Interestingly, the folk-song variations are one of those collaborative hybrids that turn up every so often in 20th-century music. Orchestrated by Goossens, who composed the finale, the piece also contains variations by Arnold Bax, Frank Bridge, and John Ireland.


The longest work here is the three-movement Concert Piece for oboe, two harps, and orchestra, lasting just under 22 minutes. It dates from 1957, a year after Goossens had returned to London in disgrace following a sex and pornography scandal in Australia. It could be that he wrote this work for his highly respected siblings Leon (oboist), Sidonie and Marie (harpists) in order to help salvage his reputation. The piece is mellow, especially in the Delian slow movement, and is notable for introducing quotations from other composers, such as Debussy and Richard Strauss in the finale. Shades of Berio’s Sinfonia.


Covering approximately 40 years, the program on this disc displays Goossens’s strengths: exquisite craftsmanship—especially in scoring—piquant but not ‘difficult’ harmony, and economy. What he lacks compared to several of his peers is a distinctive melodic profile, but that does not prevent an appreciation of this adroitly realized music. Three of these works have appeared in a three-CD set from ABC Australia, conducted by Vernon Handley with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra ( Tam O’Shanter and the Concert Piece ) and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra ( Kaleidoscope ). Handley is livelier than Davis. Concert Piece in particular sounds like a stronger work in his hands. However, the magnificent Chandos sound trumps the perfectly acceptable 17-year-old Australian recordings. The Davis disc is in a class of its own in terms of sonics, and his excellent soloists Crellin, Maguire, and Guthrie-Jones in Concert Piece seem better attuned to 20th-century English style. (I can only report on the Chandos disc in regular stereo.) While the first release in this series contained works of greater significance, this follow-up is fully enjoyable in its own right. The Second Symphony should be next up.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Digital CD 16Bit 44.1Khz. Originally recorded in: DSD

"...In each of these performances the RSNO, keenly responsive to Denève after his seven seasons as chief conductor, confirm the absolute precision, transparency and - in Jeux as much as anywhere – passion required for these scores. The detail in Images is exquisite (with a lovely oboe d'amore solo by Katherine Mackintosh). The Nocturnes, especially Fêtes, achieve a shimmering, decidedly un-Monet-like glaze, and La Mer erupts and glistens."

- Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, 12, May 2012

SINGT

OPERA'S GREATEST DRINKING SONG

Mozart: Concerto & Sonata for 2 Pianos (Alicia De Larrocha)

SCHOENBERG Pierrot Lunaire 1. String Trio 2 • 1 Arnold Schoenberg, cond; 1 Erika Stiedry-Wagner (voc); 1 Rudolph Kolisch (vn, va); 1 Stefan Auber (vc); 1 Kalman Bloch (cl); 1 Leonard Posella (fl, pic); 1 Eduard Steuermann (pn); 2 Robert Mann (vn); 2 Raphael Hillyer (va); 2 Claus Adam (vc) • SONY 45695, mono/stereo (52:53)


As in the case of several of my other CHoF recommendations, this one is for half-a-record, in this case for the 1940 recording of Pierrot Lunaire directed by the composer. It’s not that the 1967 performance of the String Trio is a poor one—it’s not—but the 1985 recording of the String Trio, also by members of the Juilliard String Quartet (for such they are) only with Samuel Rhodes on viola and Joel Krosnick on cello (Sony 47690) supercedes this one. It is the recording of Pierrot Lunaire that is wholly unique.


Directed by the composer, it was the first of Schoenberg’s mature works to be recorded (Leopold Stokowski had recorded the earlier Gurrelieder in 1932 for RCA Victor). It includes pianist Eduard Steuermann, who had been playing this work since its premiere in 1913, and soprano Erika Stiedry-Wagner, who had been speaking/singing the vocal part in performances under Schoenberg’s direction since 1921. (In Robert Craft’s book Stravinsky: Discoveries and Memories, reviewed elsewhere in this issue, he writes of a performance in Italy of Pierrot Lunaire under Schoenberg’s direction, attended by none other than Giacomo Puccini. Stiedry-Wagner was probably the speaker in that performance as well.)


Curiously for an experienced singer who had performed this work many times with Schoenberg, Stiedry-Wagner sings several wrong pitches in “Eine blasse Wäscherin”; but as Dr. Avior Byron, a musicologist and composer who is working on the book Schoenberg’s Writings on Aesthetics and Interpretation in Performance has said, these deviations from pitch were not only accepted by the composer but quite possibly encouraged as a later reconsideration of how this specific song was to be interpreted. You can read the details in Chapter Seven of his book, “ Sprechstimme Reconsidered,” at bymusic.org/images/stories/byronphd/chapter_7.pdf. To begin with, there were no less than five takes made of this song (in addition to five each of “Valse de Chopin” and “Madonna,” and four each of “Gebet an Pierrot,” “Raub,” “Rote Messe,” and “Galgenlied”), and Stiedry-Wagner deviates from the written pitch in all of them. With the composer in charge, this error could have been remedied with a 15-minute piano rehearsal; but the fact that he allowed the recordings to be made, and the take with the wrong pitches issued, indicates a much deeper level of tolerance on Schoenberg’s part. As Byron illustrates via written comments from Schoenberg, the composer wanted a stricter adherence to pitch in Pierrot Lunaire than in the spoken recitation of Gurrelieder, but in certain songs—“Eine blasse Wäscherin” was apparently one of them—the mode of expression, the curve of the voice delivering the words, the vocal melismas as it were, became more important to him than absolute fidelity of pitch. Therefore, one can indeed accept this deviation as composer-approved and not an errant mistake that the composer did not catch prior to issue.


The bottom line is that Stiedry-Wagner’s performance is utterly fascinating and enthralling in its own way. She rivets your attention much better, for instance, than does Yvonne Minton in the note-perfect recording made under Pierre Boulez’s direction. From start to finish, this Pierrot Lunaire creates an atmosphere that is spellbinding. These performers, most of whom had been doing this work for a long time under the composer’s direction, give about as authentic a performance as can be imagined; and, as Byron makes clear, even the pitch deviations are instructive to modern performers as to how the songs should be done. In tonal Western music, interpretive differences are generally given by means of variants in the phrasing and the stress given to certain words, as in opera and Lieder, but to Schoenberg, the rhythms of Pierrot Lunaire were inviolable; and though he demanded a higher degree of pitch accuracy in this work, he apparently allowed a certain degree of latitude considering the range of one’s voice and the way the music was spoken-sung. Stiedry-Wagner was an accomplished operetta soprano and particularly an actress, thus I suspect that she and Schoenberg discussed the pitch deviations in “Eine blasse Wäscherin” to some extent, especially since all of the five existing takes deviate in one way or another from score pitch and, in fact, each one is different.


So much for “historically informed” performances, eh?


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

WAGNER Symphonies: in C, WWV 29; in E, WWV 35. Huldigungsmarsch. Rienzi: Overture. Kaisermarsch • Neeme Järvi, cond; Royal Scottish Natl O • CHANDOS 5097 (SACD: 79:14)


Here’s a milestone of sorts for me. In my nearly 10 years with Fanfare , this is my first time reviewing anything by Wagner. Mainly, the reason, I suppose, is that I don’t do opera, and what else is there, really, by Wagner that isn’t opera? Well, quite a lot, actually. Prior to his earliest completed stage works dating from between 1833 and 1838— Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot , and Die hohe Braut —Wagner wrote a goodly number of works, including several piano sonatas, a string quartet, concert overtures and overtures to plays, study fugues, songs, a considerable volume of miscellaneous piano pieces, and the two symphonies on this disc. And even after he threw himself into music drama with a passion, he continued to compose in other genres throughout his life.


Thus, the Huldigungsmarsch of 1864 was written right smack in the middle of Wagner’s work on Die Meistersinger , and the Kaisermarsch of 1871 comes dead-center during work on Parsifal . Still, the composer’s non-operatic music on record—I count the large numbers of collections of just the orchestral overtures, excerpts, and fragments from the operas as operatic music—seems to be an endangered species.


Wagner’s two symphonies have received one review each in these pages. The more recent appeared in Fanfare 31:2. That review by James Miller dealt with a two-CD Decca Eloquence Wagner collection of opera overtures and preludes performed by a host of orchestras and conductors. Buried among the familiar nuggets was the C-Major Symphony with Edo de Waart leading the San Francisco Symphony. Miller hears influences of Beethoven and, even more strongly, strains of Schubert in the work, and I wouldn’t disagree with him. Wagner was 19 when he wrote the piece in 1832, so it can’t be said that he was a precocious genius on the order of Mozart, Schubert, or Mendelssohn. It’s a pretty formulaic score, strongly redolent of some of Beethoven’s overtures and, curiously, Schubert’s Ninth, which Wagner could not have heard, since its first public performance was given by Mendelssohn in 1839.


A review of the E-Major Symphony goes back even further, to issue 20:4. Submitted by William Youngren, it covers an EMI recording by Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. Wagner’s second attempt at a symphony dates from 1834, but he never completed it. An Allegro con spirito first movement and 30 bars of an Adagio cantabile second movement are all he wrote. Moreover, Wagner didn’t orchestrate it. That task fell to the conductor Felix Mottl when Cosima Wagner enlisted him for the job. The symphony opens with a gesture startlingly reminiscent of the overture to Beethoven’s Fidelio.


Those recordings are still available. I’m afraid I don’t have either of them, but I do have a fine 1992 Denon CD containing both scores with Hiroshi Wakasugi leading the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, a disc you’ll find listed by Amazon but not by ArkivMusic. This new Chandos SACD, however, with Neeme Järvi’s tight grip on the reins and the recording’s deep stage and phenomenal spotting of instruments, is definitely the way to go, if these early works by Wagner interest you.


The Huldigungsmarsch is another item Wagner didn’t orchestrate himself, at least not completely. Purely out of a need for money, Wagner wrote the piece to pleasure the mad king of Bavaria, Ludwig II, originally scoring it for military band. He then began orchestrating the march for symphony orchestra but deferred to the advice of conductor Hans von Bülow to allow Joachim Raff to complete the task. One can’t help but wonder what this says about von Bülow’s opinion of Wagner’s abilities. Raff, you will recall, is the composer who also assisted Liszt with orchestrating some of his works.


Genesis of the Kaisermarsch is a little more complicated. In 1871, the Peters publishing house commissioned Wagner to write something upbeat and patriotic to cheer the troops and boost German morale during the Franco-Prussian war. Like the Huldigungsmarsch , the Kaisermarsch was originally scored for military band, but barely two months later, to celebrate the German victory and the coronation of the Prussian king as emperor of the newly founded German Reich, Wagner rescored the piece for symphony orchestra and added to the end of it a kind of community sing-along set to a sacred text for a strictly secular ceremonial occasion. As note author Emanuel Overbecke points out, “Wagner proved himself ever the political pragmatist, for only four years earlier he had dismissed the same monarch as feeble and ineffectual.” The choral finale is not included on the current recording.


Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen , or just Rienzi as it’s commonly known, was Wagner’s first real stage hit after a string of operatic works that were either left unfinished or that were completed and mounted but with little success. First produced in Dresden in 1842, Rienzi would also be Wagner’s last opera in which the Italian influence is strongly felt. Even before Rienzi premiered, Wagner had completed his next opera, The Flying Dutchman , in 1841. Rienzi’s overture is a staple of recorded collections featuring the overtures, preludes, and orchestral music from Wagner’s operas. Beginning at around 2:45, the slow-moving, chorale-like intoning of the brass, overlaid by striding, leaping figurations in the strings, anticipates the same technique Wagner used for similar effect in the overture to Tannhäuser two years later.


All of the works on this disc, with the exception of the Rienzi overture, have relatively few recorded listings and, to my knowledge, this is their first in surround sound. If you’re a Wagner fan, and your interest in his music extends beyond his operas, I can think of no reason for you not to be thrilled by this release. Neeme Järvi, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and Chandos have teamed up countless times over the years to bring us many truly outstanding recordings, and this is another of them.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins