This recording received the 2000 Grammy awards for "Best Classical Album" and "Best Orchestral Performance."
Here's a slightly odd trio. 'The Firebird' and 'The Rite of Spring' are two of the three ballets that so sensationally launched Igor Stravinsky's career, but instead of including the intervening 'Petrouchka,' the package features 'Persephone,' a difficult-to-classify work from two decades later. Dancer Ida Rubenstein commissioned this combination of rhythmic narration, singing, and dance, hooking Stravinsky up with writer Andre Gide to concoct a telling of the myth of Persephone, daughter of the fertility goddess Demeter, whose journey to the underworld causes winter to descend upon the Earth. It is a kinder, gentler, classicized 'Rite of Spring' of sorts, and one of Stravinsky's freshest, most beautiful, and sadly neglected scores.
All three works receive alert, sensitive, and wonderfully colorful performances from Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, made all the more alluring by a truly sensational recording.

A ravishing performance of the Concerto militare by Ofra Harnoy, more than equal to its bristling difficulties yet swooning like an operetta heroine in its lyrical lines.

The Concerto militaire opens with a very Offenbachian tutti – robbed a little of its sparkle here by rather too resonant a recording – which introduces the characterful dotted march theme that affords the work its sobriquet (the composer’s own); but the soaring secondary theme is even more striking. The concerto dates from 1847 and the conductor of the present recording, Antonio di Almeida, who is also an authority on Offenbach, tells us in the notes that no complete autograph score exists although there is a set of the original orchestral parts. This is perhaps – although not certainly – held at the Offenbach Archive in Cologne. The published score used here is revised and reconstructed by the French cellist, Jean-Max Clement, who orchestrated the last two movements, using the piano score and keeping to the style and scale of the opening movement. He also had a considerable hand in revising, even devising, the often complex solo part which appears never to have been written out in full by its composer (especially in the finale, where the cadenza is by Clement alone). Some of the bravura solo writing in the extreme upper tessitura of the first movement approaches the ridiculous in appearing to throw all caution to the winds, but perhaps that was the composer’s own joke. What is fascinating is that Offenbach himself revised the second movement Andante, richly expanding its scoring to make a separate concertante piece. It has a glorious main theme and in Harnoy’s ravishing performance it is the highlight of this CD. In the concerto she is more than equal to the bristling difficulties of the solo part yet swoons like a very stylish operetta heroine in the ardent lyrical lines, characteristically and subtly using the widest range of dynamics to add to the sense of poetic spontaneity. The genial finale, with its jaunty main theme, comes off splendidly.

Almeida accompanies the Offenbach sympathetically and persuasively and cello and orchestra are naturally balanced: I only wish that the otherwise flattering acoustic of the Wessex Hall in the Poole Arts Centre had not also provided such a high degree of resonance. It suits the Lalo Concerto much better and the melodramatic opening tutti, laminated with heavy brass, is as portentous as you like. Again a very good recording balance both ensures that the soloist’s disarmingly gentle recitativo projects naturally, and readily tames the vehement orchestral protests. Almeida opens the engaging “Intermezzo” with a nice touch of melancholy, delicately setting the scene for the doleful cello entry, while the central scherzando episode brings some deliciously light flute decoration for the soloist’s gentle whimsy. The finely graduated and eloquently phrased solo introduction for the finale again shows Harnoy at her most imaginative, and there is a buoyant eruption of energy to follow.

-- Ivan March, Gramophone [11/1996]

Chopin: Scherzos & Mazurkas

Cho-Liang Lin; Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin. CBS MK 42315 [with Scottish Fantasy; also available with Mendelssohn: Concerto in E minor, and various encore pieces (CBS MDK 44902)] (recorded 1986). Lin’s is a straightforward, expressive reading of the concerto, distinguished by extraordinarily beautiful playing. Bruch was a melodist of the first rank, and the soloist emphasizes that aspect of the music in his warmly phrased account. Leonard Slatkin and the Chicago Symphony provide outstanding support, and the performance is captured in a recording of ideal depth and spaciousness. Two versions of the account are now available; the choice for most buyers is the mid-price recoupling that pairs the Bruch with Mendelssohn’s Concerto in E minor and encore pieces by Kreisler and Sarasate. – Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection.

Prokofiev: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2

Mozart: Flute Concertos, K. 313 & 314

Various/Copland. CBS Masterworks 42431 [Appalachian Spring (complete ballet in original chamber scoring); Billy the Kid; Lincoln Portrait].

Although it has come to be much better known in Copland’s arrangement for full orchestra, Appalachian Spring was originally composed for a chamber-sized complement of 13 instruments, the maximum that would fit in front of the stage at the Coolidge Auditorium in the Library of Congress – where Martha Graham’s company gave the premiere of the ballet in 1944. Many listeners prefer the more vibrant and homespun sound of this original version of Appalachian Spring, with its intimate expressiveness, to the splashiness and color of Copland’s rescoring, as brilliant as it is. Here, Copland conducts a hand-picked group of New York free-lancers in what must be counted a definitive performance; the playing is energetic and expressive, the sentiment deep but not too sweet. Copland’s 1968 account of his Lincoln Portrait, with Henry Fonda as narrator, and 1969 reading of the suite from Billy the Kid round out the disc most satisfactorily. All three recordings are remarkably vivid. – Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection.

RAMEAU BOB JAMES

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO 4 MOZART

At his best, Serkin's driving energy, fierce intelligence, and his unfailing lucidity of touch produced recordings that do that rare thing: they transcend the medium. This is one such.

Serkin is said to have disliked recording and his legacy is mixed, technically and artistically. Yet, at best, his driving energy, his fierce intelligence, his quick mind, and (until comparatively recently) his unfailing lucidity of touch often produced recordings that do that rare thing: they transcend the medium.

One such recording is his 1968 Cleveland account of Brahms's D minor Piano Concerto which Sony have recently reissued...coupled with another Serkin speciality, Richard Strauss's Burleske for piano and orchestra. Serkin "at the peak of his form, emotionally, intellectually, and technically" is how Trevor Harvey described the performance in these columns in May 1969 and I wouldn't disagree with that. From the piano's first entry it is evident that we are in the presence of a musical plain-dealer who is something more besides. The touch is plain but never monochrome, resolute but never harsh. There are miracles of dynamic shading yet dynamic changes that are elementally swift and steep. Above all, there is a revelatory way with rhythm, full of potency and drive in quicker music, and turning the more reflective passages into slow sustained acts of transcendental enquiry. As a reading this has something of Arrau's weight and profundity (Philips D 420 702-2PSL, 11/87) matched to Curzon's lyricism and sense of forward drive (Decca D 417 641-2DH, 10/87, also conducted by Szell). It is not better than either but it has some of the best qualities of both. There are those, it must be said, who are distracted by Serkin's stamping pedalwork and by breathing that has Serkin, like Arrau, cross-hatching the lie of a phrase with his own peculiar form of musical emphysema. Such things don't worry me unduly. You can't expect a man to go up the north face of the Eiger, silently, in carpet-slippers; and, in the slow movement, I find the counterpointing of Serkin's stressful breathing, with the sublimely conjured and spun melody that floats from it, to be a moving re-enactment of the composer's own recalcitrance in the face of the brute marble out of which this concerto is sculpted.

Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra are, needless to say, superb accompanists, and the sound is excellent in an appropriately forthright way, with pianissimos that are not so much pianissimo as properly hushed and innig. I don't agree with the reviewer who found Serkin's account of the Strauss Burleske to be lacking in poetry. Rather, it glints; it is sharp and witty. Above all, the performance redeems the work from its principal failing: the sense it can give of being marginally but fatally over length... [I]f you want a truly worthy memorial of this great pianist from the current batch, there is absolutely no doubt that the Brahms/Strauss disc is the one to have.

-- Gramophone [7/1991]

CANTELOUBE: SONGS OF THE AUVER

Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue

Latin American Guitar Music by Barrios and Ponce

Glenn Gould: The Composer

Classical Music

This is the second Takemitsu disc to appear in recent months: the first, from Virgin Classics (9/91), was of works for chamber ensemble. The focus here is the guitar—the ideal vehicle, it might be guessed, for Takemitsu's dreamy, introspective yet far from austere musical manner. And so, to a large extent, it proves.

The earliest music is in the solo pieces. Folios (1974) is unobtrusively characterful, with the unexpected appearance of the Bach St Matthew Passion chorale, "Wenn ich einmal soil scheiden", in No. 3. A very different hymn melody is the source of Takemitsu's transcription of What a Friend, which dates from 1977. What a friend we have in Jesus is inoffensively recast as a decorous piece of light music, along with Gershwin's Summertime and two other songs. John Williams makes the best of these miniatures, the immaculate recording catching the full range of the instrument's delicate colours.

The other compositions date from the 1980s. Toward the Sea takes risks in combining alto flute and guitar, the music often seeming too small scale and inturned for its own good. Though it is performed with the utmost refinement, the many pauses and silences almost come to seem more essential than the actual sounds. Vers, l'Arc-enciel, Palma is another mood piece; languid but not wholly soft-centred. There is a brilliant account of the oboe d'amore cadenza from Gareth Hulse, and no denying the skill with which Takemitsu himself sketches the outlines of a satisfying form on a canvas inspired by the paintings of Joan Miro.

Another painter, Paul Delvaux, inspired the strongest music on the disc, the guitar concerto To the Edge of Dream. Appropriately, in view of Delvaux's work, a distinct sense of menace emerges here to offset the more tranquil moods, and the orchestral contribution serves to control the guitar's improvisatory tendencies. We probably hear more of the guitar relative to the orchestra than would be the case in the concert-hall, but there is nothing unreasonably artificial about the result.

-- Gramophone [1/1992]

Includes work(s) for orchestra by various composers.

B�la Bart�k plays a major role in many works by Peter E�tv�s. The love of Bart�k's music first appears in the piano piece "Kosmos". The title refers to Bart�k's famous piano cycle "Mikrokosmos". However, the work also bears the title "Kosmos" because Yuri Gagarin's famous space flight was about to take place when it was written in March 1961. E�tv�s was then 17 years old, and Gagarin excited the young composer's imagination. On the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Bart�k's birth in 2006, E�tv�s wrote a piano concerto in which he further developed Bart�k's ideas and thought processes. The concerto is entitled "CAP-KO", an acronym for "Concerto for Acoustic Piano, Keyboard, and Orchestra". The piano resources are extended by use of a computer, which adds further sounds to those being played - a revolutionary technology that E�tv�s wants to be understood as a symbol of Bart�k's pioneering spirit. The concerto centres on the famous Bart�k cascades of octaves and sixths. E�tv�s has twice re-arranged "CAP-KO" for other instrumentations, e.g. as "Sonata per sei" for two pianos, three percussionists, and sampler keyboard. Among the musicians E�tv�s has always admired is Frank Zappa. When Zappa died in 1993 at the young age of 42, E�tv�s responded with grief and anger. He said, "In connection with Zappa's premature and meaningless death, one really cannot praise God, but must protest." He composed a piece that gives expression to this protest. Since the 150 psalms in the Bible do not deal with protest, the piece became Psalm 151: "This is the one that is not in the Bible."

Classical Music

This truly fantastic live set of the complete Beethoven symphonies plus select overtures as played by the Philharmonia Orchestra in Vienna in 1960 under the direction of the legendary conductor Otto Klemperer has now returned to the Andromeda catalog in completely re-mastered, superb 24bit/96kHz sound, taken directly from the original master tapes. It always a fascinating pastime to compare Klemperer’s live performances with his studio recordings of the identical works from the same period, as these come from around the time of his famous EMI late-‘50s recordings with the same orchestra.

In 1926 Hindemith encouraged the composition of a new kind of original music for wind ensemble (military band) for chamber music performances at Donaueschingen and helped raise the genre to a level of achievement which continues today. Three of these works from 1926 are published on this CD, together with Hindemith's famous masterpiece Symphony in B flat and Ernst Krenek's Dream Sequence.

Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 15 in E-Flat Minor, Op. 144

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music