These are intense and memorable performances with an outstanding, exciting and colourful ‘Sinfonia espansiva’ and a ferociously energetic, yet life-affirming ‘Inextinguishable’ Symphony No. 4. All in all, a distinguished, top drawer set.

-- MusicWeb International

This re-issue brings together the Violin Concertos of Prokofiev, along with Violin Sonata No.1, performed by Lydia Mordkovitch under Neeme Jarvi. 'Jarvi is an outstanding collaborator. His feeling for this composer's music is well established, and he brings out details that other conductors are content to overlook. Ms Mordkovitch has a powerful musical voice and a committed approach. I have returned to this recording with increasing fascination and would recommend it highly.' American Record Guide

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The Central Band of the RAF perform works by and under the baton of Nigel Hess. The works include “New London Pictures,” “The Old Man of Lochnager” based on a children’s book by Charles, Prince of Wales, and “Shakespeare Pictures” which originates in incidental music composed for productions of Much Ado About Nothing, The Winter’s Tale and Julius Caesar.

Back in the days when Johann Christian Bach was writing music, staying true to a composer's intention was not a priority in musical performances in the way it is today! His publisher, William Foster, was particularly cavalier in his attitude to his client's music and often amended the masterpieces - amalgamating or even omitting parts entirely - for purely commercial reasons. The Academy of Ancient Music, renowned for the authority of its performances, restored the works on this disc so that the listener can experience these pieces as J.C. Bach intended.

Franz Schreker's early 20th Century compositions pushed him to the forefront of modernism. His ability to work on a large scale as well as with more intimate orchestrations makes this collection a particularly varied and enjoyable experience.
The pieces here range from symphonic overtures to small chamber orchestra pieces. The title composition, 'Prelude to a Drama,' billows in its immensity. This work, which Schreker later shortened and used in his opera 'Die Gezeichneten,' achieves its grandiose scale with sweeping melodies with a minimal focus on the underlying rhythms. Conversely, 'Valse lente' is a subtle, tightly scored piece full of bright color and delightful patterns. Written to be a dance score, it is unobtrusively pleasant. Most of the pieces included in this collection, however, are of a more symphonic nature, given to the soaring energy of the late Romantics. Like a Liszt or a Wagner, Schreker put power in his music.
REVIEWS:
International Record Review (4/00, p.41) - "...Schreker had a wonderful sense of fantasy, a feeling for colour and impressive mastery of the orchestra. Sinaisky and his fine orchestra are expertly served by the recording team, and whole disc serves to advance Schreker's cause..."

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If, like me, you’re a little selective concerning which music by Bridge you really like, you couldn’t find a better advocate than Richard Hickox on this 6-CD set.

– Editor, MusicWeb International

This splendidly conceived, presented and executed Chandos series treats Bridge with authoritative style and sensitive musicianship. In this it matches Chandos banner series for Grainger, Schmidt, Enescu, Glazunov, Bax and Harty. Bridge’s music is getting to the stage where it will no longer need special pleading. The series appeared in an unhurried way – no gabble, no exploitative rush. Nothing wrong with that if the results are as good as this. Taking time can produce a better effect even if the loyal enthusiasts were chafing for each new release.

- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

For its very first album on Chandos, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain devotes its characteristic energy and musical mastery to an explosive program that transcends daily life and earthly experience. It is helped by the enthusiastic, encouraging and experienced baton of Edward Gardner as well as by the sumptuous yet detailed acoustic of Symphony Hall, Birmingham, all fully revealed in this surround-sound recording. Their performance of Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra and Holst's The Planets is already a point of reference in the UK after the immensely successful Prom concert that preceded the recording. The concert's five-star review in The Daily Telegraph praised in particular the orchestra's "great attack and complete absence of anything routine", while The Guardian emphasized the great performance of the orchestra in this "graceful and evocative programme", especially the "depth and richness of sound that belied their youth". This unique album is a first milestone in what promises to be a superb discography for the NYO.

The Welsh flautist Emily Beynon plays a selection of British flute concertos, accompanied by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Bramwell Tovey. Beynon is the Principal Flute of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Equally at home in front of the orchestra as in its midst, she has also performed as soloist with, amongst others, several BBC Orchestras, the Philharmonia Orchestra, NHK Symphony, and the Vienna, Prague, Netherlands and English Chamber orchestras.

Both works performed from The Niels W. Gade Edition Recorded in: Danish Radio Concert Hall, Copenhagen 14-19 (Symphony No. 1) and 23 & 24 (Symphony No. 5) November 2001 Producer(s) Chris Hazell Sound Engineer(s) Jørn Jacobsen

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Includes work(s) by Josef Myslivecek. Ensemble: London Mozart Players. Conductor: Matthias Bamert.

V3: COMPLETE WORKS FOR ORGAN

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For decades now the Dvorák symphony cycle sweepstakes has been dominated by three classic contenders: Kubelik (DG), Kertesz (Decca--and to my mind not quite as deserving of the attention it has received), and Rowicki (Philips). But there are other cycles worthy of consideration, including Neumann (Supraphon), Pesek (Virgin), Suitner (Berlin Classics), Macal (Koss), and this one. Its merits are considerable, and it may be that its previous incarnation on nine discs (with couplings) prevented collectors from making its acquaintance.

Neeme Järvi's fresh approach most recalls Rowicki's and results in very fine interpretations of Symphonies Nos. 1-4, 6, and 8; very good ones of Nos. 5 and 9, and a strangely dark and heavy performance of No. 7 that will not appeal to all tastes but bespeaks of a valid interpretive tradition (noted Czech conductor Zdenek Kosler always did it this way too). Sonically the recordings range from excellent to excessively reverberant, but they certainly equal or surpass most of the competition. If you collect these symphonies and want to explore beyond the canonical Big Three sets, you will find much to enjoy here.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Grzegorz M. Olkiewicz’s album consists of nine pieces by seven representatives of the “Upper Silesian School,” which undoubtedly affected the Polish music (and not just the Polish one) of the second half of the twentieth century. Naturally, being a native of Katowice and a graduate of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music, he became interested in the repertoire composed by the university’s pupils. Sometimes it was he that served an inspiration for them and edited scores for printing and premieres. The presented recordings were made in studio, at the National Philharmonic and at the Silesian one. They emerged gradually from 1984 to 1997 thanks to the Polish Radio in Katowice and Warsaw. One could consider this selection as representative for the community although it is inevitably complete. Grzegorz Olkiewicz was born in Katowice in 1959. He has performed with most of Poland’s orchestras, and has given recitals and performed with orchestras in Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, The US, and more. Many Polish composers have dedicated their compositions to him.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

An auspicious and impressive debut for this new performing team. Any new Schmitt disc from this source will be eagerly awaited.

This is a disc to welcome in every respect. Yan Pascal Tortelier was a stalwart of the Chandos catalogue not so many years back so it is a pleasure to welcome him back into ‘active service’ particularly when at the helm of the orchestra with which he has recently started as principal conductor, The São Paulo Symphony Orchestra. This ensemble have proved to be an absolute revelation in recent years with a series of sensational discs - mainly on the BIS label - of primarily Latin-American repertoire. It is a particular delight to hear all the good opinions of them formed there carried over into unfamiliar repertoire. Chandos have matched BIS on the sonics front producing a disc of excellent range, detail and sonic impact – elements all vital in conveying the richness and power of these three hedonistically romantic scores.

Composer Florent Schmitt seems doomed to the periphery of the popular Classical Music repertoire certainly outside his native France. The issue, as it is with so many similar composers, is one of achieving a kind of critical mass of familiarity which allows him to become recognisably his own man as opposed to being simply an amalgam of influences. Curiously, this disc both serves and hinders that cause. As a first port of call for the collector new to his music this is pretty much ideal bringing together as it does his three most famous (relatively) scores in solidly fine performances. If Chandos are going to do for Schmitt what they are currently doing for Halvorsen or D’Indy it is vital that this represents simply volume 1 in a developing series. None of the works presented here are new to the catalogue so converts to the Schmitt cause will have to decide whether duplication of repertoire is affordable.

La Tragédie de Salomé turned up on a blind listening disc a year or so back and is a perfect embodiment of that peculiarly Gallic obsession with what might be termed ‘erotic exotica’. Schmitt wrote an hour long ballet score in 1907 scored for chamber orchestra. Subsequently he extracted a suite of about half the score scored for a much larger orchestra and that is what is presented here. The sequence of the music in the suite follows the broad arc of the drama from a quiet yet sensuous dawn through ever more obsessive and charged dances to the climactic tragedy as Salome and the palace are overwhelmed by a storm. It is graphically seductive stuff and impossible not to respond to if you have any taste for cinematic excess in music. Likewise it is meat and drink to a virtuoso orchestra and a recording company with a reputation for demonstration quality recordings. Throughout the entire disc the playing of the orchestra is simply first rate. The strings are a model of sensuous sonority, the woodwind full of character and the brass perfectly blended; brazen or full-voiced as the music requires. Additionally, the trumpets just give their tone a little edge of vibrato which is ideal in this repertoire. Chandos have produced this as a SA-CD. Unfortunately I do not have the facilities to listen to it in this format but even the ‘standard’ CD is pretty sensational. The liner notes by Roger Nichols are good and include a useful synopsis for the ballet suite. The information about the individual works is good but I do think it would have benefited from a more extended biographical note and one that placed these works in context both as part of the composer’s oeuvre and more importantly their significance in the greater scheme of French music of the period.

The second work on the disc reflect another French fin-de-siecle obsession; namely the works of Edgar Alan Poe. Here Schmitt writes a compact thirteen minute tone-poem called Le Palais hanté based on the story The Fall of the House of Usher. In recording terms this is the rarest item offered. I can think of only one other recording – on French EMI with the Monte Carlo Opera Orchestra coupled with Caplet and Debussy. My cassette copy languishes unloved and unlistened to somewhere in the attic so I have not been able to make a direct comparison but memory tells me it had nothing of the colour or fluency of the current version. In a not wholly relevant but interesting diversion it is interesting to see how that other great Poe-acolyte Josef Holbrooke treated similarly nightmarish narratives at almost exactly the same time (1903/4) – I have to say I prefer Schmitt who manages to reign in the temptation to go fully over the top. The problem that Schmitt does have in this work is that it is far stronger on atmosphere and orchestration than melodic memorability. It is certainly worth hearing but is not the work to convince one that Schmitt is a great composer.

More convincing on that front is the final work which seems to tap yet another abiding French fascination – this time with what I might term the ‘militant psalm’. The orchestra is joined by their own – very fine – choir and soprano soloist Susan Bullock. The immediate impression of the singing is of great discipline and care over the balancing of the voices. The men’s voices are strong and extremely well focused whilst the sopranos have no apparent difficulties at all with Schmitt’s high-lying tessitura. The chorus to orchestra balance is very good with soloist Bullock set believably in front. For my personal taste I find her voice a fraction too fruity for this type of music. The booklet provides full texts in the original French as well as English and German translations but the choir sing with such excellent diction that it is easy to follow the text by ear alone.

After all of the superlatives above it might seem strange not to give the disc an unqualified recommendation which indeed I probably would have done right up to the point I made a comparison with another version in my collection. This is the 1990 Erato recording from Marek Janowski and the Choir and Orchestra of Radio France. The two main works are here but by omitting Le Palais hanté it makes for a disc of relatively short measure. Add to that that the current disc is better played and engineered and you will wonder why I hesitate. It is simply because somehow when making the direct comparison the new disc has a fraction of controlled calculation the older disc doesn’t. In its rather wild and woolly way the ecstasy – be it of a lascivious Salome or of a religious fervour comes across better. For example, in the psalm setting Schmitt repeats the lines “frappez les mains”. The French chorus, strained by the tessitura and not nearly as tight an ensemble do sound as though they are caught up in some revelatory moment. The São Paulo chorus in contrast sound a tad too drilled - perhaps worth noting too Janowski is a good two minutes quicker than Tortelier overall which does convert into extra urgency of expression. Likewise in the ballet suite, the final conflagration and destruction of the palace strains the French players and engineering but in doing so the mental picture they create is excitingly vivid, conversely the Brazilian players are able to take it all in their stride – objective reportage rather than breathless eye-witness. But this is really a matter of tiny degree and no-one buying this new disc would be anything but thrilled particularly if you have a sound-system up to the task. One last thought – again in direct comparison I think Janowski is slightly more skilful at handling the transitions between sections in both main works. This is less of an issue in the suite which are linked dances but in the Psalm his more fluent approach allows the work to flow as an organic whole. And just to add to your purchasing conundrum – the Janowski Erato disc has been re-released on the Warner Apex label at a tempting bargain price of under £5.00 as opposed to the Chandos full price. Well nobody ever said collecting was straightforward!

I’m none the wiser as to whether Schmitt is a great composer or not – my listening notes are dotted with references to other works but then I realized that often the Schmitt pre-dates them so in effect he was very much a composer of his time. The fact that he rarely seems to get to a “volume 2” is emphasized by the fact that there is a recent (2007) Hyperion disc I have not heard which again duplicates the two main works as well as HDTT’s revival of the classic EMI Martinon recordings. These are also relatively early pieces – Schmitt lived through to 1958 so I do hope that this same team return to his later catalogue. In any event, this is as auspicious and impressive a debut for this new performing team as I hoped it would be – any new disc will be eagerly awaited.

-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

Recent News Tasmin Little has scooped the Critics' Award at the 2011 Classic Brit Awards, held at the Royal Albert Hall, London on 12 May, for her recording of Elgar's Violin Concerto with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis Recent reviews The CD received a string of superlative reviews on its initial release: 'Little tantalises with a winning combination of heartfelt passion and engaging simplicity that radiates beguiling warmth.' Julian Haylock, Classic FM ***** 'For sheer beauty of tone and expressive nostalgia, Tasmin Little and Sir Andrew Davis out-Elgar their rivals.' Michael Kennedy, The Sunday Telegraph 'Tasmin Little's [recording] goes right to the top of the class.' David Mellor, The Mail on Sunday Edward Greenfield in Gramophone ('Editor's Choice') described Tasmin Little's playing as masterly'. The long-awaited and much anticipated recording by Tasmin Little of Elgar's Violin Concerto will be released this November, 100 years after the work's first performance. In concert Tasmin Little is closely associated with this concerto, having celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sir Edward Elgar with performances of it on a major tour to Southeast Asia and Australia in 2007; she has also performed the concerto extensively in London: at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, and with the Philharmonia Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall. What makes this recording especially interesting is that she has included the cadenza used in the work's first recording, made in 1916 with Marie Hall. For that occasion, Elgar, amongst other things, added harps to counter the sonic limitations of the acoustic recording process. For those used to hearing the standard version, also included, the result makes for fascinating listening, and the recording will prove a valuable addition to the Elgar discography. The 1916 version of the cadenza has been tracked separately. Tasmin Little: 'I have waited a long time to record the Elgar Concerto, a work that I have been playing for twenty years and one which is so close to my heart. In the inspirational Andrew Davis and the RSNO's commitment, I found exactly the right partnership for this monumental work.' The Violin Concerto is complemented by another piece for violin and orchestra, the charming Interlude from The Crown of India, as well as the rarely recorded but imposing Polonia, an inventive and colourful work incorporating much Polish melodic material. This was commissioned by the Polish conductor Emil Ml~ynarski in 1915 and dedicated to Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the pianist composer and, later, Prime Minister of Poland. Since coming to prominence as a finalist in the string section of the 1982 BBC Young Musician of the Year competition, Tasmin Little has enjoyed an international career, making more than twenty recordings. Highly imaginative in her approach to classical music, she received the 2008 Classic FM / Gramophone Award for Audience Innovation in London for the project 'The Naked Violin'. Whilst she has made superb recordings of the great popular violin concertos, including those by Bruch, Brahms, and Sibelius, she has made a speciality of recording and performing less familiar repertoire, especially neglected British works. On Chandos, she has released a recording of Finzi's Violin Concerto to tremendous critical acclaim (CHAN 9888). Sir Andrew Davis is famous for his performances of British music in general, and of the music of Elgar in particular. Last year he had great success with the premiere recording of Elgar's The Crown of India on Chandos (CHAN 10570(2)). Chandos also has a long association with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Over the last thirty years the label, in partnership with the RSNO, has produced a string of award winning CDs, notable among much else for their sound quality. This new CD, recorded in five-channel surround sound, continues that tradition.

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Krzysztof Penderecki's symphonies have a special place in the composer's legacy. In celebration of the composer's 80th birthday, DUX Recordings presents, for the first time in a box set, the symphonies as conducted by the Maestro himself, performed in collaboration with the Sinfonia luventus. These works have never been recorded in a series before under the artistic direction of the composer. He himself has said the DUX Recordings represent the best recordings of these works, making the series even more special. Founded in 2007, the Sinfonia luventus orchestra consists of the most talented graduates and students of music academies who have not attained 30 years of age. The orchestra has performed on many concert stages and at numerous festivals in Poland and abroad: in Austria, China, France, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Italy.

MENDELSSOHN Paulus • Richard Hickox, cond; Susan Gritton (sop); Jean Rigby (mez); Barry Banks (ten); Peter Coleman-Wright (bs); BBC Natl O & Ch, Wales • CHANDOS 10516 (2 CDs: 115:13 Text and Translation)


This is a rerun from 2001 on Chandos’ “Classics” series. James Miller reviewed it in Fanfare 25:1. I will refer readers to his review for more of the details of this production. Miller seems to prefer the Masur reading, not available then but reproduced now as an arkivmusic.com CD. Masur certainly deserves respect, and his cast is nothing to sneeze at, but I have come to prefer the Rilling recording on Hänssler to just about any other. His soloists, while less stellar than Masur’s, are every bit their equal, and Rilling gives us a highly charged, gorgeously sung performance of just about unequalled beauty.


Paulus only has about 10 readings currently available, and has been suffering from the equivalent of professional swine flu for many years—not many want to touch it. Soloists are certainly hard to come by, as the parts are just not that demanding. But—this oratorio is guaranteed a bright future as it remains, after Messiah , perhaps the most popular oratorio among American church goers and oratorio societies. The very lack of demanding solo parts makes it attractive to local ensembles, and the choral work is adventurous, yet attainable by lesser ensembles. Mendelssohn’s part-writing is easy to follow and logical to rehearse and teach, and he manages to get a consistently whopping sound out of his chorus while keeping well within the confines of the eminently doable.


Miller says about this Hickox rendition, “I can certainly commend it to your attention as a worthy performance, probably at least as good as the competition.” I think this sums up the recording very well. In a detailed comparison with the Rilling, Hickox is actually about nine minutes faster in each part, though Rilling sounds quicker because of a tighter control over the ensemble and a tauter rhythmic approach. He also is more devotional, perhaps too devotional in some instances, while the Chandos recording delights in the early-Wagnerian overtones found in some of the brassier moments. The more I hear the Chandos, the more I like it, and I am finding the differences between Rilling and Hickox interesting enough to appreciate both equally, and it is difficult to choose one above the other.


Okay—if forced—I would still go for Rilling, but every collection deserves two recordings of Paulus , so I can rest content. As for Masur, he is still worth hearing, and many will prefer him, but not by much. Though there are not many recordings of this early oratorio, these three alleviate any need for concern.


Incidentally, in James Miller’s review he states: “‘Wie lieblich sind die Boten die den Frieden verkündigen’ is usually translated as ‘How beautiful are the messengers that bring the gospel of peace.’ In the Masur (Philips) libretto (and some other places) it is rendered, ‘How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace,’ which is, in fact, the way the verse goes in the King James version of the Bible (Romans X:15). But ‘Boten’ means ‘messengers’ in German. Did the King James translators get the original text wrong or did Martin Luther or other German translators get it wrong?” In the Chandos issue, “messengers” is given in the translation. After nine years, I think I can help—Luther got it wrong. The word pódeV (“feet”) appears not only in Romans 10, but also in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament in Isaiah and the book of Nahum, the books from which Paul took his quote. I can’t vouch for the Hebrew, but Paul would have taken his quote from a Septuagint source (the Greek translation of the Old Testament).


FANFARE: Steven E. Ritter

Strangely compelling.

You would expect Krzysztof Penderecki to draw the best out of his musicians in his own work, especially after an impressive track record in this field in the past. I listened to the re-release of his recordings for EMI from the 1970s, and these are still impressive even when compared with this new digital recording.

Taking the Capriccio, the earlier recording is a tad more compact at 11:38, but easily equals the new recording in terms of drama. The soloist is set closer with the new recording, so that the balance is less natural in terms of what you might experience in the concert hall, but in all other respects this new recording is an improvement. The detail in terms of instrumentation comes through far more clearly – percussion of course, but all of those other sliding and quivering exotic sounds from all quarters, like the bowed saw for instance, are revealed in all their glory. I’ll still listen to the earlier recording for its chilling atmosphere, but recommend the new one for sheer clarity.

De Natura Sonoris No.2 is an early 1970s chiller classic, continuing and developing some of the textures in Capriccio in a purely orchestral context. Again comparing the EMI recording, made when the piece was brand new, this new Dux version has more immediacy and clarity, but more importantly shows up some of the ways in which Penderecki’s view on the work has changed over the years. There are some dynamic differences in the balance here and there, and those dry, choking clusters in the strings in the beginning are taken more slowly and with less of a sense of murderous drama. Strangely, even though the new recording is a good two minutes shorter than the old one, the new version seems slower: listening to the cacophonous brass and strings beyond four minutes into the piece, there is a greater sense of drive and urgency in the old EMI version. Where Penderecki saves time in the new recording is by compressing the longer stretches of static atmosphere earlier in the work, which are less of a novelty these days. Either way, the old analogue tape coped badly with those fireman’s bells and the sheer weight of noise from the massed brass and percussion in this work, making this new recording a welcome alternative. The sliding brass beyond 5:00, with its conversational interruptions, is a definite goose-bump moment, and the final held note under that scraped percussion is like a small chorus of drowned angels.

Penderecki’s more recent style, in any case since the ultra-romanticism of the early 1980s, has in some way proved even more controversial than his earlier avant-gardism, and the Piano Concerto does sit rather strangely with its ghostly forebears on this disc. The work was written after a great deal of procrastination by the composer, who “refrained from writing a piano concerto for many years because I was afraid [of the] many excellent concertos written in the 20th century.” The final push came from a commission from New York, with Emanuel Ax and the Philadelphia Orchestra in mind as performers. Started in June 2001, the work was originally to have followed the Capriccio design, but after the terrorist attacks of September 2001 the light-hearted nature of such a title seemed inappropriate. The work took on a more serious character, and the non-religious title ‘resurrection’, which refers to mankind’s universal desire for renewal and re-birth after disaster and crisis.

The style of the work is linked to Penderecki’s 1996 seventh Symphony, The Seven Gates of Jerusalem, but also integrates the grand stylistic gestures of Mahler and some of the romanticism of the great piano composers such as Rachmaninov. At over 30 minutes in duration it certainly has a symphonic scale, and with no intermission between any of the sections the uninterrupted musical narrative is a ride of considerable intensity. If I have any problem with this work – and I do consider it a substantial masterpiece – it is the difficulty one has in establishing an individual character to either the source, the composer, or the intended message – the expressive aim. I don’t claim that all music should have immediate clarity in either of these aspects, but I doubt if I have any colleagues even in the musical fraternity who would be able to put their finger on what is going on here. I don’t mean this in a technical sense – the work is about as difficult to listen to as Shostakovich’s 1st Symphony; but in terms of where, what, why, huh?

The booklet notes may have something of an answer to give. ‘The piano part is treated in a very original way in as much as… it explores first and foremost the piano’s percussive qualities.’ Yes, but not ‘in contrast to the major works of the piano literature’ as far as the 20th century goes: composers since Bartók have been doing little else. In any case, there is plenty of running up and down the keyboard in fairly standard romantic style, so I don’t feel any great claims can be made for originality in the solo part. More telling is that ‘the sound idiom employed by the composer harks back to the great symphonic tradition of the turn on the 19th century’. This push-me-pull-you treatment results in something akin to Saint-Saëns and Busoni fighting under a duvet, with the eclectic spirit of John Adams and the hothouse mania of Scriabin acting as referees. One of the central elements in the piece is a chorale, whose introduction at 7:10 is sheer White-Christmas Hollywood. The whole thing quasi-concludes with a final massive statement of this main chorale ‘theme’ at 28:17, with recorded bells kicking in at 29:23 which are as corny as hell. The only thing we miss at this point is a few blasts from a cannon, and the spirit of Tchaikovsky might be appeased as well: the title ‘resurrection’ might as well stand for a ‘revival’ of this way of expressing triumph of the human spirit over destructive forces.

Despite all this the Piano Concerto is strangely compelling – one of those works you know you’ll be playing again, if only to remind yourself of the strange conundrums it proposes – was it really like that? Yes, it really is, and one has to stand in awe of the way in which Penderecki rather audaciously and uniquely creates a new work out of such a gallimaufry of antique recipes. I do however wonder quite what place it will ultimately take in the canon of 21st century musical art.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

Job receives a performance of striking composure, luster, and palpable dedication. Not only do the Bergen Philharmonic respond with notable poise and eagerness (solo contributions are of the highest quality throughout), Davis conducts with unobtrusive authority as well as a sure hand on the structural tiller, uncovering a wealth of harmonic and textural detail along the way. The spectacular engineering handles everything with aplomb.

There's heaps to priase, too, in Davis's scrupulously observant and nobly unforced conception of the Ninth Symphony - and, once again what admirably vital and shapely playing he draws from the orchestra. This mightily impressive Ninth deserves a place at the top table alongside the 1969 Boult, Handley, and Haitink.

– Gramophone