Classical Music

Sir Colin Davis’ sensitivity is effortlessly mirrored by Larrocha with her enviable ease, her avoidance of all artifice or attention-seeking dalliance. Few other pianists are more attuned to Mozart’s mix of pain and radiance.

Alicia de Larrocha’s and Sir Colin Davis’s Mozart concerto cycle, while rarely less than distinguished, grows in stature with each new issue. Indeed, so musicianly and distilled are both these performances that the casual listener is in danger of taking them for granted, mistaking their classic sobriety for monotony and their devotion for a monochrome quality.

Sir Colin’s unforced way with the opening tutti of K595, his awareness of “all passion spent” is haunting but unobtrusive. Such sensitivity is effortlessly mirrored by Larrocha with her enviable ease, her avoidance of all artifice or attention-seeking dalliance. Few other pianists are more attuned to Mozart’s mix of pain and radiance, of the subtle major-minor shifts commencing at 6'34'' and, throughout, her economy ensures that every passing mood is unmistakably yet unobtrusively registered. Again, tempos are ideal whether in K595’s gently paced final Allegro (less idiosyncratically slow or autumnal than from Kempff on DG) or in the central Allegretto of K459. Even in the finale’s opera buffa high-jinks she captures the music’s undertow, a poise and equanimity like “the still point of the turning world”.

Balance and sound (grainy but apt) are exemplary, and this issue is graced with a fine portrait of the pianist by Christian Steiner.'

-- Bryce Morrison, Gramophone [12/1997]

Includes sonata(s) for cello and basso continuo by Antonio Vivaldi. Soloists: Anner Bylsma, Jacques Ogg, Hidemi Suzuki.

Classical Music

Includes prayer(s) by Anonymous. Ensemble: Choir of The Monks of Montserrat Abbey.

The Cuban-American virtuoso Horacio Gutiérrez is a legendary figure in the piano world. After taking the Silver Medal at the 1970 Tchaikovsky International Competition, Gutiérrez embarked on an international touring career that saw performances with nearly all of the world's great orchestras and conductors including Maazel, Rostropovich, Masur, Levine, Rozhdestvensky, Ormandy, Gergiev, Ozawa, Previn, Leinsdorf, Tennstedt, Ashkenazy, Barenboim and numerous others. Gutiérrez has recorded very infrequently, and these new recordings reveal a great poet-virtuoso at the height of his musical powers.

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

This is a rather rare and special disc. Rare, because as far as I can tell this is the first recording in the original English language of this late Hindemith opera and special because it is very good.

Hindemith conducted the first English performance of the opera at the Juilliard School in New York just nine months before his death in December 1963. For the libretto he persuaded Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) to collaborate with him in adapting his own one-act play of the same name that he had written thirty years previously. Wilder remains a cornerstone of the American literary and theatrical establishment but was notoriously unwilling to allow his works to be used for alternative theatrical or musical use. Hence although The Matchmaker did make it to the stage as Jerry Herman's Hello Dolly, he refused permission for his most famous works; Our Town and The Skin of our Teeth. The latter was mooted as a musical by Bernstein - which the author accepted - but when that venture collapsed he rejected Bernstein's further approach to make it an opera. According to the liner written by Tappan Wilder - Wilder's nephew and literary executor - he was extremely well versed in music in general and opera in particular as well as many languages. Skills, one imagines, that must help the collaborative process between composer and librettist a lot.

The dramatic conceit behind this highly compressed work is essentially a simple one. The drama is presented in a single fluid sequence of Christmas dinners in one household over a period of ninety years. There is no significance with it being Christmas except that it is a day that brings families together so the audience witnesses the succeeding generations in the same setting. Apparently Orson Welles credited the original play as the inspiration behind the famous 'breakfast-montage' sequence in Citizen Kane where the audience witnesses the changing/decaying relationship between Kane and his first wife. Hindemith writes in a similarly fluid style - there is little division between scenes. He uses recurring motifs to signify the passing years. Wilder's libretto revisits moments of perfunctory conversation that will be familiar to every family; "how many years have we lived here?", "you were missed at church today", "I remember when ..." With such conversational text it comes as no surprise that Hindemith writes in an arioso/recitative style - this reminded me in technique if not style of that used by Vaughan Williams in his equally compact and dramatically potent Riders to the Sea. There are few if any arias or indeed ensembles. That being said a highlight of the score is a dramatically moving and technically brilliant sextet where Sam, one of the central family's sons is on leave from the army. He tells his family to act exactly as normal so he has memories to treasure and over their prattling inconsequential small talk he sings a touching counter-melody chorale-like song; "I will hold this tight! I shall remember you!"

To give some sense of the dramatic compression at work: Sam exits; "and so good-bye", the next line of the text laments his death in the war "He was only a boy, a mere boy ... What can we do ... only time can help " and the line following that has moved the plot forward by some years and introduces another character on another Christmas day. Memory, memorial and how we live through the actions and memories of our relatives past and future lie at the heart of this work. The house is the unchanging focal point - although the closing line of the work is "And they're building a new house" but it is the lives of the inhabitants of the house that count.

Not because the text is convoluted or opaque this is an opera that requires considerable concentration if you are not quite literally to lose the plot. Fortunately the entire libretto - in English and Hindemith's own German translation - is included. Layers of potential confusion are added by the fact that - as with many families - certain names are passed down hence we have two Lucias and two Rodericks. Even more confusion comes from the fact that the same singer sings both Lucias and another sings two different roles. Seen live, this might be clear through transitions of costume or setting - with only the ear to guide — blink (in an auditory sense) and you will have dropped a decade. My sole observation with this as a piece of theatre is, I wonder if the compression prevents the audience becoming engaged with any individual character - they simply do not inhabit the stage long enough. That being said, Wilder's drawing of character is so searching and well-observed that I think most of us would recognise personality types and scenarios from our own experience that give weight and resonance to these precisely-drawn sketches.

Hindemith makes no attempt to place the music in time or place. Just the opposite in fact - his chamber orchestra includes a rather anachronistic harpsichord. This was surely the right decision - with such an express journey over the best part of a century it would end up a patch-work of pastiche. Neither does he make any particular significance of it being Christmas except for the work's brief Prelude//Introduction which is a rather curdled and harmonically dense take on "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" - which is about as un-merry as it is possible to imagine. In the essay accompanying the disc by Joel Haney he describes the work as one "which ponders the experience of time as a condition of human possibility and limitation -'the bright and the dark' - through the rise and decline of an American bourgeois family". The brilliance of both authors lies in the way they tie this sense of continuity across time - Hindemith's is a slightly subtler skill because he uses fragments of melody and motif which burrow into the subconscious so by the second or third listen the ear begins to pick up on the connections the music is making with recurring characters situations or text. Hence, this is the work of a master-craftsman. As so often, I find the accusation of Hindemith being a dry or dusty composer wholly without justification. No, he does not write big arching overtly emotional melodies. Rather he points to subtler, more 'real' scenarios which have resonance and truth for the engaged audience member.

So to this performance; Leon Botstein and his American Symphony Orchestra clearly thrive on the discovery and performance of little-known and under-appreciated works. In the past with some of the grander-scale and overtly Romantic works I have found Botstein's approach to be a degree clinical and unwilling to unbutton. Here the precision and measured emotion of Hindemith's score seems to chime perfectly with his aesthetic. This is a recording of a single live performance which given the ensemble complexities and unfamiliarity of the piece is remarkably good. There is no audible audience noise - my only sorrow is that the hall ambience is cut off very quickly at the end of the work - to preclude applause one supposes. The orchestra play very well - the engineering places the instruments quite closely behind the voices which occasionally obscures the text. All of the singers are of a very high standard and fortunately most of the text is sung with commendable clarity. Of particular brilliance is the beautifully light and clear singing of Kathryn Guthrie as Leonora. Indeed the entire cast are excellent both in ensemble and individually. None make any attempt to 'age' their voices with their characters - something perhaps an actor in the original theatrical version might.

Bridge present this single CD in a double CD case - presumably to allow for the thicker than usual liner/libretto. As well as the text the liner includes the usual performer biographies as well as two useful essays about the work. The disc runs for less than fifty minutes but so concentrated and complete in itself is the work that a filler would seem inappropriate and unnecessary. A fascinating and rather moving work. It reveals Hindemith and Wilder as masters of the slow-burn potent theatrical experience which lingers in the memory for the power of its insight into the human condition.

-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

FLUTE & HARP CONCERTO

In 1990 John Cage met sho player Mayumi Miyata, who requested he write a piece for the ancient Japanese mouth organ. Cage was deeply impressed by the sound of this instrument and in 1991 he wrote Two3 for sho and five water-filled conch shells - one of the so-called "Number Pieces" Cage worked on during the last years of his life. Although the sound of the piece's structure remains a mystery to rational thinking, it is directly accessible to sensory awareness - especially in the interpretation here played by accordion player Stefan Hussong and sheng virtuoso Wu Wei. Two3 for sho (a Japanese free reed musical instrument) and five water-filled conch shells (1991)

This is the second of three volumes of Brahms's choral works, performed by the Danish National Choir/DR with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under its distinguished Principal Conductor, Gerd Albrecht. Some of the works on this CD, especially the 'Ave Maria' and 'Triumphlied', are comparatively rarely heard, making this disc an important addition to the catalogue. Recorded in: Danish Radio Concert Hall, Copenhagen 8 & 9 November 2001 (Schicksalslied, Nänie) and 25-27 August 2003 (Triumphlied, Ave Maria) Producer(s) Chris Hazell Ivar Munk Sound Engineer(s) Jørn Jacobsen

V68: IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

MOSES UND ARON, SYMPHONY NO. 2

Classical Music

Recorded in: Studio 7, New Broadcasting House, Manchester 30 & 31 October 2001 Producer(s) Brian Pidgeon (Executive) Ralph Couzens Mike George

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

DEBUSSY: PRELUDES FOR PIANO BO

Carus's complete recording with Frieder Bernius and the Kammerchor Stuttgart of Felix Mendelssohn's sacred choral works represents a magnificent act of interpretation and editing. A better recording can hardly be imagined. This edition, which has won numerous prizes and has now been released as a box at a reasonable price, should form part of every CD collection.

This recording is now available as RCA Victrola 60135-2-RV.

SCHUBERT: STRING QUARTETS D 81

Classical Music

Classical Music

The average birthdate of these eight composers is 1900, and the youngest of them, Oscar Peterson, is sixty-seven. So this is a nostalgic look at the music of black composers; there is no Anthony Davis here. William Grant Still's music has flowed into the cracks of our national musical heritage; I call a composer great who has created a single masterpiece, and Still's “A Black Pierrot“ from his Songs of Separation is as haunting a song as Schubert or Wolf ever composed. Three Visions are evocative miniature tone poems and the Seven Traceries are impressionist sound paintings.

Howard Swanson's The Cuckoo is a light, gay scherzo and trio, with the bird cuckooing away in one hand while the other flies all over the keyboard. Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943) studied with Nadia Boulanger, earned degrees from Oberlin and Eastman, conducted choral societies, performed before presidents, and was awarded honorary doctorates from Harvard and Oberlin. His In the Bottoms depicts “black man's slave camps at the river's edge.“ The five pieces go from somber contemplation to a gay dance. Ulysses Kay's three Inventions are brief, formal pieces. John Wesley Work, Jr., studied at Columbia and Yale and became chairman of the music department at Fisk University. His Big Bunch of Roses starts with a Negro folk tune and develops in a colorful and relaxed way. Oscar Peterson's The Gentle Waltz is languorous and jazzy and sweet, Duke Ellington's Come Sunday is a soft, flowing hymn with a touch of the blues; both pieces are played in arrangements by jazz pianist Denny McErlain.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was another master composer; every work of his I have heard is at least worthy, often inspired. His suite of three waltzes—Allegro molto, Andante, Allegro assai— stands out even among all this lovely music. It has warmth, individuality, melodic charm, and a sturdy, upright dignity without a hint of pomposity that is his own special character. Monica Gaylord studied at Juilliard and Eastman and has played throughout the United States and Canada. She has a beautiful touch for these winning works, and when it comes to Coleridge-Taylor's heroic final coda, she peals forth bronze thunder; if this were a live recital, it would bring down the house. The pianist also writes the notes, in which she shows herself to be a knowledgeable historian and a fine writer. A fine recording rounds out the assets of this lovely disc.

-- James H. North, FANFARE [3/1993]

-------

This winsome collection of 20th-century music was warmly welcomed by James H. North on its original release in 1992 (Fanfare 16:4), and I can only second his endorsement. He called it "nostalgic," and I guess he's right—although to my mind, that's not so much because of the age of the composers (as he pointed out, their "average birthdate" is 1900), but rather because they all aim (at least, in the works here) for a soft-edged accessibility that went increasingly out of fashion as the century wore on. Indeed, even Dett's musical evocation of slave camps abstains from brutality. Fortunately, Monica Gaylord has the subtlety of touch this predominantly gentle recital requires. While she's perfectly capable of ringing out the splashy final numbers of the Coleridge-Taylor and Dett sets, she's at her most impressive extracting the delicate impressionistic colors from Still's Traceries or coaxing out the rhythms of Ellington's meditative Come Sunday. Fine sound and erudite notes by the pianist only add to the attractions. A first-rate reissue.

-- Peter J. Rabinowitz, FANFARE [3/1999]

• The Hannover Girl’s Choir under the direction of Gudrun Schröpresents three masses for high voices. The two masses by Johann Michael Haydn (1737–1806) were written on the occasion of Holy Innocents’ Day. The CD is rounded out by the world premiere recording of the Missa in f Minor women’s choir by Hans Koessler (1853–1926), a composer who belonged stylistically to the “Rheinberger School”.

Classical Music