Joachim Raff’s symphonies have a reputation as being diffuse, bloated, and just not terribly interesting. On the basis of some of his programmatic works in the form, perhaps this is true, at least some of the time, but his Second is a lively, compact, formally shapely and melodically rich work that does not deserve its neglect. Maybe the first movement, which is based on a triadic theme not terribly susceptible to development, lacks drama, but it certainly moves well, as does the entire symphony for that matter. The finale in particular maintains its momentum from start to finish, unlike so many other romantic symphonies. At only 33 minutes (in this performance), you can’t say that the piece outstays its welcome. Järvi typically does not see profundity where none exists, but leads the orchestra in a joyful romp through the piece that proves consistently entertaining.

The four Shakespeare preludes also prove to be lots of fun. All are relatively short but well-orchestrated and atmospheric. Perhaps Romeo and Juliet is the tamest–it’s only nine minutes long and it’s not Tchaikovsky, but Othello is punchy and tense (and even shorter); The Tempest opens with an effective storm and features music that challenges you to figure out who the characters are that Raff illustrates; and Macbeth, possibly the best of all, spends a lot of time focused on the witches and, seemingly, the final battle. It’s great to have this music recorded, and terrifying to realize that the symphony is Raff’s Op. 140 and the preludes his WoO 49-52. My but that man could churn it out, couldn’t he? Fine playing and excellent sonics round out a release that deserves your attention.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Grammont Portrait: William Blank

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

This fourth album from Neeme Jarvi and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande explores the music of Jacques Ibert. Although Ibert’s work is starkly contrasting from piece to piece, all of his compositions show his deftness with their strong melodic lines and vigorous ostinato patterns. These recordings were taken in Geneva’s Victoria Hall, and the outstanding acoustics are easily heard on this recording.

Review:

Järvi gives us a darker Divertissement than usual. The humor is mordant rather than breezy, the tone at times acerbic. But the shimmering Nocturne, with its poised piano solo, transports us into a sensual world more fully explored in Escales…, and the latter gets one of its finest performances on disc, superbly nuanced, and quite exquisitely played.

It’s the rest of the CD, though, that makes it special. The Suite symphonique, ‘Paris’ swerves garishly between the mechanism of Pacific 231 and the classiest of foxtrots and waltzes. The sad, haunting Sarabande pour Dulcinée comes from the soundtrack for George Pabst’s 1933 film Don Quichotte. Ibert was also a master of the pièce d’occasion, and Järvi includes the riotous Bacchanale and the grandiose Ouverture de fête.

Ibert emerges from it all as a fine composer, whose unity lies in his almost impudent diversity, and who is often far from frivolous as some have maintained. And the disc allows Järvi to show off his Swiss orchestra to perfection. Very fine.

– Gramophone

Järvi encourages the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande to give of their very best and, abetted by excellently judged SACD sound, the results are biting, driving, refined and brilliantly exciting. A scintillating and often nightmarish ride.

– Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

A year on from the opener, this is a very generously filled second volume of Chandos's promising Raff symphony cycle. There are two previous recordings of the composer's eleven highly idiomatic, imaginative symphonies, long unjustly neglected by programmers and critics alike. The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under Hans Stadlmair, recently released by Tudor in handy boxed set form (review, with further discographical information) is probably the critics' favourite, although it comes neither cheap nor without flaws. The forerunner was an early-Nineties series on Marco Polo with different orchestras, mainly from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, all but one under Urs Schneider: these are currently available from Naxos as mp3 downloads only (9.40248). In 2001 Naxos had the good idea of reissuing the Marco Polo recordings as physical discs under their own brand, but only two appeared (8.555411, 8.555491) and then the label either had a change of heart, or forgot.

Raff's programmatic 'Lenore' Symphony has three further modern recordings. One comes from a local rival to Järvi's ensemble, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, conducted by Nicholas Carthy. A satisfactory, rather than compelling recording, it was brought out by Italian label Dynamic (CDS 283) well over a decade ago, and there has been no sign of any kind of follow-up since. Another version is Yondani Butt's with the Philharmonia Orchestra on ASV (DCA 1000), one performance in a long line by this determinedly uncontroversial conductor of almost clinical neutrality.

Finally there is Matthias Bamert and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra on Koch Schwann, re-released as 367932, but dogged by poor sound. As for Chandos, despite the fact its audio quality was not as good as the SACD/24-bit/96kHz tags – abetted by one or two prominent reviews – implied, the first release immediately became the new standard for the Second Symphony. This is above all for the fact that Järvi is such a fine all-round conductor and the Suisse Romande a pedigree orchestra with a definite aptitude for Raff-era music. Back at the same Swiss location, that slight lossy edge to the audio is still there on this latest disc, yet the Chandos sound is still much superior to all its predecessors', and despite the imperfections constitutes a further plus-point for Järvi's cycle.

On the other hand, no further incentive should be required when the offering is one of Raff's most memorable works, the tune-packed, masterfully orchestrated Fifth Symphony. He chooses to focus – and then expatiate - on the nervous drama of Gottfried Bürger's famous but second-rate poem 'Lenore', rather than on its cold-blooded religious mania. The story is similar to Dvo?ák's later cantata Svatební Košile, known in English as The Spectre's Bride, which was based on a similar-themed ballad by Karol Jaromír Erben. This is doubly pertinent: Raff shares Dvo?ák's intuitive feel for lyrical drama. In Bürger, the eponymous Lenore is duped and then effectively buried alive for thinking herself in a state of despair neglected by God, but Raff's final-movement 'ride into hell' is jauntily mesmeric and ends with an uplifting chorale – moving, but certainly diverging from the implications of Bürger's chilling poem.

It is worth noting here that Järvi's account is a full ten minutes faster than Stadlmair, Carthy and Schneider. This is interesting enough in itself, but these three were already seven or eight minutes quicker than Bernard Herrmann's pioneering recording with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1970 — (most recently available on Unicorn UKCD 2031, but originally funded by Herrmann himself. Järvi is taking Raff at his word with his astonishingly fast metronome markings, but those who have had their opinions as to how this work should sound coloured by more leisurely approaches will likely need time to get used to these tempos, and those many long in thrall to Herrmann's account may possibly never accept them. The third movement Marsch-Tempo in particular will raise many eyebrows: Raff asks for, and Järvi gives – where no one else seemingly dares - 160 beats per minute, a good 50% more than what would normally be expected from a march. Yet odd as it initially sounds, the speed is still well within the bounds of a military double march.

Järvi's programme is amplified by a selection of overtures from Raff's operas, plus one of his own transcriptions – his only such, in fact - the 'Abends' Rhapsody. One or two of these are take-them-or-leave-them works by comparison with the symphony, though their Rossini-meets-Beethoven idiom is undeniably attractive, and their realisation here by the ever-dependable Swiss Romandes elegantly winning. Best of the four extras is the most substantial, the 'King Alfred' overture. Scored for large orchestra, it is a dramatic tone poem in all but name. The notes describe it as "grandiose in design, comparable in sweep and scope to Wagner's recent overture to Tannhäuser". The Rhapsody itself is a lovely, moodily crepuscular work, over all too quickly.

As for the CD booklet, Chandos continue apace with their shrinking-font policy, their texts tiny islands of ink in blank paper seas, legibility further hampered by the greyish ink. Still, the notes themselves are usually excellent, as indeed those here by Avrohom Leichtling are - detailed, informative, enthusiastic, trilingual. Bürger's poem might usefully have been included, if only to make use of some of that blank space.

– Byzantion, MusicWeb International

The English translation excellently acted gives this fiery Peer new appeal.

Based on concerts the Suisse Romande Orchestra gave in Geneva and Lausanne, Guillaume Tourniaire's performance of the Benestad/Andersen critical edition of the score (essentially the 26 numbers given at the play's 1876 premiere) first appeared in 2005 (A/05). In my Gramophone Collection piece on Peer Gynt in November of that year I would have hailed it unreservedly as the best complete version of Grieg's theatre music had the dialogue and melodramas not been spoken in French. Now those spoken passages have been rendered into English, in a translation by Stephen Taylor which resonates without either period whimsy or banal updating.

The linking narrations and filleting of the play by Main Perroux have been made with sharp knowledge of the Ibsen drama and of what works in concert and on disc. The national characteristics of the actors intriguingly alter the feel of the piece. While Lambert Wilson and his French colleagues are more distanced, Brechtian and mysterious, the British trio immediately embrace a warmer, more comic naturalism. Alex Jennings's voice grows from rough Ulster into an assumed English RP as Peer travels the world; Derek Jacobi is a cunning mix of spooky and funny as the Boyg, here called the Great Obstacle, and no less effective in 10 other parts; Haydn Gwynne hops with enjoyable confidence across the age and sanity barriers from Peer's mother to his various girl friends.

Tourniaire has as much of an eye on the drama as the exceptional discs of excerpts under Beecham (EMI) and Masur (Philips). He has intuited and delivered a true Grieg style from his orchestra, alert, light, swift but not afraid to punch home the ironies (of the Trolls' various numbers) and the intentionally noisy stage effect climaxes (like the Act 5 shipwreck music). The two big melodramas ("Peer and the Obstacle" and "Night Scene") — perhaps the most compelling reasons for getting to know the complete score — find Grieg at his most progressive and inventive and Tourniaire paces them beautifully. Even his rits and rails in the tricky little vocal numbers of Peer's African sojourn in Act 4 come off to a tee.

With English-speaking listeners now as well catered for as French ones, Aeon should seriously consider a Norwegian version, even retaining Perroux's taut narrative material. The Ole Kristian Ruud/Bergen BIS Norwegian set (A105) is authentically self-recommending but it lacks the special fire and imagination of Tourniaire's.

-- Mike Ashman, Gramophone [3/2007]

Premier si�cle; One Century of Music celebrates the centenary of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. The boxset contains a collection of rare radio recordings that have never been released before, spanning French, German, Russian and twentieth-century repertoire. A unique asset of Premier si�cle is the 1943 recording of the musical legend Les Armaillis (1906) by Swiss composer Gustave Doret. The album showcases the rich history and musical development of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and contain performances by all it's musical directors, from founding father Ernest Ansermet until current musical director Jonathan Nott, including all their intermediate colleagues: Paul Kletzki, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Horst Stein, Armin Jordan, Fabio Luisi, Pinchas Steinberg, Marek Janowski and Neeme J�rvi. The release comes with a voluminous, full-color booklet with texts on the orchestra's history and the repertoire presented in English, French and German as well as unique photos and archival materials.

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

"The orchestra is fine, its brass smooth, clean, deeply sonorous...the Pentatone SACD recording is clear and solid with exceptional dynamic range, and clean as a whistle...Janowski knows his Bruckner as well as anyone around." - American Record Guide

Classical Music

The second CD in Pentatone’s dance music series lets you savor the vibrant, famous compositions from German-speaking countries, including works by Richard Strauss, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Franz Schreker. +Connected by the power of music, inspired by the fin de siècle, this set glorifies the influential ballet/theatre/opera interwar period. +The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is led by conductor Kazuki Yamada, the orchestra's Principal Guest Conductor since June 2010.

This album presents extraordinary works of three twentieth-century composers with diverse cultural backgrounds, underlining the versatility and legacy of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in its centenary year. Richard Strauss’ Schlagobers (Whipped Cream, 1924) is a playful ballet set in a Viennese Konditorei, of which the orchestral suite is featured on this album. With its lively mix of Viennese waltzes and modern harmonies, light-versed tunes interspersed by sudden outbreaks of ravishing beauty, all brilliantly orchestrated, it can be considered a further exploration of the composer’s “Rosenkavalier style”. Claude Debussy is featured with Jeux, Poeme danse (1912), another piece created for a ballet performance, built around an erotic nocturnal search for a lost tennis ball that Pierre Boulez characterized as a “Prelude à-l’Apres-midi d’une Faune in sports clothes”. Debussy’s Jeux has been a major source of inspiration for post-war avantgarde composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen, and, therefore, the transition from Jeux to Gyorgi Ligeti’s Melodien, fur Orchester (1971) is not jarring. Melodien has the unmistakable mix of sensuous yet eerie soundscapes that makes most of Ligeti’s works so filmic and appealing. This album adds a significant chapter to the Pentatone discography of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, which already contains the complete Bruckner Symphonies with Marek Janowski, three dance-oriented albums with Kazuki Yamada, and concerto recordings with renowned soloists such as Arabella Steinbacher, Johannes Moser and Denis Kozhukhin. On this album, the OSR’s new chief conductor Jonathan Nott makes his Pentatone debut.

Vibrant, striking colors, sensuous harmonies and coruscating wit abound in this irresistible collection played by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the baton of the young rising star Kazuki Yamada. Hailed by Gramophone magazine as a "gifted, budding maestro" with "interpretative nous, strength of personality and scrupulous attention to detail", this is Yamada's four outing for Pentatone following his three critically acclaimed releases of dance music.

PentaTone continues the collaboration between Marek Janowski and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande with the release of the 3rd Symphony of Anton Bruckner.

This new OSR recording presents the two most ambitious musical responses to Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1893 epoch-making play Pelléas et Mélisande. Conductor Jonathan Nott has created a new suite of Debussy’s opera, which is much more extensive, and focuses more on the actual drama and symphonic development than existing suites that rely heavily on Debussy’s interludes. Schoenberg’s Pelléas und Melisande is often perceived as relatively “amorphous”, its narrative structure obscure, leaving concealed all but the most explicit references to the drama on which Schoenberg based it. In this recording, Jonathan Nott introduces a novel track division and analytical track titles that make the music’s relation to the story much more tangible to the listener. Programming it next to the music of Debussy’s opera allows us to compare both works, and to see how the most important innovators of turn-of-the-century music responded to this haunting, Symbolist story. The arrangement of Debussy’s music on this recording is the work of Jonathan Nott.

REVIEW:

For many listeners, conductor Jonathan Nott's new version of Debussy's work will be reason enough to check this album out. While his task was a difficult one, the results give a feel for the flow of the opera. But there's more. Nott has configured the track divisions and track titles of Schoenberg's single-movement Pelleas und Melisande in a novel way. In part, he seems to have relied on Alban Berg's analysis of the work as a combination of four-movement sonata form and the Wagnerian leitmotif technique, and the track titles, Nott's own, reflect this. One might debate what has been done in the cases of both Debussy and Schoenberg, but there's no debating the value of his effort; comparing the Debussy and the Schoenberg side by side is fascinating. Nott further emphasizes the direct comparison with his relatively straightforward performances of the two works, avoiding operatic gestures in the Debussy, and the venerable Swiss orchestra follows him well through unfamiliar interpretations. This is highly recommended for aficionados of the early 20th century.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Romanian classical pianist Clara Haskil (1895-1960) was particularly well known for her brilliant interpretations of classical and early romantic repertoire, especially that of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann. Haskil didn’t gain much acclaim until the late 1940s because of a series of physical ailments mixed with crippling stage fright. The songs on this release are all live recordings from Haskil’s concerts, taken between 1947 and 1956, during the peak of her career.

By 2014 eric Montalbetti had amassed 20 years of experience as Artistic Director of the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, all the while he had also been composing, something he had been engaged in since childhood: an activity he did not publicly reveal until 2015. Conscious of the heritage of Debussy and Messiaen ('my very first heroes') as well as skilled in the serialism of Boulez - whose teaching courses he attended at the College de France - and fascinated by the sonic nuances of spectral music, eric Montalbetti seeks a point of convergence, a possible synthesis enabling him to blend modality and serialism, without rejecting the harmonic contours of composers such as Murail. This new album dedicated to Montalbetti's work includes a Flute Concerto, whose commission was encouraged by Emmanuel Pahud: it's telling title is Memento vivere (Remember that you must live).

Mari Kodama, Momo Kodama, Karin Kei Nagano, and Kent Nagano present Double and Triple Concertos by Mozart and Poulenc, together with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. This unique project highlights the musicality and congeniality of this extraordinary family of performers. On this album, the husband (Kent Nagano) conducts his wife (Mari Kodama), daughter (Karin Kei Nagano), and sister-in-law (Momo Kodama). The collective performance on this album resonates with Mozart’s own practice of playing his music together with his father and sister. Despite belonging to different ages in music history, Mozart and Poulenc share a combination of playfulness and seriousness, and the latter composer manages to integrate touches of Mozartian neoclassicism into his genuinely French and twentieth-century double concerto. Sharing the stage on this recording is a dream come true for the Kodama-Nagano family.

Mari Kodama, Momo Kodama, and Kent Nagano have appeared on Pentatone frequently, including recordings of Tchaikovsky Ballet Duos (2016) and Martinu Double Concertos (2018) featuring the two sisters. Karin Kei Nagano makes her Pentatone debut.

The eminent Martha Argerich is one of the most loved and admired Classical pianists of all time. She quickly gained and maintained world-wide reputation for her exciting performances and This set is the 15th volume of DOREMI’s special series of live performances and broadcasts featuring the artistry of the young Martha Argerich. Most items in this set are First release ever.

Named a Concerto Choice in BBC Music Magazine September 2022!

The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and its Music and Artistic Director Jonathan Nott continue their acclaimed series of 20th-century masterpieces on PENTATONE, together with star pianist Francesco Piemontesi, presenting piano concertos by Ravel and Schoenberg alongside Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques. Each of these composers redefined 20th-century music in a highly personal way, and the works recorded here share a connection to the United States which one would perhaps not expect right away from these European master composers. While Ravel and Schoenberg’s piano concertos provide the most original and colourful 20th-century contributions to this genre, Messiaen employs a similar scoring to express his profound reverence for nature in Oiseaux exotiques. These challenging and multifarious scores fit Piemontesi, Nott and the orchestra like a glove.

Francesco Piemontesi is among the most-cherished pianists of our age, and presents the third fruit of his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE, having released the acclaimed Schubert - Last Piano Sonatas (2019) and Bach Nostalghia (2021). The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is one of the world’s most respected orchestras with a vast PENTATONE discography. This is their third release on the label with their Music and Artistic Director Jonathan Nott, after Strauss, Debussy & Ligeti (2018) and the gloriously received Debussy & Schoenberg,Conductor:Pelléas et Mélisande (2021), containing Nott’s new arrangement of Debussy’s opera.

REVIEWS:

Francesco Piemontesi’s musicianship is both deft and searching. Here are stellar interpretations of three very different concerto-type works, ordered into a journey from easier listening to more difficult.

You have to envy the citizens of Geneva, regularly able to hear music-making on this level from their resident orchestra and conductor. Add a pianist in Francesco Piemontesi’s class, and here are stellar interpretations of three very different concerto-type works, ordered into a journey from easier listening to (notionally at least) more difficult.

Ravel was so determined to avoid portentousness in his winsome G major Piano Concerto the first work heard on the disc — that it can easily sound trite in performance. Any such risk vanishes in the presence of Piemontesi’s brand of musicianship, which is at once deft and searching; a special moment is the sequence of trills decorating the melody in the first movement’s cadenza, marvellously judged to sound as if the notes are somehow gliding, rather than stepping from one to the next.

Without any compromising sense of a soft- focus paraphrase, the music is nonetheless delivered with a sureness of touch and purpose that absorbs and, as often as not, beguiles the ear.

--BBC Music (Malcolm Hayes)

Johannes Moser's acclaimed interpretation of Elgar's profoundly elegiac and lyrical Cello Concerto and of Tchaikovsky's elegant Rococo Variations returns to the market in an affordable stereo edition. The programme also contains Tchaikovsky's Nocturne and Morceau de Concert for Cello and Orchestra, as well as an arrangement of the famous Andante cantabile from his First String Quartet. Performed together with Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the baton of Andrew Manze, Moser's rendition was praised by Gramophone as "one of the finest we've had in years."

Nine years after its initial release, Arabella Steinbacher’s acclaimed interpretation of two of the greatest concertos ever written for the violin is presented in an attractively priced Stereo re-issue. Steinbacher joins forces with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the baton of Charles Dutoit, one of the most eminent conductors of our age. Both the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Arabella Steinbacher, a multiple award-winner, have an extensive Pentatone discography spanning more than a decade.