Opera-comique emerged in the 19th century as an intermediary between grand opera and burlesque operetta. This album charts it's progression as a distinct genre, tracing the origins from Boieldieu and Mehul early in the century via the classic vitality of masters such as Herold and Maillart into the operetta style of Offenbach and Lecocq. With innovative features, colorful orchestration, drama, wit and atmospheric writing, the operas proved very popular and these overtures encapsulate their immense vivacity and charm.

Miloslav Kabelac ranks among the most significant Czech composers of the 20th century. Alongside Antonin Dvorak and Bohuslav Martinu, he is recognized as one of the greatest Czech symphonists, and his work represents a cornerstone of Czech musical heritage. His work encompasses nearly all musical genres except opera, but at it's core are eight symphonies, each with a unique orchestration. With the czech conductor Jakub Hrusa the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra had a welcome expert for this recording, as he examines carefully these rich orchestrated scores of this still underrated music and composer.

‘This West Indian tragedy has remained the sole dramatic work of a heroic world in pre-Columbian times that, after a flourishing heyday, was abruptly terminated by foreign violence.’ Egon Wellesz (1925). In musical terms, the Opferung shows Egon Wellesz at the zenith of his creativity. In this music, Wellesz’ emancipation from his mentor Schoenberg and his aesthetics has progressed even further, as throughout his life Egon Wellesz was interested in evolving his own, unmistakable musical diction. The events of 12 March 1938 put a sudden end to this so successful career: As a Jew, monarchist and the writer of ‘degenerate music’, the 53-year-old musician was immediately removed from all of his posts and wanted by the police after ‘the seizure of power’. Following a long illness, Egon Wellesz died in Oxford in 1974.

In Voyages, prolific American composer James Lee III takes the listener on a colorful journey through his endlessly creative orchestral music; painting biblical imagery in Beyond Rivers of Vision and celebrating the joyous Feast of Tabernacles in Sukkot Through Orion's Nebula, using well-known spirituals to celebrate the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman (Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan) and reflecting on the ongoing fight for freedom through his grandfather’s personal experiences in WWII (A Different Soldier’s Tale). His music is played here by the renowned ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop.

REVIEW:

Although there may be some in the audience who may be skeptical of music by composers who are pretty much unknown to them, especially contemporary composers, they are in for a treat, for Chuphshah! is an entertaining, very listenable piece, as are all the compositions on this remarkable AVIE recording. From the opening measures of Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula, with their snare, bass drum, brass, and percussion excitement, you know right away that this is going to be a fun recording for both musical and audio reasons. In his liner note essay, Lee describes Sukkot as “a festive work for orchestra,” and it is certainly that. Next up is the longest composition on the program, the four-movement A Different Soldier’s Tale, based on stories that Lee’s grandfather told him about his experiences in World War II. As you might expect from such a description, it contains some passages of drama and turmoil, as well as passages of pathos and reflection. Beyond Rivers of Vision is in three movements, of which Lee observes “for the most part the form in these pieces is fantasia-like or rhapsodic.” The music has an otherworldly characteristic to it at times that stands in contrast to the drama of the Soldier’s Tale. The CD closes with the afore-mentioned Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan, which is based on aspects of the life of Harriet Tubman. His liner note essay is insightful and helpful in understanding what he is attempting to do in all four compositions, but especially so for this one.

As I indicated at the outset, this release is a treat both musically and sonically. The music is energetic and assertive, with plenty of orchestral effects that will show off a good audio system. The engineering team has done a good job, Alsop and the orchestra sound as though they are having a good time playing this mostly extroverted music, and the end result is a highly recommendable release from an exciting young composer.

-- Classical Candor (Karl W. Nehring)

John Adams’ City Noir was inspired by the cultural and social history of Los Angeles, with the composer himself calling it ‘an imaginary film score’, while Fearful Symmetries exemplifies his steamroller motor rhythms. The album ends with a capricious ‘Spider Dance’ of memorable rhythmic drive – a work dedicated to Marin Alsop who leads the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in these performances.

REVIEWS:

Marin Alsop has been quietly championing John Adams abroad—and now at the Met Opera conducting his El Nino— for decades. A new Naxos recording with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra demonstrates her flair and feeling for his distinctive idiom. City Noir, premiered by the LA Phil in 2009, is a vivid, multi-textured score inspired by mid-20th century urban California. With its jazz inflections and brooding canvases, the debt to the City of Angels and film noir are equally clear. This is the work’s third recording but well worth acquiring for Alsop’s theatrical bite and detailed interpretation. Punchier than Robertson and livelier than Dudamel (though Robertson’s ravishing sonics make for essential listening), she holds the attention with a sure eye for the work’s architectural twists and turns. The companion piece is Fearful Symmetries from 1988, one of Adams’s most infectious scores and yet only receiving its second outing on disc. Alsop takes the chugging basic pulse a tad faster than the composer’s own recording without sacrificing any of the infinite variety to be found in Adams’s orchestral details. It’s a joyous, carefree work and beautifully recorded. The same goes for the recorded premiere of Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance. Happily rehabilitated after getting the chop from Girls of the Golden West, this six-minute essay in wriggling cross rhythms is laced with sardonic wit.

-- Musical America (Clive Paget)

John Adams’s City Noir has been pretty well represented on disc in the fifteen years since its 2009 premiere: Marin Alsop’s new recording of the score with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony is the work’s fourth. In general, this celebration of the city of Los Angeles benefits from her approach. It’s swift and characterful...its structure emerges nicely intact in Alsop’s hands. The central “The Song is for You” boasts a series of idiomatic solos (especially from alto saxophone and trombone), at times seeming to channel Gershwin. [The] ORF’s woodwinds, trumpets, and jazz drummer really shine here. By about any measure, this is some brash and chill Adams.

Even more welcome is the pairing’s account of Fearful Symmetries, a half-hour-long study in rhythm and texture that’s only been recorded once before. Granted, that earlier release was led by the composer and it’s aged well. But Alsop’s new take is downright invigorating. The conductor brings a strong sense of drive to the music, drawing out a beautiful blend of colors – from invitingly swooning saxophone quartet playing to unexpected synthesizer colors – from her forces. What’s more, hers is a reading that manages to vigorously illuminate the sophistication of Adams’s compositional language, circa 1988. It’s a keeper.

-- The Arts Fuse

Rhapsodies is the fourth album on Naxos dedicated to the lauded American composer Margaret Brouwer - renowned for her music's lyricism, imagery and emotional power. Marin Alsop conducts the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in this programme of world premiere recordings including Symphony No. 1 'Lake Voices' and the dazzling Rhapsody, Concerto for Orchestra.

At over 80 years old, the ever agile and energetic HK Gruber has become an integral part of the music scene - not only in Austria. As a composer, chansonnier and music educator with constructive depth and his distinctive, ironical jokes, he reliably amazes, moves, and evokes laughter in his audiences, far removed from the contrived, mathematical, contemporary musical art. His genre-spanning works are audible, vibrant journeys through the incredible diversity of music history, thus shaping his own, entirely unmistakable style. In Frank Dupree and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, he finds his ideal partners, who skillfully realize this distinctive musical language.

Clarinetist Anthony McGill and violinist Rachel Barton Pine are featured soloists on a new recording of two concertos composed in response to societal injustices by Syrian composer Malek Jandali, performed by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and led by Marin Alsop, a champion of the composer’s work.

Malek Jandali, called “deeply enigmatic” by Gramophone, has been praised for writing “heart-rending melodies, lush orchestration, clever transitions and creative textures” (American Record Guide). His repertoire, which ranges from chamber music to large scale orchestral works, integrates Middle-Eastern modes into Western classical forms and harmony. Rachel Barton Pine, “an exciting, boundary-defying performer” (The Washington Post), performs Jandali’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (2014), a work that honors “all women who thrive with courage” according to the composer. Jandali’s concerto is in recognition of the women of Syria, continuing his aim to preserve the cultural heritage of his homeland.

The Violin Concerto incorporates Syrian melodies and idioms into Jandali’s Western-inspired harmonies and forms. Jandali calls upon an array of Syrian and Arabic music forms and folk melodies including multiple sama’i and bashraf (instrumental pieces), and longa (dances), from different maqam (modes). He also makes use of the oud (Arabic lute) in his symphonic scoring to infuse the work with the authentic sound and feeling of Syria. A particularly notable sama’i inspired by traditional Syrian folk music from the area along the Silk Road Is used for a “Women’s Theme.” This theme is representative of the folk music that is a source of comfort and healing for unjustly detained, peaceful Syrian activists and other women and mothers living in fear.

Jandali’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra (2021) is dedicated to its performer Anthony McGill (“the total package… stylish, passionate and limitlessly fluent on the clarinet,” Bachtrack), “in memory of all victims of injustice.” McGill says of the work, ”In the midst of the pain and the violence and injustice in the world all we are left with is the ability to pour our hearts and our souls into something more beautiful, into something more powerful, so it can communicate throughout all time and live on.” Like all of Jandali’s works, the clarinet concerto is infused with ancient themes from Jandali’s homeland as a means of preservation. Jandali explores variations on themes from old and traditional Syrian musical forms and modalities, with striking musical effects and wide ranging highs and lows in the orchestral writing.

Watch our Live Roundtable with Marin Alsop, Malek Jandali and Anthony McGill!

REVIEW:

The soloists shine, and Alsop and her Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra accompany them faithfully through every mood.

Jandali’s Violin Concerto has a long and thoughtful opening moment, an introspective middle section and a dancelike finale. He uses the Arabic oud in conversation with the violin, as plaintive voices crying out with dignity and restraint. (Kudos to oud soloist Bassam Halaka.) And maybe that buoyant feeling in the finale represents not exuberance but defiance, as a protest against suppression.

The 25-minute clarinet concerto operates mostly on a mysterious plane, one we associate more obviously with Arabic elements. Some of the subtle, sinuous playing and percussive rhythms would not be out of place in a good Hollywood soundtrack – that’s a compliment – as Jandali slowly brings us into his sound world.

-- WDAV (Classical Public Radio, 89.9FM, Lawrence Toppman)

Despite their different musical languages, all works by the Polish composers Karol Szymanowski and Krzysztof Penderecki presented on this album have in common the inherent character of a lament: Szymanowski’s Stabat mater, which was completed in 1926 and is based on a Polish translation of the Latin medieval poem, is considered as one of the most important compositions of the 20th century. Penderecki’s three-part oratorio Dies Irae was commissioned for a commemoration day in remembrance of the murder victims at the former concentration camp in Auschwitz, and hence carries the epithet “Auschwitz Oratorium”. The album closes with a Threnos for 52 string instruments dedicated to the Victims of Hiroshima. The final haunting bars of this composition present a tutti cluster, starting in a triple forte and fading out to quadruple piano.

Mahler’s cantata Das klagende Lied today constitutes a veritable rarity in concert programmes – in an age that without contradiction recognizes Mahler as one oft he most eminent milestones in the music history of the late 19th and early 20th century. Based on a horror tale written by Mahler himself, this large-scale, vocal symphonic work forms the beginning of Mahler’s more familiar oeuvre. Mahler, at the age of only 20, submitted the score for the Beethoven Prize at the Society of the Friends of Music in Vienna. He did not receive this prize, however, and subsequently made several revisions. It was finally premiered by the composer in Vienna on 17 February 1901 only. The ‚mixed version‘ (also employed for this recording) consisting of the original first movement and the revised version of the other two parts, became customary in the course of the great Mahler Renaissance in the 1960s. The presented live capture with the 2019 deceased Michael Gielen – like Mahler not only a conductor but also a composer – with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra was taken in June 1990 in the Konzerthaus Vienna.

REVIEW:

This performance of Mahler’s youthful horror story realizes every gruesome detail with positively sadistic relish. There are other fine versions in the catalog, but this live version is the most graphic, exciting, and true to Mahler’s youthful vision. Impactful live sound, great singing, great conducting—this is now the one to get.

– ClassicsToday.com

This new release features the complete symphonic recordings of OehmsClassics with Bertrand de Billy and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra from 2003-2010 when Bertrand de Billy was Chief Conductor in Vienna. Bertrand de Billy was born in Paris where he studied music. Starting as a member of an orchestra, he soon took on conducting. 1993-95 he was first Kapellmeister and Deputy Music Director at the Anhaltisches Theatre in Dessau, 1996-98 he held the same position at the Vienna Volksoper. 1999-2004 he was Music Director at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and 2002-2010 he was Music Director of the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Vienna. Bertrand de Billy is principal guest of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne (2013-2016). Since 2014/2015 he is also principal guest conductor of the Dresdner Philharmonie.

For this outstanding two-disc set, the RSO Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Cornelius Meister, brings us two works by Anton Bruckner (1824-1896): his Symphony No. 9 in D minor WAB 109, and his Mass No. 3 in F minor WAB 28. One of the more popular choral works of late Romanticism, the Mass in F minor is said to have been a work of gratitude for the composer’s recovery from a persistent nervous illness. Soloists featured here are soprano Ruth Ziesak, alto Janina Baechle, tenor Benjamin Bruns, and bass Gunther Groissbock.

Commissioned in 1885 by Great Britain, Anton Dvorak’s The Spectre’s Bride had huge success immediately upon its premiere. The story is of a girl whose dead lover returns to lead her from her home, forcing her to leave behind her prayer book, rosary, and cross. When she is led to his open grave, she flees and is eventually saved by some churchgoers. At the premiere, Dvorak conducted a 400-voice choir and an orchestra consisting of 150 musicians. Many performances across Europe and in the United States followed, cementing Dvorak’s prominence and popularity across the English-speaking world. Dvorak himself wrote: “I just cannot tell you how much these British honor and like me! Everywhere, they are writing and talking about me, saying I am the lion of this year’s musical season in London.” Here the work is performed by the Wiener Singakademie and the Orf Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Cornelius Meister.

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Simona Šaturová is pure and innocent as the girl but thrills when she throttles up. Pavol Breslik is smooth and eager as her ghostly spouse, Adam Plachetka sage-like as the narrator. A nice little discovery.

– Gramophone

There could be the dramatic skeleton of an opera lurking beneath the cantata veneer of The Spectre’s Bride, a work based on a poem about a young girl who is abducted by a ghost she believes to be the spirit of her lover. There are shapely solo contributions from the ORF orchestra, and certainly some very fine expressive singing from soprano Simona Šaturová as the girl and tenor Pavol Breslik as the spectre.

– Guardian (UK)

With worldwide acclaim and numerous awards, Xu Shuya is one of the leading composers to emerge from the Chinese 'New Wave'. His fascination with his Chinese heritage is eloquently expressed in pieces such as Insolation, inspired by the heroic myth of Kaufu Chasing the Sun, and Yun, which unites the famous 'Purple Bamboo Melody' with symphonic textures and gestures. Cristal au Soleil Couchant expresses the intensity of light and colours at sundown, while Echos du Vieux Champ conjures nostalgic memories of the composer's homeland. Shaped by spiritual concepts and the Tibetan landscape, Nirvana evokes the 'bittersweet pleasure' of 'faint distant melodies, like tunes from heaven'.

Sharon Kam is one of the world’s leading clarinet soloists and has been working with renowned orchestras in the United States, Europe, and Japan for over 20 years. Mozart’s clarinet masterpieces have been an object of artistic focus for Ms. Kam since the beginning of her career. At the age of 16, she performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in her orchestral debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Zubin Mehta. A short time later, she performed the Clarinet Quintet with the Guarneri String Quartet in Carnegie Hall, New York. As a passionate chamber musician, Sharon Kam regularly works with artists such as Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, Enrico Pace, Daniel Müller-Schott, Leif Ove Andsnes, Carolin Widmann and the Jerusalem Quartet. She is a frequent guest at festivals in Schleswig-Holstein, Heimbach, Rheingau, Risør, Cork, Verbier, and Delft, as well as the Schubertiade festival. On this newest release, she performs the works of Weber, Kurpinski, and Crusell alongside the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.

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REVIEW:

Sharon Kam is one of the finest clarinettists in the world. Her approach and variability of tone are always surprising. She also masters the gentlest pianissimi, but can likewise strike dramatically more expressive tones.

– Online Merker (translated from German)

Prokofiev first became fascinated by the violin upon hearing the playing of his private teacher, Reinhold Glière. A dozen years later Prokofiev wrote his Violin Concerto No. 1 – a work of contrasting open-hearted lyricism and whimsical playfulness that features a wild central Scherzo with dazzling technical gymnastics. By contrast, the Violin Concerto No. 2 is emotionally reserved and sardonic with an inspired plaintive and long-arching slow movement. Composed to an official Soviet commission for an ensemble piece to be played by talented child violinists in unison, the witty and upbeat Sonata for Solo Violin can also be played by a single performer.

REVIEW:

Tianwa Yang is currently on a roll with single-composer collections for Naxos (look up her Sarasate and Rihm), and this elegantly captured all-Prokofiev effort is especially strong.

First up is the Violin Concerto no. 1. Yang’s silvery legato sweetness is a perfect match for this intensely lyrical work, and the orchestra is equally alive to the score’s brightness, pace and array of translucently scored colors. The fairy-like recapitulation of the first movement’s opening theme is a delicately luminous knockout from everyone. Equally effective is Yang’s sharp-edged clout when the Scherzo takes an acerbic turn.

The Second Concerto offers an opportunity to appreciate Yang’s darker warmth, and the luxurious, heady vibrato and romance she brings to its central movement’s soaring lines. Then the buoyant playfulness and folk pep of her Solo Sonata is a reminder of the qualities that won her a 2015 ECHO Klassik Award for her solo Ysaÿe album. If you want to cover both Prokofiev concertos in a single album, no need to hesitate here.

-- The Strad

Hector Berlioz‘ Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie was a sequel to his Symphonie fantastique, the second part of the Episode of the life of an artist, which had premiered in 1830 at the Paris Conservatory. The piece that is made up of six sections was written and composed during his travels to and in Italy; for this he made use in part of material that he had already prefabricated for the prestigious Rome Prize. Berlioz and the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, whose rejection he had tried to compensate in the Symphonie fantastique, got married in 1833. (It should be noted that marriage by no means turned out to be the fulfillment of all dreams.) In his memoirs about Lélio’s premiere performance in December 1832 at the Paris Conservatory, Berlioz noted the following phrases about his future wife: “... the passionate character of the work, its ardent melodies, its exclamations of love, its outbursts of anger [...] must have made an unexpected and deep impression on her sensitive nature and poetic imagination. [...] When in the monodrama the actor Bocage, who recited the role of Lélio (that is, myself), pronounced the following words: ‘Oh, if I could only find her, the Juliet, the Ophelia for whom my heart is searching!’ […] she thought to herself: ‘My God! ... Juliet, Ophelia ... there’s no doubt, he means me ... And he still loves me as before …’” Michael Gielen conducts the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Wiener Singakademie with Herbert Lippert and Geert Smits as highly acclaimed soloists and Joachim Bissmeier as narrator in an absorbing live capture that took place on 7 Dec 2000 at the Vienna Concert Hall.

Meditative sound magic from New York City: Together with colleagues and friends such as John Cage, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown, Morton Feldman formed a circle of pre-eminent individualists within the American avant-garde movement of the 20th century, which, commencing in New York, founded a current of international significance. Crucial for his artistic development was undoubtedly his meeting with John Cage (1912–92), with whom he was in close contact after 1950. They mutually inspired each other to create music away from the compositional techniques conventional up to then, which particularly applied to the definition of specific notes, pitches and note durations or regular rhythm. It was also a commission from the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and its Principal Conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas that led to the composition of String Quartet and Orchestra in 1973. Feldman’s final completed work Coptic Light, written in 1986, displays an even more gigantic orchestra than that in String Quartet and Orchestra. In his sensitive works we always gain the impression that they are cautious attempts to achieve coherent musical results, without running against the character of the instruments.

On her debut album with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Roberto Paternostro, Selina Ott presents an exciting selection from the opulent range of 20th century trumpet concertos that have been written in close temporal proximity to one another.

Dawson’s lone symphony merits more attention than it has received.

-New York Times

William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony was premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1934 to huge enthusiasm. Its traditional form houses a continuous process of variation and introduces less well-known Spirituals in fragmentary form, while the work’s recurring motifs, remarkable transitions and syncopations are enhanced in Dawson’s 1952 revision heard here.

The Fantasy Variations by composer and teacher Ulysses Kay employs dissonance with great expressivity in a work of textural and coloristic variety. Umbrian Scene, despite its pictorial suggestion, is lean and sombre.

Arthur Fagen has conducted at the world’s most prestigious opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera and Vienna State Opera, and has led acclaimed orchestras such as the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. He has recently conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philharmonia. Fagen has served as principal conductor in Kassel and Brunswick, chief conductor of the Vlaamse Opera and music director of the Queens Symphony Orchestra. From 2002 to 2007, he was music director of the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dortmund Opera.

REVIEWS:

This new recording of Dawson's only symphony, the first in almost 30 years, has plenty of elegance and fire, though. Arthur Fagen deftly conducts the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony and also includes two fine works by Ulysses Kay. He was another African American - slightly younger than Dawson, but more prolific. Kay's music also deserves to be heard more. His "Fantasy Variations" from 1963 is brilliantly orchestrated and deceptive.

–National Public Radio (Tom Huizenga)

Recorded only twice before, the last time some three decades ago, the fresh approach to William Levi Dawson’s “Negro Folk Symphony” by the conductor Arthur Fagen and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra provides us with another crucial look at this complex, vibrant opus. Because exuberance isn’t the only goal of this music, the cooler sheen of the Vienna’s ensemble sound offers an incisive look at Dawson’s experimentalism. Dawson’s lone symphony merits more attention than it has received.

–New York Times (Seth Colter Walls)

Verdi’s Messa da Requiem – an “opera in ecclestiastical robes”, as conductor Hans von Bülow called it – recorded in October 1980 at Stiftskirche Herzogenburg with Julia Varady, Alexandrina Milcheva, Alberto Cupido, Nicola Ghiuselev, ORF Choir and ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leif Segerstam. The Messa da Requiem is a musical setting of the Catholic funeral mass (Requiem) for four soloists, double choir and orchestra by Giuseppe Verdi. It was composed in memory of Alessandro Manzoni, an Italian poet and novelist whom Verdi admired. The first performance, at the San Marco church in Milan on 22 May 1874, marked the first anniversary of Manzoni's death. The work was at one time referred to as the Manzoni Requiem. Considered too operatic to be performed in a liturgical setting, it is usually given in concert form of around 90 minutes in length. Musicologist David Rosen calls it 'probably the most frequently performed major choral work composed since the compilation of Mozart's Requiem'.

Alexander Zemlinsky composed his Lyric Symphony op. 18 for soprano, baritone and orchestra during his time as musical director of the New German Theatre in Prague, where he had moved in 1911 from Vienna. It was generally regarded as his corresponding equivalent to Mahler’s Lied von der Erde (C210021) and is based on Nobel Prize laureate and most important representative of modern Indian literature Rabindranath Tagore. The work is combined with the befriended and three years older ‘phantasmogorist’ Franz Schreker’s Prelude to a Drama, which is a version of the overture of his Die Gezeichneten. It might be considered symptomatic for the most notable characteristic of Schreker’s music: the dominance of chordal sounds over the melodic element.

REVIEW:

Zemlinsky’s seven-movement Lyric Symphony lays claim to being his best-known work and is certainly the only one to attract a significant number of prominent conductors. This live account from Vienna in 1989 was Gielen’s second recording of the work, and it finds him in prime form. He leads a powerful orchestral reading that is all the more impressive because Vienna’s proficient Radio Symphony was the last orchestra I expected to be virtuosic. Every section is totally committed to the score’s voluptuous passions, however, and the recorded sound from Austrian Radio is wonderfully clear and vivid, no small achievement where Zemlinsky’s dense orchestration is concerned.

In the soprano part the choice has typically been big, dramatic voices on the order of Deborah Voigt and Alessandra Marc. Karen Armstrong can’t compete in that league, and wisely she doesn’t try to. By not pushing her voice, singing the chromatic lines accurately, and paying attention to the verse, she delivers a more than respectable performance. But realistically neither singer has the most beautiful or distinctive voice. Orfeo supplies no texts or translations, which means that this recording can only be supplementary to one that does. There are enough drawbacks, despite Gielen’s outstanding conducting, to place this release somewhere in the middle of the pack.

The pairing of Franz Schreker’s 20-minute Prelude to a Drama from 1914 isn’t a new addition to Gielen’s discography, since it also served as the filler to his Mahler Fourth Symphony. The Prelude is rich in themes and incidents, and so skillfully structured that it can be analyzed as a sonata movement. Schreker was a colorist, as he described himself: “I am a sound artist, a phantasmagorist of sound, a sound-aesthete, and there’s not a trace of melody in me.”

The music is lovely, and Gielen’s performance glows with ardent feeling, not a mode I associate with him.

For me the evocation of history hangs heavily over this release, but it holds considerable musical rewards, too, especially for aficionados of an aesthetic doomed to be wiped out through political denunciation.

-- Fanfare (Huntley Dent)

When the Court Opera Director Wilhelm Jahn commissioned the by no means unvain Johann Strauss Jr. to write a ‘genuine’ opera, he readily accepted. So, he wrote Ritter Pásmán, a work the Waltz King himself regarded as his only one in this genre, although the plot is basically like an operetta. The source was the narrative Pázmán lovag by the Hungarian writer János Aranyi (1817-1882). It deals with jealousy and a kind of tit-for-tat. The premiere of the comic opera at the Vienna Court Opera on New Year’s Day 1892 was a major society event, but its artistic success lagged somewhat behind. The reviewers of the premiere were distanced towards the work. On the one hand, they unanimously elevated the ballet music at the beginning of Act III to the status of an absolute masterpiece. (By the way, this was the first time that a cimbalom could be heard in the orchestra of the Court Opera). The present live recording was captured at the Vienna Musikverein on 27 October 1975, with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Heinz Wallberg, Eberhard Waechter as Ritter Pásmàn, Sona Ghazarian as Queen, Josef Hopfwieser as Hungarian King, and Truedeliese Schmidt as Eva as main cast. The recording includes the complete ballet music as bonus tracks, performed by the Slovac State Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Alfred Walter.

"Slightly the audience remember that I'm - as a descendant of writing tonal music - still alive and continue composing." (Walter Braunfels, 1946) Walter Braunfels is a composer whose music died twice: Once when the Nazis declared his music "degenerate art". Then again when post-war Germany had little use for the various schools of tonal music; when the arbiters of taste considered any form of romantic music - almost the whole pre-war aesthetic - to be tainted. This 9th release of Capriccio's Braunfels Edition shows us also an open-minded composer who experimented with Jazz elements in his Divertimento for radio-orchestra in 1929.

REVIEWS:

This is light and delightful music, far from offering even the hint of banality or boredom. The music of Walter Braunfels can hardly be stylistically determined, as he is said to have references to all the great composers around him, though Braunfels always kept his music on his personal path. Conductor Gregor Bühl is among some who are again paying attention to this composer. He gives this positively upbeat music the affection and care that makes its special character shine, modeling both the clean craftsmanship and the warmth of the music’s content. The airiness, as in Ariel’s singing, becomes just as clear as the heart beating in the Serenade, without any unnecessary display of individual compositional elements.

– Pizzicato

That Divertimento is the real discovery here: an absolutely delicious bon-bon evocatively scored for a small orchestra including two saxophones, used with effortless freshness and not a shred of fin-de-siècle decadence (fun though that can be). Both the Serenade and Ariel’s Song date from 1910, fairly early in Braunfels’ career, and if they lack the individuality we find in his more ambitious later pieces, they certainly fall gratefully on the ear and deliver exactly what they promise – a bit of light relaxation. The “song,” by the way, is a lyrical orchestral piece, and not a not a vocal work. The Don Gil prelude offers six minutes of comic opera fun. Apparently the opera itself, composed in 1921-23, was a failure, but from such failures have come many appealing concert works, and here is one. As with previous releases in this series, the fine performances under conductor Gregor Bühl have all of the conviction and commitment of a true believer in the cause, and the sonics are excellent. This disc will appeal to music lovers of all ages. Strongly recommended.

– ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

Bohuslav Martinů has suffered the fate of not enjoying the same popularity and wide appeal like Bedrich Smetana, Antonín Dvorák und Leoš Janácek on the podium. This often goes so far that his singular skill is referred to, but that the wealth of his oeuvre in all the salient genres is hardly familiar. For decades, Martinu had shied away from composing a symphony. The first one was finally to be written in the USA in 1942, followed by another one every year until 1946 (the sixth was only added to the work catalogue in 1953). For this reason, there is sometimes talk of the ‘American’ symphonies. The symphonies do mirror the events of the time, but at the same time long passages must be regarded as absolute music. Cornelius Meister is regarded as one of the finest young conductors of our day and age, and here he fantastically interprets these six symphonies with transparency, emotion, and aplomb.

REVIEWS:

It is always good to discover new recordings of Martinů’s symphonies, a sequence all the more remarkable for the short period, in which the first five symphonies were composed. Cornelius Meister, with the ORF Orchestra, provides us with a distinctive vision of Martinů’s symphonies. These performances sit very much in the Austro-German traditions of interpretation. Some moments are almost Brahmsian, phrasing is weighty, structure is emphasized.

Cornelius Meister is one of the most interesting of the younger conductors around. He has a superb rapport with his orchestra, whose playing is very fine throughout.

-- MusicWeb International

The appearance of this complete set of six symphonies on three CDs, recorded live in Vienna from 2011 to 2017, serves to reinforce the essential importance of Martinů as a 20th century orchestral composer. Although it doesn’t supplant the splendid Belohlávek Onyx set, it's nonetheless a very fine cycle. The sound is clear and lifelike, with most of the advantages of live recording, a sense of occasion and excitement and a more organic and natural arc to the performance, without too many of the disadvantages. The audience is mainly well-behaved and the applause is edited out.

-- Music for Several Instruments

Paul Hindemith’s life was dominated by the events of the two world wars. In 1917, his discovery of contemporary Expressionist poetry and drama transformed him from a talented student to Germany’s leading new composer. His one-act operas Sancta Susanna and Das Nusch-Nuschi date from this period. Sancta Susanna – Hindemith’s first masterpiece – combines religious and erotic symbolism into an eerie narrative that was shocking for its time, whereas the dance suite from Das Nusch-Nuschi emphasises the plot’s origin as a Burmese comedy. The three symphonic movements from the opera Mathis der Maler refer to the three panels of the Isenheim Altarpiece by Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald, but also graphically reflect Hindemith’s own artistic struggles in Nazi Germany.

Who would assume today that after its premiere in 1910 Ernst von Dohnányi’s dance pantomime spread like a wildfire over the stages of the world. The ‘Wedding Waltz’ from Der Schleier der Pierrette could regularly be heard on musical request programmes on the radio, enjoying similar popularity to the waltz sequence from Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. Dohnanyi’s choice of the genre of pantomime was entirely in keeping with the spirit of the age that, following the large-scale, plot-laden ballets of late Romanticism, sought to find in pantomime a more intimate and more naturalistic form of expression. It may come as a surprise that the source for Dohnányi derived from none other than Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931), one of the salient representatives of fin-de-siècle Austria. With this first complete recording again an important gap is closed in the knowledge of repertoire of this fascinating epochal time of musical history.

Having joined the ensemble of Deutsche Oper Berlin at the age of 22 and the ensemble of Wiener Staatsoper in 2013, Israeli-born Hila Fahima presents a mix of well-known selections and rediscovered treasures on her debut album: Donizetti’s Lucia, Norina, Linda di Chamounix, Adina, Marie from La fille du regiment, plus Verdi’s Gilda – she will be starring in this role at this year’s Bregenz Festival – and also Amalia from his I masnadieri, as well as arias from Donizetti’s little-known operas Rosmonda d’Inghilterra and Emilia di Liverpool.

This is the second album of the Saint-Saens series, with young talents?. All recordings were made with the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, conducted by Howard Griffiths. The repertoire inludes: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in G minor op. 22, Morceau de Concert in F minor op. 94, Romance in F major op. 36, Romance in E major op. 67 and Suite for Violoncello and Orchestra op. 16b?

Award-winning composer and educator Wenchen Qin's unique musical language is influenced by his multicultural background, integrating Eastern and Western elements. All the works on this release are infused with literature, mythology and a fascination with nature. The Cloud River revitalises the sheng - an ancient Chinese instrument - with new playing techniques. With the sheng also playing a leading role, Poetry of the Land ruminates on how the land provides great inspiration.