Recorded between 1955 and 1961, Vladimir Sofronitsky's performances of the piano sonatas of Alexander Scriabin are collected in this twofer and are nearly complete, except for his partial recording of the Sonata No. 1 in F minor, of which only the final movement is provided, and the absence of the Piano Sonata No. 7. For his time, Sofronitsky was the leading Russian interpreter of Scriabin, and his interpretations were impressive for their brilliant virtuosity and volatile expressive power. Yet these dynamic performances ...range from murky, boxy sound to outright distortion, and the volume levels are severely out of balance, especially in the bonus 1951 recording of Heinrich Neuhaus playing the Sonata No. 1, an odd way to redress the missing Sofronitsky movements. Furthermore, Sviatoslav Richter's live 1964 performance of the Sonata No. 7 is included, which, with the Neuhaus, allows Profil to claim the set is complete. Because the value of these recordings is almost entirely in their historical significance, rather than for sound quality or ease of enjoyment, they are recommended for Scriabin specialists and fans of Sofronitsky who don't already have them, but few others. - All Music Guide

Schumann�s compositional plans in 1840 included not only piano works or, as is generally assumed, lieder, but also encompassed an opera project for which a libretto was nearly completed. Perhaps the most yearning moment in Schumann�s adult life was his wedding day, on which he was finally to be united with his beloved bride Clara Wieck after so much sadness and many painful conflicts - he wanted to celebrate by presenting this song cycle to his beloved as a gift. Songs as pearls, not only twelve as in the Eichendorff cycle or nine as are found in Heines's "Liederkreis," but 26 songs, like a long necklace. Following engagements on the opera stages of Wurzburg, Mannheim and Frankfurt, soprano Diana Damrau's meteoric international career took off with performances in Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, and New York. A highly sought-after lied and concert singer, she makes regular appearances at the Kissinger Sommer, Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, as well as the Munich and Salzburg Festivals. Argentinean baritone Ivan Paley studied in Buenos Aires and the Opera Department of Miami University and then began his career as a concert and opera singer. Since moving to Vienna he has focused on German lied and collaborates with several renowned pianists. Since completing his piano studies, Stephan Matthias Lademann has focused on piano accompaniment and gained extensive experience accompanying master singers such as Birgit Nilsson, Sylvia Geszty, Julia Hamari, and of course the two vocalists on this release.

According to Joachim Kaiser in his book "Grosse Pianisten unserer Zeit" (great pianists of our time), there is "among all the pianists in the whole world not one who takes such pains to perform for the sheer beauty of the music as Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli". The career of ABM, as he was known, was frequently interrupted due to ill health and can best be documented through his public performances, which also form the nucleus of this compilation. Critics described his reading of Brahms's Paganini Variations and the Bach Chaconne arranged by Busoni as "exemplary" and said that Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920–1995) had "set new benchmarks" with his recordings of Debussy, Ravel and Rachmaninov. In their book "Pianistenprofile", a handbook of 600 pianists' biographies published by Bärenreiter, Ingo Harden and Gregor Willmes describe ABM's Scarlatti Sonatas as exhibiting "flawless, hitherto unsurpassed tonal perfection and harmony". After first practising the piano with his father, ABM went in 1931 to study for three years at the Milan Conservatoire, where he graduated at 14. He then gave his first concerts and from 1938 taught piano himself, first in Bologna and later in Venice. In 1939 he won first prize at the Concours International d'Exécution musicale in Geneva, playing Liszt's E flat major Concerto. In 1946 he embarked upon his first tour to the UK, followed by a tour of the USA culminating in 1950 in an acclaimed debut at Carnegie Hall. An illness of the respiratory tract then put his career on hold for quite some time. In 1965 Michelangeli founded his own music festival in Brescia and Bergamo, and he was its Artistic Director until 1969. A severe dispute with the Italian tax authorities ended his performing career there, and in 1988 he suffered a heart attack during a concert in Bordeaux which further greatly reduced his ability to perform in public. He gave his last concert in Hamburg in 1993.

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REVIEW:

Despite an often unsatisfying sound quality and some poor performances of the Italian orchestras, this set with historical recordings is a valuable box for everyone interested in the younger Benedetti-Michelangeli.

– Pizzicato

SUPPÉ Requiem in d • Gerd Schaller, cond; Marie Fajtová (sop); Franziska Gottwald (alt); Tomislav Mužek (ten); Albert Pesendorfer (bs); Munich P Ch; Festiva P • PROFIL 12061 (74:23 Text and Translation)

Reviewing a Chandos release of Saint-Saëns’s Requiem in 28:3, I confessed to giggling out loud the first time I came across the piece on an LP in a used record shop. Somehow, it tickled my funny bone to think of Saint-Saëns, a composer who trained a cynical eye and tongue on the Church, as having written a Requiem. But I bought the recording anyway and discovered an absolutely gorgeous, deeply moving work. Since then, I’ve come upon a number of other Requiems by 19th-century Romantic composers who would seem like improbable candidates to have set a Mass for the dead to music, and yet they did.

In researching this topic, I stumbled upon a fascinating website, requiemsurvey.org, which purports to have cataloged every Requiem ever written from AD 1000 to the present. The total number is a staggering 5,024. But the site breaks them down by periods, and also allows you to search alphabetically by composer. Clicking on a displayed entry links to a page containing the composer’s biography and details on the specific Requiem, such as when it was written, and most usefully, any recordings of it. Whoever assembled this put a lot of time and effort into it.

Looking at just the 19th century—1800 to 1899, there are 1,381 Requiems. These are further broken down into two periods, 1800–1849 and 1850–1899. Suppé’s Requiem, composed in 1855, falls into the latter period, so refining the search to that range alone, one finds 584 Requiems. Among them, just a few of the more recognizable names that pop up are Franz Lachner, Spohr, Friedrich Kiel, Massenet, Rheinberger, Gounod, Reinecke, Gouvy, Bottesini, Stanford, and the list goes on and on and on. I should add that not every entry on this site is a full-blown Latin Requiem. Some, like Brahms’s German Requiem , are based on texts other than the traditional Latin liturgy, while others are just individual movements or fragments of uncompleted works. Still, it’s amazing to see the number of composers we wouldn’t necessarily associate with this genre who were drawn to it for one reason or another.

The liner note to this album makes that abundantly clear in its opening sentences: “A Requiem from the king of operetta? What on earth would that be like? Light cavalry pressed into a liturgical corset?” At least author Ursula Adamski-Störmer has a sense of humor. So entertaining is her essay, not to mention informative, that I worried I might find her narrative more interesting than the Requiem it describes, but for the fact that I was already familiar with the piece from another recording.

The first and perhaps only question to be asked is “Why?” Why would Suppé, a composer who devoted himself almost exclusively to operetta—or so we’ve been told—turn his attention to producing a large-scale and very serious 75-minute Requiem Mass? Well, according to Adamski-Störmer, as a boy, Suppé received musical instruction from two men who came from entirely different worlds. Giovanni Cigalla, a church musician, tutored Suppé in counterpoint and the sacred style; while Giuseppe Ferrari, a band master, instructed the impressionable youth in the popular styles of the day.

Perplexed by which way to turn, Suppé did a good deal of soul searching, which eventually led him to Vienna and to further study with Simon Sechter, a pupil of Salieri, and Ignaz Seyfried. It was the latter who introduced Suppé to the theater and to conductor Franz Pokorny. The two hit it off immediately and became a team—Pokorny as the principal conductor of the Theater an der Wien, and Suppé, from 1845, as the company’s principal composer. Together they embarked on a path that would eventually lead to the production of hundreds of operas, operettas, musical comedies, fairy-tale plays, and melodramas. But Pokorny never lived to see the full fruition of Suppé’s bounty, for he died in 1850. Adamski-Störmer proposes Pokorny’s death as the event that occasioned Suppé’s Requiem. Perhaps that’s true, but if so, one has to wonder why the work didn’t come to be until five years after the fact and, more significantly, why Suppé dedicated it to “His Holiness Pope Pius IX.” Those questions remain unanswered.

This 2012 live recording emanating from Erbrach’s Abteikirche in Bavaria is not the Requiem’s first time on disc. A performance of it by Michel Corboz leading the Lisbon Gulbenkian Foundation Orchestra was recorded by Virgin Classics in 2003. I don’t have that recording, but I do have another one from 1994 on Novalis with Edmond de Stoutz conducting the Zurich Chorus and Chamber Orchestra. That version is spread over two discs, perhaps because in the 1990s a work approaching 80 minutes was thought to exceed the time limit of a single CD. In any case, even if the Novalis version were still available, which it’s probably not, it pales in comparison, both as a performance and as a recording, to this new Profil release.

If you’re into Requiems, I guarantee you that Suppé’s will not disappoint. Forget everything you may have ever heard by Suppé; this is a work from some deep reservoir of pent up passion in the composer’s core being to write sacred music. The model is clearly Mozart’s Requiem, but the musical language, idioms, and style are fully of their period, and then some. Suppé’s setting of the Dies irae gives new meaning to the term Sturm und Drang . Hyper-charged drama gives way later in the Sequence to a grand, imperial processional in the Rex tremendae and to melting entreaties in the Lacrimosa . There’s not a single measure in the entire work that doesn’t hold this listener spellbound.

Adamski-Störmer proclaims in her album note, “No Verdi without Suppé.” She’s right. I might dare to go even further and declare that Suppé’s Requiem, as a Requiem, is superior to Verdi’s. But even if it’s not—disregarding Berlioz’s contribution to the genre which, I think, is a special, out-of-the-mainstream case—there’s no question in my mind that of the Requiems I know, Suppé’s is the finest and most powerful between Mozart’s and Verdi’s.

The performance captured on this disc is stunning, even thrilling. It gains from the advantage of the spacious, open church acoustic without suffering the disadvantage of long reverb with its consequent muddying of the sonic image. Every orchestral detail is clear, as are the words sung by the singers. This is one terrific recording of a terrific performance of a terrific piece of music. It may well end up on my 2013 Want List, and it definitely belongs on yours.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

"The Fifth is a cursed work. Nobody gets the point of it." That was Gustav Mahler's frustrated comment on the performance of his latest work in 1905 in Hamburg, where as former opera director he should have been able to count on staunch support. This is now rather surprising in view of the fact that the Fifth is today one of the most popular of all Mahler's symphonies. Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Chief Conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra, Cologne leads his orchestra in this performance of Mahler’s grand orchestral statement of transition from the depths of funereal gloom to heights of triumphal joy.

Rudolf Buchbinder is firmly established as one of the world's foremost pianists and is frequently invited by major orchestras and festivals around the world. His comprehensive repertoire encompasses the Baroque, Classical and Romantic masterpieces for piano as well as numerous 20th century compositions. This nine-disc set finds Mr. Buchbinder leading the Weiner Symphoniker from the piano in the complete concertos of Mozart. "... (Buchbinder's is) the finest all-round Mozart concerto cycle on disc, a reference edition guaranteed to (please) for years to come." (Classics Today)

Being one of the greatest virtuosos of the 20th century, Richter himself compiled the “8-study suite” of Liszt’s music (presented here) and a “12-study suite” of Chopin’s music. He started to perform both compilations live in concerts in the 1950s and continued to do so until 1988, often one after the other on consecutive days. His performances have remained peerless and beyond comparison to this day. This edition also presents all 14 of the études that Richter performed from Chopin’s op. 10 and op. 25. Each release of this edition features bonus pieces with alternative recordings from the studio or abroad. Volume 12 further includes three mazurkas as well as Sonata no. 2 by Karol Szymanowski, whom Richter held in high regard. In fact, Karol Szymanowski was a cousin of the legendary Moscow professor Heinrich Neuhaus, Richter’s revered teacher. Richter continued to play the Sonata for 50 years, from 1939 till 1989. It seems justifiable to assume that his personal relationship with the composer is what made the pianist one of the most accomplished performers of Szymanowski. Profil Edition Günter Hänssler has, along similar lines, already released albums featuring Richter’s performances of works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert as well as Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. This edition is devoted to the composers Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt. The set Sviatoslav Richter plays Schubert — live in Moscow won the prize for “historical recording of 2018” at the International Classical Music Awards.

Michael Rabin (1936-1972) died at the very early age of just thirty-five. The cause of his death was given as a fall, though he had been suffering from mental health issues for some time beforehand. Rabin was acclaimed in America in a manner that only Jascha Heifetz and Mischa Elman had been till then. He refused to enter a recording studio after 1959, and so the studio and live recordings he did make and that form his musical legacy have continued to this day to attract considerable attention. His tragic death has been seen by some as the result of the enormous pressure and expectations exerted by audiences and the media, especially on talented young musicians. Rabin’s father played violin with the New York Philharmonic, while his mother was a pianist. He began to make music at the age of three and made his first public appearance at eleven; just three years later, at the age of fourteen, he launched his international career with a highly acclaimed concert at Carnegie Hall. He learned early on to exploit his virtuoso talent and to give audiences what they craved. And he did indeed give performances of breathtaking quality. Audiences were in thrall to him in Europe and America and especially in Israel, where he often gave concerts. His programmes often included the most popular violin concertos, some of the principal sonatas and – often given as encores – those works that show off a virtuoso’s brilliance to the best advantage. Rabin complained in interviews that impresarios all too often wanted him to perform the same works for their programmes. He saw it as a great honor therefore, when Paul Creston dedicated his Second Violin Concerto to him. The premiere was given under the baton of Georg Solti on November 17, 1960 in Los Angeles and the recording made of it rounds off this documentation of an outstanding artist whom American critics called “a true and rare genius”.

Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) is regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. Profil Edition Günter Hänssler has already released boxed sets of Richter’s interpretations of works by Ludwig van Beethoven (PH16030), Franz Schubert (PH17005), as well as Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms (PH17967). The edition presented here on eleven albums is dedicated to the two composers Sergey Rakhmaninov and Sergey Prokofiev. The two Russian (Soviet) composers were formidable pianists, like the composers mentioned above, and left for posterity compositions for their instrument with some incredibly difficult passages. To master them, in order to penetrate towards their musical core, requires first and foremost excellent piano technique.

Bychkov's symphonic and operatic repertoire is wide-ranging. He conducts in all the major houses including La Scala, Opera national de Paris, Dresden Semperoper, Wiener Staatsoper, New York's Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Teatro Real, Madrid, and the Bayreuth Festival. His 13-year collaboration (1997-2010) with WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne produced a series of benchmark recordings that included works by Strauss (Elektra, Daphne, Ein Heldenleben, Metamorphosen, Alpensinfonie, Till Eulenspiegel), Mahler (Symphony No. 3, Das Lied von der Erde), Shostakovich (Symphony Nos. 4, 7, 8, 10, 11), Rachmaninov (The Bells, Symphonic Dances, Symphony No. 2), Verdi (Requiem). BBC Music Magazine voted Bychov's recording of Wagner's Lohengrin Disc of the Year in 2010.

According to his biographers, the composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) left an extensive oeuvre that includes numerous sonatas for flute and piano. That is true, but not altogether. The statement actually ought to be '... sonatas for piano and flute.' That may seem to be splitting hairs, but the reason for the correction becomes immediately evident when one listens to this effervescent new recording by Rainer Gepp (piano) and Christiane Meininger (flute). The piano does not modestly remain in the background and merely accompany the flute, but enjoys equal status with it.

"• Live production from the Semperoper, Dresden, 2012 • Constantin Trinks conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden. • Background: S'vanda the Bagpiper (Czech: S'vanda dudak) had its premiere in Prague in 1927. It was followed by productions all over the world, with the work translated into 17 languages. In 1931 it was performed at the New York Metropolitan Opera. The Nazis drove Weinberger into exile and the opera disappeared from the repertory everywhere until it was again performed in Dresden in 1950."

A wanderer between worlds: born in Lyon, pianist Walter Gieseking studied the piano in Hanover and soon embarked on a world career as a soloist- first in Europe, then in the U SA. He was an acknowledged master of the French repertoire- his recordings of piano works by Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy are legendary. Gieseking’s playing lived from his accuracy and gift of observation, but also from being at home in various European cultures and possessing an awareness of widely differing musical forms, which was reflected in a very wide repertoire extending beyond the classics to composers then less well-known, such as Hindemith, Schoenberg, Busoni and Szymanowski. His piano technique revealed a hitherto unknown lightness. Gieseking translated feelings effortlessly into physical movement, resulting in a unique emotional immediacy of sound. The combination of precision and such unbridled devotion again proved its worth in Walter Gieseking’s recording of Mozart’s piano works, music which demands the highest technical ability alongside an essential lightness in its acoustic. The present complete recording illustrates why Walter Gieseking must necessarily be considered one of the most important pianists of the twentieth century.

“You don’t need a teacher; what you need is an audience.” Those were the words of the great pianist and teacher Alfred Cortot, after the young Rudolf Firkušný had auditioned for him in Paris. Born in southern Moravia in 1912, Firkušný and his mother moved to Brünn after the death of his father. The boy’s musical ability was already in evidence at the domestic piano, where he enthusiastically played by ear tunes that he had heard. A friend of the family accordingly recommended him to the local conservatory, whose teachers included Leoš Janácek. Firkušný’s relationship to Janácek and his works would do much to shape his international career. Janácek concentrated principally on music theory and composition. His career as a concert pianist began in London in 1933 and he was soon playing in the great centres of music across Europe. He travelled to New York in 1938 and went on to tour North and South America. The German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 prompted him to take refuge in Paris, from where he travelled to the USA by way of Portugal in 1940. The persecution and expulsion of Jews from large parts of Europe resulted in a tremendous enrichment of American cultural life by Jewish émigrés. Under the direction of Erich Leinsdorf, the Metropolitan Opera soon assembled a Wagner ensemble of world-class singers; conductors like William Steinberg and George Szell placed their stamp upon orchestras with new repertoire, and the concert halls opened their doors to European soloists. A celebrated concert of 1941 in New York’s Town Hall gave Rudolf Firkušný his own opening to a successful career in the New World. This was further enhanced by his grand tour of South America in 1943 and showed no sign of abating when he returned to his native Czechoslovakia after the end of the war.



REVIEW:

Really special are the violin sonatas op. 120 Nos. 1 & 2 in the version for viola and piano, with violist William Primrose clearly dominating the interpretations. The various piano pieces are technically excellent. A highlight is the very sensitively played sonata by César Franck with the Vienna-born violinist Erica Morini, an artist who formed an ideal duo with Firkusny. Their performances of the Beethoven sonatas in this collection are excellent too. This box also contains only one of Beethoven’s concertos, the Fifth, in a grandiose, energetic and lean interpretation. Firkusny (1912-1994) plays brilliantly and with the greatest precision. But the superiority of the performance is ultimately due to the perfect collaboration between Firkusny and the conductor William Steinberg, who allows the Pittsburgh Symphony to play just as transparently and precisely with a springy, slender sound. Firkusny plays the Piano Sonatas No. 8 (Pathétique), 14 (Moonlight), 21 (Waldstein) with the greatest clarity and attention to detail, with little pedal, and it is certainly not bad to hear these works sometimes so objectively and yet excitingly. Profil’s collection also includes more or less inspired solo recordings of works by Schumann, Schubert, Mozart and Debussy, a very good Piano Sonata in B minor by Chopin, rich in details and sensitively played, as well as Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition played with bravura.

Really special are the violin sonatas op. 120 Nos. 1 & 2 in the version for viola and piano, with violist William Primrose clearly dominating the interpretations. The various piano pieces are technically excellent.

Another highlight is the very sensitively played sonata by César Franck with the Vienna-born violinist Erica Morini, an artist who formed an ideal duo with Firkusny. Their performances of the Beethoven sonatas in this collection are excellent too.

Firkusny's playing in the Beethoven Fifth is brilliant, exhibiting the greatest precision. But the superiority of the performance is ultimately due to the perfect collaboration between Firkusny and the conductor William Steinberg, who allows the Pittsburgh Symphony to play just as transparently and precisely with a springy, slender sound.

Firkusny plays the Piano Sonatas No. 8 (Pathétique), 14 (Moonlight), 21 (Waldstein) with the greatest clarity and attention to detail, with little pedal, and it is certainly not bad to hear these works sometimes so objectively and yet excitingly.

Profil’s collection also includes more or less inspired solo recordings of works by Schumann, Schubert, Mozart and Debussy, a very good Piano Sonata in B minor by Chopin, rich in details and sensitively played, as well as Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition played with bravura.

– Pizzicato (Remy Franck)

It is very rarely in the music world that two artists who have each had an impressive international solo career go on to form a partnership of equals. The collaboration between Zino Francescatti and Robert Casadesus is well documented in a series of what are still considered exemplary recordings - and it was one such rare, and serendipitous, partnership. Casadesus (1899 - 1972) came from a versatile French family of musicians and was taught by the same Parisian teacher as Gabrielle (Gaby), his future wife and frequent duo partner. He gained world renown in the 1920s when he toured all five continents. Casadesus and his family fled the Nazi regime in Europe and settled in Princeton, New Jersey between 1942 and 1946. It was during that time that he had his auspicious musical encounter with Zino Francescatti (1902 - 1991) who, like him, came from a family of active musicians. Francescatti was also hailed as a child prodigy and had already excelled as a 10-year-old playing Beethoven's Violin Concerto. He arrived in the United States in 1939 and, once the war ended, divided his time between living in France and the United States. In 1987 Francescatti launched an international violin competition in Aix-en-Provence, which he financed by selling his 1727 Stradivari. Like Casadesus, Francescatti had a close affinity with the music of Maurice Ravel, and their recordings of music by French composers in particular (alongside the big classical works) helped raise their compatriots' works to benchmark level.