Classical Music

The piano music expert and music commentator Attila Csampai recently marveled at the “lasting impression of Gilels’s implacable precision, the energetic clarity and purity of his musical logic, the profound, unshakeable humanity of his messages and a totally unglamorous objectivity”. This new release showcases Russian repertoire, performed by Emil Gilels, with recordings made between 1940-1963. Widely recognized as one of the greatest pianists of all time, Emil Gilels led the way to the West for his generation of Soviet pianists. His American concert debut in 1955 was renowned across the country. With a repertoire ranging from Baroque to twentieth century works, he is universally admired for his superb technical control and burnished tone on recordings.

 

REVIEW:

 

Among the recordings included here are wonderful performances of the second and third movements from the Fourth Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s B flat minor under Konstantin Ivanov from 1951 (with the stereo 1955 Chicago RCA recording under Reiner as a fill-up, though Gilels in Russia is more compelling). The sound tends to vary from recording to recording but the transfers are in general fine.

 

– Gramophone

This Edition presents the “Magnificent Seven” and the “encore” in optimum technical quality. In the mid-Fifties of the last century, with the Cold War freezing relations between East and West, the English record label Decca decided to record a series of Russian operas with the Belgrade National Opera. Belgrade in the Yugoslavia of those days under Josip Tito was more open to “the West” than the Warsaw Pact countries gathered under the wing of the Soviet Union. The deal had been struck by former Decca manager and successful promoter of east European folklore in the USA, record executive Gerald Severn. Thanks to his excellent contacts, Decca director Arthur Haddy eventually obtained a visa and travelled to Belgrade to find a suitable recording venue, which turned out to be the cinema in the House of Culture in the city centre. These were the early days of stereophony and so recordings were usually made both in stereo and in mono. The stereo LP made its first official appearance in 1958 (by which time the shellac disc was effectively obsolete, having been displaced by mono LPs since their introduction in 1948) and it would be many years before there was a mass audience for stereo listening.

Classical Music

No composer’s reputation has been as inflated into myth as that of Ludwig van Beethoven, and there are good grounds for this. As the ultimate definer of classical music, he perfected the models of his predecessors Haydn and Mozart with a hitherto unknown intellectual and artistic consistency, with the consequence that he wrote fewer works than these two, but his were longer and weightier and crowned by the nine symphonies. At the same time, his intense musical language (often disturbing for his contemporaries) heralded the age of Romanticism. This release of his complete symphonies features the interpretation of the WDR Sinfonieorchester and conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste, who has established himself as one of the outstanding conductors of his generation, demonstrating remarkable musical depth and integrity. “Everything he tackles… is a success, regardless of whether it is Beethoven, Brahms, Schoenberg, or Stravinsky.” (Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger)

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REVIEW:

Unlike his more radical contemporaries, Saraste builds a profile of the composer as a reluctant revolutionary, with a dense, post-Wagnerian body of sound built up from the solid foundations of a well-defined bass section. The instincts remain sound: this is thick-set if sometimes muscle-bound Beethoven of a kind more familiar half a century ago, voiced with a lively and relaxed directorial intelligence.

– Gramophone

Classical Music

The legendary Vienna Mozart Ensemble which came into being in the early years after World War II will forever be associated with the name of the Austrian conductor Josef Krips (1902–1974). Born in Vienna, he studied music there under Felix Weingartner, was principal violinist in the Volksoper orchestra, then Weingartner's assistant. He took posts as concertmaster in Aussig, then Dortmund and Karlsruhe, where he was appointed General Music Director in 1926 before returning to Vienna, where in 1933 he was given the post of conductor at the Vienna State Opera. He left the country of his birth again in 1938 after the Anschluss, but in Belgrade he was prohibited from working after intervention by the Nazis. At the end of the war, Krips returned to Vienna and immediately became actively involved in the reconstruction of cultural life in the city on the Danube. His artistic and organizational skills were in demand in post-war Austria when it came to re-establishing the Salzburg Festival. In 1950 he found himself under suspicion of engaging in Communist activities and went to London, where he was principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra until 1954; he returned to Vienna in 1955 and was later principal conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. From 1968 onwards he conducted regularly at the Vienna State Opera, and in 1970 he succeeded Wolfgang Sawallisch as principal conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. For many, Krips was the most knowledgeable Mozart conductor of his time, and the composer's works are the main focus of this edition, though he is also featured here as a highly respected partner to top-flight concert soloists including Artur Rubinstein, Mischa Elman, Clifford Curzon, Edwin Fischer and Isaac Stern.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

As far as I know, this release is the only one to feature Sena Jurinac singing Lieder for voice adn piano. Sena Jurinac did make recordings of other songs, but without piano accompaniment: Ottorino Respighi's Il Tramonto with the Barylli Quartet and the Vier Letzte Lieder by Richard Strauss, recorded live with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Fritz Busch in 1951. These recordings later appeared in the French References series released by the label EMI.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music