This "on demand" reissue from Arkivmusic.com offers bright and bubbly performances of an odd but curiously apt coupling. Both works are neoclassical in style as well as rich in humor. Mata's performance of the Strauss has none of the usual Viennese "flagellated cream" (as Hoffnung put it). Rather, the playing is sharp-edged and the conducting rhythmically precise, particularly in the extended finale. Textures are extremely clear, and balances favor the winds and percussion. It's a very different take on the work, and one that offsets the all-strings Wirén Serenade quite well. Playing time is only a bit more than 50 minutes, and the early digital sonics aren't entirely free from glare, but this is a very enjoyable recording, yet another worthy memento of the late Eduardo Mata. I was very pleasantly surprised, and if the coupling suits, you will be too.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

LEVINE CONDUCTS MAHLER: SYMPHO

NOCTURNE - JAMES GALWAY DAVID

SIBELIUS: VIOLIN CONCERTO SAI

GOULD: APPLE WALTZES, BURCHFIE

When Barry Douglas won his first prize in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1986 he was promptly engaged by Melodiya to record one of the works he had to offer: the Brahms D minor Concerto. Douglas's playing proved to be commending enough but as we can hear on the Olympia/Conifer CD issue of the Melodiya disc, the recording and orchestral playing left a lot to be desired ((CD) OCD137). So this new RCA recording, expertly produced and recorded last February in St Giles, Cripplegate with Skrowaczewski and the LSO, is greatly to be welcomed as the true memento of Douglas's Moscow triumph.

There is never any doubt that Douglas is technically, and in large measure emotionally, in command of this daunting work, and there is far better rapport here between pianist, conductor and orchestra than there was on the Melodiya issue. The slow movement, rapt and serious, is memorably sustained; there is nothing lax about the ensemble, nothing mannered or over-rhetorical about the playing. And the great first movement is held firmly on course. Once or twice I missed the sheer impetus of Szell's great reading with the same orchestra for Curzon on Decca (the leggiero before the recapitulation dancing in a way that fires up the soloist rather than damping him down) but doubts about the initially broad tempo (as broad as Haitink's for Arrau on Philips) were unfounded. Douglas's marvellous realization of the E major recapitulation confirms that this is the tempo he wants, unlike Pollini on an older DG recording who flatly contradicts Bohm's spacious opening at the point of recapitulation. If I have doubt about any of the movements in the new RCA recording, it is the finale. I know Brahms marks it Allegro non troppo but from the outset of the movement there seems here to be a degree of circumspection, the absence of the kind of compelling dynamism that will drive the music on into self-absorbed unity through its several episodes.

Nowadays RCA no longer make concerto recordings with clattery pianos and dimly recessed orchestras. Douglas and his Steinway make a fierce, brilliant sound, but there is much that is exquisitely quiet, especially in the slow movement. The piano is forward but not unduly so, and the sound it makes is not all like polished steel. The orchestra is very naturally recorded, with great depth of field. If anything, the horns, crucial in this work, are almost too atmospherically distant, though it must be said that the quietest pedal note does seem to carry through the texture.

The competition is, of course, formidable. Gilels, whom I occasionally find mannered in this concerto, offers a famous two-CD set of both the Brahms concertos on DG. Arrau is a law unto himself, uniquely searching. His is a fundamentally different kind of reading, touched with youthful energy but with the energy of a youth burdened beyond his years, as Brahms probably felt he was at this time. Curzon could be technically fallible in Brahms but he was a serious and sensitive interpreter of the music and inspired by Szell at his most excoriating he gave a performance of mingled poetry and electricity that even he must have wondered at.

Douglas doesn't displace these masters but he has every right to co-exist with them. As a young Brahmsian he reminds me somewhat of the late Julius Katchen, fearless but sensitive, robust but never crass. Let us hope that RCA will not feed Douglas a diet of popular concertos; Katchen recorded all Brahms's solo piano music, and Douglas ought to be offered some comparable projects. Talent of this order needs space in which to roam and grow.'

-- Richard Osborne, Gramophone [3/1989]

Track Listing
1. Powder Puff
2. Pesky Serpent, The
3. Bunny
4. Pirouette
5. Morpo
6. Diablo's Dance
7. Mambo del Crow
8. Indian Club
9. Coop de Graas
10. Infinity Promenade
11. Short Stop
12. Boar-Jibu
13. Contours
14. Tale of an African Lobster
15. Chiquito Loco
16. Sweetheart of Sigmund Freud
17. Blues for Brando
18. Chino
19. Wild One, The (Hot Blood)
20. Windswept

Personnel: Shorty Rogers (trumpet); Art Pepper (alto saxophone, tenor saxophone); Bud Shank (alto saxophone, baritone saxophone); Herb Geller (alto saxophone); Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Cooper (tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone); Bill Holman, Bill Perkins (tenor saxophone); Conrad Gozzo, John Howell , Maynard Ferguson, Pete Candoli, Ray Linn (trumpet); John Graas (French horn); Milt Bernhart, Harry Betts, John Haliburton, Jimmy Knepper, Bob Enevoldsen (trombone); Gene Englund (tuba); Hampton Hawes, Marty Paich, Russ Freeman (piano); Shelly Manne (drums).

Liner Note Author: Todd Selbert.

Recording information: RCA Studios, Hollywood, CA (01/12/1953-??/??/1954).

This double LP offers listeners a strong introduction to the trumpet playing and arrangements of Shorty Rogers, but unfortunately it has gone out of print and was the first and last in its series. The 32 selections feature six different groups headed by Rogers during 1953-1954, ranging from an octet to a big band; all of the bands feature sidemen who essentially formed a who's who of West Coast jazz. Among the other soloists are altoist Art Pepper; tenors Bill Holman, Bill Perkins, Zoot Sims, Bob Cooper, and Jimmy Giuffre; trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison; pianist Hampton Hawes; and altoists Herb Geller and Bud Shank. The majority of the selections are Rogers originals; there is music from the Marlon Brando film The Wild One and a Count Basie tribute set. Swinging and surprisingly fiery "cool jazz" that deserves to be reissued on CD in full. ~ Scott Yanow

BENIAMINO GIGLI - DONIZETTI, P

An impressive performance, spacious, full-bodied, and last but not least, never forgetful of the warm human feeling prompting Mussorgsky's tribute to a recently and prematurely deceased friend.

After Barry Douglas's recent RCA concerto debut in the Tchaikovsky, now a solo recital—with Pictures at an Exhibition, long a cornerstone of his repertory, the principal work. It's an impressive performance, spacious, full-bodied, and last but not least, never forgetful of the warm human feeling prompting Mussorgsky's tribute to a recently and prematurely deceased friend. In view of Ashkenazy's own orchestration of the work, it is perhaps not surprising that he himself draws a wider range of colour from the keyboard, particularly its upper register glints; his characterization is just a shade more vivid, underpinned by a stronger sense of direction (Decca). But Douglas's tone is warmer—and full marks to the RCA engineers for reproduction so faithful.

Both artists use the Urtext edition, notably giving us an ff start to ''Bydlo''. Here I think douglas's slower tempo is a distinct advantage in evoking the ox-wagon's lumbering motion, just as his marginally brisker tempo for the finale is truer to the composer's allegro alla breve marking. But neither his quarrelling children in the Tuileries garden nor his gossiping market-women at Limoges have as much temperament as Ashkenazy's, nor is his witch as ferocious—or sinister in flight. Both players, in their different ways, rightly make the recurrent promenade episode very personal. But on its first reflective return I questioned Douglas's subdivision of each phrase into two, just as I wondered if the ensuing sad song of the troubador (here very much an unrequited lover at the castle gate) really needs his occasional yieldings of pulse. His exceptionally full, rich fortissimo, free of all edginess or clang, is of course a tremendous asset in the majestic finale—as it also is in the big climaxes of the Dante Sonata. Comparison with Brendel (Philips) in this work revealed Douglas less dramatically menacing, less intense. But in its less urgent way (and, incidentally, he allows himself all the time in the world for the middle section's bittersweet reflection), the reading is warmly romantic and expansive—with some ravishing softer sonority en route. You're certainly left in no doubt as to why Liszt included the word 'fantasia' in the title. If yielding phrasing in the Liebestod sometimes relaxes tension in pianissimo, textural strands are clearly defined and the climax itself is sumptuous.

-- Joan Chissell, Gramophone [5/1987]

MOZART: COMPLETE VIOLA QUINTET

MOZART: COMPLETE STRING QUINTE

Music and lyrics by Lionel Bart.

Principal cast includes: Ron Moody (Fagin), Jack Wild (Artful Dodger), Mark Lester (Oliver), Shani Wallis (Nancy), Harry Secombe (Bumble), Peggy Mount (Mrs. Bumble), and Sheila White (Bet).

Ron Moody recreates his magnificent stage performance as Fagin on this soundtrack album of what must be the best British musical film ever. Shani Wallis replaced Georgia Brown as Nancy, and, together with Mark Lester (Oliver), Jack Wild (Artful Dodger) and Oliver Reed (the sinister Bill Sikes), gives Lionel Bart's marvellous score the full treatment. Highlights are impossible to select; Oliver's tender "Where Is Love?" and Fagin's "You've Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two" linger in the memory, but the complete set is as fresh now as when it was released over 25 years ago. In those pre-Lloyd Webber days, musicals had lots of strong songs, not just one.

This CD is currently available as RCA Gold Seal 61414.

"Gilels made two recordings of this concerto. The later version was made for DG in the early 1970s with Eugen Jochum and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and has earned a high reputation over the years. This earlier version, made in January 1958, is no less remarkable and very different. Perhaps it was the temporary transatlantic influence of Reiner and his orchestra which persuaded Gilels to see the concerto as a vehicle for a display of brilliant virtuoso playing, with fast tempos and little relaxation except in the third movement. certainly the playing in the overture has the same characteristics. But when this approach was harnessed to Gilel's intellectual strength the result was a performance of great power." -- The Gramophone

WEBER, NIELSEN: CLARINET CONCE