Includes work(s) by various composers. Soloist: Richard Stoltzman.

Includes song(s) by Robert Schumann. Soloists: Håkan Hagegård, Thomas Schuback.

French piano music is doing well this month, and this admirably recorded Rubinstein disc is the more welcome for including some lesser known pieces. Chabrier and Poulenc in particular don't get recorded these days nearly as often as they deserve. I notice that not even Poulenc's Mouvements perpituels are in the catalogue at the moment, which is odd, since not so long ago every pianist seemed to be playing them. The two Poulenc Intermezzi Rubinstein plays are welcome additions too. Chabrier on the other hand now makes a strong showing since all his piano works have been recorded for Vox by Rena Kyriakou, but none of these is available outside the format of a three-disc set; and that goes for Faurè's Nocturnes as well, to which only Evelyne Crochet has been giving any attention lately.

There is nothing to temper enthusiasm for this record (except surprise that no stereo version of it has been announced). Rubinstein is at his best and is a superb exponent of French music, which indeed he has been known to champion even to the extent of playing the Ravel Valses nobles et sentiment-ales as his first encore when the same piece failed to get much response in the main part of one of his public recitals. (I am assured that this did once happen; I should like to have been there.) The presentation of this RCA disc is couched in terms of his paying "homage to French music": not a bad idea and he could do more records like it. And what about another in which he could play some of the music of this century that has been written expressly for him? Pieces by Stravinsky, Falla, Poulenc and Szymanowski quickly come to mind. Ah well, just a thought.

-- Gramophone, [3/1965] Reviewing RCA 6603

OFRA HARNOY COLLECTION VOL 5 -

This disc completes Slatkin’s survey of the “London” Symphonies and confirms his credentials as an urbane and attentive Haydn interpreter. No. 95, the least favoured of the set, and No. 97 come off particularly well. With no hint of ponderousness, Slatkin brings an imposing breadth and weight to the first movement and Minuet of No. 95, while the brilliant contrapuntal sallies in the finale (Haydn’s tribute to Mozart’s Jupiter?) gain much from the division of the violins left and right. The aggressively extrovert Vivace that opens No. 97 has a fine snap and thrust to its rhythms, the mounting tensions of the development powerfully realized; and Slatkin clearly relishes the strut and swagger of the Minuet and the comic bravado of the finale. Here and elsewhere the playing of the Philharmonia is alert and refined, with delectable work from the woodwind. In the slow movements of both these symphonies Slatkin phrases warmly and graciously, bringing out the felicities of Haydn’s part-writing – as at the opening of No. 95’s Andante, or in the chromatic coda (4'29''). RCA’s recordings combine clarity with ample body and presence.

-- Richard Wigmore, Gramophone [6/1998]

TOM HARRELL - LABYRINTH

The second disc of this release includes interviews.

Selections Include:
1. Baby Driver
2. Cecilia
3. One Man's Ceiling Is Another man's Floor
4. so Long, Frank Lloyd Wright
5. Loves Me Like A Rock
6. Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard
7. St. Judy's Comet
8. Punky's Dilemma
9. Overs
10. Mother And Child Reunion
11. Do It For Your Love
12. Still Crazy After All These Years
13. Why Don't You Write Me?
14. Old Friends/Bookends

Additional personnel includes: Gil Goldstein (keyboards); Russell Malone (guitar); Christian McBride (bass).

All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology.

As Paul Simon was perparing his first Broadway musical, The Capeman, the New York Voices assembled New York Voices Sing the Songs of Paul Simon, a song-and-dance production of Simon's biggest hits. As a musical experience, the New York Voices turned out a better, richer album than Simon, whose Songs from the Capeman was curiously stillborn. The Songs of Paul Simon, however, is full of life, teeming with energy and bursting with melody. Produced by Joel Moss and featuring cameos by Christian McBride, Gil Goldstein and Russell Malone, the project features familiar numbers like "Cecilia," "Loves Me Like a Rock," "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" and "Still Crazy After All These Years," but it also showcases wonderful album tracks like "One Man's Ceiling (Is Another Man's Floor)" and "Baby Driver." The arrangements are brighter and brassier than Simon's originals, but there's a real charm to the performances that makes it a thoroughly entertaining experience, one that's much more fun and engaging than The Capeman. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

"Leonard Slatkin's series of Haydn London Symphonies brings fresh, refined readings at speeds that never sound breathless. There is wit from the Philharmonia woodwind and the string phrasing always gives pleasure."

-- Penguin Guide [2003/4 Edition] Reviewing RCA 68003

OFRA HARNOY COLLECTION VOLUME

From Mozart to Bernstein is an eclectic repertoire and there is no obvious reason why Jerry Hadley should not add to his tally of lyric nineteenthcentury operatic roles as well. In fact, the title of this recital disc -The Age of Bel Canto" - is interpreted fairly loosely, stretching as far as the 1880s to take in Delibes's Lakme and across the Channel for a couple of Victorian ballad operas by Balfe. One senses a guiding hand at work here. Hadley may enjoy singing these various styles, but it cannot be a coincidence that Richard Bonynge is on hand as conductor.

The mood is lyrical and plangent throughout. Among his Italian operas Hadley ventures one 1 energetic aria by Rossini, which he delivers without much bravura or note-by-note precision. For the rest he prefers the gentler lyricism of Donizetti, shaping the music sensitively, sometimes delicately, and with a generous helping -some might say a surfeit - of Anglo-Saxon good taste. This is the territory that Tito Schipa used to occupy, bringing to it more verbal point and emotional intensity than is found here. Hadley sounds more at home in the less demanding items, the two Balfe solos naturally, but also the Flotow and the Thomas, which he sings with unexaggerated charm.

The main pleasure of the disc lies in catching up with some relatively rare excerpts from the French repertoire. As Hadley sings it in French, Donizetti's "Seul sur la terre" from Dom Sebastien might be included in that category. There is also a typically winning solo from Planquette's Les cloches de Corneville and, above all, Gerald's sensuous aria from Lakme, wallowing in lush orchestral textures which Bonynge and the recording engineers give their head. Hadley is generally in good voice, offering a number of full-throated top Cs and once or twice venturing higher in an effective falsetto. His tenor has the measure of this versatile programme, even if the personality is sometimes wanting. Unfortunately, the booklet has no texts, only very skimpy synopses of the plots.

-- Gramophone [1/1996]

CHANTS OF THE SEASON

MOZART: VIOLIN SONATAS VOL 3

This is not just an anthology which works—it's a wow!

This is the sixteenth gala of the Richard Tucker Music Foundation—''a look at an era just gone by'', as conductor James Conlon calls it—recorded live before an enthusiastic audience. It starts with a great lift-off: America the Beautiful (no mention of its composer Samuel Augustus Ward, whose hymn is treated to a showbiz arrangement) sung by Leontyne Price. At the age of 63 she can still summon enough patriotic fervour to make non-Americans want to apply for citizenship papers on the spot! And she isn't the oldest performer by any means. Robert Merrill is ten years her senior and delivers Weill's ''September Song'' touchingly but with a maddening tendency to anticipate the beat.

Weill is also represented by the ecstatic virtuosity of the Ice-Cream Sextet from Street Scene, still fresh in one's memory from the ENO performances in London and the two recordings now available on Decca and TER. Then there are two settings of William Blake's ''Tiger! Tiger! burning bright'' (''Songs of Experience''). Virgil Thomson set the poem twice: this is the second of his Five Songs from William Blake written in 1951, but it is William Bolcom who brings the house down with his version for chanting chorus backed by a variety of orchestral percussion.

One of the most moving performances is Karen Holvik in Stephen Foster's immaculate Ah! May the red rose live alway, with piano (Steven Blier). More calculating, but equally polished nostalgia comes from Barber, especially ''Must the winter come so soon'' from Vanessa, hauntingly sung by Frederica von Stade, recently admired for her Melisande at Covent Garden. But also ''Give me my robe'' from Barber's Anthony and Cleopatra, sung with equal poignancy by Carol Vaness.

Tatiana Troyanos sings Copland's setting of Robert Lowry's ''At the river'' with impressive, quiet dignity. Bernstein is the only composer who gets in three times—the Collegiate Chorale is on form for the first of the Chichester Psalms; Jerry Hadley sings ''Maria''; and there's an ensemble from Candide. Finally, in case you didn't sign on for US citizenship, Marilyn Horne gives a truly commanding performance of Berlin's classic God bless America. This is not just an anthology which works—it's a wow!

-- Peter Dickinson, Gramophone [6/1993]

Stoltzman plays in a uniquely personal style - bent notes and microtonal slides in near vocal effects. Magical!

Richard Stoltzman could be claimed as the James Galway of the clarinet. He has developed the personality of the instrument in new ways, often drawing on jazz effects, in what he regards as an American tradition. And he has a considerable following. He has recorded major pieces like the Corigliano Concerto (RCA, 4/89), but in this collection he's simply relaxing.

He starts with an ingenious arrangement of Gershwin's piano pieces, the Three Preludes, where the few extra effects in both clarinet and piano are completely idiomatic. Then there's Bernstein's early Sonata, another American classic, which Stoltzman has now recorded in Sid Ramin's orchestration (RCA, 12193).

W. T. McKinley makes his debut in the British catalogue with a recent, rather overblown, fourmovement Sonata and so does Clare Fisher with Sonatine. There's nothing very individual in either work, but Stoltzman obviously enjoys playing them. The real gems come when he goes deeper into jazz, especially Jimmy Rowles's The Peacocks, which was used in the soundtrack of Round Midnight. This brings out everything in Stoltzman's unique style - bent notes and microtonal slides in near vocal effects. Magical!

Dick Hyman is another jazz pianist and composer. He has recorded a complete Joplin and has written rags himself. His Clarinata is a red-hot encore with a soupy middle section. Finally Stoltzman plays his own arrangement of Amazing Grace, starting unaccompanied, and very touching it is too. Altogether an attractive collection, well recorded, with some uniquely personal playing.

-- Gramophone [9/1996]