This recording was a 1963 Grammy winner.

Mr. Heppner's firm, strong tone is technically superior to that of any heldentenor now operating. With Mr. Davis's intelligent backing, Mr. Heppner creates a restrained, noble Lohengrin, dramatically cautious at times but impeccably musical.

-- Alex Ross, The New York Times [2/1/1996]

This disc was nominated for the 1999 Grammy Award for "Best Classical Crossover Album."
Evelyn Glennie's uncanny virtuosity takes yet another surprising turn with this inventive collection of tunes for xylophone, marimba, vibraphone accompanied by a backdrop of brass from the Black Dyke Band. From evocative heart-rending ballads to boisterous show tunes to adaptations of familiar works, virtually all styles of popular music are represented here.
Erik Satie's "Gymnopedie No. 1" is given a lovely arrangement with a slowly pulsing brass line against a appropriately reverberant vibraphone while the warm tone of the marimba perfectly suits the "Yorkshire Ballad" and the Irish classic "Danny Boy." Other highlights include two jazz-oriented tunes: "Triplets" (a huge hit in 1919) and the Charleston-flavored "Rudy's Rambles." But perhaps the most fun track of all, because it also includes a wild assortment of bells, whistles and pop guns, is Peter Graham's "Cartoon Music," a piece that was inspired by the manic and zany music written for the classic Tom and Jerry cartoons of the 1940s.

A performance of commanding stature that reveals Kullervo as the great work it is.

Those who recall Sir Colin Davis's performance with the LSO of Kullervo at London's Barbican Centre in 1992 (subsequently televised) will not have forgotten its epic sweep and magisterial control. We have had to wait five years for his reading to reach the catalogue during which time there have been numerous rivals. All the alternatives since the original issue of Paavo Berglund's Helsinki account have accommodated Kullervo on one CD. Sir Colin's (at nearly 81 minutes) runs to two and brings us not only Sibelius's first essay in the form but also his last. The set also includes two other works conceived in the 1890s, En Saga, from 1893, revised for Busoni's celebrated New Music concerts in 1901, and Rakastava composed originally for a cappella voices in 1894 and reworked for strings and timpani in 1911. Although Davis recorded En Saga with the Boston orchestra (Philips, 3/82 — nla), I don't recall his giving us an earlier account of Rakastava, one of Sibelius's most affecting pieces. It is affectingly played, too, though I do feel that Sir Colin makes rather heavy weather of the last movement where the farewells seem to be overcharged and too protracted. I liked the earlier version of En Saga and like this every bit as much. In his hands the Seventh Symphony, which he has always done as to the manner born, is by turns powerful, epic and serene, its climaxes expertly placed.

But to turn to Kullervo: what works in the concert-hall may not make the same impression when heard in the intimacy of the home. First, let me say that the LSO play with refinement and spirit, and the London Symphony Chorus are responsive even if, in the opening of the last move ment, they do not quite surpass the deeper, darker basses of the Finnish and Estonian choirs on rival issues. They are excellent in the middle movement. The first movement is slower than I had remembered it — certainly slower than the 1958 performance by Sibelius's son-in-law, Jussi Jalas, which brought this piece alive again after its long slumber. Yet after a few bars it struck me as being exactly right. It is spacious and broad (three minutes longer than most rivals) which underlines the Brucknerian feeling to the piece. Bruckner's Third Symphony made a great impression on Sibelius during his year in Vienna when the first ideas of Kullervo were forming in his mind. The slow movement, "Kullervo's Youth", is splendidly characterized, as is the central "Kullervo and his Sister" movement. Karl-Magnus Fredriksson may not be quite as dark-toned as Hynninen, or the admirable Hillevi Martinpelto quite as authoritative as Isokowski or Groop, but they both acquit themselves well. The remaining two movements seem to me to be paced with unerring judgement. Strangely enough, looking at the figures Davis takes about ten minutes longer than such an echt Sibelian as Paavo Berglund and yet at no point does it feel it.

Every time I hear it I am puzzled that Sibelius should have entertained such strong doubts about Kullervo as to discourage performances during his lifetime. There are many fine versions listed above and I would not want to praise this excellently recorded newcomer at their expense. All that I need say, I think, is that Sir Colin's is a performance of commanding stature that reveals Kullervo as the great work it is. At the end I wanted to applaud.

-- Gramophone [12/1997]

This recording received a 1998 "Critic's Choice" award from Gramophone magazine.

This disc received the 1997 Grammy Award for "Best Classical Engineered Recording." It was also nominated for the Award for "Best Classical Album."
This disk presents a vivid picture of Aaron Copland's growth in the decade from his arrival to the creation of his early masterpieces. The 1924 'Organ Symphony' shows the enfant terrible throwing crashing dissonance and jazzy accents around with such high spirits that conductor Walter Damrosch told the premiere audience "if a young man can write like that at twenty-three within five years he will be ready to commit murder." The 1929 'Dance Symphony' recycles music from a never-staged ballet, which accounts for its somewhat episodic nature, while the 'Short Symphony' of 1933, modest in dimension and taut in structure, reveals a dramatic increase in the composer's powers, a development first signaled by the 1930 'Piano Variations,' arranged by Copland in 1957 as the 'Orchestral Variations.'
Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony are old and trusted hands with Copland's music, having recorded nearly all of the major orchestral works for RCA and EMI. These performances are right on, full of energy catching the young composer's heady mix of French color and American attitude. The recording is excellent, having both atmosphere and punch, with the featured organ captured impactfully in Christ Church Cathedral, Saint Louis.

Track Listing
1. Soul Station
2. Speak No Evil
3. Winelight
4. After the Rain
5. Dust Kicker, The
6. Monk's Hat
7. Cozy
8. Face I Love, The
9. Point of Many Returns
10. Voice of the Saxphone, The

Personnel includes: Don Braden (tenor saxophone); Vincent Herring (alto saxophone, flute); Hamiet Bluiett (baritone saxophone, clarinet, contra-bass clarinet); Randy Brecker (trumpet, flugelhorn); Frank Lacy (trombone); Darrell Grant, George Colligan (piano); Cecil Brooks III (drums); Jimmy Delgado (congas); Bill Cosby (percussion).

Includes liner notes by Benny Golson.

Personnel: Don Braden (flute, tenor saxophone); Vincent Herring (flute, alto saxophone); Hamiet Bluiett (clarinet, contrabass clarinet, baritone saxophone); Randy Brecker (trumpet, flugelhorn); Frank Lacy (trombone); Darrell Grant (piano); Dwayne Burno (acoustic bass); Cecil Brooks III (drums).

Audio Mixers: Richard Clarke; James Nichols.

Recording information: Systems Two Studios, Brooklyn, NY (02/15/1997-03/04/1997).

Arranger: Don Braden.

Don Braden's The Voice of the Saxophone is, for the most part, impressive. His quartet arrangements of "After the Rain" and the title track should turn heads. His big-toned tenor sax carries the octet in covers of hard bop gems like "Soul Station" and "Speak No Evil." He's also making headway as a composer, especially on "Cozy," which features both him and Vincent Herring on flutes. Less successful is the pseudo-Monk TV theme from The Cosby Show, which is called "Monk's Hat." ~ Ken Dryden

This disc received the 1997 Gramophone award for "Best Orchestral Recording."

Ramey is even more in command of the title role than ever, Crider is an affecting Margherita, and La Scola a mellifluous Faust.

The librettist of Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff, Arrigo Boito was also the composer of two operas, one of which, Mefistofele, based on Goethe’s Faust, he composed while still in his twenties. Its first performance at La Scala, in 1868, lasted five and a half hours, and was roundly booed. Shortened and revised seven years later, it was this time a success in Bologna, and is still to be met with in Italian opera houses and occasionally elsewhere.

Much closer in spirit to Goethe than Gounod’s Faust managed to be, Mefistofele, though an uneven work, contains a number of fine scenes, most notably the Prologue set in heaven, and the garden scene of Act II. Faust, is given a beautiful aria, ‘Dai campi, dai prati’, and Margherita has a moving lament, ‘L’altra notte’. It is, however, Mefistofele who dominates the opera, and it is Samuel Ramey who dominates this new recording. Ramey was already a splendid Mefistofele on a 1991 Sony recording, but here he is even more in command of the role, and has the advantage of Muti’s masterly conducting. Crider is an affecting Margherita and La Scola a mellifluous Faust. Peformance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Charles Osborne, BBC Music Magazine

Can a performer make a composition sound better than it really is? Peter Serkin is one who surely can. He’s a marvellous pianist, and plays everything on this disc with an uncanny sensitivity to tone, nuance and overall shaping. He is also an enthusiastic champion of living composers. All these nine works were written for Serkin, seven for a 1989-90 recital tour consisting entirely of specially commissioned compositions. Other pieces by Peter Lieberson frame the present collection, while the work he wrote for the tour occupies the central position; this American composer has long been the pianist’s close friend. Breeze of Delight, from Lieberson’s Fantasy Pieces, works minor miracles with the sorts of gestures and harmonic language familiar from John Ireland. Other compositions – including some of Lieberson’s – still end up seeming more the result of craft and occasionally remarkable ingenuity exacted on tired, if generally dissonant, materials and borrowed forms than the product of compulsive invention: Oliver Knussen’s Variations, for example, or Alexander Goehr’s … in real time I, which gives the disc its title. Leon Kirchner’s often turbulent, cunning Interlude suggests the hand of an underrated master. But even in this case, the responsibility for turning prose into poetry could, as elsewhere, have really been Serkin’s astonishing talent.

Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 4 (out of 5)

-- Keith Potter, BBC Music Magazine

This recording is now available as RCA Victrola 60135-2-RV.

TOSCANINI COLLECTION VOL 38 -

HONEGGER: SYMPHONIES NOS 2 & 5

"Vol. 40 [of the Toscanini Collection is] a rare assortment of musical lollipops... The collection includes a revelatory performance of Ponchielli's ''Dance of the Hours'', Toscanini's own stupefyingly brilliant arrangement for full string orchestra of a moto perpetuo by Paganini, and a cholesterol-free account of An der schonen, blauen Donau that is a tremendous relief from Viennese tendentiousness in this waltz."
-- Richard Osborne, Gramophone [1/1991]

Lecuona Sinfónica

Registering a wide emotional range, Gatti makes very familiar material seem fresh and compelling without being willfully "different."

This pair of Romeo and Juliets from Daniele Gatti and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is the conductor's fourth CD for BMG Conifer. Others include a Bartók disc, Respighi 's "Roman Trilogy," and a very effective Mahler Symphony No .5. With the Prokofiev, the trend in recent years has been for conductors to fashion their own series of selections from the compete work and to eschew the three suites the composer produced that may be musically satisfying but that ignore entirely the narrative flow of the ballet. A spectacularly successful example is a 1996 RCA disc from Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony which, at 78 minutes, presents a bit more than half of the ballet—perhaps all you really need outside the context of a staged performance. Gatti takes a middle ground. He plays most of the movements from the "official" Suites Nos. 1 and 2 (op. 64b and op. 64c) but reorders them to make more dramatic sense. Gatti states in the notes, "I have chosen to present the individual pieces as a series of colorful contrasts, as Prokofiev did, whilst retaining a semblance of the original story line."

The conductor succeeds considerably. Gatti registers a wide emotional range, rendering aptly both the most tender music and the crudest moments. He captures both the Neoclassical spirit of the work, as in his graceful, spontaneous-sounding "Juliet, the young girl," and the overtly Romantic gestures. The "Balcony Scene" has moments of exquisite delicacy, rising to a fervent tenderness; the closing "Romeo at Juliet's Tomb" is powerful, with an acutely agonized sense of grief. Those who love this music will have (at least) one of the several versions of the complete score—Maazel's, on a bargain-priced London "Double Decker" set, fills the bill nicely—and I find Tilson Thomas's balletic, well-played program indispensable. There's also still a place for the traditional, composer-approved suites: Muti's early 1980s readings of the first two, for instance.

In Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Gatti makes very familiar material seem fresh and compelling without being willfully "different." The opening minutes are permeated with a sense of longing, and when the Big Theme comes, while Gatti doesn't wallow, his performance is certainly quite stirring. From Intersound's budget-priced "Royal Philharmonic Orchestra" series, we know this venerable ensemble plays well for any good conductor; they play exceptionally well for their young Music Director. The recording is billed as having "EDR"—"Extended Dynamic Range"—and, indeed, you'd better adjust the volume level with care. The opening chord of "Montagues and Capulets" starts at a modest level, but Crescendos to a cataclysmic roar that had me diving for the gain control the first time out. The sound, generally, is nonfatiguing, with imaging and depth that are very good, if not quite state-of-the-art. The conductor's respiratory exertions are episodically audible.

There are close to 100 listings for the Tchaikovsky in Schwann Opus and dozens of Prokofiev's R & J, in various forms. Do you really want another version of these perennial favorites? You may want Gatti's.

-- Andrew Quint, FANFARE [7/1999]