Peter Pears gives the words their full due and sings with sensitive mastery, while Julian Bream plays with unfailing affection. The enthralling music and superb performances makes this out-of-the-way record a joy.

To a very considerable extent this record is a tribute to Julian Bream's playing; had he not been around, the two song cycles and the Britten folk-song arrangements (and for all I know, other items too) would never have been written. And very enjoyable it all is. The two song-cycles are, I think, near each other in quality, but some way apart in effect, for the Britten is obviously written to suit Peter Pears and Julian Bream, whereas the Walton seems at times to be written, as it were, against them. Thus the second song needs to be sung (I apologize for the word) saucily, the fifth with a degree of inebriations, and they are not really within Pears's emotional range. You might think the last one beyond the powers of most singers, so difficult is it, but in fact Pears makes a very good shot at it, and it is surprisingly effective. But Lady, when I behold the roses seems better suited to the performers' style and, a lovely song, it comes off without any sense of strain. The words of these songs ("chosen by Christopher Hassall"—why didn't Walton choose them?) all date from the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, and their charm is among the cycle's chief attractions.

The Britten Songs from the Chinese date from 1958, two years before the Walton, and they are settings of some of Arthur Waley's exquisite translations. Peter Pears gives the words their full due, and sings with sensitive mastery, while Julian Bream plays the marvellous guitar part with unfailing affection. I'm told that Britten himself did a good deal of guitar practice when writing these songs, and it would be interesting to hear him attempt them. His recent folk-song arrangements are delightful, and at least one of them has a guitar part of formidable difficulty. The Seiber arrangements of French folk-songs are simpler in style, but lovely to hear, and the Fricker setting of 0 Mistress mine, is delightful... [T]he enthralling music and superb performances and splendid quality makes this out-of-the-way record a joy.

-- R.F., Gramophone [7/1965, reviewing the original LP release]

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***

It is difficult to think of a more agreeable sound than that of flute and guitar; or so it seems immediately after listening to this record. Of course, the basic sound also needs quality in its execution: that it most certainly has, in high degree, on this occasion, the Galway vibrato seeming altogether less obtrusive when accompanied by guitar only.

The programme is splendidly chosen; although looking mostly like major works calling for serious listening, those major works, when considered by movements, separate into the lightest of summer-evening-on-the-river trifles. One major work is more familiar than I thought from its title it was, and perhaps than you think it is: in the Cimarosa Serenade the editing and arranging team of Galway and Yamashita have by coincidence chosen exactly the same movements, in the same order, as Arthur Benjamin chose in arranging from the same source (Cimarosa's keyboard sonatas) for the Cimarosa/Benjamin Oboe Concerto. The lay-out is of course different; and the element of familiarity involved may lend an extra pleasure on a first hearing. Pleasure, here, is also helped along by a first-class quality of recording, whether in the LP or CD version.'

-- Gramophone [4/1987]

Although there have been many fine and some thrilling performances of Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony since it first appeared on record, there are only two that really count—and this is one of them. The other is the perfectly proportioned and beautifully played Karajan (DG, 1/93). Of course, there are many more modern and better recorded versions that can be recommended but (to put an unwelcome scenario) were the bomb about to drop, and one had only time to play one version of the Fifth, for me it would be this one. Unaccountably it was never released in this country on 78s after the war, although numbers in HMV's DB series were allotted to it. In those days duplication was the exception rather than the rule and this symphony had not established the popular following it now enjoys. Perhaps it was felt that its release would impair the success of the now deleted rival set with Artur Rodzinski and the New York Philharmonic (Columbia, 2/49).

When the work was first issued on LP, I wrote: ''Not even the Berlin Philharmonic under Karajan can match the strings of the Boston Symphony in sheer power and eloquence under the baton of Koussevitzky. They possess a lyrical intensity matched by few others. Above the stave they sing with unerring purity of intonation: the sound is marvellously clean and their tone can only be called luminous.'' (Writing in another context Harris Goldsmith declared, ''the voluminous warmth of the Boston string section under Koussevitzky was one of the hedonistic delights of Western civilization''.) The wind and brass are of comparable excellence. This account dates from February 6th and 7th, 1946, yet the musicians sound as if they have known this music all their lives. As they do in an earlier performance I have on AS Disc (not available in the UK) from November 17th,1945, which must have been made very near the work's premiere.

To the Fifth Symphony and the four Romeo and Juliet excerpts (which were coupled on the LP) RCA have added two performances recorded during the orchestra's visit to New York in November 1947: the Classical Symphony and the ''Danse finale'' from Chout. I don't think the Classical is superior to the marvellous account on 78s recorded by Koussevitzky in the early 1930s (HMV, 10/31) which I hope will reappear in due course, but it is still both vivacious and enchanting. As I wrote of the Fifth and the four Romeo and Juliet excerpts first time round, these interpretations are totally unmannered yet of outsize personality, their virtuosity worn lightly. Superb performances, then, in a class of their own, which produce even better results now than they did on vinyl.'

Robert Layton, The Gramophone

Inner City: Songs by Helen Miller, lyrics by Eve Merriam, story by Lawrence Kasha, Joseph Kipness and Tom O'Horgan.

Linda Hopkins, Tony Award 1971 for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

Masterworks Broadway describes Inner City as "the musical that rocked Broadway with its distinctly untraditional take on modern urban life." The raucous 1971 show was conceived and staged by Hair director Tom O’Horgan the same season he directed the Broadway premiere of Jesus Christ Superstar. Based on Eve Merriam’s best-selling book The Inner City Mother Goose, it recounts children’s tales with a contemporary urban vibe and has a lively, R&B-influenced score by Helen Miller and lyricist Eve Merriam. Inner City introduced Linda Hopkins, who took home a Tony as Best Featured Actress in a Musical, along with Delores Hall, Larry Marshall, and Allan Nichols. Historic note: one of the production’s associate producers was Harvey Milk, before he left New York for San Francisco.

Featured songs:
1. Fee Fi Fo Fum/Now I Lay Me
2. Hushaby/My Mother Said
3. Nub of the Nation
4. Urban Mary/City Life/One Misty Moisty Morning
5. If Wishes Were Horses
6. Deep in the Night
7. Jeremiah Obadiah/Riddle Song
8. Shadow of the Sun
9. Boys and Girls Come Out to Play/Lucy Locket/Wisdom/The Hooker (“You Make It Your Way”)
10. Law and Order
11. The Dealer (“You Push It Your Way”)
12. Kindness/As I Went Over/Apartment House/There Was a Little Man/Who Killed Nobody?
13. It’s My Belief
14. Street Sermon
15. The Great If/On This Rock/The Great If (Reprise)

Note: The absence of audio in the left channel for eight seconds at the beginning of Track 10 ("Law and Order") has been retained from the original LP and cassette masters of this recording.

Though Bream's successful explorations and expansions of the repertory have been more wide-ranging than those of any other guitarist of his generation he has always had a special affinity with Spanish music, one which this disc celebrates. . . . No living guitarist can 'sell' this music so persuasively as Bream, who starts from a base of affection and conviction; indeed, a comparison with recordings of these pieces by others provides a definition of 'style' to anyone in need of one. . . . [H]ighly recommendable. -- John Duarte, Gramophone

IMPRESSIONS - DEBUSSY, RAVEL

"The disc from Nathalie Stutzmann ranges promiscuously across a variety of original singers, most of them castratos but also including Durastanti (the poor note in the booklet here neglects to mention singers and doesn't even name the role for which each aria was composed). It begins superbly, leaping in with the magnificent ''Fammi combattere'', sung here in a truly grand manner—as indeed everything is, for Stutzmann, although still under 30, has a commanding style and a tremendous technique allied to a very powerful contralto. It is not unlike the traditional English oratorio contralto, up to a point, but more resonant, clearer, and stronger in attack. Her manner is that of a modern singer, not a self-conscious period stylist, but she has a real feeling for Handel. She is an exceptionally rhythmic singer and produces immense fire in the quick numbers among them the big outburst from Partenope ''Furibondo'', and the first of the two from Floridante, as well as parts of the Mad Scene from Orlando, in which too, she is very successful at conveying, musically, the character's slipping into madness through her softening of the voice. There are also some pathetic arias of a high order, sung with no less distinction: the devastatingly beautiful ''Cara sposa'' from Rinaldo, the second of the Floridante arias (one of Handel's finest siciliana-style pieces), where the hushed tone in the da capo is wonderfully telling, and the Radamisto aria ''Ombra cara'' again, whose hauntingly sung ending concludes the disc very movingly. I thought ''Va tacito'' from Giulio Cesare a shade unsubtle, but the other aria from that work is charmingly rendered, with an appealing swing to the rhythm. Ornamentation is mostly tasteful again, there is some rewriting that goes too far but no serious damage is done. The accompaniments are done with more vigour than refinement, but serve excellently in support: in many ways a thrilling disc."

Stanley Sadie, Gramophone [3/1993]

...RCA Living Stereo have released a well-recorded, ardently sung selection of "Hebrew Melodies" (a mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish, i.e. Eili, Eili; Kol Nidrei; Meverke, Mein Zun, etc) with Jan Peerce and the RCA Victor Orchestra...

-- Gramophone [8/1995]

The works on this disc were arranged by Hiro Fujikake.

SERENADE

As Stephen Hough's sparkling Hyperion coupling of his Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 readily demonstrated (9/97), the music of Lowell Liebermann communicates warmly and vividly. For all the lyrical fervour of Liebermann's beguiling idiom, it rarely cloys, thanks in no small measure to the formidable craft he so abundantly possesses (not for nothing was he a pupil of David Diamond at the Juilliard School). The substantial opening Moderato of the Flute Concerto (commissioned and premiered by Galway in 1992 with Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra) starts and finishes like some lost instalment from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, but the bulk of the movement is given over to a wistful chaconne which Liebermann then proceeds to work out with a graceful fluency and imaginative resource that will surprise no one already familiar with the thirdmovement passacaglia of Liebermann's impressive Second Piano Concerto. If the two remaining movements aren't perhaps on quite the same level of inspiration, the solo writing is grateful, the scoring stylish and the whole work makes a most appealing addition to the genre.

In many ways, the Piccolo Concerto (1996) shares the same ground-plan as that of the Flute Concerto, its first two movements again displaying a mastery of variation technique, followed by a wittily ebullient finale (which quotes from Mozart's Symphony No. 40, Beethoven's Eroica and Sousa's The Stars and Stripes Forever). The central Adagio is especially reminiscent of Shostakovich in its icily atmospheric chill, but there are strong echoes of the Russian master throughout (whom Liebermann openly acknowledges as 'one of my biggest musical influences'). Again, the scoring is always deft and economical, as it is in the single-movement Flute and Harp Concerto of 1995, which adds just five instruments to the forces asked for in Mozart's predecessor. If I have a complaint about both these pieces, it would be that, for all their bewitching surface beauty, I found myself craving more in the way of emotional trenchancy and gritty argument. Liebermann's compositional gifts are not in doubt, but there's a restricted range of tonality and expression here that tends to pall after a while.

Galway is his usual immaculate self, as effortlessly assured an exponent of the piccolo as he is a flautist, and forming a sensitive partnership with Hyun-Sun Na in the Flute and Harp Concerto. Moreover, the London Mozart Players respond with enthusiasm under the composer's shapely lead. Vivid sound, too, though not without a touch of 0 multi-miked glare in some of the busier lulls (and there was even an occasional hint of overload in the Piccolo Concerto).

-- Gramophone [2/1999]

JAMES GALWAY PLAYS RODRIGO

Galway plays the Violin Concerto with a degree of imaginative flair and technical ease that one almost believes the music was conceived with the flute in mind.

Khachaturian's Flute Concerto was transcribed by Jean-Pierre Rampal from the Violin Concerto with the composer's blessing, and he has already made an excellent recording of it which is available on Erato's mid-price Presence label (EPRI5527,11/84). Coupled with a no-less-enjoyable version of the lbert Flute Concerto it has the benefit of a strikingly fine 1970 analogue recording. Galway has prepared his own edition of the solo part "which goes even further in its attempts to adapt the solo line to the characteristics of the flute". He also plays the work with that degree of imaginative flair and technical ease that he has previously applied to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and Cesar Franck's Violin Sonata, which makes one almost believe the music was conceived with the flute in mind. He is particularly appealing in the dreamy and languorous melodies of Khachaturian's Andante; but also in the unforgettable second subject of the first movement (Khachaturian wrote some marvellous tunes in this work) Galway's sweet, yet never sugary timbre gives the melody a radiant lyrical colouring. The flute for all its bravura can't match the violin in the finale, but overall the piece is very enjoyable in its new dress.

Instead of another concerto Galway opts to arrange three Khachaturian lollipops as encores, and again the combination of lyrical ardour (in the famous Adagio) and sparkling, easy virtuosity (in the Sabre Dance, here elegant rather than noisy) is very persuasive. The digital recording, made in Watford Town Hall, is spacious but the resonance brings a slight lack of refinement in tuttis—the big fortissimo climaxes in the centre and towards the end of the concerto's slow movement are much too fierce, and this applies to the chrome cassette as well as the LP. They are in fact very closely matched, though the level of tape transfer is not especially high.

-- Gramophone [2/1986]

Bream Collection, Vol. 12 - Twentieth Century Guitar I