Selections recorded March 7-10, 1991.

CHRISTMAS WITH MOZART

Includes short fantasy on a basque carol. Soloist: Emily Mitchell.
Includes the bells of dublin. Ensemble: The Chieftains.
Includes winter. Ensemble: Guildhall String Ensemble. Soloist: Richard Stoltzman.

For 20 years (1940-60) Alfred Newman presided over the music division at Fox studios, enlisting the talents of a remarkable stable of composers and in the process winning nine Academy Awards himself. He wrote the 20th Century-Fox Fanfare, one of the most instantly recognizable musical logos ever, and was best known for his rich string writing. This is very evident in the selections included here, from Wuthering Heights to The Song of Bernadette and Anastasia. Yet Newman was equally at home in historical dramas such as Captain from Castile and The Robe, as well as the modern, urban soundscapes of Street Scene and (a personal favorite) Airport, his last score. As with previous releases in this series, the performances under Charles Gerhardt are aptly spectacular, the engineering as vivid as the music itself, and the selection wonderfully representative of the composer's best work. Now available on-demand from Arkivmusic.com, this entire series is a "must" for film buffs and 20th century orchestral music fans alike.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

With Bashmet at his finest, and the LSO playing beautifully for both Järvi and Previn, this is a disc for anyone with a taste for romantic viola music.

This outstanding version of the Walton Viola Concerto from Yuri Bashmet, warm and intense, was recorded five years ago, presumably held up for lack of a suitable coupling. Having the three Bruch works may seem odd, but with the passionate Bashmet the mixture works well. After all, both composers are at their most richly lyrical, Walton in his sharp twentieth-century way just as much a romantic as Bruch. It is also worth noting that though in style they are worlds apart, the Bruch Double Concerto and the Walton Concerto date from successive decades, written respectively in 1911 and 1929.

Bashmet's Russian radio recording of the Walton, issued on Revelation in a coupling with the Britten Spring Symphony, is put out of court by the absurdly close balance of the soloist, which makes this studio recording doubly welcome. Like Kennedy, Bashmet adopts a very slow speed for the opening Andante, but is rather more adept than Kennedy in avoiding sluggishness in his subtle phrasing, with contrasts heightened. He is fast and incisive in the vigorous third subject, and the central scherzo brings a dazzling display of virtuosity, more sharply pointed than with Kennedy. In the finale too Bashmet finds more fun in Walton's scherzando writing, but then draws out the epilogue at a very slow speed, beautifully sustained, not just by him but by Previn and the orchestra, the ideal accompanists.

The rarely-played Bruch Double Concerto in three compact movements, slow, medium and fast, is better known in the version for clarinet and viola. As performed here by Bashmet with his pure-toned violinist colleague, Viktor Tretyakov, it gains in sensuousness from having the solo instruments closely allied rather than sharply contrasted. It is amazing what a fund of melodic invention Bruch kept into his seventies, not just in this concerto but in the Romance for viola and orchestra' of 1912, a glorious piece that harks straight back to the slow movement of the G minor Violin Concerto. Bashmet again gives a heartfelt performance, as he does of the well-known Kol Nidrei; with viola in place of cello, he conveys an extra poignancy in the hesitant themes of the first half, ripely leading up to the lyrical apotheosis. With Bashmet at his finest, and the LSO playing beautifully for both Jarvi and Previn, this is a disc to recommend to anyone with a taste for romantic viola music.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [3/1999]

This coupling offers two youthful concerto works and a solo interlude. The most substantial work is the Britten Piano Concerto (placed last on the disc), written in 1938 when the composer was 25. It is a boisterous piece, unstintingly virtuosic and with clear overtones of Prokofiev. It suits Douglas well, and he tackles the relentless passagework with spirited enthusiasm. His tone is rather hard, particularly in the fortes, but this is not entirely unsuitable given the steely, driven quality of the music. The first-movement cadenza is genuinely exciting, and the point when the orchestra re-enters in a moment of calm retreat (track 7 at 9'21''), with Douglas providing a rare beauty of tone and colour in the following lyrical passage, is beguiling... The Debussy Fantaisie (1890), which despite the composer’s efforts remained unperformed during his lifetime, receives a strong performance with crystalline clarity in the passagework... His playing breathes with natural phrasing and articulation, and has a sure-footed integrity...

-- Tim Parry, Gramophone [10/1997]

This live recording differs from the recording included in the complete box set of Bruckner Symphonies on RCA Red Seal 60075.

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

BRAILOWSKY PLAYS CHOPIN

Call Me Madam is a pure adrenalin shot of circa-1950 zeitgeist, a screwball comedy pulled from the headlines with impeccable timing. The show was conceived as a vehicle for Ethel Merman, at that moment arguably the biggest star in Broadway musicals, and reunited her with Irving Berlin, composer/lyricist of her blockbuster 1946 hit Annie Get Your Gun. A red-hot ticket when it opened on October 12, 1950 at the Imperial Theatre, Call Me Madam proved to be the blockbuster Merman and Berlin hoped for. They were in the very best of hands: George Abbott directed, Jerome Robbins choreographed and the casting was supervised by Abbott’s new young assistant, Harold Prince. The cast included an Oscar-winning leading man (Paul Lukas), the bright new presence of Russell Nype as Mrs. Adams’s lovelorn attaché and – as Merman’s underutilized understudy – the young Elaine Stritch. The capitalization for the entire show came from NBC and its record division, RCA Victor. Unfortunately a big problem loomed as Merman was under contract to Decca Records who refused to release her to star in what was sure to be a hit record. Ultimately, RCA Victor turned to one of its hottest singers, Dinah Shore, to step into Merman’s shoes for the original cast recording. It rose to No. 6 on the Billboard album chart but by the late 1950s, it had been deleted from the catalog. The recording got an LP reissue in 1977 but it disappeared again until this Masterworks Broadway release, and is the first and only authorized CD version of RCA Victor’s Call Me Madam digitally remastered from the original tapes.

BRAHMS: SYMPHONY NO 3 SCHUBER

After his highly variable Mahler cycle, it's very good to be able to report that David Zinman is back in top form for Brahms. For the most part, these are splendid performances, beautifully played and recorded. The very opening of the First symphony sets the tone: rich, emphatic, but not exaggerated. Textures are clear, bass lines unusually audible. Zinman handles some of Brahms' most intransigent bits of orchestration, such as the opening of the Third symphony, with its perpetually syncopated accompaniment, with effortless mastery. The inner movements of all four symphonies are without exception perfectly paced, including the slow movements of the Second and Fourth symphonies.

Are there a few quibbles? Naturally. The introduction to the First symphony's finale lacks mystery, while the coda of the Second symphony's finale would have benefited from slightly more prominent brass and a surge of additional energy from the podium. On the other hand, the finale of the Third never has sounded better, the coda tremendously fulfilling, while the Fourth's passacaglia is really imposing, but also energetic. Here the trombones truly make their presence felt. In short, this set stands with the best, and I suspect its stature will only grow over time.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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Brahms had a special connection with Zurich. He attended the opening of the Tonhalle, the city’s famous concert hall, in 1895 and was the only living composer to be featured on the ceiling painting; it’s reproduced in the booklet for this set, part of the altogether splendid packaging. The latter-day descendants of the orchestra for that opening concert have here given us a cycle of symphonies with which I am sure the composer would have been very pleased.

The first thing that strikes you is the beauty and colour of the playing. Both times I’ve heard them live, it’s the Tonhalle strings that have impressed me most, rich and rounded, oozing with character. This makes them ideal for Brahms. The mellow beauty of the Second’s first movement suits them perfectly, but they also develop a distinctive sheen, even a slight hard edge, for the more high energy moments, such as the opening movement of the First or the invigorating downward sweep that opens the Third. There is also some sensational wind playing and some first rate solos, such as the oboe in the First and the clarinet in the slow movements of the Third and Fourth. The playing alone would be worth the asking price, but it’s Zinman’s dynamic conducting that holds the set together. His reading of each symphony carries a clear sense of a transformational journey which, for me, went beyond the ordinary. The transition from darkness to light in the First is obvious, but Zinman breaks it down still further so that there is ebb and flow in each movement: in the first movement’s Allegro, for example, there is an almost tangible feeling of the drama and tension of the first subject being tamed by the gentler lyricism of the second. The Second carries a steady trajectory towards the celebration of the finale, but Zinman takes this movement just a touch slower than many so that the ebullience is contained within a certain set of rules. The Third also seems to go on a steady path from the exhilaration of the opening to an increasing sense of melancholy which is almost - but not quite - solved by the finale. Only in the first two movements of the Fourth was that sense of direction a little lacking. The tension and energy ups dramatically with the Scherzo and the final Passacaglia becomes so intense as to be almost unbearable.

It helps that these live recordings were all taped within two days, so we have here an unusually coherent reading of Brahms’ symphonic oeuvre. Sections of the press have damned this set with faint praise, calling it a safe middle-of-the-road Brahms cycle, but for me it’s much more than that: it’s an intelligent, well argued reading of this great cycle which stands comparison with any Brahms set that has come my way in recent years. Zinman is very much in the traditional mould of Brahms interpreters, eschewing the approaches of Harnoncourt or Gardiner, but he argues convincingly that there is still a place for this in our 21st century and he certainly carried me along with him. The sound, by the way, is excellent, rich and bloomy with plenty of clarity for the inner voices.

Incidentally, for those who are interested in such things, Zinman observes all the exposition repeats. Live as these recordings are, the audience is exceptionally well behaved and there is not a hint of a cough throughout. Applause, and there must have been much, is also absent. My only quibble is that the CDs give us barely any time to digest one movement before the next begins, surely an unnecessary compression of space when there is so much spare time on each disc.

-- Simon Thompson, MusicWeb International

"I very much enjoyed Slatkin's performance of the Second Serenade. He approaches the work in a very relaxed, straightforward fashion, but there's nothing dull or routine about the playing of the St Louis orchestra, which is very alert, and first class in every respect. The first movement is taken at quite an easy-going tempo, and the music is very much allowed to speak for itself, but Slatkin takes great care to state all the accents very clearly, especially in the string pizzicato accompaniments, so that the general effect is very fresh and buoyant. The somewhat complex rhythms at the beginning of the Scherzo are also very clearly articulated, and despite a fairly relaxed tempo the movement has a great deal of vitality. The Adagio is very well held together, and nowhere does it lapse into a plod, as it can so easily do, even though the tempo is quite slow...
Slatkin is again very effective in the Serenade's last two movements, and I think his performance is marginally the best now available, if only for his slight superiority over Bertini in the Adagio. RCA's recording is pleasantly mellow..."

-- Gramophone [8/1990]

BERIO: VOCI, REQUIES, CORALE

...wonderful stuff...with a clearly attentive Chicago Symphony. It's an excellent performance, not quite as wild as his latest NDR release, but rock-solid in the first movement and very exciting in the finale. -- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com [reviewing RCA 84588]