No better Joplin cycle exists, and its first complete appearance on CD is long overdue.

Between January and April 1975, the classically trained, multi-award-winning jazz pianist and composer Dick Hyman – whose astounding résumé includes playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman, writing and arranging for Count Basie, and scoring most of the films of Woody Allen – went into RCA’s Studio A in New York City and set down the definitive recording of ragtime legend Scott Joplin’s piano works. In 1988, an hour-long selection from the five LPs was released on CD. Now at last, Sony Classical is issuing Hyman’s entire Joplin album on three well-filled silver discs.

This really is Joplin’s complete piano output. It even includes the six short exercises that form his 1908 School of Ragtime, with their printed prefatory remarks read by the 92-year-old Eubie Blake, a friend of Joplin and a distinguished ragtime player in his own right. Also here are Joplin’s less familiar marches and waltzes. And there’s a bonus: the set contains Hyman’s own twelve delightful improvisations on themes by Joplin, which he designed to demonstrate the composer's influence on the development of jazz harmony and melody. When the LPs were first released, Gramophone’s jazz critic wrote that “the eminently musical quality of Hyman’s playing is in evidence throughout the collection; he has the ability to characterize perfectly each piece and somehow to pinpoint every little harmonic subtlety and melodic felicity without in any way detracting from the conception as a whole.... He pays as much attention to matters of tempo, texture, phrasing and dynamics as though he were doing the twenty-four Chopin Preludes. Two for instance I particularly enjoyed were Cascades with its rippling lightness of touch and Scott Joplin’s New Rag in which Hyman’s cleanness of articulation and rhythmic exuberance are a joy. … Joplin well deserves this very handsome and well-recorded tribute.”

CONTENTS:

• Maple Leaf Rag
• Original Rags
• Swipesy
• Peacherine Rag
• The Easy Winners
• Sunflower Slow Drag
• The Entertainer
• Elite Syncopations
• The Strenuous Life
• A Breeze from Alabama
• Palm Leaf Rag
• Something Doing
• Weeping Willow
• The Chrysanthemum
• The Cascades
• The Sycamore
• The Favorite
• Leola
• The Ragtime Dance
• Eugenia
• Lily Queen
• Gladiolus Rag
• Nonpareil
• Heliotrope Bouquet
• Search-light Rag
• Rose Leaf Rag
• Fig Leaf Rag
• Pine Apple Rag
• Solace
• Sugar Cane
• Stoptime Rag
• Euphonic Sounds
• Country Club
• Wall Street Rag
• Felicity Rag
• Paragon Rag
• Silver Swan Rag
• Kismet Rag
• Magnetic Rag
• Reflection Rag
• Antoinette
• Cleopha
• March majestic
• Combination March
• Rosebud
• Great Crush Collision
• School of Ragtime (Exercises Nr. 1-6)
• Bethena (Concert waltz)
• Binks' Waltz
• Pleasant Moments
• Augustan Club Waltz
• Harmony Club Waltz
• New Rag
• +Dick Hyman-Improvisation on Peacherine Rag
• The Entertainer
• Elite Syncopations
• A Breeze from Alabama
• Something Doing
• Gladiolus Rag
• Heliotrope Bouquet
• Fig Leaf Rag
• Stoptime Rag
• New Rag
• Pleasant moments

REVIEW:

The ragtime genre came into full flower from the mid-1890s through the end of World War I, spearheaded by Scott Joplin (1868-1917), whose 1899 composition Maple Leaf Rag became the template and standard bearer for classic through-composed rags. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw newfound interest in Joplin as a serious composer, starting with the New York Public Library’s publication of Joplin’s collected works. Joplin’s 1902 rag The Entertainer figured prominently in the soundtrack for the 1973 Academy Award-winning film The Sting, launching a floodgate of Joplin releases. Even classical artists as unlikely as Itzhak Perlman, James Levine, and E. Power Biggs hitched their stars to the Joplin bandwagon.

However, the most comprehensive, intelligently produced, respectful, and artistically satisfying collection of Joplin’s complete piano works came from RCA Victor in a five-LP boxed set, featuring pianist Dick Hyman. No better Joplin cycle exists, and its first complete appearance on CD is long overdue.

The music is presented by genre, with the rags arranged in loose chronological order by composition, followed by marches and waltzes. Also included is Joplin’s charming “School of Ragtime” Etudes complete with Joplin’s introductory remarks read by composer/pianist and Joplin colleague Eubie Blake, who was 92 when he faced the microphone to speak. Hyman also offers the Grand Crush Collision march both in its original text and in his own ragtime transformation.

Although Hyman’s pianism embraces the entire history of jazz piano, his effortless virtuosity is firmly rooted in classical training. As Rudi Blesh aptly stated in his brilliant and insightful original booklet annotations, the pianist “takes ragtime seriously without becoming solemn and portentous, more as one must do in approaching, say, much of Mozart.”

Two further qualities make Hyman’s Joplin stand out: his intelligent tempo choices, and his ideal fusion of classical projection and jazz time keeping. Take Joplin’s 1899 hit Maple Leaf Rag, for example. Hyman’s vigorous pace, dynamic contrasts, and clear articulation convey pure joy with a soupçon of brashness, so unlike Joshua Rifkin’s effete and rhythmically stiff traversal. The Cascades’ descending runs are as crystalline and transparent as Rubinstein’s Chopin. By contrast, Hyman’s measured tempo and ear-catching inflections of phrase in Elite Syncopations give shape and breathing room to Joplin’s polyphony.

Note, too, Hyman’s lovely legato touch and subtly lilting rubatos in Weeping Willow, Gladiolus Rag, and Solace, while Something Doing is pure lightness and effervescence. The pianist’s characterful animation keeps the episodic Bethena concert waltz afloat and moving. And although Hyman clearly respects Joplin’s texts, the pianist is not above filling out the texture with discreet octave reinforcements in the left hand, as he does in the difficult Euphonic Sounds, a rag that foreshadows elements of stride piano. Because Hyman approaches each piece on its own terms, one gleans more variety and expressive scope from Joplin’s oeuvre than we experience from most other Joplin interpreters.

The original LP edition devoted the tenth side to twelve of Hyman’s improvisations on Joplin themes, which here are spread across the three CDs, most likely for timing considerations. They are sheer delights, from The Entertainer’s bi-tonal coda to a brief and unbuttoned Peacherine Rag that brilliantly burlesques Art Tatum’s 1940 recording of Harold Arlen’s Get Happy.

A Breeze From Alabama is pure, unadulterated barrelhouse and boogie-woogie, while in Joplin’s New Rag Hyman can’t resist interpolating Juventino Rosas’ Over the Waves–better known as the summer camp ditty “George Washington Bridge”. In short, Dick Hyman and Scott Joplin unquestionably belong to the coterie of symbiotic performer/composer pairings that include Schnabel/Beethoven, Gould/Bach, Gieseking/Debussy, Larrocha/Albéniz, and Hamelin/Alkan.

Full disclosure: I met Dick Hyman nearly 60 years ago when I was eight years old, and he has been a friend, a colleague, and a musical father figure to me ever since. We even played two pianos together in several concerts. I vividly remember hearing Dick preparing these Joplin pieces at the time of the 1975 sessions, and marveled at his absolute commitment to the material, his focus and his flexibility in the process of getting all of the music under his awesome fingers. Thanks to Sony/BMG for reissuing and gorgeously remastering an important recording project that belongs in every serious collection.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Jed Distler)

In celebration of the great Israeli-American violinist’s 75th birthday, Sony Classical is proud to present the first-ever collection of Itzhak Perlman’s complete recordings for RCA and CBS/Sony in a single box set: 18 CDs spanning the years 1965 to 2012.

Itzhak Perlman has dominated the world of violin virtuosos for half a century. His TV appearances had already made him a household name in the US by the time he was 13. A few years later came his Carnegie Hall debut, then the prestigious Leventritt Award, followed by triumphant tours of Israel, North America and Europe between 1965 and 1968. By then he was an international celebrity and recognized “not just as the finest violinist of his generation but as one of the greatest musical talents to emerge since World War II” (leading string authority Tully Potter writing in the NEW GROVE).

And it was then that Perlman began his illustrious, virtually unparalleled career as a recording artist. His first sessions for RCA, accompanied by pianist David Garvey – with works ranging from sonatas by Handel, Leclair and Hindemith to showpieces by Paganini, Bazzini, Sarasate and Falla – took place in New York in 1965 but were not issued for nearly 40 years because the label felt concertos would make a more suitable commercial debut for the rising star. When an album of these pieces was finally released – as “Perlman Rediscovered”, in 2004 – it was hailed “an outstanding tribute to one of the great names among violinists of any age, as well as a remarkably varied and interesting recital in its own right” (ClassicsToday). These tracks are, of course, included in the new collection.

Perlman’s first concerto efforts for RCA – the Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Prokofiev Second, with Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony – were set down in 1966/1967 and released the following years as his recording debut. ClassicsToday acclaimed them in a recent reissue as “offering playing that is gutsy and shamelessly virtuosic, and with a sharper rhythmic focus than Perlman often achieved subsequently. The finale of the Sibelius remains a potent example of the playing’s youthful fire.” In 1969, Perlman recorded what was arguably one of the finest albums of his career, the two Prokofiev Sonatas (which he never remade), partnered by pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy at the beginning of their long and distinguished collaboration: “Delicate where needs be … and yet with a Heifetzian resilience that both sonatas willingly respond to … Perlman and Ashkenazy play with astonishing virtuosity” (Gramophone).

Itzhak Perlman’s work for American Columbia began in the mid-1970s and – apart from Bach and Vivaldi multi-violin concertos with Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman and the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta – cover a wide swath of chamber music with special partners: pianists Daniel Barenboim and Emanuel Ax, cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Lynn Harrell and guitarist John Williams. The Mendelssohn Piano Trios with Ax and Ma, first released in 2010, appear here for the first time in a Perlman collection (“…ensemble balance, clarity of inner part-writing, drama, lyricism, and phrase shaping of the highest order … I find these performances not just outstanding; I find them astounding” (Fanfare).

That other John Williams, the legendary composer for the silver screen, was Perlman’s collaborator in another medium, the movies: his two best-selling “Cinema Serenade” albums arranged and conducted by Williams, with Perlman featured in selections from such classic films as Modern Times, Gone with the Wind, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Out of Africa, Cinema Paradiso, The Color Purple and, of course, the theme that Perlman memorably performed on the soundtrack of Williams’s Oscar-winning score for the Spielberg masterpiece Schindler’s List.

New to Perlman CD editions are two complete soundtrack albums: John Williams’s “elegant and thoughtful score” for Memoirs of a Geisha in which the violinist is joined by Yo-Yo Ma and to which Perlman “brings a magical and peculiarly oriental sound to his violin-playing” (Gramophone), and the music for Yimou Zhang’s Hero by Tan Dun: “Few composers today write more effective melodies for bowed strings” (Gramophone). And to round off this uniquely wide-ranging survey of the violinist’s musical passions and triumphs, in its first appearance in a Perlman collection, the artist is joined by golden-voiced cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot in Eternal Echoes, a highly praised album of liturgical and traditional selections which the violinist has affectionately described as “Jewish comfort music – everything that I recognize from my childhood is in this program.”

SET CONTENTS

DISC 1:
Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 63   
Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47

DISC 2:
Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, TH 59
Dvořák: Romance in F Minor, Op. 11, B. 39   

DISC 3:
Prokofiev: Violin Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 80   
Prokofiev: Violin Sonata in D Major No. 2, Op. 94bis   

DISC 4:
Lalo: Symphonie espagnole, Op. 21   
Ravel: Tzigane, M. 76 (Version for Violin & Orchestra)   

DISC 5:
Paganini: Centone di sonate, Op. 64, MS 112 (Sonata No. 1 in A Minor)   
Paganini: Sonata for Violin and Guitar in E Minor, Op. 3, No. 6, MS 27   
Paganini: Sonata concertata in A Major, Op. 61, MS 2   
Giuliani: Duo concertante in E Minor, Op. 25 "Grand Sonata"   
Giuliani: Cantabile in D Major, Op. 17, MS 109   

DISC 6:
Dohnányi: Serenade in C Major, Op. 10   
Beethoven: Serenade in D Major, Op. 8   

DISC 7:
Bach, J.S.: Concerto for 2 Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043   
Vivaldi: Concerto for 3 Violins in F Major, RV 551   
Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante in E-Flat Major, K. 364   

DISC 8:
Chausson: Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet in D Major, Op. 21   

DISC 9:
Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Major, Op. 78   
Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, Op. 100   
Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 108   

DISC 10:
Mozart: Duo for Violin & Viola in G Major, K. 423   
Mozart: Duo for Violin and Viola, K. 424   
Leclair: 6 Sonatas for 2 Violins, Op. 3, No. 4   

DISC 11:
Lubbock/Rosenbaum/Jones/Temperton: The Color Purple: Main Title   
Gardel: Scent of a Woman: Tango (Por Una Cabeza)   
Legrand: Yentl: Papa, Can You Hear Me?   
Bacalov: Il Postino: Theme   
Bernstein: The Age of Innocence: Theme   
Williams: Theme (From "Far and Away")   
Legrand: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg: I Will Wait for You   
Previn: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Theme   
Williams: Sabrina: Theme   
Barry: Out of Africa: Main Title   
Bonfa: Black Orpheus: Manha de Carnaval   
Williams: Main Theme (From "Schindler's List")   
Morricone: Love Theme (From "Cinema Paradiso")   

DISC 12:
Raksin: Theme from "Laura" (1944)   
Steiner: Theme from Now, Voyager (1942)
Chaplin: Smile from "Modern Times" (1936)   
Rózsa: Love Theme from Lost Weekend (1945)
Young: St. Patrick's Day from The Quiet Man (1952) (Traditional)   
Korngold: Marian & Robin Love Theme from "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938)   
Hupfeld: As Time Goes By from "Casablanca" (1942)   
Walton: Touch Her Soft Lips and Part (From "Henry V")   
Young: Stella by Starlight from The Uninvited (1944)   
Young: Theme from My Foolish Heart (1949)
Steiner: Tara's Theme (From "Gone with the Wind" 1939)   
Newman: Cathy's Theme from "Wuthering Heights" (1939)   

DISC 13:
Tan Dun: Works

DISC 14:
Paganini: 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, Op. 1, MS 25   
Ben-Haim: Berceuse Sfaradite   
Sarasate: Navarra, Op. 33   
Handel: Violin Sonata in E Major, Op. 1 No. 15, HWV 373   
Hindemith: Violin Sonata, Op. 11 No. 1 in E-Flat   
Leclair: Violin Sonata, Op. 9 No. 3 in D   
Bloch: Baal Shem: II. Nigun (Version for Violin & Piano)   
Falla: Spanish Dance No. 1 (from La vida breve)   
Bazzini: La ronde des lutins, Op. 25   

DISC 15: John Williams: Works

DISC 16:
Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49   
Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor Op. 66   
Mendelssohn: Songs without Words, Op. 19, No. 1 Sweet Remembrance" - Andante con moto"
Mendelssohn: Songs without Words, Op. 38, No. 2 - Allegro non troppo

DISC 17:
Berditchever: A Dudele   
Shenker: Mizmor L'Dovid   
Goldfaden: Shoyfer Shel Moshiakh   
Schwartz: Romanian Doyne   
Rosenblatt: T'filas Tal   
Traditional: Yism'chu   
Schloßberg: R'tzay   
Traditional: Dem Trisker Rebns Khosid   
Schorr: Sheyibone Bays Hamikdosh   
Traditional: Kol Nidrei   

DISC 18:
Tchaikovsky: Sérénade mélancolique, Op. 26, TH 56   
Tchaikovsky: Valse-Scherzo, Op. 34, TH 58   
Dvořák: Romance in F Minor, Op. 11, B. 39
Dvořák: 8 Humoresques, Op. 101, B. 187: No. 7, Poco lento e grazioso (Transcribed by Oscar Morawetz for Violin, Cello & Orchestra)   
Dvořák: Piano Trio No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 90, B. 166: "Dumky", V. Allegro   
Dvořák: Slavonic Dances, Op. 72, B. 147: No. 2, Dumka. Allegretto grazioso   
Halvorsen: Passacaglia and Sarabande for Violin and Viola (With Variations on a Theme by Handel)   
Walton: Canzonetta from Henry V   
Williams: Air and Simple Gifts

The celebrated New Orleans Jazz Orchestra examines and the profound relationship of its hometown to the nation of France with its release of Petite Fleur on Storyville Records. The second album under the artistic directorship of drummer Adonis Rose features ten songs, nine of them standards associated with French and New Orleans musicians. The tenth tune is an original by Cyrille Aimée, the acclaimed jazz vocalist born and raised in France but now living and working in The Big Easy itself.

Aimée is the NOJO’s collaborator and vocalist on the album. It was the singer who initiated the collaboration, telling Rose that she would like to work with the 18-piece big band and asking if he had any ideas for a project. “I said, ‘Well, okay, musically, how can I tell a story here?’” Rose recalls. “I thought about the long, shared history of those two places, and that became the concept. A narrative about the musical relationship between New Orleans and France.” The title tune, a standard by early jazz clarinet legend Sidney Bechet, epitomizes the concept: A composition by a New Orleans artist living in France, performed by a New Orleans band with a French vocalist. Composers from both sides of the Atlantic, from Michel Legrand to Jelly Roll Morton, get similar treatment. So do various New Orleanian styles, from a stomp (“Get the Bucket”) to a second line (“Down”) to Fats Domino-style rock ’n’ roll (“I Don’t Hurt Anymore”). In addition to being its spotlight vocalist, Aimée is also Petite Fleur’s featured soloist, applying her razor-sharp scat singing to “In the Land of Beginning Again,” “On a Clear Day,” and “Undecided.”

REVIEW:

Petite Fleur is essentially a meditation on the ties that bind Crescent City art to French culture. Teaming up for 10 songs that cross styles and oceans while exploring that particular connection, the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and French vocalist Cyrille Aimée make a perfect match, united in the act of storytelling.

The album speaks to Artistic Director and drummer Adonis Rose’s sure-handed helming of the NOJO, the entire band roster’s contributions in part(s) and sum, Aimée’s well-documented gifts, and a shared vision that brings them all together.

-- JazzTimes (Dan Bilawsky)

This ten-album set celebrates the release of the first ten volumes of the HAYDN2032 series, which aims to record all 107 Haydn symphonies by the 300th anniversary of his birth in 2032. This highly ambitious project under the artistic direction of Giovanni Antonini is shared between two ensembles, Il Giardino Armonico and Kammerorchester Basel. Its first volumes have received the most prestigious awards, including the Gramophone Award, the Diapason d’Or, the ‘Choc’ de Classica of the year and the Preis der Deustchen Schallplattenkritik. Produced in collaboration with the Joseph Haydn Foundation in Basel, this series pays tribute to one of the key composers in the history of music, whose inventiveness and emotional richness are nevertheless underestimated all too often. Antonini places his enthusiasm and sense of colour at the service of this music, which he sees as ‘a kaleidoscope of human emotions’.

While Faure's Requiem is a monument of French sacred music, Gounod's Messe de Clovis is much less well known. It was composed from 1891 onwards as a tribute to Clovis who, like Joan of Arc, had become an iconic figure after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. The two works share a reflective and intimate character that gives the impression of a return to the purity of Gregorian chant, although this does not detract from the jubilant character of Faure's Requiem: "this warm, luxuriant sound leads to an elevation of the spirit", says Herve Niquet. The work is recorded here in it's 1893 version, in an orchestration that uses neither violins nor woodwind; a later version with full orchestra was published in July 1900. O salutaris by Louis Aubert (1877-1968) for soprano, violin, harp, organ and choir and L'Adagio for violin and organ by Andre Caplet (1878-1925) complete this programme, a co-production with the Palazzetto Bru Zane and performed with fervour by the Concert Spirituel.

SOMM Recordings announces Bruckner from the Archives, a major new, six-double-CD-volume series celebrating the 200th anniversary of Anton Bruckner’s birth in 1824. Conceived and designed by SOMM Executive Producer and acclaimed Audio Restoration Engineer Lani Spahr with support from the Bruckner Society of America, the series features rare archival recordings of Bruckner’s 11 symphonies and selected other important works, many appearing for the first time in any form.

Recordings have been sourced from the more than 11,000 Bruckner performances in the Archive of John F. Berky, Executive Secretary of the Bruckner Society of America, who also acts as Consultant for this important series.

Across the series, authoritative notes by Professor Benjamin M. Korstvedt, Jeppson Professor of Music at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, President of the Bruckner Society of America and member of the Editorial Board of the New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition, trace Bruckner’s life and compositional development from the Symphony in F minor (1862) to the unfinished Ninth Symphony (1894).

Volume 1 (SOMM 5025) will be released on 15 March 2024 and includes two Symphonies: in F minor (Bruckner Orchestra, Linz conducted by Kurt Wöss) and No.1 in C minor, ‘Linz’ (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Eugen Jochum); Bruckner’s only String Quartet (Koeckert Quartet); Psalm 112 (Vienna Akademie Kammerchor, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Henry Swoboda); the Overture in G minor (WDR Symphony Orchestra, Cologne, Dean Dixon); the March in D minor, and Three Pieces for Orchestra (Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Hans Weisbach).

Future volumes include never-before released performances conducted by noted Brucknerians Eugen and Georg Ludwig Jochum, Eduard van Beinum, Volkmar Andreae, Christoph von Dohnányi, Herbert von Karajan, and Joseph Keilberth. Lani Spahr’s previous SOMM releases include the lauded four-volume sets Vaughan Williams Live (ARIADNE 5016, 5018-20) and Elgar Remastered (SOMMCD 261-4), and a Gramophone Editor’s Choice for “superb audio restorations [bringing] performances fully to life” for Elgar from America, Volume 3 (Ariadne 5015-2).

Fresh from his triumphant onstage success in Paris, Berlin and Brussels singing leading roles in the operas of Rameau and Mozart, tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen presents his long-awaited first Mozart recording. Together with his ensemble A Nocte Temporis, he has devised a highly imaginative programme. From the eleven single opera and concert arias for tenor and orchestra that are ascribed to Mozart, the Belgian tenor has selected those that are entirely in the composer's hand - leaving out the ones completed or reconstructed by others, and adding an exquisite aria from Mitridate, re di Ponto. Mozart was only nine years old when in 1765, during his stay in London, he launched into his first opera aria for tenor and orchestra, to verses from a libretto by Metastasio. At the end of 1766, on his return to Salzburg, the child prodigy composed Or che il Dover - Tali e cotanti sono KV 36 for a festive celebration, making the court aware of his enormous talent. Throughout his career, alongside his own operas Mozart also wrote arias intended for insertion into the operas of other composers, hidden masterpieces that now receive revelatory performances.

SOMM Recordings is pleased to release Volume 3 in it's "major commemorative series" (ConcertoNet. Com) Bruckner from the Archives. Many of the expertly restored and remastered recordings, like these performances of the Third and Fourth Symphonies, are appearing for the first time in any form. Conceived and designed by SOMM Executive Producer and acclaimed Audio Restoration Engineer Lani Spahr with support from the Bruckner Society of America, Bruckner from the Archives celebrates the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth in 1824 with rare archival recordings of the 11 symphonies and selected other important works. These have been sourced by Lani Spahr from the more than 11, 000 Bruckner performances in the Archive of John F. Berky, Executive Secretary of the Bruckner Society of America, who also acts as Consultant for this important series. This third instalment offers live radio broadcasts of Bruckner's Symphony No. 3 by the NDR Symphony Orchestra under Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt (1966) and Symphony No. 4 by the Munich Philharmonic under Volkmar Andreae (1958). These never-before-heard interpretations from the Bruckner symphonic canon offer a new perspective on these much-loved works, particularly as they are accompanied by the very latest in scholarship about the works' genesis in the context of Bruckner's life and compositional development, written by Professor Benjamin Korstvedt, President of the Bruckner Society of America and member of the Editorial Board of the New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition. Prof. Korstvedt commends the Brucknerian pedigree of Schmidt-Isserstedt and the NDR SO, an orchestra built by the conductor and led by him for two decades after the Second World War. They in fact had given the very first performances of the Oeser Edition of the Third shortly after it's publication in 1950. So, too, Swiss composer-conductor Volkmar Andreae, who was a leading Bruckner advocate: by the end of his career he had led more than 250 Bruckner performances. This recording of the Fourth, from 1958 with the Munich Philharmonic, is typical Andreae: characterful, at times fiery and passionate, at others deeply expressive, but always keenly alive to the richly varied content and moods of the music. Lani Spahr's previous SOMM releases include the lauded four-volume sets Vaughan Williams Live (ARIADNE 5016, 5018-20) and Elgar Remastered (SOMMCD 261-4), as well as Elgar from America, Volume 3 (Ariadne 5015-2), which garnered a Gramophone Editor's Choice for "superb audio restorations [bringing] performances fully to life". Praise for Volume One and critical interest in the Series: Gramophone Editor's Choice (June 2024) [EMBARGOED UNTIL 22 MAY] "We look forward to the next editions in the series; to further uplifting recordings and to new light, shed on a composer we thought we knew. "?The Quarterly Review: Endnotes, May 2024 "This is an auspicious launch of what promises to be a Bruckner series of uncommon interest. "?John Quinn, Music Web International Volume One: ARIADNE 5025-2 � Volume Two: ARIADNE 5027-2

SOMM Recordings is delighted to build upon it's critically acclaimed discography with violinist, Adrian Butterfield, and the London Handel Players in a new collaboration featuring the Op. 7 set of six Violin Concertos by the French violinist-composer, Jean-Marie Leclair. The London Handel Players, praised by the New York Times for their "soulful depth" and "consummate skill and musicianship," have previously released five Handel discs with SOMM, along with recordings that celebrate Geminiani, J.S. Bach, and Telemann. The group's co-founder and director, period-instrument violinist Adrian Butterfield, has been described as "a marvel" by Gramophone for his recordings of Leclair's first three books of violin sonatas. The solo concerto emerged in Italy in the early 18th century through composers like Torelli, Albinoni and, particularly, Vivaldi. J.S. Bach acquired a copy of Vivaldi's popular set of twelve concertos, L'Estro Armonico, to transcribe and study, and he put his own stamp on concerto writing with works that are larger in scale, making use of more detailed contrapuntal development and a greater degree of harmonic variety. When Jean-Marie Leclair met an untimely death on 23 October, 1764 in a still-unsolved murder in Paris, he left behind a stellar reputation as the founder of the French violin school, along with a collection of works for violin that includes four volumes�of solo violin sonatas and two volumes of violin concertos; his Op. 7, heard here, and Op. 10, to follow in the near future. These virtuosic and elegant violin concertos are something of an amalgam of the Italian concerto style and of Bach's formalistic innovations. Leclair was born in Lyon in 1697, and his dream was to become a solo violinist in his own country. But, at this time in France, violin playing was the province of country fiddlers and orchestral players, while the viol was the chosen instrument for the French upper classes. When the Italian violinist-composer, Arcangelo Corelli, published his iconic set of Op. 5 sonatas in 1700, no French violinist was equipped with the technique to perform them. Having spent a year studying dance and composition in the Italian city of Turin, Leclair moved to Paris, where he soon published his first set of twelve violin sonatas. For a couple of years, he commuted between Paris and Turin in order to study with a former student of Corelli's, and, over the course of two decades, published three more sets of sonatas, along with the two sets of violin concertos. The concertos are justly celebrated for their blend of French elegance and Italian virtuosity, reflecting not only Leclair's skill as a renowned violinist, but also his background, which drew on a variety of Europe's national styles. In the early 1910s, Holst became interested in astrology, and he conceived the idea of a suite for orchestra based on the solar system's individual planets. Originally, he composed�The Planets on the piano, using the instrument in his newly-built, sound-proofed room in the music wing at St Paul's Girls School as well as the piano at his home in Thaxted. This version for four hands, two pianos was scored by two of his colleagues at St Paul's, Vally Lasker and Nora Day, who acted as amanuenses, because Holst suffered intermittently from painful neuritis in his right hand. Following the resounding success of the orchestrated version of The Planets, the original piano duet score was overlooked, though it was eventually published separately in 1949-51. In 1979, Holst's daughter, Imogen, reissued the complete two-piano arrangement in one volume, and Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman perform this version here. Elgar's renown was such that, at the height of his fame, several established musicians were commissioned by publishers to make piano transcriptions of his orchestral music. This was no mean feat, given that Elgar's scores are scrupulously marked as to how he wanted every phrase-sometimes even every bar or note within that phrase-to be played. It was the composer, arranger, and conductor, Otto Singer II, who made the transcription for piano four-hands of Elgar's 1905 Introduction and Allegro, scored originally for solo string quartet and string orchestra. Singer's insight and skill are evident in techniques like transferring string double-stopping to spread keyboard chords, and his piano four-hands version is admirably true to Elgar's evolving contrapuntal and harmonic ideas. In Victorian England, the marriage of a tradesman's son to the daughter of a Major-General in the British Army, who was eight years his senior, might not have appeared a perfect match. Yet, the marriage of Edward Elgar and Caroline Alice Roberts turned out to be a love-match. In 1888, as a wedding present, Edward presented to Carice, as he called her, Salut d'Amour. This enduring melody has inspired numerous arrangements for widely varying instrumental combinations, including this one for piano duet.

In November 2025, SOMM pays special tribute to the centenary of Sir Charles Mackerras (1925 - 2010) who was, amongst other stellar achievements, an outstanding interpreter of the music of Czech composer Leos Janacek�(1854 - 1928). At the age of 25, and over the next six decades, Mackerras introduced generations of London opera-goers to Janacek's extraordinary masterpieces, and he was directly responsible for these works becoming established in the British operatic repertoire. Our centenary tribute features the release of a remastered broadcast, from 1964, of Mackerras's first London production of the opera The Makropulos Affair. Also included is Janacek's quasi-operatic�song cycle, The Diary of One who Disappeared. Audio restoration is by Lani Spahr, whose previous restorations for SOMM of works by Elgar, Bruckner, Holst, and Bliss have recently received no less than three Gramophone Editor's Choices. Shortly after Mackerras arrived in the UK from Australia in 1947, a�British Council�Scholarship enabled him to study conducting with�Vaclav Talich�at the Prague Academy of Music, during which time he discovered Czech music and Janacek in particular. His breakthrough in introducing Janacek's unfamiliar music to British audiences came in February 1964, when he conducted The Makropulos Affair at Sadler's Wells. This release is an exciting, highly-charged souvenir of that first London production. The title of the opera, inspired by Karel Capek's 1922 play, refers to a century-old probate case, which holds the key to the formula for a life-extending elixir. The coolly enigmatic opera diva Emilia Marty shows great interest in the case, and is revealed to be Elina Makropulos, a woman from�Crete, who has lived for 337 years. This recording features the Australian dramatic soprano Marie Collier, an outstanding exponent of the role. The vocal writing in the opera is predominantly conversational, underpinned by an orchestral score that is both uncompromisingly modern and evocative of ancient times. The lead characters in two of Janacek's operas Kata in�Katya Kabanova�and Emilia Marty in�The Makropulos Affair were inspired by Kamila Stosslova with whom he fell deeply in love, despite their both being married and he being almost forty years her senior. The earliest work to be inspired by Kamila was�The Diary of One who Disappeared, begun the month after Janacek met her in 1917. This unorthodox song cycle for tenor, contralto, female voices, and piano was inspired by a diary-in-poems about a village boy who falls in love with the gipsy girl �ofka. Janacek wrote to Kamila, "All through the work I thought of you! You were my �ofka." This 1956 recording features Bernard Keeffe's English translation with Richard Lewis, tenor, Maureen Forrester, contralto, women from the BBC Singers, and pianist Ernest Lush.