"• An album of three chamber works composed or arranged for violin, viola and two cellos – a rare and intriguing string collective. • A pupil of Rimsky-Korasakov and later teacher of both Rachmaninov and Scriabin, Anton Arensky's chamber works are considered amongst his finest compositions. • Ernest Sauter (1928-2013) gained his greatest degree of recognition as a composer for the ballet. The work heard herein, titled ""À la mémoire d'Arenski"", is a fitting companion to the Arensky work."

Classical Music

Classical Music

This outstanding album contains 15 famous arias from the operas of Verdi, sung by the most influential Verdi voices of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. All of the recordings featured on this album are radio recordings, and were made between 1962 and 1984. The live recordings offer an interesting alternative to the studio recordings of the same works by the same performers. The selections are arranged chronologically by date of composition, and are a broad representation of the career of one of the finest operatic composers in history.

The Walhall Eternity label is for the first time releasing in it's entirety the legendary 1959 Covent Garden Ring cycle of Richard Wagner conducted by Franz Konwitschny, performances that feature the finest Wagnerian voices of the 1950's, including Wolfgang Windgassen, Hans Hotter, Astrid Varnay, Ramon Vinay, Amy Shuard (student of Eva Turner and Covent Garden regular), Gottlob Frick and more. Franz Konwitschny's gripping interpretations lie comfortably between those of F�rtw�ngler's commanding heights supremacy and Solti's fire and spontaneity. Re-mastered 24bit/96kHz.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This recording combines all the major works of bassoon repertoire written between 1770 and 1830, with Mozart's magnificient concerto as the undisputed masterpiece of the entire repertoire. He was able to bring the full range of bassoon's possibilities into play, making use of its entire tonal range in the opening movement, with semiquaver passages, glorious cantabile sections and maniacal trills. Matthias Rácz, probably one of the best bassoon players of our generation, present this work as well as the two concertos of Hummel and Weber with the greatest of ease.

Also available on standard DVD

BRUCKNER Symphony No. 5 (Nowak ed.) • Claudio Abbado, cond; Lucerne Fest O • ACCENTUS ACC 10243 (Blu-ray: 80:33) Live: Lucerne 8/19–20/2011

Claudio Abbado formed the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2003 after his return to musical life following successful treatment for stomach cancer. His appearances each summer with this group, built upon the core of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra plus first-chair players from many top ensembles, are highly anticipated events. So, when Lucerne videos are released during the year following a festival, it’s like returning to a favorite summer vacation town. What’s the same? What’s changed? As the cameras scan the orchestra, we see that the older female cellist (Natalia Gutman) is missing, but many other familiar faces are back, including violist Wolfram Christ, flutist Jacques Zoon, and the eccentric-appearing principal trumpet (Reinhold Friedrich, who, for some reason, is permitted to wear an extravagant velvet jacket and as a result looks like a cross between Ben Franklin and a circa 1910 patent medicine salesman). Plus, as always, there is a healthy number of young musicians who must be marveling at their good fortune to be participating in such an extraordinary endeavor. Because of the degree of continuity from year to year, a strong sense of artistic purpose and, of course, the man on the podium, the orchestra consistently performs at a level equal to the very best permanent ensembles on earth, even though they are together only relatively briefly each summer.

Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5 is a work that can be condescended to. If a conductor begins with the premise that the Fifth is a piece that—however powerful and popular—is constructed from simplistic elements and lacking refinement, well … you’ll get a performance that’s simplistic and unrefined. Abbado finds layers and layers of nuance and meaning in the symphony. (Benjamin Zander is another conductor who shows the work a similar respect.) Any aura of ritual or of a grinding symphonic machine is banished and something much more organic is in evidence; it’s less a sonic cathedral (to use the standard Bruckner cliché) and more of a Beethovenian or Mahlerian evocation of the natural world. The chorales—strings in the second movement or the “11 apostles” in the Finale—are thankfully shorn of any Hollywood religiosity and just seem to blossom inevitably from musical seeds planted much earlier on. Abbado leads the Scherzo with exceptional lift and lightness, but still allows the obsessive quality to come through without nearly as much hard-headedness—the “country bumpkin” cliché—as is often the case. And then there are the felicities provided by all those world-class instrumentalists. For just one example, listen to the seamless manner with which phrases are passed from horn to oboe to flute at the very end of the second movement.

The sound is glorious in stereo and, especially, with multichannel—richly sonorous, dynamic, detailed, and dimensional. I’ve never witnessed a large audience listen so quietly before; everyone present in the Concert Hall of KKL Luzern for the two performances generating this video last August knew, I’m sure, that they were witnessing something special. They seem afraid to breathe, much less cough or fidget in their seats. As has become the custom, flowers rain down on the performers after the concert’s conclusion. The audience rises to its feet, something that doesn’t happen all that often in Europe (as opposed to the U.S., where every performance, however routine, typically gets a standing ovation). Abbado will be 80 next year and he looks well. Here’s hoping there are many more of these Blu-ray treasures to come.

FANFARE: Andrew Quint

Bruckner’s famous “Romantic” Symphony No. 4 forms the prelude to a spectacular DVD series from Accentus Music and Unitel Classica, exploring Bruckner’s symphonic cosmos. Recorded live at Philharmonie Berlin on 20 June 2010, Der Tagesspiegel describes Barenboim’s Bruckner as ‘… conceived and performed very theatrically, like an opera without words.”

Also available on Blu-ray

Live Recording from the Lucerne Festival, Summer 2011

‘Abbado’s approach to the music of Bruckner is soft and songlike, at times tense and urgent, but constantly filled with warmth of feeling’ – not only the Neue Zürcher Zeitung is full of praise when Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra play Bruckner. Their interpretation of his awe-inspiring Fifth Symphony reflects the composer’s burgeoning powers and exquisite compositional artistry. As The Guardian poetically states: ‘The composer himself, one suspects, might have leapt to embrace Abbado as an ideal interpreter.’

Classical Music

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas Nos. 27, 28, 30, 31 • Dina Ugorskaja (pn) • CAVI 8553299 (77:35)


Dina Ugorskaja, the daughter of the pianist Anatol Ugorski, is a Russian pianist and composer trained in Germany. Early in her career, she has already recorded Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” and op. 111 sonatas, the Chopin preludes, and a disc of Handel suites. The Sonata No. 27, the first of the 32 in which Beethoven uses German to indicate the movements’ tempo and character, is the piano work in which Beethoven’s late period begins, and Ugorskaja’s playing is fully alive to the quick changes of mood in its stark, febrile first movement, with extremely sensitive pacing of the rise and fall of each phrase, and careful weighing of tone. Her tempo for the second movement is on the slow side, but the melody is patiently shaped, as if sung, never in a hurry. This is a terrific performance of an elusive work.


Ugorskaja’s well-projected, unforced sound, and instinctively rhapsodic, though tasteful, responses to the music’s changes of character, are a good fit with the predominantly lyrical sonatas Nos. 30 and 31, though there’s real grandeur in her playing in the sections that need it. How beautifully she plays the right hand melody in No. 30’s third movement’s first variation, in which Beethoven uncannily anticipates the ornamented singing line of Chopin’s nocturnes, pieces that I’d love to hear her play. No. 31 receives a properly serious, thoughtfully savored reading, with highly expressive playing in the mystical latter sections of the piece. There are one or two moments in the first movement where Ugorskaja’s impulse to move the music forward detracts from the movement’s benign, stable character, but that’s a small quibble.


In op. 101 (Sonata No. 28), I was a little disappointed in her reading of the second movement, a tricky, fast march. In it, her espressivo approach, so winning in the sonata’s first movement, isn’t always rhythmically consistent enough in the repeated dotted rhythms. (Igor Levit’s splendid performance on a recent Sony disc has more speed and better control.) Nonetheless, Ugorskaja’s late Beethoven is cognizant of the sonatas’ details and structure, and manages to sound personally expressive without being self-indulgent. Cavi’s engineering captures the depth and variety of her splendid, “open” sound. Highly recommended.


FANFARE: Paul Orgel

Classical Music

Also available on Blu-ray

BRAHMS, J.: Serenade No. 2 / Alto Rhapsody / Symphony No. 2 (Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Nelsons) (NTSC)

In 2014, all signs pointed to a new beginning at the Lucerne Festival. For the first time, the festival would take place without the incomparable Claudio Abbado, with the young Latvian Andris Nelsons leading the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Nelsons had already won the trust and respect of both listeners and performers in a moving memorial concert for Abbado in Lucerne. He is known internationally as one of the most gifted conductors of his generation. Now he was poised to lead the prestigious festival into a new era – he brilliantly mastered this “greatest challenge”(as he himself called it) of his career. The audience and the musicians responded with heart-felt gratitude. “He is aware of every single player and carries us on an unbelievable wave of enthusiasm”, according to concertmaster Sebastian Breuninger. Solo violist Wolfram Christ adds, “Nelsons accepts what is inherent in our orchestra and what comes from Abbado; he builds on it and makes it into something new.”

ANDRIS NELSONS CONDUCTS BRAHMS

Johannes Brahms:
Serenade No. 2 in A Major, Op. 16
Alto Rhapsody, Op. 53
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73

Sara Mingardo, contralto
Bavarian Radio Chorus
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor

Recorded live at the Concert Hall of KKL Luzern, 15–16 August 2014

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: German, English, French, Japanese, Korean
Running time: 109 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

Classical Music

Chopin: Complete Works for Piano & Orchestra, Vol. 1

This disc features four great Victorian works for Cello and Piano. This is literature that deserves to be a part of the standard repertoire.

Classical Music

Pianist Alexander Kobrin, born in Russia in 1980 and now based in the U.S. is an internationally acclaimed pianist who, among other honors, is a former winner of the Gold Medal Prize in the heralded Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. + This Centaur release features Mr. Kobrin’s in an all-Schumann program, opening with one of the composer’s finest of several piano masterpieces that comprise Schumann’s first two dozen or so published works, Carnaval, op. 9, followed by Waldszenen, op. 82, which contains the wondrous Vogel als Prophet, and concludes with the op. 18 Arabesque.

This new release is Volume 9 in Centaur’s Steven Staryk retrospective. Born April 27, 1932 in Toronto of Ukrainian immigrant parents, Steven Staryk began his violin studies at the age of seven. The publication of his career memoirs and observations in Fiddling With Life has been lauded by reviewers and distinguished musicians. His prodigious career was a unique and extraordinary integration of related activities: soloist, pedagogue, chamber musician and concertmaster; he surpassed the summit in each and every role. The title “King of Concertmasters” was bestowed upon him by The Strad magazine after having led three major orchestras by the age of 35: the Royal Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw (the first British subject to attain a major position in continental Europe) and the Chicago Symphony. He also served as Concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the CBC Symphony and the Boyd Neel Orchestra. This release presents Staryk performing alongside Quartet Canada the works of Brahms and Strauss.

Hailed for Their Outstanding Musicianship, the Arianna String Quartet - Violinists John McGrosso and Julia Sakharova, Violist Joanna Mendoza and Cellist Kurt Baldwin - Has Firmly Established Itself As One of America's Finest Chamber Ensembles. Their Performances Have Been Praised for Tonal Warmth, Fastidious Balance... Expressive Vitality (Chicago Tribune) and Emotional Commitment and Fluent Virtuosity, (Pretoria News, South Africa). This Double-Disc Set Finds the Group Initiating a Complete Beethoven String Quartet Cycle with the Earliest of the Quartet Opuses, Op. 18/1-6.

This is an extraordinary journey through the most preeminent of classical symphonies. With an ensemble of only 12-16 top-quality musicians, the Pocket Philharmonic Orchestra explores Beethoven's musical origins. All the great conductors and orchestras have shown where Beethoven led: how his ideas paved the way for later masters like Schumann, Bruckner and Mahler. What hasn't been shown yet is where Beethoven was: where his musical language came from, how he shifted standards and developed techniques in a completely new and revolutionary way. The Pocket Philharmonic has a new approach to this idea: instead of a full chamber or symphony orchestra, the ensemble performs as a chamber ensemble in a symphonic manner – symphonic chamber music, or chamber music symphonies, so to speak. "This is the most vivid performance of the Eroica you have ever heard" said the critics. “It makes the revolution in his music audible. "An outstanding listening experience."

Pianist Richard Cionco – praised by Donal Henahan of the New York Times for his “sensitive pianism” – made his orchestral debut at the age of nine, and has since performed with the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra and the Seijo Symphony of Tokyo. He is currently a faculty member at California State University at Sacramento and is a Steinway artist.

This album features two towering masterpieces of the romantic piano music literature, Brahms’ Paganini Variations, op. 35 and Schumann’s Études Symphoniques, op. 13. Now based in the US, Ukrainian pianist Sophia Agranovich, a Steinway Artist and Juilliard graduate, is an internationally acclaimed virtuoso, recording artist and educator, performing as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. “Agranovich possesses not only technique, but superior musicianship…” (American Record Guide) “…mind-bending technical prowess and heart-melting emotional expressivity…” (Fanfare)

Classical Music

Organist Hansjorg Albrecht and his sound engineer Martin Fischer have collaborated again on a set of new Richard Wagner organ transcriptions. This time Albrecht plays the celebrated Woehl organ in the Herz-Jesu-Kirche in Munich. The transcriptions are by the young composer Axel Langmann, and by Edwin Henry Lemare. The Overtures to Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot are heard in world premiere recordings. Hansjorg Albrecht has released more than 20 albums on OehmsClassics, both as conductor and organist. They include the complete recording of Walter Braunfels' orchestral songs, which received many positive comments from the international media; and Richard Wagner's Ring ohne Worte in the orchestral version by Lorin Maazel, which was nominated for the German Record Critics' Prize. Hansjorg Albrecht was also nominated for a Grammy award in 2013 in the category Best Classical Instrumental Solo for his organ recording of Gustav Holst's The Planets.

Classical Music

Classical Music