Anton Rubinstein’s Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, Op. 95, emerged in 1874 – ending a dry spell of roughly 20 years since his previous efforts in the genre. It came at a time when the future of the purely instrumental symphony was in doubt, reflecting the notion of Wagner and his disciples that Beethoven had exhausted the possibilities of symphonic development – and that the day of “synthetic” art (the “Gesamtkunstwerk”), with its blend of symphonic, vocal and theatrical elements, had arrived. Rubinstein did not agree, and composed his fourth symphony in an apparent effort to prove that Beethoven’s methods were still valid. This marks Delos’ second re-release of Russian Disk’s acclaimed series of Rubinstein’s orchestral music, as performed with authentic idiomatic flair by Igor Golovchin and his Russian State Symphony Orchestra.

“… a strong and individual artist whose depth of feeling and technical control are never in doubt.” (Gramophone) This lush and lovely album offers beguiling masterpieces for cello and orchestra by Russia’s most revered composer- played to perfection by the musical team of renowned Russian-American cellist Nina Kotova, with the legendary Russian maestro Vladimir Fedoseyev leading Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra- all musicians who have these soulful pieces in their very bones. Kotova and company begin with Tchaikovsky’s lively Pezzo capriccioso before serving listeners the main course: one of the world’s most beloved works for cello and orchestra, the gorgeous Variations on a Rococo Theme. Then the cellist bows out as we are treated to one of the composer’s greatest orchestral pieces of smaller scale, the shimmering Serenade for Strings. In all, it’s a program filled with soaring melodies and sheer musical delight.

REVIEW:

What’s so singularly impressive about Kotova’s interpretation and exposition of Tchaikovsky is her awareness of the music’s meaning. This allows her to eschew exhibitionism and translate Tchaikovsky’s musical purpose with pensive meticulous introspection.

Her understanding and elucidation of Tchaikovsky is nonpareil, flamboyant yet measured, but still emanating the turbulence of the music’s emotional impact. Her technique is immaculate and, in combination with her intuitive feel for Tchaikovsky, the end result is a confection of pure elegance.

– Huffington Post

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In addition to being the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra's principal flutist, Iceland native Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson has forged a distinguished simultaneous career as a soloist and chamber musician. On this, his debut solo CD he offers an impressive and varied program of classic works for flute and piano by mainstream composers, plus a haunting unaccompanied flute novelty composed by a fellow Icelander. Michael McHale, with whom Mr. Höskuldsson collaborates, is one of Ireland's leading all-around pianists. "Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson played with agility and warmth" - New York Times.

The Swedish award-winning string orchestra, Musica Vitae, directed by violinist Malin Broman and accompanied by pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips, is showcased here in a sparkling performance of Felix Mendelssohn's challenging Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra. The concerto is coupled with Felix's sister, Fanny Hensel Mendelssohn's, String Quartet, here for the first time recorded in an arrangement for string orchestra. As a bonus, Malin and Simon also perform four songs by Fanny, arranged for viola and piano. Musica Vitae Chamber Orchestra is the ensemble that brings live music - indeed the music of life - to each and every individual member of the audience. The vast realm that is art music is handled with the utmost precision and elegance by it's 15 string players. The repertoire consists of baroque and romantic as well as modernist and contemporary music from a wide variety of genres. Musica Vitae appear on stages big and small in Sweden and abroad. Internationally, the orchestra has been warmly greeted in China, the United States, Greece, Switzerland, Germany and Spain to name but a few countries.

Mauro Giuliani was a composer deeply rooted in the everyday musical life of the Vienna of his era, a city on which Mozart had recently left his mark, where Haydn's art had come to his final flowering and where Beethoven and Schubert were soon to tower above all others. Never in the history of the guitar has the instrument been so close to and so in tune with the great names of classical music. On this release, Antonio Puccio presents Giuliani's complete Rossiniane and Pot-Pourris. Giuliani arranged many nineteenth century opera themes for the guitar. His work Le Rossiniane includes numerous themes from the operas of Rossini, including Otello, L'Italienne a Alger, Cendrillon, and others. He wrote his Pot Pourri in 1811, more than a decade before his Rossiniane. These two sets of pieces have been rarely performed and recorded, and quite unfairly so. Originally recorded and released to great acclaim in 1999, this album is now available nearly twenty years later, and still just as significant.

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The 5 piano concertos of Rubinstein opened a new era in the history of Russian piano art, setting the stage for the great Russian concerto masterpieces, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. This is the 3rd in Delos’ current series of Russian Disc re- and features the 2nd and 4th concertos, as performed by distinguished, Russian-trained artists.

The young Polish pianist Martin Labazevich has teamed up with his compatriot, the emerging conductor Ewa Strusińska to record their debut Delos disc: a highly appealing all-Polish program of beloved musical gems for piano and orchestra as well as engaging orchestral selections. Add the young virtuosos of the Beethoven Academy Orchestra to complete a supremely gifted and accomplished musical team. “… a pianist with great audience appeal and virtuosity…” (Horacio Gutierrez) “Ewa Strusinska left an indelible impression … with her dynamic and incisive direction.” (The Northern Echo)

... a work written by a young, ebullient, but quite mature talent, and distinguished, beyond it's broad scope and youthful freshness, by a remarkably unified conception. Thus did Russian master P.I. Tchaikovsky describe the long-neglected "Ocean" Symphony (Symphony No. 2 in C Major, Op. 42 - Original Version) by Anton Rubinstein, his composition teacher at (and the founder of) the St. Petersburg Conservatory. His "Ocean" symphony is a bold and highly original programmatic work that convincingly evokes the struggle of man against the elemental forces that rule the seas. Echoes of composers like Mendelssohn and Schumann are heard in the work, no doubt the result of Rubinstein's European training and exposure - yet there remains a certain Russian pathos and earthiness. Also heard here is a colorful suite of dances from Rubinstein's oriental-flavored opera, Feramors. Igor Golovschin and his Russian State Symphony Orchestra provide skillful and idiomatically true performances.

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In the wake of the beloved Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky's untimely passing in November 2017, tributes, memorials and musical event dedications have flowed non-stop. But none thus far has matched the sheer scope, power and sonic splendor of this all-Russian performance of Verdi's blockbuster Requiem Mass. The all-star cast of soloists- soprano Dinara Alieva, mezzo-soprano Olesya Petrova, tenor Francesco Meli and bass Dmitry Belosselsky- sing their hears out for Dmitri, under the baton of the vaunted Maestro Yuri Temirkanov leading the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Bolshoi Theater Chorus. The result is an incredibly heartfelt and moving musical tribute to one of the greatest baritones who has ever lived.

On this generous last installment of their Schubert-Brahms pilgrimage, Pieter Wispelwey and Paolo Giacometti serve us three iconic sonatas, including a world premiere. In it's original hue of G Major, Brahms' first violin sonata op. 78 is more scintillating and transparent than the D-major cell adaptation, and much more enchanting in it's opening Vivace. Brahms' third violin sonata op. 108 fuses surprising ebullience with superior mastery of form, in an epic piece which is an undiluted kick in the groin when played on a cello. And thankfully, Pieter and Paolo revisit Schubert's Arpeggione, that gem of intimacy, fragility, frivolity and humbling, unattainable beauty. A fitting final, in all respects.

Can we get into Beethoven’s creative mind, especially in the last phase of his life when he was coping with severe hearing loss? Tom Beghin’s new recording of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Opus 109, 110, and 111 is an artistic exploration of how Beethoven’s musicking was shaped by the work environment he created with the help of colleagues and friends. Not only does pianist Tom Beghin perform Beethoven’s trilogy of pianistic masterpieces on a magnificent new replica of Beethoven’s Broadwood piano, he uses a reconstruction of the Gehormaschine that was mounted on the composer’s piano so he could continue to create music as his hearing declined. “You do hear better when you bring your head under this machine, don’t you?” Andre Stein asked Beethoven. Two centuries later, we too can bring our heads under the machine and wonder: Do we hear Beethoven differently? Beghin draws us inside the hearing machine, where we feel as well as hear the essence of Beethoven’s rambunctious and irresistibly poetic musical vibrations. Inside the Hearing Machine invites us into the multisensory playground of a deaf composer for whom the machine was more than a hearing aid and who interacted with his instrument through much more than sound.

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Brigitte Fassbaender said: ‘Gundula Janowitz possesses one of those voices where you have only to hear a couple of notes and you immediately know who it is. Her elegant timbre and unmistakably instrumental way of forming the phrases is unique.’ Few singers have voices that approach the purity of Janowitz’s: with its very fast vibrato and ‘white’ production, the focused sound can soar, swoop and dip with astonishing ease and control, the vocal line becoming almost liquefied into a seemingly endless melisma. Janowitz’s recorded catalogue, tends to misrepresent the focus of her career because it downplays her work as a recitalist. Of course, she did tape all of Schubert’s songs for high voice but apart from a couple of late song recitals and a disc of Hindemith’s Das Marienleben, that is all we have to remember her by as a performer of song. So this album will be a welcome addition to her discography. For her Athens recital, Janowitz chose two composers absolutely at the centre of her song repertoire, Franz Schubert and Richard Strauss, with a third, Robert Schumann, forming a bridge between the two.

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Gyorgy Sebok (1922-1999) was a Hungarian-born American pianist who was also renowned as a teacher and giver of masterclasses. He made more than 16 recordings for the Erato label as a soloist early on in his career. He has received countless honors and awards throughout his career in recognition of musical life. His fellow Hungarian pianist Livia Rev said of him: “one of the greatest pianists in the second half of the century, if not the greatest.” Cellist Janos Starker, with whom Sebok played for more than six decades, pulled even fewer punches: “First hand, second hand, or in recordings, Gyorgy Sebok is the greatest pianist who ever lived,” and also “one of the greatest teachers of all time.” This live recording was made at the 1991 Grange de Meslay Recital, Parcay-Meslay, France.

Founded in 2010 by cellist Niklas Schmidt, "Fontenay Classics International" stands for fine chamber music, superior sound and exquisite design. FCI presents both young ensembles as well as recordings of Mr. Schmidt himself. Named after the Greek God of the East Wind, the Evrus Trio was founded in 2000 by three young musicians. The Evrus Trio’s ambitious tour schedule has earned them acclaim from audiences and critics alike. On their debut CD they present Tchaikovsky’s expansive Piano Trio in a, op. 50 and Shostakovich’s youthful, single movement Piano Trio in C, op. 8.

Pianist Christian Chamorel (b. 1979) is one of Switzerland’s most widely fêted pianists of his generation. +An invitee to festivals around the world, he is also founder of the annual, popular Swiss Mont Musical festival. +Mr. Chamorel’s new Fondamenta all-Mendelssohn release includes performances of the great composer’s two piano concerti, several of his Songs Without Words, and the Variations Sérieuses. +Laurent Gendre leads the Orchestre de Chambre Fribourgeois.

With their latest release of “Locale” from Foghorn Classics, the Alexander String Quartet presents brand new accounts of two of Antonín Dvorák’s most enduringly popular chamber works. The “American” String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96 from 1893 was written during the composer’s extended retreat from New York City to the rural “Czech” community of Spillville, on the Turkey River in northeastern Iowa. The ASQ plumbs the rich and reflective “outdoor” nuances of this exquisitely crafted master­piece. And the miraculous pianist Joyce Yang joins the Alexanders once again for this recording of the jubilant Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81 from 1887, composed at the composer’s country home amidst Bohemia’s woods and fields in Vysoka, just a little south of Prague. These two works are among the composer’s most expressively articulate chamber works. Both are profoundly influenced by their geographic “locale” and are, perhaps, exemplars of the sophisticated duality of the transatlantic experience of the late 19th century, embracing the nostalgia of the traditional bucolic ideal and the urbane sophistication of the imminent new age. Eric Bromberger’s accompanying notes and commentary provide illuminating musical and historical context, not least some of Dvorak’s own thoughts on the American-ness of his quartet. This is the third release on Foghorn Classics celebrating the inimitable collaboration between the Alexanders and Yang. Earlier releases in­­clude the Brahms and Schumann Quintets and, most recently, the Mozart Piano Quartets. Their combined concert repertoire, among several other standard and modern works, now includes a brilliant new and much-lauded quintet from the American composer Samuel Carl Adams, commissioned to help celebrate a decade of joyful collaborative music-making.

SCHUMANN Piano Quintet. BRAHMS Piano Quintet • Alexander Str Qrt; Joyce Yang (pn) • FOGHORN 2014 (70:24)



One would think that the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets would make natural partners on disc; yet, they’ve been paired together fewer times than I’d have thought. I found no more than half a dozen such couplings, and interestingly, of those, only one (not counting the present Alexander Quartet’s version) is anywhere near recent, and that is a 2007 recording with the Artemis Quartet and Leif Ove Andsnes on Virgin, which received a less than favorable review from me in 31:4. Three others fall into the historical category: a recording issued by Pearl with the Busch Quartet and Rudolf Serkin (Brahms, 1938; Schumann, 1942); a recording issued in a three-disc set by Testament with the Hollywood Quartet and Victor Aller (Brahms, 1954; Schumann, 1955); and a recording by Doremi with the Tel Aviv Quartet and Pnina Salzman (Brahms, 1974; Schumann, 1983). There’s also a pairing of the two works on a 2000 Globe CD, featuring the Rubio Quartet and Paul Komen.


This led me to wonder why these two piano quintets by two men who held each other in high esteem, and whose lives intersected in very personal ways, would not be joined together on disc more often. Then, listening to them, one after the other, as they’re programmed on the Alexander’s CD—the Schumann first, the Brahms second—some possible reasons presented themselves.


To begin with, the Brahms Piano Quintet dwarfs the Schumann, and not just in its duration, which is some 12 minutes longer, but in the thickness of its textures, the weightiness of its material, and especially the ponderousness of its piano part. Schumann, the keyboard virtuoso who wrote such magnificent music for his own instrument, also seemed to understand intuitively how to combine piano and strings in a way that was balanced and transparent and that allowed for the strings to be heard on an equal footing. He leveled the playing field. Steven Ritter, in a 34:1 review of the Quintet performed by the Leipzig Quartet and Christian Zacharias on MDG, wrote, “Schumann in this piece knew what he was writing for, and the balance among the strings with the piano is well-nigh perfect.” Exactly right.


Brahms, too, was reputedly a formidable pianist, but his writing for the instrument, at least in his earlier works, was of a different nature. It was muscular, bulky, and dense. For the string players in his Quintet, it’s a constant struggle to be heard.


Then there’s the music itself. Much of Schumann’s Quintet gives off a feeling of spontaneous inspiration. For the most part, it’s a buoyant, ebullient work. Brahms’s Quintet is not spontaneous sounding at all. Much of it, with its convoluted rhythmic contortions, sounds laboriously worked out. Add to that a score containing some of Brahms’s most violent music, and in the very dark key of F Minor—which, according to Christian Schubart’s Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (Ideas for an Aesthetic of Sound Art) (1806), expresses “deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery, and longing for the grave”—and you have a work that’s grim, desperate, and brutal in three of its four movements. Can there be any more sudden or crueler ending to a piece than the fateful three-note thud that decapitates the Finale dead in its tracks?


The piano quintets by Schumann and Brahms are indeed very different works, which, on emotional and psychological levels, probably wouldn’t make compatible marriage partners.


There’s also the age difference to take into account. Schumann composed his Quintet in 1842, more than 10 years before he and Clara met Brahms for the first time in Düsseldorf in 1853. By the time Brahms completed his Piano Quintet in 1864, Schumann had been dead for eight years.


But Brahms’s Quintet was one of those works that had a lengthy gestation and a difficult birth, struggling to find its final form. Originally, it took shape as a two-cello String Quintet. Had Brahms not destroyed that first version, it would have been his only string quintet scored for two cellos, following the example of Schubert’s great C-Major Quintet. As it turned out, Brahms’s only two extant string quintets, opp. 88 and 111, are scored for two violas, following the examples of Mozart.


Unhappy with the piece as a String Quintet, Brahms next revised it as a Sonata for Two Pianos. He was well enough satisfied with that version not to have destroyed it, but Clara Schumann and Hermann Levi, who performed the two-piano version together in concert, both felt that the piece needed a bigger, perhaps orchestral, treatment. Brahms wasn’t ready yet to write a symphony, but he took his friends’ advice to heart, and rearranged the score one last time as the Piano Quintet we know today. The two-piano version, however, was preserved and published as op. 34b. But filed under the category of “can’t leave well-enough alone,” the destroyed two-cello Quintet version was exhumed in a speculative reconstruction by Anssi Karttunen and recorded at least once that I know of, on a Toccata Classics CD (TOCC0066).


The Alexander’s Schumann is indeed breathtaking, as much for its sweeping lyricism and emotional responsiveness to the music’s impassioned Romantic gestures, as for its technical precision, ensemble balance, and tonal bloom. It stands head and shoulders, by far, above any of the recent recordings of the work to come my way. I already mentioned the disappointing Artemis effort; and even more recently, I found the Fine Arts Quartet’s entry with pianist Xiayin Wang on Naxos “workmanlike and professional, but not emotionally moving or inspiring.” Yet another letdown was a live recording from the Heimbach Festival with Christian Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt, and friends, a performance I found wanting for a bit more rehearsal time.


Quite honestly, until the arrival of this new version of the Schumann from the Alexander Quartet and Joyce Yang, my favorites have been a performance by the Schubert Ensemble on ASV, reviewed in 30:3, and the classic 1966 recording by the Guarneri Quartet with Arthur Rubinstein, a review of which (assuming it was reviewed) most likely predates the Fanfare Archive. The Alexander’s Schumann is simply wonderful, taking pride of place among all others with which I’m familiar.


The Brahms Quintet, too, is special. The hair-on-fire Scherzo, in particular, is a guided tour through Brahms’s rhythmic arsenal. If the players thoroughly appreciate the pulse-quickening, heart-pounding effect this movement is intended to have, and they deliver it accordingly, it should make you want to jump out of your skin. No one, of course, has literally ever done such a thing; it’s just an expression, like being beside oneself, which, according to quantum theory, at least, is a possibility. But I have to say that the Alexander’s performance is super-charged and electrifyingly exciting. Needless to say, the ensemble’s terrific reading of Brahms’s Piano Quintet is not limited to just the Scherzo. This new recording of the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets will be a serious contender for my year-end Want List.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

BRAHMS String Sextets Nos. 1 1 and 2 1. String Quintets Nos. 1 2 and 2 2 • Alexander Str Qrt; 1,2 Toby Appel (va); 1 David Requiro (vc) • FOGHORN 2012 (2 CDs: 130:33)


Completed in 1860, the first of Brahms’s two sextets is an effusive outpouring of youthful ardor that belies the age and life-experience of the 27-year-old composer who wrote it. By 1860, Brahms had already lived through the harrowing events of Schumann’s attempted suicide, commitment to a mental institution, and premature death, not to mention the effects of those events on Clara and her children. But Brahms was also in love with Clara, or at least with some idealized love surrogate for Clara, and this B?-Major Sextet seems to sing a song of blissful, sun-filled days, until the arrival of the second movement, that is—a set of variations in D Minor on a theme strongly redolent of the Gypsy melos Brahms picked up during his tour with Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi and which would infuse much of his music for the rest of his life.


Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this Sextet is the clarity of the textures and lines Brahms maintains throughout the work, in spite of the addition of two more instruments to the ensemble and the thickness of the scoring. It’s a transparency that can be heard with penetrating purity in this performance by the Alexander Quartet in which Tony Appel takes the first viola part, and David Requiro takes the second cello part.


Four years later, Brahms turned his attention to a second sextet, this time in G Major, completing it in 1865. Throughout its composition, Brahms was involved in the most serious romantic dalliance of his life, one that very nearly led to the marriage altar. The woman was Agathe von Siebold, to whom Brahms had proposed. Then, suddenly, Brahms got cold feet and broke off the engagement. What this has to do with the Sextet is that it contains one of the composer’s rare (perhaps only) use of a musical cryptogram in which bars 162–168 of the first movement contain the notes A-G-A-D-H (B)-E, a reference to Agathe.


The G-Major Sextet is also richly melodic, but tinged perhaps with just a bit of wistful nostalgia and regret; at 32, Brahms is becoming the sorrowful, lonely traveler we know from many of his later works. The minor-key Scherzo, which now comes in second place, and the Poco Adagio which follows it, have a certain portentous gravitas about them, as if Brahms now knows the journey going forward will not be a particularly happy one for him.


Toby Appel and David Requiro switch roles for the G-Major Sextet, with Appel playing second viola and Requiro playing first cello. The effect on the ensemble is a darkening one, which suits the music perfectly. Go-to, long-time favorites in this piece have been the Nash Ensemble on Onyx and the Raphael Ensemble on Hyperion, but once again, the Alexander Quartet, joined by Appel and Requiro, makes a most persuasive case for the score with a tonal refulgence, textural translucence, and expressivity of phrasing that are hard to resist.


Much later in Brahms’s output come the two string quintets. The F-Major was written in 1882 at Bad Ischl, the composer’s favorite summer retreat. The normally highly self-critical Brahms was so pleased with the work that he wrote to his publisher, “You have never had such a beautiful work from me,” and in a letter to Clara Schumann, he called it “one of my finest works.” History has not necessarily concurred, if one judges by the number of recordings the piece has received; at around 30, it would seem to be Brahms’s least popular chamber work. Hearing it, one has to wonder why, for it contains some of the composer’s most haimish music, warm, sun-drenched, and filled with the optimism and promise borne by a spring day. Unusual for Brahms’s larger chamber works as well is the fact that the Quintet is in three movements instead of four, with the second movement combining elements of a slow movement and a Scherzo into one.


I first learned the quintets from the 1970s LP recordings by the Guarneri Quartet with Michael Tree, which I reviewed in their digitized transfers in 32:6. The players bring a great deal of warmth and bigheartedness to their readings, but they’re perhaps not quite as technically polished as are the Boston Symphony Chamber Players on a Nonesuch CD, which I’ve long enjoyed. I haven’t heard the Uppsala Chamber Soloists’ recent entry on Daphne, which Lynn Bayley praised highly in 37:1, but of those I am familiar with—and in addition to the above-cited Guarneri and Boston versions, they include the Juilliard Quartet with Walter Trampler and the Hagen Quartet with Gérard Caussé—I’d have to say that the Alexander Quartet with Tony Appel outshines them all. The readings are closest to the classic Guarneri accounts in their warmth and beauteous sound, but more technically polished, better balanced, and offering more detailed recorded sound.


The same may be said of the G-Major Quintet, op. 111, the work Brahms intended to be his last, but as we know, Fate had other plans for him. The Quintet was composed in 1890, again at Bad Ischl, as the previous Quintet had been. Surprisingly, there’s no sense of leave-taking, nothing autumnal in the character of this music. It’s in fact quite joyful. In certain ways, however, it does sum up the totality of Brahms’s art. It has been called the composer’s most cosmopolitan work, suggesting a diversity of Italian, Viennese, Hungarian, and Slavic influences. The score has an almost serenade-like personality to it, reflecting back on Brahms’s early orchestral serenades.


These are performances to fall in love with and to live with happily ever after.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

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