As a tribute to Alexander Baillie on his 60th birthday, he and John Thwaites join together to create an outstanding release of cello and piano music by Brahms. The Brhams Sonatas have formed part of many a recital by Baillie and Thwaites over the years but what makes these so special are the pianos. The pianos for this release were chosen specifically for each sonata and are authentic to the time of the composition.

Classical Music

Smetana's Mavlast is one of the most powerful and undoubted cultural values of the Czech people. The work continues to be relevant, since it draws on the ideas about the history and role of the Czech nation conceived by FrantiSek Palacky, presenting a modern European nation in a light that is effective in more that the narrow national context - as exemplified by the history, interpretation, popularity and an incredible number of recordings of the Mavlast cycle from the 30s of the 20th. The new live recording of Smetana's works brings the interpretive view of the youngest generation of conductors based on current methods of interpretation, in an effort to come closer to the original text, as much as possible. Marek Stilec is the conductor of Hradec Kralove Philharmonic Orchestra.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Hungarian dances of Johannes Brahms have always been most popular. Rarely, however, have these immortal evergreens been heard so glowing and full of life as in the performance of Guido Schiefen and Markus Kreul, who for the first time ever recorded the complete arrangement for cello and piano by the Italian cello virtuoso Alfredo Piatti on album. Along with Joseph Joachim, Piatti was one of Clara Schumann's preferred chamber music partners and thus in Johannes Brahms' closest circle. The composer must have been very satisfied with Piatti's version, since the cello adds several dimensions of the most sensitive expression to the score, which was originally written for piano four hands - only a string instrument can lament as painfully as the sixths in No. 11. Schiefen and Kreul joyfully celebrate the emotionally charged music, without ever slipping into cliché. Mischievous elegance (number 3), accentuated rhythm (number 10) and the genuinely Czarda-like juxtaposition of deeply felt melancholy and exuberant cheerfulness (number 4) characterize the music, which was partly composed according to original Hungarian melodies and partly inspired by Brahms in the style of the puszta. Through to the exuberant finale with its never-ending trills, Piatti does not exactly make the cellist's task easy. Yet his arrangement is much more than just virtuoso stuff: in close relation to the four-handed model, a genuine piece of chamber music is created, which the two performers conjure up on the dance floor in almost somnambulistic certainty.

Not only was Robert Fuchs an admired friend of Brahms, but he nurtured a prodigious number of pupils, among whom were Enescu, Korngold, Mahler, Wolf, and Sibelius who called Fuchs a clever orchestrator, professional to his fingertips, and very happy as a composer. The three Violin Sonatas, composed over a 24-year period between 1877 and 1901, exemplify Fuchs superbly crafted and melodious grace, with soaring Romanticism spiced with occasional Hungarian color, folkloric themes, and vivacious finales.

Charles-Marie Widor’s ten organ symphonies sit at the heart of his extensive oeuvre. They reveal Widor’s mastery of the form with their profundity, technical difficulty and sonorous color. Symphony No. 7, Op. 42, No. 3 inaugurated a new, orchestral approach to the genre and encompasses dreamlike sonorities, Chopinesque melancholy and majestic bravura. The Symphonie gothique, Op. 70 makes explicit reference to Gregorian chant, developing a kind of theological ‘programme music’ that is both austere and consolatory.

Classical Music

MENDELSSOHN Cello Sonatas: in B?, op. 45; in D, op. 58. Variations concertantes, op. 17. Assai tranquillo. Lieder ohne Worte, op.19a/1,3,6 (arr. Piati); op.109 • Antonio Meneses (vc); Gérard Wyss (pn) • AVIE 2140 (72:45)


As Chopin’s works for cello owe their genesis to his association with Franchomme, so Mendelssohn’s pieces were written with specific cellists in mind. The charming and brilliant Variations concertantes (1829) and the First Sonata (1838) were written for the composer’s talented younger brother, Paul. In the interim, Mendelssohn composed the charming albumblatt, known as the Assai tranquillo , as a gift for his Düsseldorf colleague, Julius Rietz. The weightier Second Sonata, from 1843, is dedicated to Count Mateusz Wielhorski, who became a professional cellist on his retirement from the Russian army and eventually an important patron of music in St. Petersburg. Mendelssohn’s last work for cello and piano, the poetic Song without Words , op 109, is dedicated to Lisa Cristiani, one of the few women cellists of the time. Three of the piano solo Songs without Words , transcribed by the cellist Alfredo Piatti, who was much admired by Mendelssohn when they met in London, are interspersed among the original works on this disc.


The distinguished Antonio Meneses—a celebrated soloist and, since 1998, cellist with the Beaux Arts Trio—is a near-ideal interpreter of this important Romantic repertoire. Commanding a rich and varied tonal palette, Meneses approaches Mendelssohn’s essentially lyric expression with poise and equilibrium. This does not mean that passion and drama are given short shrift. In the Scherzo of the D-Major Sonata, the cunning pizzicatos verge on the sinister, only to be dispelled by the flowing cantabile of the trio. During the ensuing Adagio, one of the most beautiful slow movements in Mendelssohn’s chamber music, the cello interrupts the piano’s chorale figure with a series of recitatives. Meneses imbues these passages with a poetic utterance that is disarming in its intensity. His reading of the op. 109 Song without Words is the finest I can remember. Though Gérard Wyss’s piano-playing may lack a certain polish and finesse, his musical instincts are acute, and he remains the sensitive and supportive partner throughout.


Musically speaking, these performances will comfortably take their place alongside other admired readings of the repertoire, including those of Mischa Maisky and Sergio Tiempo (DG 471565) and János Starker and György Sebok (Mercury 434377). The recording, however, made in England in June 2007 at Potton Hall, Suffolk, doesn’t seem to do full justice to Meneses’s wonderful sound. It’s difficult to tell if poor microphone placement or a problematic acoustic space is the culprit, but presence and blend are lackluster. Stephen Pettitt contributed the informative and inviting notes.


FANFARE: Patrick Rucker

•For their second OehmsClassics recording, the Lower Austrian Tonkünstler Austria decided on the Mendelssohn First and Third Symphonies. Recorded live at the Vienna Musikverein, these performances further reveal the growing sense of appreciation conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada is receiving. He is soon to be appointed Principal Conductor of the hr‑Sinfonieorchester, Frankfurt, Music Director of the HoustonSymphony and Principal Guest Conductor of the LondonPhilharmonic.

Robert Schumann: Works for Piano (Recordings 1956-1959)

Volume 55 in the critically acclaimed Liszt Complete Piano Works series features transcriptions of pieces by his contemporary Eduard Lassen, performed here by award-winning pianist Andrey Ivanov in his recording debut. Andrey gave his first concerto performance at the age of nine. In 2006, he was selected to study at the Central School of Music in Minsk, graduating to the Moscow Conservatoire. He won first prize at the Belgrade and Minsk International Piano Competitions and went on to perform in Moscow, St Petersburg, Belgrade, Brussels and Amsterdam. He is currently studying at the Birmingham Conservatoire with Pascal Nemirovski.

Also available on Blu-ray

For the first time ever, a Chinese symphony orchestra is performing at Lucerne Festival. If yet more evidence that classical music has long since become a global language were needed, it would be this appearance by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra under music director Long Yu. These musicians from Asia have planned a program of three Russian composers. Aaron Avshalomov, who was born in 1894, served as a professor at the Shanghai Conservatory, where he taught from 1919 on; he was one of the founders of China’s Western musical tradition. His tone poem Hutongs of Peking captures the sounds and voices that once echoed through the narrow alleys of the Chinese capital. Tchaikovsky’s immortal Violin Concerto will be performed by one of the leading virtuosos of our time, Maxim Vengerov. And the orchestra will demonstrate the degree to which a composer under Stalin had to wrestle with his own identity with Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. Here the composer reacts to the political demand to be popular and monumental – which leads to an absurdly overstated “jubilant” conclusion.

Classical Music

Mauro Giuliani was both a virtuoso performer on the guitar and one of the great figures in early 19th-century composition for the instrument. His variations, studies, sonatas and other works have entered the repertoires of generations of subsequent performers. The six dazzling Rossiniane for solo guitar are fantasias on themes taken from the great Italian composer’s operas. They offer a compendium of the guitar as a miniature orchestra revealing refinements of technique and expressiveness never before achieved on the instrument.

Classical Music

Including premiere recordings, this programme provides us with a privileged opportunity to engage with 36 of Ludwig van Beethoven’s rarely heard sketches, variations and briefest of compositions, even the earliest of which have much to teach us about the emergence of his unique voice and style. The range of Beethoven’s musical experimentation reveals a lasting interest in counterpoint, as well as practical pages such as cadenzas for a Mozart concerto, an incomplete sonata and a second version of the famous bagatelle Fur Elise. A significant supplement to his greatest works, these miniatures bring the full arc of Beethoven’s singular genius into ever clearer focus.

“Roberto Devereux” (1837) saw the light of day during a period of intense creativity for Donizetti. After its premiere and up until 1848, Devereux was performed almost uninterruptedly. In the years that followed it would also enjoy a successful international career, throughout Europe and in the Americas, with versions in French, German, Russian, and Hungarian. When Donizetti moved to Paris in 1838, he enriched the opera with the overture that paraphrases the British anthem “God Save The Queen.” The Queen dominates from her very entrance, a true protagonist, here performed by the great Mariella Devia: her pure voice, perfect intonation, great stage presence, all combined with the technical qualities of her voice, led to an extended standing ovation. It was a great success, too, for Sonia Ganassi (Sarah) and the tenor Stefan Pop (Devereux).

The legacy of the conductor Sergiu Celidache is honored with a re-release of a 1965 live performance with the Orchestra e Teatro "La Fenice" di Venezia. With a program that included winning performances of Mussorgsky's "Pictures At An Exhibition", along with the not usual inclusion of Cherubini's "Symphony in D" and the then premiere of a work by Swedish composer, Sven Erik Back, the maestro Celidache's reputation as an iconoclast among conductors with his programming choices is evident with this collection. With exception technical and sound quality, this live recording presents a significant opportunity towards a reappreciation of Celidache.

Tafelmusik presents Beethoven's landmark Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" - an heroic and monumental symphony originally dedicated to Napoleon - and Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4 "Italian." with historical performances Maestro Weil and his players may yet convince you that "Beethoven can sound as radical in 21st century as he must have in the 19th" (Gramophone).

The Dover Quartet, “the young American string quartet of the moment” (The New Yorker), launches its emerging, three-volume complete Beethoven quartet cycle with the six Opus 18 quartets, often cited as the epitome of the classical string quartet as developed by Haydn and Mozart while foreshadowing Beethoven’s future innovations. 

When Dino Ciani died in 1974 in a car accident in Rome at age 32, the world lost a great pianist. He was described by his teacher Alfred Cortot as "a youth possessing the rarest gifts bestowed by nature.” Today he is considered an icon among classical record collectors. This new release from DOREMI features 1970 and 1973 Live broadcasts of the Beethoven Piano concertos No. 1 and No. 3. This is the first time that these recordings have been available to the public.

Uta Weyand’s latest album is devoted to music from the year 1892, played on an instrument made that same year. It recreates a very specific historical moment where the instrument and the music can be seen and heard as contemporary. German-born pianist Uta Weyand comes from a musical family. The daughter of a choir conductor and an organist, she grew up with choral music and the organ repertoire. During childhood she expressed her extraordinary musical talent not only at the piano, but also excelled at the violin, voice, and music composition. The Post and Courier (South Carolina) predicted her success, stating, “Weyand is a pianist of genius, who should have a long career.” And the Nuremberg News confirmed, “…especially admirable is her amazing ability to make the great Steinway sing and wrest many captivating colors from it.” After her studies in Freiburg (Germany), Baltimore, and Madrid, with Elza Kolodin, Vitaly Margulis, Leon Fleisher, and Joaquín Soriano, Ms. Weyand has had great international success, giving numerous piano recitals and appearing with orchestras in most European countries, Russia, Brazil, Cuba, and the United States.

The comic-heroic romp Matilde di Shabran was Rossini’s last commission for the theatres of Rome, the city where he’d had great successes such as Il barbiere di Siviglia. Rossini took advantage of the agile, sparkling style of librettist Jacopo Ferretti to create a narrative in which the ferocious Corradino, a declared misogynist, is introduced to the resourceful Matilde, who succeeds in melting his iron heart and winning his love. This premiere recording revives the original 1821 Rome version, which was conducted at the last minute by Paganini, and caused brawling in the streets between Rossini’s admirers and detractors.

 

REVIEW:

 

This splendid recording of the original Rome version of Matilde, recorded at the 2019 Rossini Wildbad Festival in Germany, relishes the almost comic tale of the melodramatic medieval tyrant Corradino conquered by love, or rather Matilde, with a score packed with some of Rossini’s most accomplished music.

 

Michele Angelini is magnificent as the villain, everything that you hope for in a Rossini tenor—fleet of voice in his runs and trills and with gravity-defying head notes. Sara Blanch’s Matilde matches him note for note. Their Act I duet ‘Ch’io fugga ha già timore…’ is a thrilling lesson in Rossini singing. There’s good work from the rest of the cast, notably the contralto Victoria Yarovaya as Edoardo, who Corradino has unjustly imprisoned and turns tragedy into comedy. Equally pleasing is the Passionart Orchestra conducted by José Miguel Pérez-Sierra. All scrupulously Rossinian including the celebrated horn solo at the beginning of Act II.

 

– BBC Music Magazine

Sonate a Quattro are the brilliant compositions from Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, written during the summer of 1804 at the young age of 12. These works, at the time, were commonly performed by wind quartet and it wasn’t until 1954 when the original manuscripts were discovered in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. showing their original arrangement for string quartet. The world premiere recording of Rossini: 6 Sonate a Quattro features two of Canada’s most respected and beloved performers - Mark Fewer (violin), and Joel Quarrington (bass) - and two of North America’s rising stars - Yolanda Bruno (violin), and Julian Schwarz (cello) and produced by JUNO award-winning producer John D.S. Adams. These performances, from November 2017, were recorded in collaboration with the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance using the newly released (2014) Critical Edition published by the Fondazione Rossini Pesaro.

Classical Music

BRUCKNER Symphonies: No. 4; 1 No. 9. 2 MOZART Symphony No. 35 in D “Haffner” 3 • Bruno Walter, cond; 1 NBC SO. 2 Philadelphia O. 3 New York PO • MUSIC & ARTS CD-1262 (2 CDs: 127:30) Live: 1 02/10/1940, 2 02/28/1948, 3 02/06/1944


Having recently obtained an extensive collection of acetates from the estate of a private music collector, the Music & Arts label is issuing some fruits of that here in the form of live performances by Bruno Walter. Two items—the Bruckner Ninth and the Mozart “Haffner” symphonies—are previously unissued items; the Bruckner Fourth was released on Pearl GEMM CD 9131 but here enjoys slightly but tangibly superior sound. While still constricted, it is tolerably listenable by the standards one would expect for a recording of that vintage. Here the weak bass register is noticeably stronger and clearer, background hiss is slightly reduced, occasional fluctuations in pitch have been evened out, and assorted clicks and pops and similar extraneous noises excised or reduced. However, the Pearl release is still not superfluous, as this issue does not include the filler pieces by Weber and Smetana (the overtures to Oberon and The Bartered Bride ).


While none of these items is, strictly speaking, a novelty in the Walter discography, the performance of the Bruckner Fourth preserved here is of particular interest to both Brucknerians and Walterians. The Walter discography contains only two versions of this score: the live one presented here, and the conductor’s studio recording with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, recorded from February 13-25, 1960. (The discography of the CSO is complex, because Columbia used that moniker for several different studio orchestras in various locales. In Walter’s case, the monaural recordings are with a reduced contingent of the New York Philharmonic and other local musicians, while his stereo recordings are with a core ensemble drawn from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Festival Orchestra, supplemented by members of various Hollywood film studio orchestras.) The Sony SMK 64 481 issue of the studio performance is presently available—as are most of the titles in Sony’s erstwhile “Bruno Walter Edition”—as an ArkivMusic reprint.


What is most remarkable is how radically Walter’s conception of this piece changed over 20 years, with the respective timings providing an initial indication: 16:32, 14:32, 8:27, and 18:32 versus 18:40, 15:37, 10:59, and 20:46. Walter does use different editions of the score—the 1888-89 Löwe/Guttmann version in 1940, and the 1936 Haas edition of the 1878/80 version in 1960. (For the 1960 recording I am taking the word of John F. Berky on his abruckner.com discography site over that of Sony, which states in its CD booklet that Walter used the 1953 Nowak edition.) However, this in no way accounts for the differences, as most of them are matters of instrumental detail (e.g., the radically reduced orchestration in the Scherzo at 8:13-8:16 in the 1940 performance as compared to the same passage at 8:20-8:23 in the 1960 recording) rather than cuts in the score. Instead, Walter’s earlier interpretation is far more volatile, not only in terms of significantly faster tempi but also in more generous use of accelerandi and other tempo modifications. For example, in 1940 there is an adrenaline rush on an ascending scale from 1:41 to 1:52 not employed in 1960, while in the fourth movement the 1940 performance takes only a mild ritardando at 8:13 to 8:16 but in 1960 a very emphatic one in the same passage at 8:20 to 8:23. In 1940 the Scherzo movement is taken at an exceptionally brisk pace, whereas in 1960 it is stately, with the trio section being positively languorous. Similarly, whereas in 1960 Walter squares off phrases in the more emphatic manner common to most Bruckner performances nowadays, demarcating discrete units as aural equivalents of the giant stone blocks used to construct Gothic cathedrals, in 1940 the phrasing is noticeably more fluid and linear, particularly in woodwind runs that ripple like rapidly flowing rivulets (cf. at 15:24 in the first movement). How much these changes owe to the oft-noted differences in Walter’s recordings made before and after his March 1957 heart attack, and how much they may owe to the conductor possibly seeking to elaborate greater distinctions between his approaches to Bruckner and Mahler, can only be a subject of speculation. In any case, in these respects the 1940 performance is akin to the relatively few complete Bruckner symphony performances that survive from before WW II, and suggest an earlier school of performance which is now well-nigh extinct. Both for that reason, and for the intriguing snapshot of how Walter’s interpretation of this piece shifted over the years, this recording is of particular interest for collectors of historical performances.


The companion performance in this set of the Bruckner Ninth lacks the same degree of intrinsic value, in that there are eight surviving recorded performances from Walter’s baton, variously given with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Columbia Symphony. The table below provides details for comparison. In this and the succeeding tables, if a particular performance has appeared more than once on CD, I have cited the best version currently in print; studio recordings are marked with an asterisk. For the timings in this instance, I have used those provided by Mark W. Kluge in his notes to the 2003 Music and Arts release of the 1946 performance, except for the 1948 and 1950 performances not listed by him.




FANFARE: Date Orchestra CD Issue (if any) Timings


03/17/46 NYP Music & Arts CD-1110 21:42 9:37 19: 42


02/28/48 PO Music & Arts CD-1262 21:19 9:43 19:28


02/02/50 NYP none (private collection) 20:12 9:55 19: 15


08/20/53 VPO Andromeda ANDRCD 9092 21:10 10:09 19:17


12/27/53 NYP Tahra TAH 571 20:32 10:09 19:46


02/10/57 NYP Music & Arts CD-1212 19:59 10:01 19: 14


11/13/59 LAP none (private collection) 22:30 10:53 21: 58


11/16-19/59 CSO Sony SMK 64 483* 23:51 11:29 23:16


As Kluge rightly states in the booklet notes to the 2003 disc of Walter’s 1946 performance, “Walter’s live performances of the Ninth Symphony preserved on tape show a certain consistency, varying in individual nuance rather than interpretive outline”. In the booklet notes to the present release he further observes, “All of his live performances of the score display certain common interpretive details,” of which he provides several examples, such as “the very precise (almost clipped) brass interjections in the opening bars.” Unremarked upon by Kluge, except for a passing observation that the studio account “lacks the fire of Walter’s live performances,” is the extraordinary speed and drive of Walter’s conception of the work, which in the pre-1959 performances clocks in at between 49:22 (the fastest recorded performance by any conductor) and 51:01. Among the almost 400 complete performances listed in the abruckner.com discography, only Volkmar Andreae, Jascha Horenstein, Georg-Ludwig Jochum, Roger Norrington, plus (amazingly) John Barbirolli and Hans Knappertsbusch, have timings within three minutes of Walter. This work alone gives the lie to the stereotype of Walter as a cushy, gentle interpreter given solely to Gemütlichkeit rather than Sturm und Drang.


Despite their overall similarity, the pre-1959 performances do not suffer from lack of variety or interest. With the exception of the live 1959 performance, which stems from a relatively poor source, the sound quality improves incrementally with the more recent performance date, though the sonic differences between the three performances from 1953-57 are rather minimal. For me, the key factor in evaluating the first six performances is Walter’s approach to and follow-through from the fortissimo recapitulation of the first theme of the opening movement, beginning at about halfway through the movement. For the approach to the recapitulation, the recap itself, and the section immediately thereafter, Walter demarcates each of the three sections with a marked caesura and tempo adjustment. There are noticeable differences to how he does this in several of the performances; although these may simply be differences of the moment, they suggest instead that he was not entirely satisfied with his handling of these sections and was constantly searching for new and better solutions. I find the 1946 performance to be the least satisfactory; as the timing of the first movement indicates, Walter there inserts greater pauses and slows down each section more than usual, causing the whole to lose coherency and momentum and to bog down. Walter also takes two major ritardandi early on, at 1:55 and 3:00, that he drops after the 1948 Philadelphia performance, which has a similarly hobbling effect. (For a more positive response, see Robert McColley’s review back in 26:6.) By contrast, the unreleased 1950 performance is the most successful, having a fierce energy and the least pronounced breaks and tempo deceleration.


The three performances from 1948 and 1953 occupy a middle ground between these extremes; here the differences are to be found more in the distinctive timbres of the respective orchestras. In his booklet notes to the 1946 performance, Kluge states that “the warmer style of the Vienna Philharmonic added a sense of plasticity and nuance not as evident in the later [1953] New York performance,” given the latter orchestra’s “virile, even aggressive playing style.” I would agree, but I find a certain slackness present in the Vienna performance as well, and its recorded sound is slightly more recessed. Comparing the New York and Philadelphia ensembles in the present booklet notes, Kluge correctly finds “a contrast in style between the two ensembles. The Philharmonic sonority is bold and brassy, making the most of Bruckner’s dramatic climaxes. However the Philadelphia ensemble, even in its first encounter with the score, adds a patina of refinement”—due no doubt to the orchestra’s fabled string section. Finally, in 1957 Walter attempts a hybrid solution that combines pronounced Luftpausen with his briskest tempi, a solution I prefer to all but the 1950 performance (see also the positive review by Jeffrey J. Lipscomb in 32: 3).


The two 1959 performances are, as their timings indicate, of a very different character—ultimately no less dramatic, but more monumental and in line with the mainstream of Bruckner interpretations, while also evincing the more rounded edges of Walter’s trademark lyricism in other repertoire. Given both the relatively poor sound of the preceding live performance, and some ill-fitting junctures in it that suggest Walter’s new interpretation not to be fully settled, the studio recording is easily preferable between those two. Along with the 1957 performance—and that of 1950, for those few who can find it from private sources—the studio recording is also one of the top choices for Brucknerians who want Walter represented in their collections.


Despite Walter’s intense devotion to Bruckner following his recovery from a near-fatal bout of double pneumonia in 1927 (Walter credited his convalescence with giving him the spiritual repose needed to comprehend Bruckner rightly), many commentators have regarded his studio Bruckner recordings, especially that of the Ninth, as relative weak points in his discography. Devoted Walterian that I am, I nevertheless agree with that assessment; Walter never mastered the timing of the numerous pauses in Bruckner’s symphonic movements, and choosing the manifold subtle shifts in tempi needed to make the sprawling movements cohere, to the same degree as did Wilhelm Furtwängler and Eugen Jochum, my own Bruckner reference standards. Part of the fault here, however, lies not with Walter but with Columbia’s miscalculated decision to use an orchestra of only 65 players for the recording sessions—possibly due to a degree of parsimony, but also because the extremely lively acoustics of Legion Hall would have caused a full-sized orchestra to be swamped with reverberation. The fact that Walter almost fully succeeds in disguising the paucity of string players and producing a genuine Brucknerian orchestral sound testifies to near-miraculous conductorial skills.


The 1948 performance of the Bruckner Ninth in Philadelphia was paired in concert with a performance of Mozart’s “Haffner” Symphony. Since only the Bruckner was broadcast for a one-hour time slot, the performance of the Mozart was not preserved. In its stead, Music and Arts has thoughtfully provided a previously unreleased 1944 New York Philharmonic broadcast of the work. Mozart occupies a large and special place in Walter’s discography. In terms of frequency of surviving performances, the “Haffner” has seven recordings—five live and two studio, with the NBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Columbia Symphony. It thus ranks behind No. 40 (eleven performances, eight live and three studio) and No. 39 (eight recordings, five live and three studio), and is tied with the “Prague” (seven recordings, four live and three studio). The following table again provides details for comparison; note that Tahra misdates the 1953 performance to January 5 instead of January 4.


Date Orchestra CD Issue (if any) Timings


02/17/40 NBC SO Andromeda ANDRCD 9012 5:02 4:31 3:10 3: 33


02/06/44 NYP Music and Arts CD-1262 5:15 4:44 3:16 3: 33


01/21/47 BSO Wing WCD 58 (Japan) 5:11 4:29 3:17 3:37


02/05/50 NYP none (private collection) 5:33 5:05 3: 25 3:43


01/04/53 NYP Tahra TAH 571-572 5:29 4:54 3:33 3:55


01/16/53 NYP Sony SMK 64 473* 5:27 4:44 3:21 3:46


01/13-21/59 CSO Sony SM3K 46 511* 5:58 5:13 3:49 4:04


Here one notes that until the final, post-heart attack, stereo recording, Walter’s interpretive approach remains remarkably consistent, broadening very slightly in tempi with the passing years. As before, sound quality generally improves in successive performances, save for the decidedly poor-sounding Boston Symphony issue and the somewhat tubby sound of the unedited source for the 1950 performance. Yet here, too, there are subtle differences, with the 1944 performance under review being the most distinctive. At 1:15 in the first movement, Walter slows the tempo for the lyrical counter-subject to a far greater degree than elsewhere, and likewise beginning at 4:40 accelerates the tempo to a far greater degree to provide a whirlwind close. Not unexpectedly from an ensemble drilled under Toscanini, the NBC performance features particularly strong, crisp accents on chords and fluid runs on strings and winds. The live 1953 performance has a higher voltage than the studio recording that followed it, though it suffers from a rather glassy, shrill treble register (for a different opinion on the last point, see Mortimer H. Frank’s review in 14:4). The stereo recording has of course by far the best sound, but its slower tempi drain it of the vitality characteristic of Walter’s earlier performances. The 1944 performance is in surprisingly good sound for its time, and I would rate it alongside the two 1953 versions as the best of his performances of this work.


The remasterings of the original sources have obviously been done with the meticulous care that marks all Music and Arts issues. Mark Kluge’s booklet notes are exemplary; they include a brief discussion of recent Bruckner scholarship that defends the Löwe/Guttmann edition of the Fourth as one genuinely authorized by Bruckner rather than riding roughshod over his true intentions, and also discuss Walter’s various retouchings of the timpani and brass parts in different performances of the Ninth. (Kluge does not discuss the 1950 performance, but the excision of the trombone parts from certain passages of the Scherzo that occurs in the 1957 and 1959 performances also occurs there, though curiously not in the intervening ones from 1953.) The booklet and tray card have a typographical error that gives the total time of the second disc as 50:30, which is the timing of the Bruckner Ninth alone; the correct total time is 68:20. For Walterians, this release is self-recommending; for Brucknerians and collectors of historic performances, it will be of interest primarily for the Bruckner Fourth, and secondarily for the “Haffner” and the Ninth. To each of these interested parties, this release is warmly recommended.

James A. Altena

John Philip Sousa’s swift rise to fame and greatness came at a time when band concerts were the most important aspect of musical life in the US. The works on this recording range from the early Revival March of 1876 and the stirring Right Forward March from Sousa’s time as conductor of the US Marine band, to the “up-to-date” 1920s fox-trot Peaches and Cream and the 1923 Leaves from My Notebook, dedicated to the Campfire Girls of America. Music from Sousa’s operetta Chris and the Wonderful Lamp can be found alongside his medley of tunes from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, which includes many of the hit tunes from this operetta, while The Honored Dead was performed at President Ulysses S. Grant’s funeral.

Roberto Noferini performs the brilliant and alluring 24 Caprices of Paganini on an instrument and bow of Paganini's time.

"The electricity I feel when I'm dealing with the magic harmony" Paganini wrote on 15, January 1832 in a letter to his friend Luigi Guglielmo-Germi. There could be no better definition of Paganini's musical temperament. After hearing Paganini play in a concert, Franz Schubert wrote: "I have heard the voice of an angel." And Franz Liszt's comment was: "How much passion, how much suffering in those four strings." How can we imagine Paganini's art today, at such a distance in time, unless we refer to the impressions of his contemporaries, of the people who had the chance to see him, listen to him and be thrilled by his music? The search for a performance that endeavors to be as near as possible to the magic of a live concert of this great Genoese musician can only start from here. In order to attempt this feat of moving musically back two centuries, it is necessary to aquire to the wood, horsehair strings and bow technique within painstaking attention to the directions left by Paganini in his original scores (this was in fact the advice of violinist Artur Grumiaux.) To all this we add the talent of a present-day virtuoso who is less subject to the harsh law of time and can find another way of bringing back to our time the masterpieces of the past. - Tactus

Established in 1986 by Serafino Rossi, Tactus is devoted to the discovery and preservation of the enormous and still unexplored Italian classical music repertoire, from Gregorian chants to Contemporary Classics.