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The Biblical story of Belshazzar's hubristic arrogance set against the valour of the young warrrior-leader Cyrus provided the 20-year-old Rossini with a dramatic story with West-Eastern resonances which still speak to us today. For the title role of Cyrus, Rossini wrote what would be his longest-ever contralto role, to which the great Rossini singer Ewa Podles is both naturally attracted and ideally suited. She is partnered by two young stars of Rossini singing, Jessica Pratt and Michael Spyres, and a conductor-scholar, Will Crutchfield, of immense experience and sympathy.

What the press said:
''In the title role, the booming contralto Ewa Podles gives the kind of old-style, intensely felt performance that is her trademark. As Amira, the soprano Jessica Pratt established herself in two daunting arias as a brilliant new presence on the bel canto scene.'' New York Times

Gioachino Rossini CIRO IN BABILONIA
(Blu-ray Disc Version)

Ciro – Ewa Podles
Amira – Jessica Pratt
Baldassare – Michael Spyres
Zambri – Mirco Palazzi
Argene – Carmen Romeu
Arbace – Robert McPherson
Daniello – Raffaele Costantini
Ned Keene – George von Bergen


Bologna Teatro Comunale Chorus and Orchestra Will Crutchfield, conductor


Davide Livermore, stage director

Recorded live at the Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, August 2012

Bonus:
- Cast gallery

Picture format: 1080i High Definition Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French, German, Japanese, Korean
Running time: 165 mins
No. of Discs: 1 (Blu-ray)

REVIEW:

Jean-Jacques Kantorow has recorded Saint-Saëns’s two other violin concertos on BIS 860, which I reviewed in 21:6 and on BIS 1060, which I also reviewed, in 25:5. In the first case, it seemed to me that Kantorow exaggerated rhythms “until they become irritating,” and, in the second, that he provided an attractive alternative to either Ruggiero Ricci or Philippe Graffin in this least initially ingratiating of Saint-Saëns’s violin concertos. Kantorow is aggressively piquant in the Third Concerto as well, but the competition’s stiffer, with Arthur Grumiaux having made two recordings of it and Nathan Milstein, one—in addition to Zino Francescatti’s legendary account, which the work’s admirers should find in equal parts more noble and less racy. While Kantorow slashes with abandon in the first movement and wheedles intimately in the second, he comes into his own in the third, exhibiting greater accentual restraint yet stunning technical aplomb in passagework that defies the notes’ assessment that those seeking traditional virtuosity in this work will be disappointed. As in the slow movement, he reveals the rich lyricism of the finale’s reflective interludes. Center stage, Graffin creates an impression of cogency in this last movement for which mannerisms in the headlong first movement and the occasionally languorous slow movement hardly prepare. The orchestral support, represented in resonant and wide-ranging recorded sound, buoys the soloist throughout, providing both moments of sensitive repose and sonorous bustle.

I’ve most frequently heard Eugène Ysaÿe’s transcription for violin and orchestra of Saint-Saëns’s solo piano étude in an arrangement for violin and piano. In orchestral garb, the work bears greater affinity to Saint-Saëns’s violin concertos; and although Kantorow’s reading may seem brittle compared with Oistrakh’s breathtaking one with pianist Vladimir Yampolsky, the orchestral accompaniment virtually transforms the piece, with the violin lighting the stratosphere with pyrotechnics against a colorful orchestral backdrop, all in the grand manner of Henri Vieuxtemps (Ysaÿe’s teacher). The Caprice andalous , which Dong Suk Kang included in his collection on Naxos 8.550752, 18:2 (which also included the Third Concerto—Kang’s performance of the Caprice, and of the Concerto, sounds especially refined and elegant after hearing Kantorow’s more urgent and slightly more mannered ones), seems to be Saint-Saëns’s most overtly Spanish number, although he had embodied Pablo Sarasate’s musical personality with greater or lesser success in the Havanaise and Introduction and rondo capriccioso as well as in the Third Concerto. The work’s ethnicity and its brilliant writing for the soloist, especially at the conclusion, may overcome for listeners any resistance to what they deem less immediately appealing thematic material. And certainly Kantorow makes the most of opportunities for display.

Just as BIS’s volume surrounding the First Concerto included the Sarabande for string orchestra, op. 93/1, and the recording of the Second Concerto included Spartacus and La muse et le poète for violin, cello, and orchestra, this third volume in what appears to be a series includes the more austere Prélude to Le déluge (in which Kantorow extracts from the orchestra a nostalgic sentiment that goes beyond the suggestive violin solo) and a rambustious performance by Heini Kärkkäinen of the Valse caprice , op. 76. As in the works for violin, the engineers have placed the soloist center stage, but the depth and definition of the orchestral sound ensures that the accompaniment never degenerates into a drop cloth merely catching splotches of color the soloist insouciantly sprinkles. The program concludes with the bumptious Allegro appassionato , op. 70, with bubbling high spirits at its center.

Although Kantorow’s reading of the first two movements of the Third Violin Concerto may seem just too headlong and too diffuse, respectively, for some listeners, the bracing third nearly redeems them, and the other two bravura works for violin (Ysaÿe’s in its stirring orchestral setting)—to say nothing of the additional pieces in affecting readings led stylishly by Kantorow and, in the last two, played brightly and energetically by Kärkkäinen—tip the balance in the recording’s favor. Recommended.

-- FANFARE (Robert Maxham)

Celebrating their 100th anniversary, the London Chamber Orchestra release a live recording taken from a highly-celebrated performance at Cadogan Hall, London in 2019, featuring three sublime works for string orchestra. When you go to an LCO concert, you do not just go to listen to a concert, you go to experience a performance and this live recording is no exception. Christopher Warren- Green and the orchestra capture the quintessential ‘Englishness’ of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and explore the emotional and musical connection between Suk and Dvorák's Serenade for Strings.

REVIEW:

Sometimes you just need to be reminded how lovely certain music can be. With more that 70 minutes of lovingly performed, warmly recorded music for strings, this is truly a recording to both stir and soothe the soul, delivering whatever your soul might need during these difficult days.

– Classical Candor

No one knows who first gave Beethoven's Trio Op. 11 the nickname Gassenhauer ("street song"). Neither do we know if the name was kindly intended or derogatory, chosen to boost sales or perhaps meant ironically (Heinrich Heine, for instance, would later satirize the omnipresence of a tune, sung everywhere, from Weber's opera chorus "Wir winden dir den Jungfernkranz").The catchy tune in Beethoven's final movement with variations was the vocal trio "Pria ch'io l'impegno" ("Before I go to work") from the comic operaL'Amor marinaro (The Sailor's Love), composed in 1797 by Joseph Weigl, who was a godchild of Haydn and had been pupil of Antonio Salieri. The aria enjoyed widespread, long-term popularity: more than 30 years after the opera's premi�re, Paganini still delighted Vienna audiences with variations on the same tune. Beethoven wrote his instrumental trio only half a year after the premi�re, probably fulfilling a commission by clarinetist Joseph B�hr, who is said to have asked for variations on that theme. When clarinetist Kilian Herold asked composer Johannes Sch�llhorn to arrange a Beethoven work for trio, Sch�llhorn thought of the Bagatelles Op.119. The idea was to add a final level to a three-level concept, Composing Beethoven, consisting in an original work by Beethoven, then one of Beethoven's arrangements of his own works, and, finally, a work by Beethoven arranged by a 21st-century composer. Sch�llhorn, already well-experienced in creative approaches to music of the past, deconstructs the original piano texture here in such a way that the resulting sound is not too lean, but opens up new areas of freedom for the pianist's new partners. He has conceived a light, airy trio texture brimming with discreet punch lines, interruptions, disruptions, unexpected connections, and cello sonorities ranging from sul tasto to col legno battuto, resulting in a fond, respectful homage to Beethoven.

This release is the 49th volume in the Naxos series of the complete works of Franz Liszt. Volume 49 features a wide-ranging selection of dance pieces. The Valses oubliées reveal a compound of wistful nostalgia and advanced harmonies while the remarkable Csárdás macabre, a characteristic Hungarian folk-dance, is full of innovative features. The effervescent Mazurka brillante is a very rare example of Liszt making original use of this Polish form, whilst simultaneously transforming it. The Grand Galop cromatique, heard here in two versions, is a bravura encore piece that the young Liszt often played in his virtuoso recitals. The works are presented on this release by Goran Filipec, recent laureate of the Granc Prix du Disque of the Ferenc Liszt Society of Budapest.

• A compilation of Mendelssohn's most important piano pieces

One can easily find a great number of outstanding chamber music works for string instruments; on the other hand, chamber music repertoire for woodwinds on a similar high level of composition is relatively sparse. By the 1800s, string instruments and the piano had achieved a high standard in terms of playing technique and construction; wind instruments, however, lagged somewhat behind. Woodwinds still sounded uneven across their registers and suffered from technical constraints, including limitations in terms of musical keys: all of this must have exerted a counterproductive influence on a generation of Romantic composers who wanted to expand music’s horizons in terms of dynamics and harmony. The Ma’alot Wind Quintet has teamed up on this album with pianist Markus Becker in works by Ludwig van Beethoven for piano and woodwinds, supplemented by several of Beethoven’s charming works for flute-playing clock, arranged by clarinetist Ulf-Guido Schäfer for woodwind quintet. The main raison-d’être for this choice of program lies in the fact that Beethoven himself composed an excellent large-scale original work for four woodwinds (oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon) and piano – a work which, in terms of musical proportions and compositional ingenuity, rose far above the standard of what was otherwise being written for winds at the time when it was premiered (1796).That original composition is coupled on this album with another work by Beethoven for which we no longer have the original instrumentation, but which can be reconstructed, thanks to a series of circumstances, to a point of departure from which Ulf-Guido Schäfer has been able to arrange it as a chamber music Concerto for piano and wind quintet.

Dvorak had an ambivalent relationship with Classical and Romantic traditions, something that is clearly exemplified in his piano trios. The Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 90 is a daring late work that uses popular moods and freer forms consisting of six Dumky – a melancholic and poetic musical form that draws from the composer inexhaustible melodic creativity. The Piano Trio in F minor, Op. 65 was influenced by the death of the composer’s mother and also by Dvorak having heard Brahms’ Piano Quintet, Op. 34, a work composed in the same key. Cyclic elements and fiery drama permeate the writing. “Individually excellent, they are even more impressive together”, wrote the Gazzetta di Mantova after a concert by the Italian-Swiss Trio des Alpes, thereby describing one of this Trio’s essential qualities: three independent, all-round successful personalities meeting as a trio. What attracts them is the quintessence of chamber music: dialogue, a shared sound and the blending of three instruments into a single whole.

Classical Music

2020 saw the release of the first installment in this three-album traversal of Beethoven’s violin sonatas – a disc which has garnered distinctions such as Choc de Classica and Cum Laude (Luister), with performances that ‘wed classical verve to a profoundly Romantic spirit’ (Gramophone) in ‘recordings that are conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing’ (BBC Music Magazine). As Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen open the second disc, they do so with the iconic Spring Sonata, Op. 24. Completed in 1801, the work proved immediately popular with a second edition appearing only months after the first publication. There were also numerous arrangements for a variety of forces – including a song based on motifs from the sonata’s slow movement. Soon after completing Op. 24, Beethoven began work on a set of three sonatas of which the first two are included on this album. Musically the Op. 30 sonatas continue the development that had begun with the Spring Sonata towards a contrast-rich, symphonic style. Beethoven originally planned to end the first and shortest of the three with the expansive movement that later became the finale of the great Kreutzer Sonata. As this would clearly have ruined the proportions of the work, he eventually replaced it with a set of variations. Closing this album is the second sonata of Op. 30, in C minor. It is the most important of the set; a genuine Grande Sonate in four movements, and an early example of Beethoven’s ‘heroic’ style.

REVIEW:

This is one of the most responsive partnerships I’ve heard in these sonatas, and I’ve heard some really outstanding ones. The togetherness of these two artists in precision of timing and harmonic vibration in matters of phrasing and dynamics is an amazing thing to experience.

-- Fanfare

This is a Lohengrin sure to be welcomed by the true Wagnerian connoisseur. Offered complete for the first time on CD and re-mastered in 24bit/96kHz audio, Walhall’s Eternity Series brings to market a 1949 Moscow, USSR performance of the opera, sung in Russian. Evincing tremendous vocal power and voice control, Ivan Kozlovsky (1900-93), a lyric tenor then at his apex, heads the all-Russian cast; his performance ranks with those of the more familiar Wagnerian Lohengrins of the era, Melchior and Konya, in their respective primes. Samuil Samosud conducts the USSR Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

For the first four years of their marriage, Robert and Clara Schumann kept a joint diary, a project which Robert described as ‘a record of our wishes and our hopes, and the means whereby we may convey to one another any requests we may have to make, for which words may not suffice...’ In the imaginative recital Album für die Frau, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton combine songs by both composers into something similar – the depiction of a relationship seen through the eyes of both parties. Using the eight songs from Robert’s song cycle Frauenliebe und –leben to poems by Adalbert von Chamisso as the framework, they add songs as well as some piano solos in order to create a fuller and more complex picture. The result seems to suggest that the experiences of our ‘Frau’ are richer than Chamisso and Robert Schumann imagined: while love, marriage and motherhood dominated much of Clara Schumann’s life, Robert’s death in 1856 signaled the start of a four-decade widowhood during which she resumed her stellar career as a pianist. As a team, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton have released a number of acclaimed discs, including ‘Fleurs’, featuring flower-themed songs by composers from Purcell to Richard Strauss and Britten, ‘A Verlaine Songbook’, exploring settings of the poetry of Paul Verlaine, and ‘A Soprano’s Schubertiade’, a Schubert anthology.

REVIEW:

Amid formidable recorded competition, Sampson is close to the top of the Frauenliebe pantheon. It is high time Joseph Middleton made an album of solo Schumann piano music.

– Gramophone

� A 2011 concert performance by Italian mezzosoprano Sonia Ganassi singing French arias of Bizet, Gounod, Massenet, and others. � Conductor Carla Delfrate leads the Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana. � Recipient of the Italian Abbiati prize in 1999, Ms. Ganassi has appeared in many of the world's major opera houses, and is scheduled to appear with the Vienna State Opera as Jane Seymour in Donizetti's Anna Bolena during the 2013/14 season.

The first phrase of Reger’s Op.141 Serenade plunges the listener into the world of joyful music-making among friends circa 1780. The immediate modulation to a higher key in the second phrase brings us back to the more knowing world of late-Romanticism, and Reger thereafter moves between the two with great charm and no little skill. Light and effervescent the temper of these serenades may be but they also make considerable demands on their performers to keep up with the composer’s breathless turn of phrase and invention; these Italian musicians are fully up to speed. The Larghetto slow movement of Op.141 is an expressive high-point on the disc and, like much of Reger’s music, it is far too little known given its tender appeal to the general listener. With these two works, Reger was evidently paying homage to a Classical spirit whichfound its fulfilment – at least in this unusual instrumentation – in Beethoven’s Serenade. The six movements find the young Beethoven at his most carefree and effervescent: even the Andante and variations (which would become a conduit for profound thoughts later in his career) is as light as air and bubbling with melody and witty repartee. Anyone who only knows Beethoven from the symphonies, sonatas and concertos has a very pleasant surprise in store with this disc. Andrea Oliva is principal flautist of the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and has made many notable recordings with them and their music director, Sir Antonio Pappano, but he has also enjoyed a successful career as a soloist: according to Sir James Galway, he is ‘one of the best flutists of his generation, a shining star in the world of the flute.’ He has recorded Bach sonatas with Angela Hewitt and the chamber music of Saint-Saëns (BC95165) and Dutilleux (BC94738) with his Santa Cecilia colleagues, both released by Brilliant Classics.

This album of orchestral showpieces features four of the five members of the Mighty Handful, a group of Russian composers who, during the second half of the 19th century, collaborated to create a distinct national style. The recorded works illustrate different aspects of their endeavors – both in terms of the musical means they employ and their subject matter. Orientalism is one of the typical features of the music of the group, as witness Balakirev’s Islamey – employing material from the Caucasus Mountains – and Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances, describing the revels of a nomadic eastern tribe during a 12th-century raid into the Russian lands. The most individual of the group was Modest Mussorgsky, with a musical language both powerful and startlingly vivid in imagination. His celebrated Pictures from an Exhibition was composed in 1874 as a tribute to a recently deceased artist friend, and takes in such specifically Russian elements as the fairy-tale witch Baba Yaga and the Great Gate of Kiev. Originally written for the piano it is here performed in the 1922 orchestration by Maurice Ravel. Also by Mussorgsky, the opening Night on the Bare Mountain paints a witch’s Sabbath in bold brushstrokes, and was re-orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov after the composer’s death. It is his version, with more sumptuous orchestral textures and a tighter formal plan that is heard here, performed by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shu

Following on from his critically acclaimed Lutoslawski programme, the conductor Krzysztof Urbanski pursues his collaboration with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester on Alpha. The New World Symphony is a work that has always fascinated Krzysztof Urbanski: "It was only when I studied Dvorák’s other symphonies that I came to understand the principal characteristic and strength of the Ninth: simplicity. I wanted to dig deeper, and so I examined the manuscript and parts used for the New York premiere. There I discovered things that changed my view of it, like the fact that the first four bars of the third movement shouldn’t be played on the repeat. That gives them a completely different meaning when they recur at the da capo . . . The coupling, the rare Hero’s Song, shows an entirely different side of Dvorák. The way he transforms the initial four-note motif to evoke so many varied feelings, from joy to tragedy, shows his immense compositional mastery."

Till well into the 1960s it was common practice to perform operas in the language of the country where they were being performed. What now seems strange to us, with our reverence for the original, was taken for granted then – except perhaps by those who knew not only the music but the language originally set to it and were annoyed by more or less inappropriate translations. Today we have long since grown used to being distracted from the action on stage by subtitles, or surtitles, and thus being at least able to follow the crude, implausible or totally incomprehensible plot of this or that opera by reading the libretto. Whatever the language, the artistic value of the performance depends very much upon its exponents. And that was where the German-speaking nations of the 1950s and 1960s, when the recorded-music market had not yet succumbed to globalization, had a lot to offer. The proof is in the five complete recordings – complete, that is, but fo the cuts so often made in those days – that make up this box set. The cast lists read like a Who’s Who of contemporary vocalists. We can count ourselves lucky to have these audio documents – edited to the highest possible technical standards – at our disposal. They offer us a reunion with a great series of irreplaceable and unforgettable soloists.

The Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and its Music Director Gustavo Gimeno present a composer portrait of César Franck. The album features the famous Symphony in D Minor, as well as the lesser known, but equally enchanting Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra, with Denis Kozhukhin as soloist. Born in Liege but raised in Paris, Franck synthesized Wagnerism with French musical traditions, resulting in a fine equilibrium between a voluptuous orchestral sound and audacious harmonies on the one hand, and lucidity and graceful charm on the other. While the three-movement symphony follows a from-darkness-to-light trajectory, the delightful Variations oscillate between symphonic poem and miniature piano concerto. The OPL and Gustavo Gimeno continue their acclaimed PENTATONE series of composer portraits that already featured monographs of Shostakovich, Bruckner, Ravel, Mahler, Stravinsky, Debussy and Rossini. Denis Kozhukhin adds another release to his extensive PENTATONE discography that already contains Grieg/Mendelssohn (2019), Strauss’s Burleske (2018), Piano Concertos by Ravel and Gershwin (2018), Tchaikovsky and Grieg (2016), as well as a Brahms solo recital (2017).

Composed in Russia between 1884 and 1917, the four works appearing on this disc all do so in some kind of disguise. Prokofiev and Scriabin both conceived their respective collections for the piano, and it is later arrangers that have adapted them for string orchestra. Rudolf Barshai took on Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives in 1962, selecting 15 of the 20 brief pieces and arranging them for his own ensemble, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. Scriabin’s Preludes received a similar treatment in 1999 when the Finnish composer Jouni Kaipainen chose 13 from the original 24, rearranging the order they appear in and transposing them in some cases. As for Anton Arensky (1861—1909), he composed his set of variations as the third movement of a string quartet, taking the theme from a song by Tchaikovsky and letting it undergo a series of transformations. Cheered by the success of the piece, he made his own arrangement for larger forces, a version which remains one of his best-known works. Tchaikovsky’s Elegy, finally, is actually heard here as it was composed, in 1884, but the piece saw the light of day as ‘A Thankful Greeting’ and was renamed ‘Elegy’ only at the time of publication, before making a final reappearance, as part of the composer’s music to Hamlet. The four works are performed by the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, one of Finland’s finest ensembles, conducted by its artistic director Sakari Oramo.

-----

REVIEWS:

The long-established Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra is, on this evidence, one of Finland’s finest ensembles, and the scale of its string band (5.5.4.3.2) is very effective in this repertoire. Each piece is sensitively conducted by their artistic director Sakari Oramo, and well captured in BIS’s excellent SACD surround sound. The English notes by Andrew Huth are very useful and the disc will be welcomed by musical Russophiles.

– MusicWeb International

Sakari Oramo and the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra deliver exciting performances. The orchestra’s playing is outstanding in its sharpness and immediacy. Nothing sounds exaggerated, the Finnish musicians are only concerned with awakening moods and telling dramatic stories.

– Pizzicato

Classical Music

‘Gotterdammerung’ (Twilight of the Gods) is the epic fourth and final opera of Wagner’s great Ring cycle, with a plot that depicts the fall of heroes, gods, and the entire world. As ever with the Ring, the joys of love are all too fragile and fleeting, and the drama of ‘Gotterdammerung’ revolves around dark and unsettling reversals of fortune and illusions of hope that synthesize thrilling and powerful grand opera traditions with Wagner’s revolutionary techniques. Containing all of the Ring’s essential elements, ‘Gotterdammerung’ possesses a profoundly satisfying sense of inevitability that makes it both a towering climax and a unified summation of the Ring’s abundant variety.

Themes of love and passion dominate these orchestral excerpts from Wagner's music dramas. The legend of Tannhauser contrasts the sensual allure of Venus with the ideals of courtly love and religious devotion. Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg pits an inspired but rash young singer against the traditions of the old masters in a song competition, with a beautiful girl as the prize. Tristan und Isolde, based on one of the world's great love stories, is considered Wagner's most revolutionary work, seamlessly blending themes of love and death into a shattering apotheosis. Gerard Schwarz's other selections of Wagner excerpts can be found on 8.572767 and 8.572768.

Bruckner, A.: Symphony No. 6

Christian Thielemann writes: “I see Die Meistersinger as the pivot and central point of Wagner’s entire oeuvre. On the one hand it is a reaction to Tristan; on the other, he had found himself in a blind alley with Siegfried, and together those two works showed him the way out of it. The fascinating thing about Die Meistersinger is that you can find everything in it. Hero and anti-hero, comedy and tragedy, upperclass and lower-class lovers, burlesque and reflection, the old and the new, in short a whole world. The magic words summing it up for me are ‘atmosphere’ and ‘poetry’. How can I, as a conductor, make the music glitter in its exaggerations and parodies, and at the same time lend it authority? Conversely, how can I make its emotionalism sound not false but genuine, emphasizing the deeply felt popular note in the music? Wagner is fundamentally asking his interpreters to square the circle, which is what makes Die Meistersinger such a difficult work to perform. Perhaps it can succeed only by osmosis, if we open ourselves up entirely to all its moods, colours and aromas, inhaling them so deeply that they naturally emerge from us again at the right moment.”

Ludwig van Beethoven went to Prague for the first time in 1796, accompanying Prince Lichnowsky, who introduced him to the city's foremost aristocratic families. One of these was the Clam- Gallas family, who played an eminent role in musical circles. It was here that Beethoven met Josephine Clary-Aldringen, an amateur singer and mandolinist who in 1797 married Count Christian Christoph. It was to her that Beethoven dedicated a number of pieces for mandolin and piano that feature in this recording, along with two interesting sonatas by Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Bartolomeo Bortolazzi, originally composed for the same combination of instruments. Neapolitan mandolinist Raffaele La Ragione has already made several recordings of mandolin music, and this is his first release with the Arcana label. Marco Crosetto, the founder of the ensemble La Vaghezza, is a Turin-based harpsichordist who in 2018 reached the semi-finals of the famous Musica Antiqua international competition in Bruges. The result of an in-depth study of the original sources, this selection of Beethoven's lesser-known works constitutes a fitting and original contribution to the 250th anniversary celebrations.

Bronislawa Kawalla, the first prize winner at the International Bach Competition in Washington, comes from a well-known musical family. She graduated from the Secondary Music School in Krakow in the class of Maria Bilinska-Riegerowa and studied at the Higher State School of Music in Warsaw (currently the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music) in the class of Professor Jan Ekier. She polished her skills in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Monique Haas, as well as at the Academie Internationale de Maurice Ravel with Philippe Entremont. She has recorded for Polish Radio and Television recordings, and has performed in renowned concert halls all over Europe, Canada, the USA, Latin America, and Asia. Kawalla is also devoted to pedagogical work, being a professor at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. Appropriately, for this release she has chosen a programme of music by Chopin.

From the elated dream to the bitter reality: to provide a proper rendering of Franz Schubert’s music, with its enormous range of expressions including all the intermediate tones, the instrument of choice must be the Fortepiano, if only for its similitude to the pianos used during Schubert’s lifetime. The model used in the present recording is based on the grand piano of the Viennese master Conrad Graf, an instrument that Schubert himself owned. Its six pedals allow Schubert’s music to be played with multifaceted pliancy and depth. The skillful use of all these pedals, which in modern instruments have been reduced to two or three, opens up a multitude of sound facets, similar to doors that open up to a multitude of rooms, each decorated in its own particular way and with its own particular style.

Vol. 2 once again demonstrates the unique stylistic quality of Felix Draeseke’s works for strings. When the composer turned to the quartet genre, he ventured onto compositional terrain largely regarded as the domain of composers of traditional orientation. Wagner’s influence is also found in Draeseke’s quartets, though not in the form of an imitation of Wagnerian composing but as a creative rendering of the Classical composers as they had been conveyed to Draeseke by Wagner. The idea of the “melodic thread” running through the music and unifying it is everywhere in evidence in these works. The composer’s third quartet, his op. 66, was regularly performed in Central Germany during his lifetime – for instance, in Leipzig in 1911, when the Gewandhaus Quartet included it on the program for the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Franz Liszt’s birth. Draeseke’s op. 66 quartet differs from all of his other works in sonata form in that it is designed in five movements, a structure reminding us both of Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor op. 132 and Haydn’s early quartet divertimenti. Both spheres, the sublime tone of the “Heiliger Dankgesang” and the carefree mood of the cassations and serenades, seem to occur in continuous mutual interpenetration in this work. The “most feared contrapuntist” reveals his strictest mien, while at the same time showing that he is a subtle humorist who in particular delights in play with metrical emphases.

The Orchester Wiener Akademie and it's conductor Martin Haselb�ck continue the Resound Beethoven series, performed on period instruments and scrupulously respecting the orchestral layouts of 200 years ago. Volume 8, the last volume of the series, is devoted to two emblematic works, both of them dedicated jointly to Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz and Count Andreas Kirillovich Razumovsky: Symphonies nos. 5 and 6. Each of these symphonies has a name attached to it. While the Fifth Symphony is sometimes called the 'Fate' Symphony for more or less determined reasons, Beethoven himself named the Sixth 'Pastoral', thus pursuing the venerable tradition of the musical pastorale while conferring a new dimension on it. The Orchester Wiener Akademie recorded these two works in the Landhaus Saal of the Nieder�sterreich Palais, Beethoven's favorite concert venue. Between 1819 and 1827, all his nine symphonies were performed there at the 'Concerts spirituels' founded by Franz Gebauer, and it was in this same palace that the Austrian Revolution of 1848 began.

The great writer Stendahl wrote of Il viaggio a Reims that “this opera is a feast”. The plot is a contemporary farce tailor-made for a particular occasion – the coronation festivities of Charles X – though Rossini valued the music so highly that he preserved at least part of the score three years later in the opera Comte Ory. This sparkling work is heard complete for the first time and in accordance with the critical edition.

Review:

Wildbad’s Antonino Fogliani leads a staging that doesn’t hang fire for a moment. The piano-accompanied recitatives are vividly delivered; the performance has a vividness and theatrical ‘carry’ that confirm that Il viaggio is indeed ‘a feast’.

– Gramophone