Romantic Era
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Dvorak: From the New World & Other Works / Nelsons, Opolais, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig [Blu-ray]
Also available on standard DVD
Recorded live at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig in May 2017, this release features a delightful concert by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and conductor Andris Nelsons. For the program, the conductor has chosen works by Antonin Dvorak, including the Othello Concert Overture, and his famous Symphony No. 9 in E minor- “From the New World.” Also featured in this concert is young soprano Kristine Opolais. Acknowledged as one of the most exciting sopranos before the public today, she made her debut in October 2010 at the Bavarian State Opera House in Munich in the title role of the new production of Dvorak’s Rusalka directed by Martin Kusej. It seems only fitting that she return to Dvorak for this performance. This recording was made during Andris Nelsons first season as Gewandhauskapellmeister.
Schumann: The Roots & The Flower - Counterpoint in Bloom / Christensen
Although Robert Schumann’s public role in the Bach revival is less well known than that of Felix Mendelssohn, Bach’s music would play an influential effect throughout his life. Schumann would in turn, arrange and perform many of Bach’s works including adding piano parts to the Solo Violin Sonatas and Cellos Suites and trumpets to the St. John Passion! In 1843 he and Clara rented a custom-made pedalflügel - a dreadnought of an instrument combining a Friedrich Wieck grand piano with a pedal keyboard that enabled Schumann’s to play Bach’s organ music at home. During one of his periodic bouts of depression, Schumann became gripped by what he called Fugenpassion and shortly thereafter his obsession with Bach would blossom in the Canons and Fugues of Opp. 56 and 58. The curious name of this album references Carl Nielsen’s advice to fellow composer Ture Rangström, namely, to get down to the roots of a piece so that it would truly flower. And so following Nielsen’s advice, acclaimed organist Jens E. Christensen, a master of styles ancient and modern, dug deep to uncover the roots of Schumann’s imagination for this truly extraordinary program, a lovingly cultivated German-Danish, Piano-Organ, Baroque-Romantic hybrid, that will no doubt become a perennial favorite for fans of Schumann’s most florid contrapuntal creations.
Schumann: An Clara
Brahms: Piano Sonata No. 3 & Scherzo Op. 4 / Bronfman
Johannes Brahms began his musical life studying the piano, and his earliest, truly great compositions were solo piano works, both presented here. The Scherzo in E-flat minor, Op. 4, is the earliest surviving composition by Brahms. He wrote it in November 1851 when he was 18. He published it as Op. 4, rather than Op. 1, because, he explained to a friend, “when one shows one's self for the first time, people must first see the head and not the feet.” Musical scholars feel that, despite the composer’s denial, it obviously shows a “dependence” on Chopin’s scherzi, and quotes from Heinrich Marschner’s Hans Heiling at bar 46 as well. is certain that Brahms had composed the Scherzo of the F minor Piano Sonata in November 1852,before meeting Schumann and Liszt, but the same scholars feel bars 105 through 111 of this Scherzo unmistakably show the influence of Liszt’s music with “striking parallels.” The Sonata was completed just after Brahms’ visit with Schumann, and it would be easy for us to see Schumann’s influence in retrospect. Internationally recognized as one of today's most acclaimed and admired pianists, Yefim Bronfman stands among a handful of artists regularly sought by festivals, orchestras, conductors and recital series. His commanding technique, power and exceptional lyrical gifts are consistently acknowledged by the press and audiences alike.
Fauré: Piano Works
Ani & Nia
Bruckner: Symphony No.1 in C Minor, WAB 101 (Linz Version)
Grieg: Orchestral Music, Vol. 2 - Orchestrated Piano Pieces
Great Choral Classics
Rossini: Liederabend (Art Song Evening) 1992 / Horne, Katz
Although Marilyn Horne was 58 years old at the time of this concert, no weakness clouded the beauty of her voice. Among the recordings over the course of Horne's career, there are many Rossini operas. This all-Rossini program shows that she could convincingly dominate the smaller forms as well.
REVIEW:
Little needs be said about Marilyn Horne, one of the greatest singers of all time, with a highly distinctive voice, immediately recognizable and colorful, a deep sense of musicality, and a vocal technique that is awe-inspiring. No ornamentation, no roulade, no trill, not the longest phrase, were beyond her phenomenal breath control. Add to this her almost magical personality.
Liederabend does need a word of explanation. The Liederbands (Liederabenden) were an extensive series of vocal recitals (over 60 years) performed at the Schwetzingen South- West Radio (Germany) Festivals. For all its touting as a Liederabend Horne’s program is all-Italian, all-Rossini (a Horne specialty). 19 songs, early and late, familiar and unfamiliar; all musical delights. Among the better known are ‘La pastorella’, ‘Bolero’, ‘La molinara’, the arias ‘Cruda sorte!’ (Italiana in Algeri and ‘Di tanti palpiti’ Tancredi. A few from ‘Sins of my Old Age’ are included.
Here is a great singer at the top of her form with most entertaining music. No texts, but a biography of Horne and a history of the Festival are included.
-- American Record Guide
Mendelssohn: Choral Music / Winpenny, St. Albans Cathedral Choirs
Compared with large-scale oratorios such as St Paul, which includes the lyrical chorus How lovely are the messengers, Mendelssohn’s smaller sacred choral works were influenced by Palestrina, ranging from short liturgical motets such as the Sechs Sprüche to the canticle settings of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis. The famous sacred melody ‘O for the wings of a dove’ is to be found in Hear my prayer. The fine choristers of St Albans Cathedral can also be heard ‘on sparkling form’ (Gramophone) in John Rutter’s Gloria (8.572653).
Friedrich Gulda - The SWR Studio Recordings, 1953 & 1968
Gulda, a brilliant master of rhythm, uncompromising Bach interpreter and jazz musician, is in the best keeping with Chopin. Works by Chopin appear in Gulda’s concert programmes from quite early on. His secret in playing Chopin with so much vitality? It is the inimitable mix of rhythmic strictness, most cantabile tenderness and controlled outbursts of emotion. Although he would become one of 20th-century music’s most capricious rebels — as in love with the free spirits of jazz as with the living monuments of classical — pianist Friedrich Gulda (1930–2000) was born and bred in that most traditional of musical cities, Vienna. He studied theory with the late-Romanticist Joseph Marx at the Vienna Academy of Music, and he won the Geneva International Pianists' Competition at age sixteen, eventually earning a reputation for the rare blend of cogency and freedom within his interpretations of music from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven to Ravel and Debussy. His most notable recordings included both books of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and the complete sonatas and concertos of Beethoven.
Tchaikovsky: Rococo Variations; Gloriana Excerpts / Rostropovich, Pears, Britten
Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
Variations on a Roccoco Theme, Op. 33
Pezzo capriccioso, Op. 62
Romeo and Juliet – Fantasy Overture
Mstislav Rostropovich, cello
English Chamber Orchestra
Benjamin Britten, conductor
Recorded live from Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Aldeburgh, 16 June 1968
Bonus:
BRITTEN, B.: Gloriana, Op. 53 (excerpts)
Peter Pears, tenor
Aldeburgh Festival Singers
English Chamber Orchestra
Benjamin Britten, conductor
Recorded at Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Aldeburgh, 5 June 1970
Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Enhance Mono
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Menu language: English
Booklet notes: English, French, German
Running time: 68 mins
No. of DVDs: 1
Rheinberger: Organ Concertos / Rowe, Skevington, Et Al
Beethoven: Fugues & Rarities for String Quartet & Other Works / Fine Arts Quartet
The string quartets of Beethoven are among the greatest works of their kind, but he composed other works for quartet which have been neglected. This album is dedicated to these intriguing rarities. Alongside the wild and monumental Grosse Fuge, in many ways the culmination of Beethoven’s achievements in the string quartet genre, this recording further displays his mastery of counterpoint by bringing to light brilliant yet forgotten original versions of his quartets Op. 18, No. 1 and Op. 131, plus six virtually unknown miniatures, including his Preludes and Fugues.
Franz Liszt
Rubinstein: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2 - 3 Serenades
Sullivan: Ballet Music - L'île Enchantee; Thespis / Penny, RTE Concert Orchestra
Soon after his return from studies in Leipzig, Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote his second work, L’Île Enchantée. This was a ballet score on the subject of a shipwrecked mariner which debuted at Covent Garden in the form of a divertissement at the end of Bellini’s La sonnambula, where it was received with acclaim. This premiere recording restores passages Sullivan cut when presenting the work for concert performances. Thespis, a collaboration with W.S. Gilbert, is a flamboyant opera cum pantomime of which only fragments now remain – the work’s lost ballet has been rediscovered and restored by Roderick Spencer and Selwyn Tillett.
REVIEW:
L’Île Enchantée is an early (1864) ballet originally designed to be performed as a divertissement following a performance of Bellini’s La Sonnambula. Nights at the opera evidently ran long in those days, because this particular trifle lasts nearly fifty minutes. The music reveals the young Sullivan fully in command of his gifts for catchy melodies and colorful orchestration. It may not be great stuff, but it is extremely entertaining, and if you enjoy nineteenth-century ballet music then you’ll certainly take to this appealing example of the genre. Never mind the plot, which involves a shipwrecked sailor washed up on an island populated by nymphs and fairies and suchlike. The autograph score is lost, but the work was reconstructed from surviving orchestral parts and here receives its world premiere recording (originally issued on Marco Polo in the early 1990s)—and a fine one it is.
Thespis, Sullivan’s first collaboration with W.S. Gilbert, was a Christmas spectacular most of which no longer exists — Sullivan incorporated bits of it into later works, but a few ballet numbers appear to have survived. The five dances presented here total nine minutes of music, and make an apt filler to The Enchanted Isle. Again, they reveal Sullivan’s obvious facility at this sort of light entertainment. Andrew Penny and the RTE Concert Orchestra offer lively, refreshing performances of all of this music. There’s not a dull or routine moment anywhere, and Naxos’ clean and clear sonics leave little to be desired. This release represents an attractive and intriguing addition to the discography of England’s greatest nineteenth-century composer.
– ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)
Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
Spohr: Violin Duets, Vol. 2
Schumann: Complete Works for Violin and Orchestra
Saint-Saens: Music For Wind Ensemble / Markl, Royal Air Force College Band
Camille Saint-Saens was involved in every aspect of French music during his long lifetime, and his frequent travels led to a fascinating mixture of Western music with Moorish and African elements in works such as Orient et Occident and the Suite algérienne. Saint-Saëns wrote few works for winds, but the grand biblical themes of Samson et Dalila, patriotic military traditions and the dignity of a British coronation all lend themselves perfectly to arrangement. In The Carnival of the Animals, the roaring lions are superbly evocative; while his perspectives on English and Scottish dances in ballet movements from Henry VIII are brilliantly imaginative.
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 3
Brahms: Piano Works
Verdi: Il Trovatore / Oren, Fondazione Orchestra Regionale delle Marche
Taken live from the stage of the Macerata (Italy) Festival in July and August of 2016, this performance has much to recommend it despite the fact that none of the singers are familiar names. This is the kind of regional performance that the big American companies should be listening to.
Never having heard of the soprano singing Leonora, Anna Pirozzi, I checked Operabase and discovered that she sings all over Europe–plenty at Covent Garden–and that her repertoire is all of the heavy Verdi roles: Abigaille, Lady Macbeth, Aida, Amelia, and Leonora. I wouldn’t bet on her Abigaille or Lady Macbeth, but her performance here is nothing less than spectacular.
The voice is big, with a rock-solid middle register, a steely edge to the high Bs, Cs, and D-flats, and a strong bottom, which avoids chest voice for the most part. But she also can spin long, high pianissimo phrases with a Caballé-like ease. The sound is attractive (though not in the Caballé class), her Convent Scene is a model of soft, legato singing, and her entire fourth act is nothing less than magnificent. And she throws herself into the text.
Marco Caria is a very good Luna with great ease in his upper third, a fine legato, and a nice sneer. But the voice, even on a recording, sounds a bit small for the part, and when he pushes for a bigger sound the microphones catch it and he sounds a bit desperate. But for the most part, he’s a valuable addition, a true Italian voice.
Piero Pretti as Manrico is a big lyric whose schedule includes Riccardo (Ballo), Rodolfo (Bohème), and Gualtiero (Pirata), as well as more Manricos, through September 2018. The sound is appealing and well-centered, the high notes–he takes “Di quella pira” in key–admirable and solid. But he’s a size too small for the part. He’s inaudible in the stretta to the first-act finale as well as in his duets with Azucena. And in the final scene, when he should be overpowering Leonora, he simply isn’t. Try him, you’ll like him, but think of Manricos of the past and he’s a miniature.
Enkelejda Shkosa is a more internationally known singer. Her Azucena is just about perfect despite a too-quick “Stride la vampa”; Azucena’s extreme anxiety is audible throughout. Shkosa’s third act is gloriously sung, and if the conductor and recording engineers had opted for more volume it would have torn down the house. The others are all very good, paying heed to what they’re singing, and Alessandro Spina’s Ferrando is solid.
Daneil Oren’s leadership has to be judged by the fact that this was recorded over a period of a few performances, and accordingly voice/orchestra balances vary from scene to scene. And in the Tower Scene, Manrico sounds like he is standing next to Leonora. Nonetheless, Oren totally understands mid-Verdi and differentiates beautifully between the exclamatory and, for want of a better term, “post bel canto” moments in the score. He gives the singers leeway in the arias but keeps a tight rein otherwise. The sound is clear, but as mentioned, the volume levels keep changing.
In all, though–and this is the point of even reviewing this recording–aside from Netrebko’s recent outing, this is the best Trovatore to be released in quite a while. There is, by the way, a DVD and Blu-ray video of this performance. It is all in reds and blacks, with plenty of fire. The look is gothic.
– ClassicsToday (Robert Levine)
Sousa: Music for Wind Band, Vol. 19 / Brion, Royal College of Music Wind Orchestra
In addition to his world-famous marches, John Philip Sousa was a master of the piquant Humoresque, of which there are two examples here. The first, On the 5.15, is a popular song detailing the travails of a commuter, while the second, The Band Came Back, introduces popular tunes in witty fashion. The sonorous Second Fantasia from El Capitan showcases the band’s bravura qualities and The Fighting Race draws on a trombone solo. There are charming detours to explore rural Americana in the form of Sheep and Goat (‘Walkin to the Pasture’) and the evergreen classic, Turkey in the Straw.
Bizet: Complete Piano Music / Julia Severus
Not all of this music is especially memorable, and none of it is profound. But one can safely slot Bizet into the tradition of Moszkowski, Paderewski, Mendelssohn, Gottschalk and others as a composer of admirable, charming little salon miniatures which, one imagines, gave amateurs of the day considerable pleasure and provided the composers with respectable calling-cards at evening parties. Even in this field, I would not credit Bizet with the originality some of those other composers exhibited in their works for piano.
Julia Severus has carefully and cleverly programmed her two discs here. Each begins with lighter fare, progresses through a smart alternation of serious and slight, and ends with one of the L’Arlésienne suites, arranged for piano by the composer. The two nocturnes on CD 1 are reminiscent more of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words than anything by Chopin, and I prefer the lovely cantabile F major to the less-inspired example in D. There are several waltzes bathed in the perfume of the salons of Paris. The C major waltz really is a clever delight with some surprises in store, although the “Grand valse de concert” does not have a main tune nearly as hummable as Moszkowski’s work by the same title. The three Esquisses include a “Ronde turque” which impressed me as sounding quite a lot more authentically Turkish than almost any other western piece bearing that title.
The most dramatic work on CD 1 is Variations chromatiques, the chromatic passages of which serve up high drama and empty virtuosity in equal measure before the piece turns into a rather pedestrian, wandering “happy romantic” piece near the middle. An ominous ending, consciously imitative of Beethoven, barely manages to save it. The four Preludes are refreshing and nicely varied in mood, although they add up to just three minutes’ worth of music. The two Caprices are rather longer and I actually found the first quite interesting in its spicy blend of minor mode, sly attitude and stealthy rhythms. Again, think of Moszkowski, or perhaps even of a Chopin mazurka. Both Caprices sound as if they are just waiting to be orchestrated; by contrast, the first L’Arlésienne suite has been de-orchestrated here, and the beginning of the introduction does sound rather naked. In fact, it sounds like a fugue subject waiting to be put into counterpoint. The rest of the suite goes better; indeed, the minuet and carillons are quite successful as piano pieces.
The second CD opens with the longest work in the set: Chants du Rhin, a series of tone-pictures with titles like “Les rêves” which lasts for a little over twenty minutes. Even this work manages to be cutesy; “La bohémienne” is like a Chopin waltz composed by an inebriate. I think Julia Severus takes the opening movement a bit too quickly, but the others are better - “Les confidences” in particular is a well-voiced song begging for words. The most striking moment of the Magasin des familles comes near the end of the “Méditation réligieuse,” when Bizet caps off the piece with some unexpected, indeed totally out of place, fortissimo chords. Better is the second L’Arlésienne suite, which succeeds as a piano piece all the way through, especially the dance episode in the middle of the Pastorale and the dazzling passagework in the center of the final Farandole.
A few miniatures fill out the remainder of the set, all of them from essentially the same “songs without words” mold. The only Venetian characteristic I can detect in “Venise” is its melancholy mood, something like (one might say, creatively) a city reflecting that its best centuries are behind it. A “Romance sans paroles” is rather sans interest. The surprisingly Latin American “Marine” hints that Julia Severus would probably be a great performer of samba, ragtime and composers like Gershwin and Ernesto Nazareth.
I was surprised to realize that Bizet had even written piano music, so this set counts as a pleasant discovery. That some of the works, particularly the waltz in C, nocturne in F, “Marine”, and a few excerpts from L’Arlésienne, are actually very good makes this an even better surprise. Julia Severus is reliable and sensitive to the music’s lyricism and supplies her own well-written liner-notes, and the recorded sound is warm and close. This piano music is generally not too special - in fact none of it is “special” except maybe the sudden Brazilian turn of “Marine” - but all of it is, at a minimum, rather pretty, and “rather pretty” is a good thing to be. If you are fond of rather pretty piano music, here are two discs full of it waiting to be heard.
– Brian Reinhart, MusicWeb International
Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto, Op. 35; String Quartet No. 3, Op. 30 / Weithaas, Camerata Bern
Violinist Antje Weithaas stands for highest musicality, exquisite technique, and fabulous playing and artistry. On this release, she plays the solo part of these works, and also leads the Camerata Bern Orchestra. She explains her own reading of the score which in some cases is different from the “standard” reading: “I wanted to record Tchaikovsky for several reasons. Most importantly, I love Tchaikovsky’s music, particularly the two works featured on this recording. I wanted to coax the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto out of the corner of virtuoso tradition, which it has occupied until now. In certain aspects, an established way of playing it has become somewhat cemented over the last decades. But neither do I see that approach justified in the score, nor does it correspond with my view of Tchaikovsky as a musician and a human being. We all found it thrilling to challenge and question our previous experience with this piece, both as performers and as listeners, and to tackle it as if it was new to us…”
Fauré, Liszt, Ravel, Respighi: Le Temps Perdu / Cooper
| Borrowing the title from Proust’s great novel, Imogen Cooper’s latest recital features a collection of pieces that she learnt as a teenager in Paris, or in her twenties working with Alfred Brendel in Vienna, but none of which she has performed on the concert platform, or really played at all in the intervening years. Cooper studied in Paris from 1961-67 with Jacques Février (who had known Ravel well), Yvonne Lefébure (who had known Alfred Cortot), and Germaine Mounier. She started to wonder about the messages from her teachers she would find on her scores, and about the nature of memory. She was also interested to see if the repertoire she has acquired since she learnt these pieces would change her view, or shed a new light. This highly personal recital is an exemplar of Imogen Cooper’s outstanding pianism and musicianship. |
Schubert: String Quartets "Rosamunde", "Death and the Maiden" / Doric String Quartet
In March 1824, despite describing himself as ‘the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world’, Schubert completed not only the great Octet, but also the two String Quartets recorded here.
The String Quartet in D minor is considered the greatest of Schubert’s late quartets, mainly on account of its raw emotional honesty, which reaches an almost unendurable pitch in the second movement, a set of variations based on Schubert’s song Der Tod und das Mädchen. All four movements are driven by extensively repeated rhythmic figures, reminiscent of the musical style of Schubert’s great idol, Beethoven.
Full of Schubertian ambivalence, the String Quartet in A minor is a deeply intimate work. The opening, expressing brooding sadness, is played by the first violin over a restless accompaniment, subsequently interrupted by flurries of almost manic energy. In the second movement, Schubert ‘borrowed’ the main melody from the third Entr’acte of his incidental music to the play Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern (1823) by Wilhelmine von Chézy.
- Chandos
