Bernard Hermann Tippett String Quartet/Julian Bliss, clarinet Hermann Psycho Suite

J.S. BACH; BACH/BUSONI; BEETHOVEN; BACH/A. MARCELLO; CHOPIN James Rhodes, piano. JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Partita No. 6 in E minor BWV 830; J.S. BACH/FERRUCCIO BUSONI: Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C major BWV 564; BEETHOVEN: Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109; J.S.BACH/MARCELLO: Adagio from Concedrto No. 3 in D minor BWV 974; CHOPIN: Prelude No. 4 in E minor, OP. 28; Etude No. 12 in C minor, Op. 25; BONUS: Interview; Video - Live at the Roundhouse, London, J.S.Bach/A. Marcello: Adagio.

Recorded as part of their critically praised Infernal Dance season, the Philharmonia Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen explore three contrasting works by Bela Bartok - the chamber piece Contrasts and the orchestral works Dance Suite and The Miraculous Mandarin. Contrasts is one of Bartok's most imaginative forays into the world of chamber music while Dance Suite is a rhapsodic collection of folk inspired tunes. The Miraculous Mandarin is raw, dangerous, exotic and elemtnal.

REVIEW:

Now-or-never concert adrenaline is palpable here. There’s unflinching attack in the savage pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin, deadpan wit in the gentler Dance Suite, and it’s all delivered with that unnervingly meticulous, steely focus that conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen gets from the Philharmonia. Some might like their Bartók rougher-edged, but I was drawn in by the cool ferocity and steadfast virtuosity of these performances. As a very nice extra we get Contrasts, a glory of a trio commissioned by Benny Goodman in 1938.

– Guardian (UK)

Acknowledge as the UK's foremost musical pioneers, with an extraordinary recording legacy, the Philharmonia leads the field for its quality of playing. Together with its relationships with the most sought-after artists, most importantly its Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Philharmonia Orchestra is at the heart of the British musical life. This is the first in our series of Philharmonia releases that feature Salonen as conductor and is a hybrid SACD/CD in both stereo and surround. Forthcoming recordings as part of Salonen's new partnership with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Signum include Mahler's 6th and 9th symphonies and Berloz's Symphonie Fantastique. 'the music-making was superb' 5 Stars*****The Times '[Salonen] brought this extravagant manifestation of late Romanticism to a suitable blazing climax.' The Evening Standard 'The Philharmonia played as is the music really mattered, with beautifully moulded textures and impeccable attacks.' The Financial Times

Classical Music

Classical Music

Leading performers of 17th-century music Fretwork, His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts and the Magdalena Consort (directed by Peter Harvey) combine forces under the artistic direction of William Hunt for this first complete recording of the consort anthems of Orlando Gibbons. Gibbons’ music is one of the artistic glories of the first Stuart reign. Amongst his sacred compositions, verse anthems such as This is the record of John and Behold, thou hast made my days are long acknowledged masterpieces, amongst the greatest in all English sacred music, but best known to most in their setting for choir and organ. Here they are presented together with an array of other great anthems, some of them scarcely known, in their more intricate and colorful versions for consort accompaniment. Following the instruction of such contemporary writers as Morley and Caccini, these radical new performances place communication of text at the forefront, seeking to rediscover the dramatic essence of the verse anthem that made it arguably the most effective musical creation of the English Reformation. With the incisive declamatory skill of several of the UK’s leading period performers, they reveal the extraordinary rhetorical and poetic power of this music, as it might have been heard in the Chapel Royal and the private domestic chapels of early 17th century England.

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REVIEW:

Skip straight to track 3 and Gibbons's first In Nomine a 5, and listen to the blanched brilliance, the glistening cobweb delicacy of tone from Fretwork's viols. The effect of the perilous A466 tuning heights is of uncanny beauty, familiar notes polished up to a new sheen and luster.

– Gramophone

Signum’s fourth disc with the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra continues their series of the great core Russian repertoire. Featuring the Orchestral suite of one of Tchaikovsky’s most famous ballets Swan Lake, complemented with Rachmaniov’s final composition Symphonic Dances.

This recording follows the St Petersberg Philharmonic’s 2010 releases of Verdi’s Requiem (SIGCD184), Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad" (SIGCD194) and Prokofiev’s Cinderella and Romeo & Juliet Orchestral Suites (SIGCD214).

“This is a full-blooded performance of Verdi?s late work … Full marks for passion” The Telegraph, January 2010

“Temirkanov is good, noble and intense, gripping our attention with Shostakovich?s sustained lines.” Musicweb-International, June 2010

Vital and individual readings.

There’s really not much to say about this one. Sir Andrew Davis in an all-Elgar programme ought to be a safe pair of hands, and so it turns out, and more besides.

The programme opens with the Enigma Variations, the phrasing of the theme as loving as one has ever heard it. The end of the first variation, C.A.E., depicting the composer’s wife, may be a little too drawn out for some tastes, but Elgar often expressed his affection for her in language at least as sweetly sentimental as this. The showy variations are splendid, but the more intimate ones are even more successful, and one comes away, perhaps more than in many performances, with the idea that some of Elgar’s friends were a melancholy lot. The cellist, Basil Nevinson, in a highly expressive reading, has rarely sounded as sad as he does here. The solo part is beautifully played, and this seems the moment to praise the outstanding orchestral playing throughout the disc, and the brilliantly characterful solo playing in particular. The Enigma Variations has been recorded many, many times, and each listener will have a favourite. I am very attached to Barbirolli in this work, though I sometimes wonder if this is not as much for sentimental reasons as for musical ones. The present performance is as fine as any I have heard, and I don’t think anyone who acquires it will be less than delighted. The recording is particularly detailed, bringing out a few points of orchestration I had never heard before, though you have to turn up the volume a fair bit to get enough punch in the louder passages, which means that the softer ones lose a little of their intimacy.

The performance of In the South is, if anything, even finer. The opening is surely the most exuberant music Elgar ever composed, and this comes over wonderfully well in this performance. Once again the orchestra is in inspired form, and this extends to the gentler, more atmospheric passages too. The work, always a winner in the concert hall, is nonetheless not one of the composer’s more coherent creations from a formal point of view, but Sir Andrew’s subtle control of tempo between the different sections disguises that very successfully. There are passages in the work where the composer runs the risk of overstepping the boundaries of taste, too, and it is a mark of the conductor’s skill that they are totally convincing. I’m thinking in particular of the passage based on hammered, repeated falling fifths (beginning at 7:12) where the listener is not sure whether Sir Andrew is moving the music on or not, only that the pulse never drags, successfully avoiding any suggestion of bombast. It’s a very fine performance and, like the Enigma, is greeted with enthusiastic applause.

This performance of the adorable Serenade will not appeal to those who want to indulge themselves, but is likely to please those who feel that Elgar knew what he wanted as regards tempo. Even so, the first and last movements here, amongst the briskest performances I know, still fall short of Elgar’s markings which do seem very fast indeed. The music is gracefully phrased, skipping rather than lilting, and is full of affection despite the conductor’s unwillingness to linger. The central slow movement, at a similarly flowing tempo, is very moving, wistful and passionate by turns, just as it should be.

The name “Philhamonia Orchestra” - albeit in trendy all lower case fashion - is given greater prominence on this disc than “Signum”, and the back cover of the booklet carries information about other Philharmonia performances on the same label. As a collaborative effort it can only be welcomed, especially at mid-price. There are very readable and informative notes by M. Ross. Newcomers to Elgar and seasoned listeners hoping for vital and individual readings of these particular works need not hesitate.

-- William Hedley, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

The Organ of Saint Sulpice, Paris is widely considered to be a prime example of the pinnacle of 19th-Century French organ building. Joseph Nolan expertly demonstrates the full capabilities of this mighty organ with this programme of Romantic organ music, performing favourite works by Boëllmann, Elgar, Liszt and Thalben-Ball. This disc is a follow-up to last year's well-received performance by Joseph Nolan on The Organ of Buckingham Palace (SIGCD114). 'Nolan not only draws real sparkle from the instrument, using its unpreposssessing resources to amazing effect, but turns out a magisterial account of the sonata's first movement [Sonata No. 3 in A, Medelssohn]' Gramophone Magazine

Recorded in 2014 at the beginning of a series marking his 85th birthday season, Christoph von Dohnányi leads the distinguished Philharmonia Orchestra in a live performance of Anton Bruckner’s monumental Ninth Symphony, which stands alongside the other epoch-defining Ninth symphonies of Beethoven and Mahler. Mr. von Dohnányi was the sixth music director of the Cleveland Orchestra for close to two decades; since 2002 he has been an honored, regular guest conductor with many of America’s leading symphony orchestras, including those of New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Boston.

Tenebrae mark their 15th anniversary season with a celebratory re-release of Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles, as well as the premiere recording of a new work by Owain Park. Inspired by the Camino Frances pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Path of Miracles has quickly become a contemporary classic amongst choral music fans. To mark their anniversary year Tenebrae commissioned British composer Owain Park to compose his new work Footsteps as a companion piece to Path of Miracles. A shorter work, Footsteps is themed on similar concepts of travel, solitude and journeying, and blends texts by eight different authors to structure a narrative that cycles the seasons through the view of a lonely traveller. Praise for the original release of Path of Miracles: “After the eerie opening effect - a glissandi, Taiwanese style, bursting into the pilgrims hymn from Dum Pater Familias - you know you are about to embark on a remarkable musical journey ... The music weaves together diverse themes and styles encompassing sparse, clear writing with subtle use of harmony portraying the text ... It is a tour de force and absolutely stunning.” Choir and Organ “... a real achievement.” International Record Review

Dance is the final part of a triology of albums following Flight and SEasons. This project started as a concept album, using the title as the inspiration for the works. Though several of the works embrace the composer's background collaborations in ballet, there are other works influenced by violinist Kerenza Peacock's connection with folk music.

TALBOT Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Suite. Fool’s Paradise • Christopher Austin, cond; Royal PO • SIGNUM 327 (67:12)


James Reel in his Fanfare 34:5 review of choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ballet on DVD hailed, as have most critics, Joby Talbot’s score as a significant triumph. I could not agree more with Reel’s assessment, and was particularly struck by his wish that Talbot had been asked to write the scores to those Harry Potter movies which John Williams had been unable to undertake. I had a similar thought as I listened to this release for the first time. Talbot’s work only peripherally sounds like Williams’s scoring for that franchise, but magic, and yearning, and menace, and whimsy (to use Reel’s descriptors) are qualities of both Harry’s and Alice’s story, and Talbot captures these qualities with skill equal to that of the illustrious American composer.


Alice was the first full-length ballet commissioned by the Royal Ballet in almost 20 years, and this almost 40-minute suite encompasses but a third of the two-hour score. It uses the same large orchestra with its huge tuned percussion section and four amplified women’s voices, and, while it follows its own music-driven dramatic arc, it is well devised to demonstrate the range of the whole. One might regret the exclusion of the caterpillar’s sensuous Indian music, which, while less distinctive than say the opening bitonal ticking-clock motif which reappears throughout the work, is still delightfully flavorful. And the contrapuntal tapping of the Mad Hatter at the tea party is certainly an integral part and should have been included here. Still that is quibbling. Talbot wisely avoids the riotous Rose Adagio parody, which depends on the visual antics, but does include the Red Queen’s manic Tango and The Croquet Match with her scordatura solo violin theme. Alice’s solo, Alice Alone , provides an expressive center to the suite, and the Cheshire Cat grins most mysteriously. Talbot ends the suite with the act I finale: the exuberance of the waltz for the Living Flowers and the innocent longing of the pas de deux for Alice and her Knave of Hearts.


The theme of longing is continued in Fool’s Paradise , another dance collaboration with Wheeldon. The score is based on Talbot’s 2002 The Dying Swan , written for piano trio to accompany the 1917 Evgenii Bauer film of the same name. The film tells the story of a ballerina admired, painted, and then strangled by a crazed artist. Wheeldon takes this in a completely different direction, assisted by Talbot’s rich orchestration for strings and piano, to suggest the shadowy atmosphere of the fairy-inhabited Athenian forest of A Midsummer Night’s Dream . The score, with its popular and classical inspirations, develops slowly over ostinatos in the manner of the minimalists. It is perhaps less compelling on its own than when accompanying the dancers, but is still lovely in the abstract, and so hauntingly evocative that it should not be hard to conjure one’s own visuals if the need is felt.


Friend, frequent collaborator, and conductor Christopher Austin did much of the orchestration of the Alice score, suggesting that he should know the music as well as anyone. So it proves here, supported by a Royal Philharmonic Orchestra exceedingly sensitive to the many demands of both scores. There are moments in fact, as in Alice’s solo, where Austin finds even more poignancy and ecstasy than Barry Wordsworth does in the fine video version. The engineering is first-rate and the program notes and pictures most supportive. This is a marvelous supplement to the video of the ballet, or the perfect introduction to Joby Talbot’s music for those uninterested in ballet…though given a chance Wheeldon and Talbot might just cure that.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames