Chita Rivera: Legends of Broadway

BK1 WELL TEMPERED CLAVIER

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Op. 57 "Appassionata" - Op. 27,2 "M

Gunter Wand's NDR Beethoven cycle is one of the great ones, and these performances, while not quite the best in the set, will disappoint no one. Judicious tempos, lean and clean textures, and taut rhythms characterize this "Eroica", which never wears its Classical-period orientation like a hair-shirt, leaving plenty of room for Romantic angst in the funeral march. The Finale also has unusual cogency, and it's only in the first movement where I might have wished for a bit more impulsiveness. No such reservations apply to the Eighth, however. Wand's interpretation brims with humor and benefits from his careful attention to bass lines when they get the melody (as at the first-movement recapitulation). The recording also enjoys terrific sonics. If you don't have the complete set and don't want it, you can certainly get this disc with confidence. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

It is Lutoslawski’s last completed work, the Fourth Symphony (1993), which most fully embodies his highly personal reinterpretation of Polish music’s romantic past. But another late piece, Chantefleurs et Chantefables (1990), offers clear evidence of how satisfying that reinterpretation could be. These ‘songflowers and songfables’ represent a refinement rather than a dilution of Lutoslawski’s hard-won modernity, and they are all the more effective for their brevity – the longest lasts less than three minutes.

That ‘hard-won modernity’ did not imply a total rejection of such traditional genres as symphony and concerto – though some would say it should have done. Certainly Lutoslawski’s Symphony No. 2 (1966-7) remains a problem-piece, mainly because the material of its first movement seems designed precisely not to generate a traditional kind of symphonic argument. The second movement has far greater breadth, but it can hardly serve to ‘explain’ the first movement in retrospect; it would be better on its own.

Twenty years later, in his Piano Concerto, Lutoslawski was more alert to the possibilities of creating a viable symphonic style out of the interaction rather than separation of lyric and dramatic materials, and although the concerto’s range of stylistic allusions can be disconcerting, a good performance can turn such ambiguities to positive ends.

This is certainly a good performance. If the recording by Krystian Zimerman, the work’s dedicatee, summons up shades of Rachmaninov, Paul Crossley’s less forceful but no less well-characterized reading seems closer to Ravel. Esa-Pekka Salonen is a sensitive accompanist, and the Sony sound is consistent with what I described, reviewing Salonen’s earlier Lutoslawski recordings (11/94), as “spacious clarity as well as spatial depth”, even if it “may not bring the orchestra far enough forward for some tastes”.

This recording of Symphony No. 2 must rank as superior to either of the composer’s, and although Dawn Upshaw is occasionally rather shrill in Chantefleurs et Chantefables the performance as a whole is well judged. As for the brief Fanfare, it has a splendidly brassy exuberance.'

-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone [6/1996]

Colors of Bach

2017 release. Nai Palm lead singer and composer of R&B future soul outfit Hiatus Kaiyote releases her first solo album Needle Paw. A two-time Grammy nominated singer, songwriter and musician from Melbourne, Australia, Nai Palm is a composer, instrumentalist, producer, vocalist and poet who approaches all of these self-taught disciplines with an intuitive, infectious grace. Comprised almost entirely of her guitar playing and vocal arrangements, Needle Paw is Nai Palm s self-imposed challenge to explore the potential for immortality and timelessness within her music by stripping away the produced layers to focus on the element that is closest to the source of the human soul, the voice. Needle Paw is the rawest glimpse into Nai Palm s musical world. It is dreamlike, honest, and beautifully transparent, revealing her musical ruminations to listeners with a courageous vulnerability and artistic generosity.

THE ROYAL EDITION - SHOSTAKOVI

"The Hindemith concerto, while not exactly revealing itself as an unregarded masterpiece, gets just the right degree of tempered bombast and pastoralism - suggesting that here is a piece ripe for reassessment."

-- BBC Music Magazine reviewing Sony 64507

"These two concertos are the product of Nielsen's last years: the Clarinet Concerto, surely one of his strangest and most powerful utterances, was written in 1929, only two years before his death, and the Flute Concerto comes from 1927. They are two of the most masterly concertos for their respective instruments (Nielsen whose understanding of the wind was second to none had planned a concerto for each of the wind family) and Robert Simpson rightly calls the Flute Concerto "the richest and most original" written for the instrument...Stanley Drucker gives an intelligent account of his demanding part...Julius Baker is the excellent soloist in the Flute Concerto which he plays with great virtuosity."

-- Gramophone Reviewing original LP, CBS 72639

Gilels's playing is leonine and fiery, and his virtuosity is never less than imposing. There is much poetry, too...

-- Gramophone [6/1983]
reviewing the first CD release of the Gilels/Mehta Piano Concerto, CBS 36660


David Oistrakh plays...with the total skill and musicianship which seem as rewarding today as they did 20 years ago... [T]he Philadelphia strings are both very strong and very impressive.

-- Gramophone [12/1982]
reviewing an LP release of the Oistrakh/Ormandy Violin Conceto, CBS 60312

Track Listing
1. Total Eclipse, film score: Opening - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
2. Total Eclipse, film score: Trip to Paris - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
3. Total Eclipse, film score: Sea Quartet - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
4. Total Eclipse, film score: Arrival - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
5. Total Eclipse, film score: Café Andr - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
6. Total Eclipse, film score: Hashish Kiss - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
7. Total Eclipse, film score: Looking for Rimbaud - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
8. Total Eclipse, film score: Naked on the Roof - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
9. Total Eclipse, film score: Café Bobino - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
10. Total Eclipse, film score: Hashish 2 - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
11. Total Eclipse, film score: Dormeur du Val - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
12. Total Eclipse, film score: Coming Home - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
13. Total Eclipse, film score: Triangle - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
14. Total Eclipse, film score: Knife - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
15. Total Eclipse, film score: Sun - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
16. Total Eclipse, film score: Mathilde and Verlaine - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
17. Total Eclipse, film score: Two Trains - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
18. Total Eclipse, film score: Verlaine Escapes - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
19. Total Eclipse, film score: Rimbaud Wounded - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
20. Total Eclipse, film score: Memory - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
21. Total Eclipse, film score: Sentence - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
22. Total Eclipse, film score: Tear - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
23. Total Eclipse, film score: Cafe Bobino 2 - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
24. Total Eclipse, film score: Drunken Boat - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
25. Total Eclipse, film score: Abyssinian Plateau - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
26. Total Eclipse, film score: Death - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
27. Total Eclipse, film score: Eternity (Finale) - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)
28. Total Eclipse, film score: End Credits - (with Wilanow String Quartet/Warsaw Symphony)

Composer: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek.

Personnel: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek (recorder); Marta Boberska (soprano); Bogdan Liszka (oboe).

Audio Mixer: Rafael Paczkowski.

Liner Note Author: Arthur Rimbaud.

Recording information: Polish Radio Studio; Studio Buffo, Warsaw, Poland.

Photographer: Etienne George.

Filmmaker Agnieszka Holland's 1995 retelling of the relationship between poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine earned a much-deserved critical thrashing, but its score remains a thing of beauty. Polish composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek's international breakthrough, Total Eclipse communicates the passion and invention of Rimbaud's poetry with a grace the film utterly lacks, employing the Warsaw Symphony and a small string quartet to evoke both the epic sweep and profound intimacy of his work. It's music that's raw and alive yet stunning in its adherence to classical traditions, buoyed by Kaczmarek's lyrical melodies and nuanced arrangements. ~ Jason Ankeny

It is thought that Bach’s Suites for solo cello were written between 1717 and 1723, at about the same time as his works for solo violin, but no original manuscript remains. The cello suites are less flamboyant than the violin works, so present the greater challenge in communication; like Shakespeare’s texts, understanding depends on the subtlest of phrasing, rhythm and intonation.

The Dutch baroque cellist Anner Bylsma brings to this new set (he recorded the suites 11 years ago for RCA Seyon) a remarkable range of expression – vigorous, playful, impetuous and elegant, with extraordinarily fine articulation and elasticity of phrasing within the framework of each movement. Bylsma here records on one of Stradivarius’ great cellos, the ‘Servis’ dating from 1701, which is an extremely rare example of the ‘bassetti’, a large instrument 3 cm longer than the modern cello. For this recording, he uses a plain gut A string, with the three lower strings metal-overspun, which gives a particularly full, muscular sound, unusual for a baroque instrument.

-- Annette Morreau, BBC Music Magazine

"Michael Tilson Thomas made some excellent records with the Philharmonia in the ’80s, and although I hadn’t come across this particular performance before, knowing this conductor’s flair for such music, I expected good things. I wasn’t disappointed.

The Nutcracker was the final ballet in Tchaikovsky’s great triptych, and was completed in 1891, a year during which the composer made a fatiguing concert tour of America and also suffered a nervous collapse. There is real justification in calling Tchaikovsky the father of the modern ballet score, and he effectively paved the way for dance-theatre music to be taken seriously. However, his first ballets were coolly received, and he was (as ever) wracked with self-doubt about this work, even after the premiere. This score has, of course, gone on to become one of his most popular scores.

Like Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, The Nutcracker is most often heard in highlight form, but in fact works better when experienced complete. It’s just the right length, and has so many famous numbers that it seems ridiculous to condense it to 20 or 30 minutes. I do possess excerpt discs, but turn most frequently to my benchmark complete version, Ashkenazy’s Decca recording with the Royal Philharmonic. It has a spectacular sound, full, rich and wide-ranging, and a very useful fill-up is included, Glazunov’s masterpiece The Seasons. However, that set is at full price, so the real competition for this budget Sony release comes from Previn’s excellent LSO version (now on Classics for Pleasure, also without a filler), and Dorati’s marvellous Concertgebouw recording on a Philips Duo, which finds room for a substantial Sleeping Beauty selection (Fistoulari and the LSO).

The fact that Tilson Thomas can hold his own against anyone is immediately evident in the Overture, which has a Mendelssohnian lightness and graceful wit that is captivating. As a Bernstein protégé, MTT is a theatrical conductor through and through (listen to any of his Mahler or Copland records), so he is completely at home with the colour and drama of this great score. His pacing throughout is exemplary, on the fast side but with ensemble crisp and rhythms tight. All the famous dances of Act 2 are as infectious as one could wish for; listen to the delectable trumpet playing in the Spanish Dance, whilst the Russian Dance has tremendous weight and panache. The principals of the Philharmonia obviously relish the many solos that litter the score, and indeed the whole orchestra enjoy themselves enormously. I like the way Tilson Thomas gives due attention to Tchaikovsky’s exotic ‘special-effects’, including a child’s trumpet in C, children’s drums, a rattle and mechanisms suggesting cuckoos and quails. He even uses a ratchet and Irish whistle in the Grandfather’s Dance, while kazoos, toy snare drums and a children’s cap gun are used in The Battle. Marvellous fun!

The whole performance has a flair and feeling of ‘rightness’ that are very captivating. The conductor never loses sight of the famous adage that ‘there is a lot of ballet in Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, and a lot of the symphony in his ballets’. He gives everything its due place, so one feels an organic growth in the piece, rather than a succession of set-pieces. Listening to these discs was as satisfying as any of the competition I had to hand, and in many ways the short playing time ceases to be an issue in the face of a great performance. Recording quality is also well up to scratch, with a full-bodied richness that matches the playing...highly recommended."

-- Tony Haywood, MusicWeb International

THE ROYAL EDITION - SCHUMANN:

THE ROYAL EDITION - STRAVINSKY

Teaming composers as disparate as Bloch, Foss and Ben-Haim on the basis of shared ethnicity seems a slightly dubious exercise. On the other hand, since these three performances may be considered definitive, this is a real opportunity to discover some worthwhile new music. Bloch's Sacred Service is perfectly approachable in idiom, although, in echoing 'colourful' scores like Schelomo rather than anything more astringent, Bloch does not avoid an impression of rhythmic squareness. Those familiar with the more avant-gardiste utterances of Lukas Foss will scarcely recognize the composer from his early Song of Songs, at last getting a proper UK release. The manner is postHindemith, pre-Bernstein; Tippettian pastoral, with an exotic element intensified here by the cosmopolitan delivery of Jeannie Tourel. The orchestral accompaniment is not technically beyond reproach but the playing has total conviction and Tourel's is a performance to treasure. Only the post-Stravinskian eclecticism of Ben Haim's Sweet Psalmist of Israel is a little hard to take over half an hour.

-- Gramophone [11/1992]

This recording presents a performance of H.C. Robbins Landon's edition of Mozart's Requiem, a product of modern scholarship, sound musicological argument, and learned intuition. It comprises Mozart's original fragment along with completions by the familiar Süssmayr, as well as Mozart's other students, Eybler and Freystädtler. The CD booklet gives details on who added what, and makes for interesting reading. But, the real concern here is the performance itself, and it is truly captivating. Bruno Weil's quick tempos bring fresh air and sunlight into the mausoleum some have made of this work. There is a compelling urgency that carries over from one movement to the next. The "Rex tremendae" here sounds chilling, its defiant anger fully embodied by the Tölzer Boys Choir, which sings with all the range and beauty of a traditional choir but with more clarity and poignancy. The four soloists are beautifully devotional, though bass Harry van der Kamp has some slight intonation problems in the "Tuba mirum". Tafelmusik's vividly colorful playing clarifies the musical lines with naturalness and subtlety, while the recorded sound marvelously balances reverberation and clarity. An outstanding release. --Victor Carr, ClassicsToday.com

Bach’s D minor Harpsichord Concerto BWV 1052 stands as a landmark both in Bach’s own output and in the history of the keyboard concerto. While J.S. Bach is often given credit for “inventing” the keyboard concerto, the fact is that during the period when he was in charge of the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, two of his oldest sons (W.F and C.P.E.) were also involved both as performers and composers. C.P.E. Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto Wq. 1 was likely composed for the Collegium, and it is in any event exactly contemporaneous with the elder Bach’s works in the form. The invention, then, of the keyboard concerto was very much a family affair, and it is probably correct to say that the two sons were at least as responsible for this innovation as was their father.

BWV 1052 held a special place in the heart of C.P.E. Bach, who knew it intimately and made his own manuscript copy. This disc, featuring the younger Bach’s D minor Concerto, composed at Potsdam in 1748, offers a splendid opportunity to compare the music of father and son. J.S. Bach’s concerto begins with a famously compact ritornello full of pregnant musical figures, lasting only about fifteen seconds. C.P.E.’s ritornello lasts more than a minute, and is full of those dissonant jagged phrases alternating with more lyrical ideas typical of this composer particularly, and of the Sturm und Drang ethos more generally. It sounds decidedly more modern, but the fact is that both works are masterpieces and it’s a joy to be able to hear them paired together.

Gustav Leonhardt recorded BWV 1052 at least three times, if not more, but this version from around 1981, featuring an unidentified string ensemble (The Cantus Germanicus Academica Anonymous?), remains perhaps his finest for the playing of the ensemble, the rich timbre of the harpsichord, and the warmth of the recorded sound. Leonhardt finds an especially natural, flowing pace in each movement, one that never turns mechanical. Hardly the most flamboyant of artists, he also doesn’t put on his monk’s robe of austerity here to the point where the music loses its natural brilliance. This is particularly important in the C.P.E. Bach concerto, with its strong contrasts between solo and orchestra.

This current reissue contains no notes, no recording information–in short, nothing but the disc. In fact, you’d be just as was well off downloading the performances for less money, but however you source them you owe it to yourself to listen, and listen often, to these two magnificent works as played here, so splendidly.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Harry Partch is an American visionary and stubborn individualist... He has built his own musical world out of microtones, hobo speech, elastic octaves and percussion instruments made from hubcaps and nuclear cloud chambers. Recently ... an army of young music lovers stormed New York’s Whitney Museum to hear Harry Partch and his thirteen disciples produce a music that was totally personal and eclectic in the best sense. African polyrhythms, and ancient Greek modes, bits of Babylonia and the pulse of the American diesel engine all gathered into a richly erotic, primitive, fresh and stirring drama of sound.

-- Newsweek


Includes bonus tracks: The Instruments of Harry Partch.

From the Masterworks vault, NBC’s television adaptation of Alice Through the Looking Glass featured a starry cast including Agnes Moorehead (Bewitched), Ricardo Montalban (Fantasy Island), Robert Coote (My Fair Lady), Nanette Fabray, Jack Palance, Jimmy Durante and even The Smothers Brothers – as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum!  This loose adaptation of the Lewis Carroll story, featuring Judi Rolin as Alice, first brought its blend of music and whimsy to television on November 6, 1966.  The great Don Costa arranged the Simmons/Charlap songs.

By popular demand, Sony Classical will release the soundtrack to the hugely successful period drama, following the early life of Queen Victoria. From her ascension to the throne at the tender age of 18, through to her courtship and marriage to Prince Albert. Queen Victoria went on to rule for 63 years and was the longest-reigning British monarch until 9th September 2015 when she was overtaken by her great-great-granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II. The soundtrack features the instantly recognizable and Emmy nominated theme tune, performed by Mediaeval Baebes1     The Suite    2     The King Is Dead    3     Coronation    4     Lord M    5     Locomotives    6     Mirrors    7     The Wedding    8     The Royal Birth    9     Privy Council    10     A Royal Affair    11     Victoria Titles    ABOUT THE COMPOSERSMartin PhippsComing from a musical background (he is Benjamin Britten’s godson), Martin Phipps scored his first TV drama, Eureka Street, in 2002. Since then he has won 2 BAFTAs & 5 Ivor Novello Awards and has gone on to write music for many of the most interesting series of recent years, including the BBC and Weinstein Company’s War and Peace; Peaky Blinders and Black Mirror. In film, Martin Phipps is currently scoring Fox Searchlight’s The Aftermath, starring Keira Knightley and Alexander Skarsgård. Previous film credits include the Weinstein Company’s much anticipated Woman In Gold with Hans Zimmer, starring Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren; Harry Brown and Brighton Rock. Ruth BarrettRuth Barrett, has amassed an impressive number of cinema and drama credits including two scores for Dredd 3D director Pete Travis: Legacy and City Of Tiny Lights; Toast, the BBC feature film starring Helena Bonham Carter; Wallander, the BBC detective series starring Kenneth Brannagh; the BBC’s Remember Me; the British feature film Harry Brown starring Michael Caine and the gritty and hard-hitting Paul Abbott-penned feature thriller Twenty8K with UK producer Jake Gosling. Ruth Barrett’s most recent scores include Hat Trick Production’s medical drama, Critical; ITV’s hugely popular brand new eight-part family drama, The Durrells and the BBC’s five-part comedy drama Love Nina, starring Helena Bonham Carter. Ruth Barrett studied composition at The Royal Academy of Music and read music at Cambridge University.

SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY

ABEL GANCE'S NAPOLEON

Tchaikovsky & Arensky: Piano Trios

This is the Hindemith so many listeners and commentators love to hate—earnest, workaday neo-classicism based on cardboard harmonic progressions and squared-off rhythms, conveyorbelted via an apparently inexhaustible supply of wrong-note marches, sicilianos and pastorales. And yet these sonatas can be great fun to play, and when the players are masters of their instruments they are fun to listen to as well. Moreover, when the accompaniments are in the hands of a recreative personality as strong as Glenn Gould's they assume an entirely new and unexpected range of character.

Gould's fundamental insight into Hindemith's world was his identification of its "true amalgam of ecstasy and reason". These were the very qualities which fused in Gould's own artistic make-up, and it should not be surprising that his empathy with Hindemith is strong. Only in a rare eccentricity of tempo (such as the dead slow opening to •the finale of the Trumpet Sonata) or in a tendency to peck at lines marked with slurs (in the finale of the Tuba Sonata at a point actually marked molto legato) does the perverse side of his nature assert itself; and even here the sensation of intense commitment overrides all. The added vocals are of course something that every Gould-listener has to learn to take in their stride.

The soloists were members of the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble and all thoroughly distinguished musicians. Hornists could no doubt fault Mason Jones's steadiness of tone and intonation, particularly in the Alto Horn Sonata. Otherwise the playing is consistently well-focused and alert (Hindemith gives the tubist an especially severe examination in rhythmical awareness).

As with other issues in this series, the recordings (from 1976) are clear and forward, though instrumental perspectives do appear to vary slightly from sonata to sonata. It does seem a pity, though, that Sony Classical did not include Gould's accounts of the three piano sonatas in this set, rather than issuing them separately (they would still have fitted onto the two discs).

-- Gramophone [3/1993]