"The Beethoven concert aria was recorded in 1965 in the wake of a series of successful concerts with the New York Philharmonic. The soprano was then at her peak, and while the electric charge on the recording is not quite as high as at the concerts, this is nonetheless one of the best versions of the aria on disc..." -- Joel Kasow, FANFARE

"Fans of Régine Crespin’s wonderfully distinctive voice need little encouragement to acquire this reissue. The account of Beethoven’s 'Ah! perfido' is a testament to her dramatic ability to command absolute attention from the listener. Essentially the same qualities are displayed in the mélodies... Satie’s ‘Daphénéo’ and Ravel’s ‘Le grillon’ recall the magical hush of Crespin’s recording of 'Shéhérazade'..." -- Christopher Dingle, BBC Music Magazine

This recording restores a different variety of "period performance" to the catalog. Recorded in mid-1952, the opera is performed in English (in the Martin translation) by most of the cast that gave the premiere of the Met's 1951 production. 'Cosí fan tutte' was thought to be improved most by leaving a lot of it out. Dorabella and Ferrando lose their second act arias as well as the usual omission of the little duet in act I. Aside from the absence of vocal embellishment and the sheer weight of the forces used, the performance is surprisingly close to historically informed performance practice. Tempos are fleet, the recitatives--albeit much abridged--are accompanied by a piano, and the tone is conversational.
The four lovers were cast with big voices that today would be associated with Verdi. Of the women, Eleanor Steber's weighty and beautifully sung Fiordiligi and, in contrast, the quite young Roberta Peters' very pert Despina are the standouts. Richard Tucker as Ferrando is the best of the men, very funny and surprisingly fluent, deploying his golden tone in a role unexpected in light of his fame as a Verdi singer. An interesting window on the history of Mozart performance.

Fresh from his recent double Grammy win, innovativ e composer, vibrant performer and double bass virt uoso Edgar Meyer premieres two new concertos and rediscovers music of Italian composer Giovanni Bot tesini on this new Sony Classical recording. Celli st Yo-Yo Ma and violinist Joshua Bellare featured guest soloist on the CD.

Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland remain among the most popular of 20th-century American composers, and the accessible, populist musical style that granted them much success with audiences is evident in this collection of their vocal works. Virgil Thomson, whose music also appears here, is less of a household name; his music, while equally (or more) conservative, has never entered the mainstream like that of his contemporaries has.
This disc is of great historical interest. All the works are heard in their premiere recordings, dating from 1950 to 1954. A young Leontyne Price gives the perfect rendition of Barber's 'Hermit Songs,' imperious, coy and despairing by turns. If Eleanor Steber lacks the naïve, wide-eyed wonder of more recent interpreters of 'Knoxville: Summer of 1915,' such as Dawn Upshaw, it is refreshing to hear a more dramatic performance that may indeed be closer to the composer's wishes. In Copland's folksy 'Old American Songs,' William Warfield sings with verve and complete authority. A special attraction here is that each composer is heard as a piano accompanist in his own works, and as an added bonus, the liner notes feature engaging reminiscences about the three composers by their younger colleague Ned Rorem.

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

VIVALDI, VILLA-LOBOS: GUITAR C

There's revealing diversity in these pre-'West Side Story' works of Bernstein, as well as harbingers of that landmark musical and film. Among them is the dramatic horn work in the title composition, which also certifies the classical chops and sureness in syncopation of jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman. The modernist flurries of the saxophone arrangements are evocative of the much later work by the avant-garde ROVA ensemble.
The 'Fancy Free' ballet appears along with the "Three Dance Episodes" from 'On the Town,' a 1944 show envisioned by Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins as an extension of 'Fancy Free.' The ballet (reproduced here from a monaural recording) presents a remarkable array of emotional dramas - some with Coplandesque bravado, some with Latin touches of tango and fandango, some with the sassy strut which is so Manhattan. The dances showcase Bernstein's facility at reusing and combining themes, some taken from 'On the Town's' most famous number, "New York, New York" (not to be confused with the John Kander-Fred Ebb song of the same name sung by Liza Minelli in the 1977 film "New York, New York"). The composer conducts with vigor.
By contrast, the 'Serenade' lacks the expected Bernstein lyricism and clear, tight structure, but is interesting in concept and shows off the dynamic palate and authority of violinist Zino Francescatti.

If you happened to pick up this music on, say, the car radio, it would, I think, be quite a challenge to identify it. You could date it readily enough as belonging to the 1820s or 1830s, but I doubt whether you could put a nationality to it, still less a composer. Georges Onslow (1784-1853) was Anglo-French (English ancestry, French birth and principal domicile). Beethoven and Schubert are very distant as reference points, Mendelssohn and Spohr perhaps rather closer. The music, however, is richly worked, vivid and passionate. Its textures are very full and very busy, much more egalitarian than most in the chamber repertory – undoubtedly great fun to play – with much interchange between the voices, and involving elaborate accompaniment figures.

It would be easy to say that sometimes there is a lot going on and plenty of excitement, but not much actually happening; however that would be slightly unfair. The C minor work in particular, which has a programme derived from a shooting accident during a hunt when Onslow nearly lost his life, is quite remarkable: a first movement of great intensity, with some passionate music in the development section, a minuet (Dolore, febbre e delirio) with ferocious accents, vast chromatic slithers and diminished sevenths galore, portraying his desperation, then an Andante representing convalescence (not quite on the ethereal spiritual level of Beethoven’s Op. 132, but hymn-like and dark-textured), and then a brilliant C major finale.

The other two works are not programmatic but also have plenty of strongly imagined music. Op. 39 in E boasts a very appealing Adagio, its main theme presented in a variety of ways and contexts, a minuet with a fragmented melody of considerable charm, and an exuberant and powerfully developed finale. The first movement of the B minor work, Op. 40 again shows Onslow’s grasp of structural tension in the powerful shaping of sections and the absorption of lyrical and dramatic elements; there is another near-violent minuet (a development quite distinct from the Beethovenian scherzo style) and again a slow movement of much passion. In the past I have always thought of Onslow as a rather conventional figure, but that is mistaken. He may not be a great composer, but he is certainly an extremely interesting one, with ideas of some originality and a considerable technique. These musicians, using the famous Stradivari instruments in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC, play with great spirit, warmth and skill and convey the full measure of the passion behind the music. I hope many readers will try this fascinating disc.

Stanley Sadie, Gramophone [6/1996]

Mozart: Flute Concertos Nos. 1, 2 & Clarinet Concerto

MONTEVERDI: SELVA MORALE E SPI

SCHUBERT: PIANO SONATAS D 850,

Neidich plays on a modern reconstruction of an 1810 clarinet, Levin on an 1825 piano, and the gains are naturally most evident in the work which gives the closest ear to sonorities, Weber's Grand duo concertani. He wrote it for himself and his much-admired friend Heinrich Baermann, and it is not a clarinet sonata but exactly what it says, music for two virtuosos. The lighter piano textures are of great benefit in those passages where there is a danger of a modern piano overwhelming the clarinet. This is striking in the slow movement (where a long solo passage for the piano is also built into the music), but also in some of the dizzy figuration in the finale where the piano's right-hand speeds along in thirds beside the clarinet, especially with the piano taking the upper third. The virtuosity seems to hold no terrors for these skilled players, and they bring a suitably Weberian note of sinister darkness to the Andante and a witty flash to the final Rondo. The phrases are often very long: close recording means that Neidich's snatched breaths are very audible, and so are puffs in the middle of phrases suggesting that, unusually for a clarinettist, he is using the technique of 'circular breathing' (refilling the lungs through the nose while continuing to play with the reservoir of air in the mouth).

Danzi's Sonata is an amiable piece that shares with Weber's Duo an interest in giving the two partners equality by occasionally silencing the clarinet. It is charmingly invented, though not as forward-looking in manner as some of his music. Mendelssohn's Sonata is a good deal less evenly inspired than much of the music written in his dazzling teens, with some empty passagework that seems to be on automatic pilot in the outer movements contrasting with striking developmental sections where the composer takes the controls again. Much the most remarkable movement is the Andante, a curiously haunting little song first played on unaccompanied clarinet and charmingly deployed throughout the movement.

-- JW, Gramophone [9/1995] Review of Sony 64302

This collection presents the under-rated tenor Siegfried Jerusalem in a program of favorite arias: Wagner, Weber, Mozart and Weinberger as well as selections by Smetana, Meyerbeer and Tchaikovsky, all sung in German. Jerusalem, the tenor of choice in Wagnerian repertoire in the late 70s and 80s, is always an intense performer on stage, but under-recorded in some of his key roles. There is steel in his voice and, of course, this is necessary in much of Wagner, but there is also a need for lyricism and Jerusalem sings with an almost italianate elegance. The arias from 'Lohengrin' achieve this elegance, while the "Prize Song" from 'Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg' is suitably ecstatic.
Jerusalem shines in non-Wagnerian works, too. His Tamino from Mozart's 'Die Zauberflöte' is just right, and "Dies Bildnis is bezaubernd schön" is full of fresh, youthful vigor. His rendition of Lensky's aria from Tchaikovsky's 'Eugene Onegin' is heartbreaking and well-characterized--a high point of the disc. Duets from Weinberger's 'Schwanda, der Dudelsackpfeifer' with Hermann Prey and the late, magnificent Lucia Popp are a real treat. If you want to discover a great artist in an interesting program, you should grab this one.

The Debussy-Ravel axis is the most famous chamber pairing in the catalogue and it would perhaps be easier to note those quartets that don’t pair them together than those that do. The Tokyo Quartet’s recordings date from August 1977 and are now amazingly a quarter of a century old. Little has dated about the performances even if there is a nagging feeling that they, as with other groups, properly fail to distinguish the characters of each work one from another. The tumbling violin lines in the opening of the movement of the Debussy are finely done; they lean into the notes and bend the rhythm of the second movement with phrasal insouciance; they express delicacy and concentration in the Andantino and in the finale are sonorous – violist Kazuhide Isomura especially so. In the Ravel the continuity of mood is captured with cellist Sadao Harada prominent in the tonal balance, particularly in the Assez vif second movement. They are subtle as well as instrumentally sound.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Mozart: Serenade, K. 388 - Beethoven: Octet, Op. 103 - Dvorá