PIERRE BOULEZ EDITION - MESSIA

Schubert’s last song cycle – his Schwanengesang – may lack the dramatic unity of Winterreise or Die schöne Müllerin, but its 13 lieder nevertheless form a coherent single work: seven settings of poems by Rellstab, in which the tone is generally confident, even if the undercurrent of disquiet is palpable, followed by six Heine settings, where the mood is darker and increasingly tormented. For no discernible reason – except that ‘Abschied’ (‘Farewell’) becomes the final number – the two sets have been transposed here, so that the sense of the singer’s descent into despair is compromised. Fortunately, however, the young Danish baritone Boje Skovhus sings with such shattering expressiveness that he overcomes this anomaly, suffusing ‘Abschied’, despite its jovial piano part, with a sense of such agitation that one is in no doubt that this is a man on the brink of suicide. But it is in the Heine songs that this outstanding singer – his voice is robust but controlled with infinite delicacy, his phrasing impeccable – really comes into his own. Rarely has ‘Die Stadt’ seemed so threatening. His Winterreise, when he comes to record it, promises great things. Which is more than can be said for the Canadian baritone Patrick Mason’s insipid account of this most searing cycle. Granted, his voice is fine enough and his musicianship is not in question, but he may as well be singing nursery rhymes for all the anguish he conveys.
Performance: 5 (Out of 5), Sound: 5 (Out of 5)

-- Claire Wrathall, BBC Music Magazine

HARMONIEMUSIK - CASTIL-BLAZE,

If we consider Haydn in connection with the French horn we probably first think of his famous symphony, nicknamed the Hornsignal. But though the four horns of that piece testify to Haydn’s wonderfully fertile imagination in writing music for this most difficult of brass instruments, it is by no means the only example. In this new release the Dutch ‘natural’ horn player Ab Koster and three fellow horn players, two oboists and L’Archibudelli string ensemble explore five less familiar works. In one of them at least – the Divertimento à tre – Haydn demands nothing less than technical magicianship from his horn player. Koster rises to the occasion, negotiating with seeming nonchalance passages of sustained lyricism, sudden bursts of arpeggios, acrobatic leaps and busy passagework that often heads towards the stratosphere. A virtuoso performance.
Performance 5 (out of 5) Sound 5 (out of 5)

-- Nicholas Anderson, BBC Music Magazine

KELLER: CARMINA HUMANA RUHLAN

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 21 & 26

Includes libretto in German and English.

A gripping and imaginative score, steeped in the lush orchestral textures of Strauss and Puccini.

It is good to see the upsurge of interest in Schreker's operas. Irrelohe comes immediately after Der Schatzgraber in the canon and was first produced in 1924 in Cologne. Immediately after the First World War Schreker was hailed by Paul Bekker as the most significant musical-dramatist after Wagner. (''The important question whether a similar type of talent would ever again resurface after Wagner... is now answered: Franz Schreker is such a talent, the first since Wagner, that is of a similar calibre, the same phenomenon, but in a wholly different manifestation.'')

His musical language is steeped in the lush and overripe orchestral textures of Strauss and Puccini, and embraces symbolism, expressionism and the Viennese Jugendstil. One could think of the idiom as a cross between the Strauss of Elektra and Korngold, albeit with a higher norm of dissonance than the latter. Schreker's star began to wane after the critical mauling Irrelohe received, and against a background of resentment at his success, and growing anti-Semitism (he was forced to resign as Director of the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin; subsequent Nazi persecution seems to have occasioned a stroke which led to his death in 1934). He later enjoyed the venom of that self-appointed pontiff of modernism, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (as indeed did Sibelius – so he was in good company).

Irrelohe, to the composer's own libretto, is set in the eighteenth century. Count Heinrich lives as a recluse in Irrelohe castle, fearing hereditary madness should he give way to sexual passion. His love for Eva inspires the jealousy of her suitor, Peter, as well as the enmity of Christobald, whose own fiancee had been raped by Heinrich's father. Peter attempts to prevent their wedding but is killed in the ensuing struggle, and in the meantime Christobald sets fire to Irrelohe. Echoes of Valhalla's fate in Gotterdammerung! Eva finally sings of the redemptive power of love. (The name of the opera, incidentally, derives from a railway station: while travelling on a sleeping-car Schreker, woken up by a guard calling out the name of a station, looked out of the window and saw the name, Irrloh.)

While Schreker's mastery of dramatic and psychological effects is not in question, many critics have felt that his music is too close to the wilder shores of Hollywood for comfort (Wolfgang Molkov's note speaks of it having ''quite an inventory of horror-film cliches'') but we do not condemn, say, Ravel or Prokofiev, because others have pillaged and polluted their harmonic vocabulary; nor should we Schreker. While recognizably indebted, mainly to Strauss and Puccini, Irrelohe as drama with music holds you almost from start to finish. The characters and the vocal lines are drawn with care and the orchestral textures are sumptuous. My only reservation is that although there is a great deal of highly imaginative material and a sophisticated orchestral resource, Schreker's music is predominantly a succession of finely realized atmospheres: melodic inspiration of a strongly individual profile is less in evidence though there are inspired passages – the Prelude to Act 3 is one, though the act as a whole strikes me as the least interesting musically. Everything is dramatically effective and indeed masterly. In his thoughtful paper ''Style, Structure and Taste: Three Aspects of the Problem of Franz Schreker'' (Proceedings of the Royal Music Association: 1982) Peter Franklin speaks of him as ''a brilliant musical psychologist whose 'decadence' is a function of the range of experience on which he draws and the skill with which he manages its naturalistic representation in music''.

The performance under Peter Gulke is thoroughly committed and the cast is a strong one. The recording derives from a concert performance given in the Grosser Musikvereinsaal in Vienna and although the singers are favoured there is an excellent and well-balanced orchestral detail. The break from the first CD to the second in the middle of the eighth scene of Act 2 is not well chosen but otherwise there is no cause for complaint. Those who know Der ferne Klang or Der Schatzgraber will probably need no prompting to investigate this set; for those who don't, Irrelohe is a gripping and imaginative score, well served by all involved in this production.

-- Robert Layton, Gramophone [12/1995]

Silvestrov’s Fifth Symphony might well have emerged from Prospero’s island. The music epitomises something rich and strange. Ominous, heavy with threat (trs. 3, 5), dissonant but accessible, dreamy and romantic. Ham-fisted and insensitive but useful parallels include Mahler’s Adagietto, Berg, Griffes’ Pleasure Dome, the film scores of John Barry and the Hollywood 1970s and further enlivened by idyllic evocations of birdsong. A massive orchestra is used and there is an orchestral piano presumably played by Lubimov who is at the centre of things in the similarly ecstatic Postludium. At one point there is a low-key chatter of voices – but very low. This is voluptuously expressive music given spine by the undertow of gloom. I do not know why it has not made more headway. If there were any justice this would have been played at the BBC Proms but the same could be said of a host of other regrettably neglected works including Hovhaness’s Majnun and Etchmiadzin symphonies, of the Benjamin Dale tone poem The Flowing Tide, of Ronald Stevenson’s concertos, the oratorios and symphony of Yuri Shaporin and the piano concertos of Nikolai Kapustin.

This Sony-Arkiv re-animation scores over the competition in various areas. Its sound is rich – bathed in warmth yet not smearing detail. Students of the work will find that the version under review is in nine tracks which certainly aids the process of getting to grips with a single span of three quarters of an hour. Even timid souls – and I count myself in their company – should make a point of hearing the remarkable Fifth Symphony. It is as much an ikon of the second half of the twentieth century as Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 and the various mystic-religious works of Macmillan and Tavener. The difference is that the Silvestrov is sensuous to the point of saturation rather than devout to the point of asceticism.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Who is Nikolai Korndorf? Have no fear, if the name is unfamiliar to you at present the ensuing popularity (which I’m sure this disc will attract) will have it tripping off the tongue as readily as Gorecki, Part, Schnittke or Tavener. For the uninitiated (and that included myself prior to hearing this release) Korndorf was born in Moscow in 1947 and started out as an 'avant-garde' composer, but (and here’s where he shares similarities with the names listed above) he suddenly changed to a more tonal, simple and above all spiritual style in the early 1980s. In 1991 he moved to Vancouver, Canada, and since then his music has been steadily gaining admirers and exponents in the West.

Sharing the same title, and possibly general sentiments, Korndorf’s three orchestral Hymns would appear to constitute a cycle but, as Korndorf himself has said, he prefers that they should not be performed or considered as such. However, this debut disc offers us Hymns II and III, though I would strongly echo the composer’s wishes and urge listeners to program a suitable break before moving from Hymn II to III. In terms of musical style the works presented on this disc share much in common with Gorecki’s Third Symphony – slow moving, seamless textures, minimal material, peaking climaxes and, in Hymn III, an ethereal, wordless soprano part. If anything Korndorf’s music is even more static than either Gorecki or Part, and generally the impression is of vertical rather than linear movement – walls of ‘bell-like’ pulsating chords dominate and seem to suggest a kind of ‘summoning prelude’ to a great event – Korndorf himself would suggest perhaps the dawning of a new spiritual age.

Hymn III was composed in response to a commission by the Kohler-Osbahr Foundation for a piece in honour of Gustav Mahler, and there are certainly Mahlerian echoes to be found here – not least the off-stage trumpets heard at the beginning and the high sustained string texture which recall the First Symphony. Generally speaking, if you have enjoyed the sound world of Gorecki and Part then you will probably enjoy discovering Korndorf too. As for the performances, the BBC Symphony Orchestra play this music with great conviction and the soprano solo in Hymn III is beautifully delivered by Catherine Bott.

-- Michael Stewart, Gramophone

This disc was nominated for the 1997 Grammy Award for "Best Choral Performance."

The principal reason for acquiring this recording...is Ying Huang's extraordinary performance as Butterfly. The Chinese soprano offers a towering portrayal of the tragically doomed Cio-cio San. With her pure, high, youthful voice, Butterfly for once sounds as girlish as she should and Huang's beautiful singing is hard to resist.

-- Lawrence Johnson, Chicago Tribune [7/28/96]

This album was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental
Soloist Performance (without Orchestra).

This selection contains both DDD and ADD recordings.

This selection contains both ADD and DDD recordings.
ROMANTIC CELLO is a greatest-hits collection that offers several much-beloved nineteenth-and early twentieth-century cello works of a soaring melodic nature, performed by a veritable all-star team of cellists. There is quite a lot of variety here. The past is evoked fancifully by Peter Tchaikovsky in the courtly 'Rococo Variations' and with bittersweet nostalgia by Edward Elgar in the first movement of his moody Cello Concerto. An intense prayer is offered by Max Bruch in his 'Kol Nidrei,' and good old-fashioned heroics are supplied by Antonin Dvorak in the finale to his Cello Concerto. Doing the playing chores are Yo-Yo Ma (heard live in Saint Petersburg), Janos Starker, Ofra Harnoy, Steven Isserlis and Gregor Piatigorsky, so you know you're in good hands throughout.

SYMPHONY NO. 9