SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO 14

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 21 & 26

Embraces its historical lineage...luminous and pulsing.

This isn’t a new release. Maw’s Violin Concerto was written with Joshua Bell specifically in mind in 1993; the recording followed in September 1996. In the very enthusiastic sleeve-notes – I’m not sure how Maw feels about being described as a “genius” – great play is made of the work in relation to the Brahms Violin Concerto. Certainly it has a complex romantic affiliation but the composers’ names that occurred to me were those of Prokofiev and Walton. Not that Maw could be remotely taken to be either of them – but in its cultivation of an almost Italianate lyricism it does summon up the memory of Walton’s Mediterranean work and in its fusion of melodic beauty and scherzo drama it must pay at least oblique, tangential historical homage to Prokofiev.

The Concerto is cast in four movements. It opens with ruminative slowness but then opens out into a flourishing, rich and luminous sound world, bedecked by manifold orchestral and solo felicities; those little orchestral lurches toward the end for instance. The second movement is indeed Walton-like in its vivacity but Maw’s control of lingering lyricism, finely woven into the work’s fabric, ensures seamless warmth from the current-swell of dynamism that he generates. The lodestones here are Prokofiev and Barber but they’re securely absorbed into Maw’s lyric modernist world. The powerful cadential passage over a sustained orchestral chord is followed by a muted upwards drift into orchestral nothingness, a Cherubini-like stroke of translucent and mysterious beauty.

Maw’s predilection for major chords – the C major especially – permeates the third movement. Harmonies are richly complex and there are elements of post-impressionism in the writing, as well glimmers of Berg; but over and above such composer-spotting moments, which are essentially incidental, is the sense of luminous quiet, the rapture, the specific and yet endless personal landscape that Maw evokes. And when he unleashes the finale it comes brimful with tunes, vibrant and exciting, richly orchestrated.

Throughout Bell plays with the romantic ardour that Maw identified – and so admires – in him. His playing manages to balance scrupulous cleanliness of attack with tonal warmth and pliant phrasing. Norrington marshals the LPO in assured, colouristically aware fashion and the recording does full justice to the enterprise.

The Maw is a concerto that embraces its historical lineage without being shackled by it. If you admire the Berg, Barber, Walton and Prokofiev concertos, and like orchestration that is both luminous and pulsing then this is the work for you.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

This selection contains both AAD and DDD recordings.
Christmastime is a season made for familiar traditions: food, decorations, and music. This collection of seasonal favorites is an anthology of some of the world's most popular performers. From legendary pops conductor Arthur Fiedler to the voice of Mario Lanza, these are artists recognized in homes across the country.
Timeless classics such as Morton Gould and the RCA Symphony Orchestra's 'Jingle Bells' and Robert Shaw Chorale's 'Deck the Halls' are the epitome of Christmas cheer. Performed with crowd-pleasing flair, the music is equally at home as the centerpiece of a listening experience, or in the background of a family gathering. So pleasant, so familiar, everyone will recognize this music.
As important to the holidays as a warm hearth in the home, these songs are seasonal essentials.

Giulini goes his own sweet way, showing masterly judgement and control. Top honors go to Ruth Ziesak, faultless throughout.

More than most works regularly cited as pinnacles of western music, the B minor Mass is open to vagaries of interpretation. The vogue is for playing fast and flat, reducing forces and stripping the opulence and opaqueness that used to characterise Bach performance.

Giulini goes his own sweet way, which is not quite like anyone else’s. His choir is big – a far cry from the Joshua Rifkin approach of using solo voices in multipart choral writing – and his tempi slow. At least on paper they are slow: this B minor Mass is such a well-measured, coherent vision that even a Sanctus nearly a third longer than other recorded versions makes perfect sense. After all, Giulini is keeping time, not the clock. Indeed, frequently slowness is strength, as the masterly judgement and control of a gradually unwinding ‘Dona nobis pacem’ and a perfectly plotted ‘Qui tollis’ bear witness.

Among the soloists, Roberta Alexander sounds uneasy in a laboured ‘Laudamus te’ where the solo violin’s hesitancy is transmitted to the singer. Top honours go to Ruth Ziesak, faultless throughout. The live recording from Munich’s Herkulessaal is a shade reticent, but chorus and orchestra nonetheless come across as highly responsive and a credit to their maestro.

-- Christopher Wood, BBC Music Magazine

Poised and patrician interpretations that concentrate on lyricism, warmth, and spacious breadth rather than incipient tension.

Walter’s 1960 B flat recording hasn’t Beecham’s geniality or élan but it does have an unhurried and patrician affection that is hard to gainsay. The generosity of the phrasing never descends to Casals’s rather heavy-handed loving kindness; the sectional balance is fine, the direction remains crisply understated but affectionate. The wind and horn principals distinguish themselves in the slow movement where Walter brings out detail with candour but without any kind of finicky over-scrupulousness. Genial and leisurely – and without any crunching tutti weight – the finale is of a piece with Walter’s mature perception of the symphony. It’s a young man’s work but seen somewhat through avuncular and retrospective eyes.

The Unfinished was recorded two years earlier, this time in New York. Poised and patrician once more this is a reading that concentrates on lyricism rather than incipient tension or internal dynamic contrasts. The orchestra sounds notably fine and Walter’s direction retains a grand seigniorial approach, one that will perhaps disappoint those who might have missed the spirit of his fiery wartime performances with this orchestra, a time when he seemed on occasion hell bent on recreating Toscanini’s sweeping dynamism. Nevertheless his later approach certainly makes up in warmth and spacious breadth – especially the second movement – what it lacks in velocity and power.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International [reviewing Sony 78741]

NASIDZE, TSINTSADZE: QUARTETS

The well-known painting of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach reproduced on the cover of this CD must be one of the most immediately attractive composer portraits ever made. The wide-brimmed hat, the fur-lined coat, the wisp of steely hair and, above all, the reddened but unmistakably genial face (displaying, if I’m not mistaken, his father’s nose) suggest a man one would want to accompany straightaway to the nearest coffee-house. But Friedemann was actually a little more complex than that, both as a person who could be lazy and argumentative and as a talented musician torn between the styles of the late baroque and early classical periods, so it is perhaps no surprise to find that there is considerable variety in the music on this disc. The opening Sinfonia in D major is one of those sunnily optimistic works that revel in the splendid new sound of the classical orchestra, but the D minor Sinfonia which follows is a highly serious piece for church use, containing a solemnly drooping fugue. There is also an Ouverture-Suite once attributed (pretty implausibly) to Johann Sebastian which, though undeniably attractive and individual, is now thought unlikely to be by Friedemann either; a quirkily expressive but perhaps rather rambling harpsichord concerto; and a by-now familiarly protean and surprise-filled Sinfonia in F major.

Tafelmusik are the perfect ensemble to perform this music. Like much of it, they delight in sheer orchestral sound, enjoying the advantage themselves of being able to turn it out in particularly pleasing and well-finished form. I would not hesitate to recommend this disc to any lover of eighteenth-century orchestral music.

-- Lindsay Kemp, Gramophone [2/1998]

Track Listing
1. Uncertain Future (Main Title)
2. Shelby & Percy
3. Hannah's Fall
4. Mystery of Night, The
5. Open for Business
6. Remembering Eli
7. Trees, The
8. Gift from the Forest, A
9. Reading the Letters
10. Healing Balm, A
11. New Life for Gilead, A
12. Wrongful Blame
13. Desperate Decision, A
14. Care of the Spitfire Grill

Original score written by James Horner.

Audio Mixer: Shawn Murphy.

Recording information: Todd-AO Scoring Stage, Studio City, CA.

The soundtrack to the popular independent film The Spitfire Grill contains James Horner's subtle, moving score that works as an individual piece of music, not just as pleasant sonic wallpaper. It's a lovely score and one that proves that Horner, who has also written the music for Braveheart, Field of Dreams, and Alien, is one of the finest film composers of his era. ~ Rodney Batdorf

MOZART: SINFONIA CONCERTANTE,

This recording was nominated for the 2000 Grammy Award for "Best Opera Recording.

György Ligeti's only opera, 'Le Grande Macabre,' after a play by Michel de Ghelderode, concerns itself with nothing less than the end of the world. This is promised by the evil Nekrotzar but, despite dire warnings and ominous foreshadowing, the whole thing is something of a bust and in the end the only casualty is Nekrotzar himself. In between are any number of lascivious and criminal goings-on in fictional Breughelland, a place of infinite corruption, socially, morally and politically (and enormously funny in the bargain). Ligeti's brilliant, delightful, infinitely difficult music ranges from preludes and interludes scored for automobile horns and doorbells to the breathtaking coloratura flights of Gepopo, the soprano chief of the secret police. The performance under Esa-Pekka Salonen is beyond praise.

Volume 8 of Sony's Ligeti Edition presents the revised score of 1997, taken from live performances in Paris. There are numerous changes and the opera is shorter by some ten minutes. The revision also changes the language from German to English. The German original is available on Wergo in a fine performance. The Sony recording preserves a performance of even greater brilliance of what is now one of the great comic operas in English.

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.

Mendelssohn: Songs Without Words - Variations serieuses - Ch

Rubinstein Collection, Vol. 41: All Brahms: 3 Violin & Piano

Legendary for his accomplishments, musical, scholarly and beyond, Camille Saint-Saëns created an astounding collection of compositions. These pieces for cello and accompaniment must surely rank among his finest achievements.
The composer wrote more than mere pleasant melodies. The demands of Cello Concerto No. 2 are extraordinary, and yield results quite profound. Baroque lyricism and a penchant for drama make Saint-Saëns' orchestral work a delight. The more intimate Cello Sonata No. 2 takes advantage of the rich tonal power of both instrument and soloist.
Renown cellist Steven Isserlis performs with panache befitting his reputation as one of the world's leading cellists. His technique, both technically precise and deeply passionate, brings out the most of Saint-Saëns difficult works.

Debussy: La mer, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Danse &

This selection contains both ADD and DDD recordings.

...an abundantly characterful, often exquisitely observant reading of the Enigma Variations set down at Walthamstow towards the end of 1954... Beecham sifts Elgar’s textures with rare mastery, and there are some delectable sounds throughout from his RPO wind principals (above all, Jack Brymer’s wonderfully hushed solos in the ‘Romanza’). Elsewhere, ‘Troyte’ fairly tears out of the blocks (distinctive, gun-shot timpani), and the finale struts with an irresistible physicality and unbuttoned thrust. By contrast, ‘Dorabella’ skips along in a more leisurely fashion than usual, and I love the tender intimacy Beecham imparts to ‘Ysobel’. A pity about the botched opening of ‘RPA’; otherwise, an Enigma to savour, if not quite ousting such legendary near-contemporaries as the evergreen Monteux or Barbirolli’s inspirational 1956 Halle account from the head of a very long list. It’s preceded by a terrific, swaggeringly exuberant Cockaigne (whose ripe coda heralds a startling change in both ambience and perspective) and a wholly disarming, gently affectionate reading of the Serenade for Strings.

-- Gramophone [8/2001]

This installment of the William Kapell Edition charts but one more corner of the Russian piano repertory for which the pianist achieved an early fame. Kapell's 1946 recording of the appealing Khachaturian Concerto was the work's premiere recording, and the pianist immediately became associated with what became a jukebox favorite.
The gem of this disc, however, is Kapell's 1949 recording of Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto. In the explosive Allegro of the opening movement, Kapell moves between rippling pianissimo passages to lashing sforzando chords with consummate ease. A greater testament to Kapell's musical and technical skills comes in the variations of the second movement. His shifts from the mood of one variation to the mood of the next are immediate, passionate, and thoroughly convincing. He moves from the lush chordal lyricism of the first variation to the breathless abandon of the second, flying across the keyboard and never losing his way. The entire performance sizzles with a nervous energy that will most likely captivate any listener.

One of the more disingenuous lines of ad copy attached to RCA's Kapell Edition has got to be that "[Kapell] was able to attract the finest artists to him." Well, sure, but it probably didn't hurt that the artists Kapell "attracted" were also under contract to RCA. And while no one would argue with a description of violinist Jascha Heifetz or violist William Primrose as being among the finest artists, cellist Edmund Kurtz might not rank among everybody's short list.

Be that as it may, the Kapell-Primrose collaboration on the Brahms Viola Sonata in F minor is beyond all argument, superb. Primrose plays the piece with a warm-hearted tone and open-hearted interpretation, and Kapell doesn't so much follow Primrose as wrap himself around him like a comfortable sweater. Less convincing is the Kapell-Heifetz performance of the Brahms Violin Sonata in D minor, especially if you have an antipathy toward Heifetz's playing in general and his Brahms playing in particular. Heifetz is simply too hard-hearted and unyielding for Brahms. And Kapell himself seems uncomfortable with Heifetz's interpretation: rather than a comfortable sweater, Kapell sounds like a too-tight straitjacket.

The surprise of this volume of the Kapell Edition is Edmund Kurtz. While not in the same league as RCA's house cellist Piatgorsky, Kurtz turns in a driven yet expansive performance of the Rachmaninov Cello Sonata. Together with Kapell's vigorous piano playing, Kurtz turns in nearly as fine a performance of the Rachmaninov as is imaginable. One of the more interesting volumes in the Kapell Edition.

-- James Leonard, AllMusic.com

HOROWITZ PLAYS SCRIABIN

Love Song

HALLELUJAH! AND OTHER GREAT SACRED CHORUSES

Rubinstein Collection, Vol 22: Brahms: Concerto No. 2; Grieg

V10: RUBINSTEIN COLLECTION