Sir Roger Norrington's approach to adapting historical performance practice for a modern symphony orchestra has yielded excellent results. This recording features the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra performing Schubert's most famous work, Symphony No. 8.

Rarely recorded Ballets by Tommasini, Milhaud, Sauguet + Exceptional richness of musical colors + First Class, rousing interpretations.

Hector Berlioz remains to this day the arch Romantic composer. His imagination knew no bounds and through his often-extreme visions, he revolutionized the way composers would approach the orchestra in the future. Spooky, wild, tender and utterly without inhibition perfectly describes the "Symphonie fantastique". But even some of his overtures are not for the faint-of-heart, especially when two masterful conductors at the helms of two of Europe's finest orchestras give these colorful scores full rein. Unquestionably, Berlioz at his best! - Hänssler Classic

This album features many extraordinary performances of 19th Century repertoire, but it also provides a glimpse of Schuricht's advocacy of 20th century composers such as Borish Blacher and Gunter Raphael. A bonus disc featuring Schuricht in rehearsal rounds out this second portrait of one of the 20th century's greatest conductors.

This latest release in the Premium Composers Series features a program of the most famous and most beautiful symphonies of Franz Schubert.

Today, the name of Arnold Mendelssohn scarcely ranks as a footnote in most musical textbooks; however, he played a seminal role in the revival of German church music. His love of polyphony, combined with his characteristic warm, late Romantic harmonic language imbues Mendelssohn's scores with a sense of otherworldly timelessness.

Haenssler CLASSIC's Ballets Russes series is unrivaled for completeness and will include many works never before recorded. Each booklet includes historic details of the works performance and artwork from the original productions. World-renowned choreographer John Neumeier has overseen the production of the entire series. For 20 years from 1909 to 1929, the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev and his Russian ballet became one of the 20th century's most incredible artistic adventures, redefining theater, music and dance in every performance.

The great soprano Martina Arroyo enjoyed on an unparalleled career on the international stages of opera houses that lasted from the 1960s to the 1980s. Coming from a mixed African-American and Puerto Rican background, she was one of the early singers in the opera world to cross the racial line. Her youthful, dramatic soprano made her an ideal Verdi and Puccini heroine but she could also draw upon the lyrical mezzo qualities of her voice to beautifully interpret intimate songs. In this Schwetzingen Festival recital she was at the height of her vocal abilities.

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REVIEW:

American soprano Martina Arroyo is much acclaimed as an opera singer, especially in the Verdi repertory. Here is a rare opportunity to hear her in recital at the 1968 Schwetzingen Festival.

– American Record Guide

Géza Anda was among the small group of 20th Century pianists whose playing and artistic point of view became a seminal force for future generations. Anda's live performances presented a balance of spontaneity and reflection achieved through his complete devotion to realizing the composer's creative vision. Anda's interpretation of Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand and Orchestra is a fascinating addition to his discography, providing new insights to this haunting score and Anda's extraordinary interpretive abilities.

Roger Norrington and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra SWR continue their survey of the major works of the 19th Century symphonic repertoire with two symphonies by Schubert. Throughout his decade of working with the RSO, Norrington has transformed the sound of a modern symphony orchestra into an ensemble capable of delivering authentic historically informed music making. By employing both the benefits of authentic performance practice and technically superior modern instruments, Norrington has left a legacy that has opened the ears of romantic "purists" as well as delighting devotees of authentic performance practice.

The great bass-baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has been involved with the music of Bach throughout his career. Even as a student, he studied the cantatas and in his first Post-War concert in 1947, he was a soloist in the "St. Matthew Passion." As the singer's career progressed, performances of the music of Bach and his contemporaries became increasingly rare. However, in the 1950s, while at the beginning of his career, Fischer-Dieskau produced a series of radio recordings featuring not only the music of Bach but other Baroque composers such as Schutz, Tunder and St. Elzel.

Perhaps no other musical style has exerted a greater influence on the culture of the first half of the 20th century than Jazz. This utterly American music travelled to every corner of the globe: From Shanghai to St. Petersburg; from New Orleans to New Dehli, from Harlem to well... Haarlem. While classical composers embraced the rhythmic vitality and melodic freedom of their own compositions, others sought to legitimize Jazz in the concert hall including: Debussy, Stravinsky, Hindemith and Shostakovich and of course Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington.

BRAHMS Violin Concerto. Serenade No. 2 in A • Ernest Bour, cond; Zino Francescatti (vn); SWR SO Baden-Baden and Freiburg • HÄNSSLER 94.219 (72:07)


Readers should be aware that when multiple reviews of the same release appear back-to-back in the magazine, copies of those recordings are sent to the contributing reviewers blind. This means we don’t know when or if a colleague might be submitting an opposing opinion and, if so, who that colleague might be. In this case, however, I think I can make a pretty good guess that this release also went out to Robert Maxham and, based on our usually differing views about violinists and violin playing, plus what he’s said about Zino Francescatti in past reviews, I can almost guarantee the reader two quite different takes on this performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto.


First, let me say that of Francescatti’s recordings I’ve heard—admittedly not that many—there’s only one I really liked and would have recommended, had I been reviewing for Fanfare back then. That was his 1959 recording of the Brahms “Double” Concerto with cellist Pierre Fournier and Bruno Walter leading the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. Among my disliked Francescatti recordings was his Paganini First Concerto with Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic, coupled with a Saint-Saëns Third Concerto with Ormandy leading the Philadelphia Orchestra.


It’s hard to say exactly what turned me off Francescatti’s playing early on. It was at a time in the late 1950s, shortly after I first started learning the violin and listening to recordings that my ideas of what constituted ideal violin playing were being formed. Francescatti was touted as a virtuoso extraordinaire, a technician of such redoubtable accomplishment that he was compared favorably to Heifetz. Yet what I heard when I listened to Francescatti was a rich, silken tone that often turned hard and abrasive in technically challenging passages. More disturbing, though I couldn’t have verbalized it at the time, was what I now regard as a laissez-faire approach to rapid passagework—a sort of “close enough for government work” attitude, in which harmonics were missed, runs were uneven, and notes were often sloughed off. To my ear, Francescatti lacked the self-discipline of Heifetz and Milstein and the discretion of Oistrakh in knowing when to resist risk-taking that exceeded one’s limits.


Second, all of this may be of little relevance because—though Francescatti’s discography is probably more extensive than current listings would suggest—Columbia Records, the label for which Francescatti mainly recorded, decided that Isaac Stern was the more saleable violinist, thus curtailing Francescatti’s exposure on record, at least to American audiences.


Counting this current Hänssler release, to the best of my knowledge, there are five Francescatti versions of the Brahms concerto on record, all of them commercially available on CD. Compared to Oistrakh’s 15 recordings, documented in a 28:4 review, five seems like a modest number, but as suggested above, Francescatti may have been captured live in more performances of the work than are in general circulation; I don’t know. Of the five, however, this studio recording made in 1974 is the latest. The other four versions are Ormandy/Philadelphia, 1956 (mono); Mitropolous/Vienna Philharmonic, 1958 (mono); Bernstein/New York Philharmonic, 1961; and Leinsdorf/ORTF National Orchestra, 1969.


Francescatti was 72 when he joined Ernest Bour and SWR Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden and Freiburg for this venture. It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that his previously full-bodied tone has thinned a bit, and there seems to be a very slight but detectable right-hand tremor on sustained notes; listen carefully, for example, to the high A at bar 140. Also, some of the minor technical issues noted in his earlier recordings have now become real liabilities. The passage in chords beginning in bar 164, for instance, is choppily articulated and sounds a bit desperate in its grasping for the notes. Nonetheless, the violinist has lost none of his fearlessness in the face of danger. For a 28:4 review of Arabella Steinbacher’s Brahms, I plugged 24 versions of the concerto into a spreadsheet and then sorted them by timings. If I were to add this Francescatti performance to the mix, it wouldn’t be the fastest—at 36:03, that distinction still goes to Milstein with Fistoulari and the Philharmonia in a 1961 recording for EMI—but at 38:15, it ties Grumiaux’s 1958 recording with van Beinum and the Concertgebouw for seventh place on the list, still 15 seconds faster than Heifetz’s classic 1955 Reiner/Chicago account.


I hope I haven’t made this Francescatti Brahms sound worse than it is. If you’re willing to overlook a slip here, a mishap there, and a rough patch every now and then—all technical flaws which I believe were always present in Francescatti’s playing on earlier recordings—there are some nice things to be said of the performance as well. Conductor Bour and Francescatti share a rapturous vision of the score, bringing to it many moments of an almost ecstatic magnanimity. The lofty, angelic purity of Francescatti’s tone in the first movement’s post-cadenza measures (he plays the familiar Joachim cadenza, by the way) is absolutely transfixing.


So, even though I’ve expressed personal reservations about Francescatti’s playing in general, I acknowledge that he’s justly recognized as one of the 20th century’s great violinists, and I recommend this CD not just to Francescatti fans. Those who cherish Brahms’s Violin Concerto will also want this memento of what is probably the violinist’s last recorded performance of the work.


Brahms’s rustic, amiable A-Major Serenade is a generous addition to this already desirable disc, and considering it’s almost as long as the concerto, it would be ungenerous to call it filler. Ernest Bour is not a conductor I’ve had occasion to review before, but based on his contribution in the concerto and his reading of the serenade, I’d have to say that he has a real flair for Brahms. Unfortunately, Bour died in 2001, so we’re not likely to hear any more from him. But this is a glowing performance by a conductor and an orchestra on top form.


Sonically, both the concerto and the serenade are quite good, but the serenade, recorded four years later in 1978, is marginally better. It’s more open and has more air around it, which lends the serenade an appropriate outdoorsy atmosphere. Strongly recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

This is the first volume of Michael Korstick's recording of the complete piano works of Claude Debussy. The featured work is the well known first Book of "Preludes" together with rarities like "Toomai des Elephants" which was originally intended by Debussy for the second Book of "Preludes" but later discarded. Also featured is another Debussy discovery, the "Petite valse," dating from 1915. Korstick's delicate touch and idiomatic approach to every nuance of these suggestive scores will no doubt bring an exciting dimension to interpreting Debussy in the 21st century.

LISZT Piano Sonata. Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13. Valse oubliée No. 1. 6 Paganini Etudes. Au lac de Wallenstadt. Il penseroso • André Watts (pn) • HÄNSSLER CD 93.718 (77:08) Live: Schwetzingen 5/25/1986

This is a live concert, but the sound is on par with just about any studio recording, and there is no applause, or any other distraction, from the audience. Liszt has figured prominently in André Watts’s repertory, both on disc and in concert, and there is nothing in this recital that you won’t find on one of the two Liszt CDs that he recorded for EMI not long before. There are the expected benefits and hazards. Watts has an occasional moment of slightly (very slightly!) less than flawless fingerwork—which is not something one would expect on a disc recorded in a studio, of course. On the other hand, Watts is more spontaneous here than on the EMI discs, which present his pianism purring and powerful like the engine of a racing car. There is purring and power here too, but also a touch of the unexpected, and that makes this new release worth exploring, especially if you don’t want to invest in the pair of EMI releases. (They were reissued at a bargain price in the label’s Double Fforte series, but that two-CD set is no longer in print.)

I think it’s been a while since Watts released a new CD, and it is good to be reminded what a terrific pianist he was … and I hope still is. (He is still a few years from his 70th birthday, and holds a faculty position at Indiana University in Bloomington.) His Liszt Totentanz is one of the most electrifying piano recordings ever made, and it reveals him—as does the present release—as having supreme digital dexterity and a flair for old-school virtuosity. At the same time, he never has been an effect-mongering showoff, and the performances on this CD confirm that intelligence and good taste are part of his skill set as well. I’ve heard more cohesive readings of the Sonata in B Minor, it’s true, but the music certainly does not fall apart, and Watts always keeps the big picture in focus. Some might be surprised by his strong flair for the Magyar elements in the Hungarian Rhapsody; they should remember that Watts’s mother was Hungarian.

If you don’t have any of Watts’s Liszt, I’d recommend this highly. If you do, I’d still recommend it, although I don’t think it eclipses the studio recordings.

FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle