This is the first release ever of all the Bruckner symphony recordings that Hans Rosbaud made for SDR (now SWR). Hans Rosbaud is remembered chiefly as a committed performer of contemporary music. This resulted from his regular appearances in Donaueschingen, where he conducted either the world or regional premieres of works by Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. Crucially important was his conducting of the first concert performance of Arnold Schönberg’s opera Moses and Aaron in Hamburg on 12 March 1954. However he devoted equal attention to the works of Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler. which is all the more reason to take a closer look also at his other recordings, in this case, at his Bruckner interpretations. Rosbaud produced performances of all Bruckner's symphonies for the radio broadcasting company Sudwestfunk (SDR), apart from the First, which he never conducted.

This recording contains the complete recital given by Clara Haskil at Ludwigsburg Castle in April, 1953. The Debussy works and the encores have never been previously released. The performance is musically outstanding and features engaging repertoire, thus being an impressive record of a legendary musician. The eminent Romanian pianist, Clara Haskil began, her career as a child prodigy and entered at the Bucharest Conservatory when she was 6. At age 7 she was sent to Vienna and profited from the tutelage pf Richard Robert (whose memorable pupils included Rudolf Serkin and George Szell) and briefly with Ferruccio Busoni. She was only 7 (or 10) when she made her public debut there. At 10 she was sent to Paris to continue her training with Morpain, and, at 12, entered the Paris Conservatoire. A celebrated interpreter of classical and early romantic repertoire, many considered Clara the foremost interpreter of W. A. Mozart in her time. She was also widely known for her interpretation of Beethoven and Schumann, both of which can be heard on this recital.

This album showcases one of Ginette Neveu's last recordings of Beethoven's concerto, recorded only weeks before her death. The Brahms Concerto was recorded live in 1948 and the Beethoven Concerto was also recorded live in 1949.

Live Recording from July 7th, 1988, Karlsruhe (Germany). A Jazz evening that had everything: intimacy and exaltation, subtleties and fireworks, modernism and Old School. With his predilection for the piano trio as a central form of expression, Michel Petrucciani was out of step with the mid-eighties. He was a driven man, playing in his most active period more than one hundred concerts a year, with the feeling deep inside him that, given his illness, he had less time available than other people, a feeling which he repeatedly mentioned in talks with friends and journalists. Petrucciani wanted to condense his music, releasing energy under tension in an awaited discharge. The bassist Gary Peacock and the drummer Roy Haynes were the perfect partners. One had been socialized in post bop, sowed his wild oats in Free-Time and later, as a partner of Bill Evans, Paul Bley and Keith Jarrett among others, perfected his trio playing. The other had personally experienced the birth of bebop and was one of the busiest jazz luminaries in his field.

This recording of the 1993 Schwetzingen Festival has already achieved cult status. The then, 78 year old Sviatoslav Richter plays for the first and last time in public Gershwin's jazzy Concerto in F-sharp. Gershwin's works had always been suspect under the Soviet regime. All the more surprising was Richter's decision to perform this work in his maturity. Needless to say, Richter never made a formal, studio recording of this work. It is not only a unique recording, but also a document of Richter's expansive interest in all musical repertoires than came under his purview. The Fifth Piano Concerto by Camille Saint-Saëns was eclipsed by the same composer's more popular "Second" Concerto throughout Richter's performing career. With the exception of one album, he never again recorded this work and there is no record that he ever again performed it internationally. With this concert, there can be no dispute that we are dealing with a real rarity.

SCHUMANN: Romances and Ballads

This is the fifth installment of the SWR Classic series dedicated to Hans Rosbaud. It contains Tchaikovsky's symphonies no. 4 and 5 - the only ones Rosbaud has recorded for the SWR. Especially no. 5 can be regarded as a reference recording along other famous interpretations. "He is not only a virtuoso pianist, but has more or less mastered nearly all orchestral instruments. That puts him in a position to provide the individual members of the orchestra with helpful advice, which-nowadays- hardly any conductor is able to do. As these qualities go along with striving for the ideal, a rare capacity for enthusiasm as well as with an iron will he does not hesitate to impose, Hans Rosbaud is an inestimable and somehow indispensable institution." (Bernhard Sekles, Rosbaud's former professor of composition)

Annie Fischer enjoys a singular reputation within the great tradition of Hungarian pianists due to her deeply moving and romantically intimate performances. She became famous and admired on account of her uncompromising spiritually absorbing interpretations. Like many other musicians, Fischer only left behind a few studio recordings however the few that were left became benchmark interpretations.

Les Vendredis is a collection of string quartets by several Russian composers, who played a key role at the famous Friday evening concerts organized by the music publisher Belaieff at the end of the 19th century. Alexander Glazunov, Anatoli Liadov and Rimsky-Korsakov are among the illustrious names that formed that musical society. Belaieff, son and heir of a wealthy wood trader, was a music enthusiast and an excellent violist. Thus, it was only natural that he hosted string quartet concerts in his house and commissioned composers for new string quartet works. Some of these works were published in 1899 by Belaieff’s own publishing house, which he had founded in the 1880s. The works of this collection continue to fascinate to this day, but are, unfortunately, only rarely performed. The Szymanowski Quartet, who are known for their exciting and cleverly compiled concert programmes, perform this repertoire with both pleasure and passion. Their technical perfection suits the musical challenges and their soulful performance highlights the lyrical emotions of these Russian musical treasures.

"For this May 1973 concert, the two veteran instrumentalists, Josef Suk and János Starker, chose the then only 27-year-old Rudolf Buchbinder as their pianist to complete the trio. The performances are full of sensitive – and when necessary – forceful music-making. Three famed soloists playing masterworks from the piano trio repertoire A further highlight from the Schwetzingen SWR Festival concert series Musically outstanding presentations"

Paul Hindemith was an all-round musician, virtuoso violist, composer and educator. He mastered all the instruments of the orchestra to a more or less professional level of proficiency, all of which was more than adequate preparation for conducting too. He was strongly influenced in his conducting by Wilhelm Furtwängler, placing the highest value on the living tradition of interpretation. This release features his 1958 recording of Bruckner’s radiant Seventh Symphony; the mature master locating Bruckner’s achievements as a high point on the continuum between Bach and his own work.

Classical Music

When the Beaux Arts Trio played this concert in 1960, the soon to be world famous ensemble was only 5 years old. During the next 48 years and several changes in membership, the Beaux Arts would become recognized as one of the greatest classical music ensembles in the world, under the constant leadership of Menahem Pressler. In September 2008, the Beaux Arts Trio played it's final concert - but here you can admire their beginnings.

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.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Mahler: Symphony No. 4

Henryk Szeryng, once regarded a supreme master, has faded from memory, his fame not comparable to that of Heifetz or Oistrakh, Milstein or Menuhin, although often mentioned along with them. His performances set standards; the major record companies vied for his favor. In 1955 Szeryng played with the Sinfonie Orchester des S�dwestfunks under Hans Rosbaud. These live recordings of a Romantically-edited Nardini Concerto in E minor and Vieuxtemps' popular fourth concerto were followed in March 1957 by studio recordings of Ravel's "Tzigane" and Schumann's neglected Violin Concerto.

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

Introducing François-Xavier Roth - the charismatic new Principal Conductor of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg in his debut recording as part of the SWRmusic/haenssler CLASSIC collaboration that has produced so many critically acclaimed recordings. This beautiful program features two Late Romantic paeans to nature: Mahler's popular First Symphony and Anton Webern's early, lushly scored tone poem, "Im Sommerwind".

Rihm: Dis-Kontur / Lichtzwang / Sub-Kontur

Classical Music

The orchestra leader, composer, arranger and pianist of world renown recorded 13 of her own pieces with the SWR Big Band, covering a broad spectrum from bebop powerplay to soft yearning ballads. Akiyoshi's compositional style is unmistakable. She mixes bebop, & big band jazz with Japanese elements of music. In May 2007 she had her first opportunity to work with the SWR Big Band.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Founded 1998, the Bennewitz Quartet, from the Czech Republic, have become one of the classical music world's top international chamber ensembles, a status confirmed not only by prestigious competition victories but also by the acclaim of the critics. Having recently recorded an all-Dvor�k program on two CDs (Cypresses) for hanssler in 2012, the ensemble returns to the music of this Bohemian/American master with two quartets for strings, both of which are important milestones in the composer's �uvre: No. 10 in E-flat Major, op. 51, and No. 13 in G Major, op. 106.