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Shostakovich: Symphony No 4 / Boreyko, Southwest German Rso
To complaints of sectionalism, both in the first and final movements, Boreyko’s reply might well be, “Your point?” He doesn’t downplay any of it. Instead, he uses its often dissociative blocks of content to deliberately create juxtapositions that shock, moments of quiet melancholy followed by instrumental screams or taunts. It’s as if he were shouting (with Shostakovich) at the audience to pay closer attention, to consider each panel in the triptych of brutality, mockery, and sullenness that he’s placed upon display. When the time is right, nothing is held back, and this becomes among the most uninhibited of available Fourths. At other moments, Boreyko reminds me occasionally of Jansons (Avie 2096) in the silken beauty he coaxes from the Stuttgart strings. But where Jansons makes that sound an end in itself, this conductor uses it to better conjure those points of relative emotional stability that Shostakovich repeatedly creates, and quickly destroys.
If I have a criticism, it is that the Scherzo is too deadpan. The coarse sarcasm of the winds and brass are taken straight, and the dissonances in the subsequent string fugue are slightly downplayed. The conductor builds an impressive climax to the movement, but he clearly views it as an emotional intermission between two lengthy, harrowing events. While sympathetic to the need to interject some ray of hope into the proceedings, I don’t find that this treatment works especially well. In the coda to the third movement, certainly; and Boreyko makes something powerful out of the side glance Shostakovich takes there at Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. But the Scherzo requires something darker and more incisive, in my opinion.
The rest of the album is given over to a short three-movement orchestral suite drawn from the composer’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. It is described on the jewel box cover as the world premiere recording of the original version, but nowhere inside is this discussed; and it’s the same suite present on Deutsche Grammophon 650702, issued last year. I find these three tiny excerpts tell us far less about the work than the lengthier conductor-arranged suites of Conlon and Runnicles. Still, as filler goes, they make light-hearted listening. Boreyko makes more of the score’s spikiness than Thomas Sanderling, and the Stuttgart RSO runs rings around the Russian PO.
Despite my expressed reservations, Boreyko’s Fourth moves in among my favorites. There it joins Kondrashin/Moscow PO, Rozhdestvensky/Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, and Sinaisky/BBC PO, all currently out of print. I find it slightly superior to Gergiev/Kirov Orchestra (Philips 470 842), where momentum trumps detail, but these are matters of personal taste. Both treatments are in excellent sound, and either will do for the modern Shostakovich collector looking for a first-rate performance of this fascinating work.
-- Barry Brenesal, FANFARE [11/2007]
BERLIOZ: Requiem, Op. 5
Chopin: Cello Sonata & Piano Trio
Liederabend 1968 / Arroyo, Hokanson
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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 plays Solo Recitals, 1950-1955
REVIEW:
Hungarian virtuoso Géza Anda (1921-1976) opens a recital derived from radio broadcasts from SWR Stuttgart with Haydn’s perky F Major Sonata (17 April 1950), given a sparkling bravura rendition. Anda’s pearly play and deft touch make themselves felt in every concerted bar, and the runaway Presto finale might be a minor meteor. Schumann ever maintained Anda’s devotion, and he often programmed Symphonic Etudes, including the free interpolation of the five posthumous variations. The rendition included here (2 October 1951) includes two of the posthumous etudes, nos. 4 and 5, inserted after the sixth and eighth of the traditional studies. The first exploits sweeping arpeggios and glissandi techniques; the latter opens a jeweled music-box filled with nectar crystals. The serenity yields to the following Etude, a staccato study in syncopations that becomes quite frantic. Etude X, for want of a better term, has always struck me as “Brahmsian” for its double octaves. The agitato mysteries of Etude XI have rarely been so rarified in their mist contours, except perhaps from Cherkassky. The Etude XII finale, besides its obvious, heroic bravura, exudes the Innigkeit requisite...
The Ravel waltzes, in their sturdy percussion, date from 19 May 1951. Anda does not spare the fortissimos nor the pedal, moving to extremes in the first two waltzes, from aggression to erotic insinuation. The dance marked “Presque lent--dans un sentiment intime” has its perfect executor in Anda, which rivals the classically-chiseled entry by Robert Casadesus. Lithe and sensuously nimble, the last two waltzes--Moins vif et Epilogue--combine Vienna glitter and Schubert’s intimate suggestiveness in Ravel’s idiosyncratic kaleidoscopic panoply. Rolf Liebermann’s 1951 Sonata (2 October 1951) marks one of the few pieces Anda programmed that post-date World War II. His “modern” repertory ceased, for the most part, with the 1945 Third Concerto of Bartok. Liebermann (1910-1999) begins his nine-minute work with a toccata-style Vivace with periodic moments of pointillist staccati. The heart of the piece is the Andante espessivo, rather angular and reminiscent of Ravel, Gershwin, and modal Poulenc.
The second disc is devoted to the 1955 (May 21) recital at Ludwigsburg, a venue frequented by Anda’s esteemed colleague, Clara Haskil. Anda opens with the First Ballade of Chopin, a reading of balanced intensities, gothic and introspective at once. The music’s fierce Neapolitan harmonies and inner tumult manage to find a noble repose in the course of its poetic declamation mid-way, only to yield to the Dionysiac dramaturgy of its late pages with a passionate abandon that belies Anda’s repute for “objectivity.”
Anda recorded the Op. 25 set of Chopin Etudes for EMI, and he often featured the complete ensemble as a concert staple. He plays the A-flat Major for its serene beauty, and thus sets the tone for the remainder, to be played in the classic style of Backhaus, for poetry and strength of form.
The Brahms E-flat Major intermezzo, a simple, nostalgic folk song evocation, makes the perfect commentary to all of the “learned” counterpoint of this evening’s colossal recital at Ludwigsburg, where the spirit of colleague Clara Haskil must have lingered nigh.
-- Audiophile Edition
Dvorak, A.: Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" / Carnival
Bruckner: Symphonies Nos. 3, 4, 6, 7 & 9 / Norrington, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln
| Sir Roger Norrington has been chief conductor of the former Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra RSO (today SWR Symphonieorchester) for thirteen years. During this time he caused internationally quite a stir with what got to be called "The Stuttgart Sound", a synthesis between historically informed performance and technical capabilities of a modern orchestra. Whether Mozart or Haydn, Bruckner or Brahms, Norrington's main focus laid on quick tempi, a "pure ton" (that is, vibratoless), articulation, seating plan and orchestra size as experienced by the composers themselves back in their time. With the present re-issue of his Bruckner SWR-recordings, Norrington sought to render the "human face" of Bruckner, not just the quasi-religious abstraction the public is sometimes given instead. His symphonies are secular works written with the Musikverein Vienna in mind. They contain descriptive music (journeys, nature, birds), dance music and humor, unexpected dramatic passages, and pauses. In his entirely individual style (culled from Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Wagner, but rarely sounding like any of them), Bruckner echoes memories of his own violin playing as a youth at village weddings, quite as much as those of the St. Florian organ loft. |
WEINBERG / SHOSTAKOVICH / TCHAIKOVSKY, B.: Cello Sonatas
Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3
Gulda: Sinfonie in G - Heidelberger Hazztage 1971
Gulda's “Symphony in G“, presented on this album, was discovered in the SWR archive in the course of research for the release of all the recordings the Austrian pianist made for the German Southwest Broadcasting Corporation (SWR). Until now nobody actually knew that this work existed for there are no indications of Gulda being commissioned or of a specific occasion for which he might have composed this symphony. Therefore, one listens here to the world première of a piece which – apart from being recorded in the studio on 20 November 1970 – has never been performed in public. At the beginning of the 1970s Gulda gave concerts that exclusively featured his own compositions. This also applies to his performance at the Heidelberger Jazztage in 1971, released here for the first time digitally and on album. Almost all of Gulda's jazz works, though often based on classical forms, cannot be played without knowledge of improvisation so as to “keep them away from bunglers” (as the pianist himself put it). One of Gulda’s few compositions without improvisation to be heard here is No. IV from the ten-part piano cycle “Play Piano Play”. “Prelude and Fugue" was probably Gulda’s favourite work and was the last piece of Gulda’s performance in Heidelberg. An exception on this album is Fritz Pauer's "Etude.” In 1966 Fritz Pauer won a prize in the jazz competition Gulda had initiated and so Gulda decided to include this work in the Heidelberg concert from 1971.
Zbigniew Seifert - live recordings 1973 & 1976
Debussy: Orchestral Works
Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 1-4
Mahler: Symphony No. 1
Les Ballets Russes, Vol. 5
Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 8
Kings of Swing, Op. 2 (Live)
KURTAG: Choral Works
Elgar: Enigma Variations, In the South & Introduction and Allegro / Norrington, Stuttgart Radio Symphony
British conductor Sir Roger Norrington lends impressive insight into three masterpieces by the great British composer Edward Elgar. The programme comprises Elgar's ever-popular "Enigma Variations", the thrilling overture "In the South,” and the refined sounds of his Introduction and Allegro for string quartet and string orchestra. Roger Norrington’s work on scores, on sound, on orchestra size, seating and playing style, has had a profound effect on the way 19th century music is now perceived and, not surprisingly, he is in great demand by symphony orchestras world-wide. He works regularly with orchestras in Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg, Amsterdam, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and London. He is Chief Conductor of the Radio Sinfonie Orchester in Stuttgart and of the Camerata Academica in Salzburg. He is closely associated with the London Philharmonic and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment which has, since January 1997, taken over the work of the London Classical Players.
Wagner: Siegfried, Act III (abridged)
LESSING, Kolja: Violin Music From Israel
Benny Goodman Orchestra feat. Anita O'Day
A singer with an exciting presence and a voice to immerse yourself in. A band that lit up with high wattage a repertoire including both standards and popular songs. A band leader who had his ensemble under control through proven discipline and could, when needed, take the lead as a soloist, but tended to hold back amidst his all-stars. The result a mixture that whisked the concert hall in Freiburg (Germany) for one evening in October 1959 into a wonderful world of successful jazz entertainment and sent the audience out into the night with an earworm.
KAGEL: Rrrrrrr... / Anagrama / Mitternachtsstuk
Bartok: The Works for Violin and Piano / Becker-Bender, Nagy
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REVIEW:
These players don’t seem to be among those who conceive Bartók’s music primarily as a rigorous exploration of dissonance; and their moving it from center stage, though hardly underplaying its jagged power (as in the Solo Violin Sonata), allows it to speak naturally and, in general, cogently. Highly recommended to admirers of the composer’s paradigm-shattering synthesis.
– Fanfare
Michael Gielen Edition, Vol. 3 (1989-2005): Brahms - Symphonies and Concertos
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REVIEW:
Gielen proposes we listen to Brahms for the sake of his musical arguments rather than for the lustrous sounds that he's capable of conjuring, an approach that seems eminently sensible, and a valid alternative to various fleshier interpretive options.
– Gramophone
