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

Mahler’s cantata Das klagende Lied today constitutes a veritable rarity in concert programmes – in an age that without contradiction recognizes Mahler as one oft he most eminent milestones in the music history of the late 19th and early 20th century. Based on a horror tale written by Mahler himself, this large-scale, vocal symphonic work forms the beginning of Mahler’s more familiar oeuvre. Mahler, at the age of only 20, submitted the score for the Beethoven Prize at the Society of the Friends of Music in Vienna. He did not receive this prize, however, and subsequently made several revisions. It was finally premiered by the composer in Vienna on 17 February 1901 only. The ‚mixed version‘ (also employed for this recording) consisting of the original first movement and the revised version of the other two parts, became customary in the course of the great Mahler Renaissance in the 1960s. The presented live capture with the 2019 deceased Michael Gielen – like Mahler not only a conductor but also a composer – with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra was taken in June 1990 in the Konzerthaus Vienna.

REVIEW:

This performance of Mahler’s youthful horror story realizes every gruesome detail with positively sadistic relish. There are other fine versions in the catalog, but this live version is the most graphic, exciting, and true to Mahler’s youthful vision. Impactful live sound, great singing, great conducting—this is now the one to get.

– ClassicsToday.com

Includes song(s) by Hermann Reutter. Soloists: Doris Soffel, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Axel Bauni, Aribert Reimann.

Following on from the last Knappertsbusch release of a programme of pure Beethoven featuring Backhaus and the Vienna Philharmonic dating from 1954, Orfeo's new album offers a recording of an entire concert performed in 1962. This recording features Geza Anda and the Cologne Radio Orchestra, one of the few concert orcehstras that Knappertsbusch conducted at the time apart from the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, and using the highly professional recording technology of Westdeutscher Rundfunk. The programme of this concert is again a Beethoven piano concerto, the passionate Third in C minor. The pianist Geza Anda, then aged 41, was the diametric opposite as a performer to the 74-year-old Hans knappertsbusch.

Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist Bela Bartok is considered to be one of the most important composers of the twentieth century. He and Franz Liszt to this day reign as Hungary’s greatest composers who have ever lived. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which would go on to become ethnomusicology. Some of Bartók’s best-known works are collected on this album. All of them have written music history and decisively influenced classical Modernism. The composition of these works extends from 1927 (String Quartet No. 3) to 1945 (Piano Concerto No. 3).

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This new album is a stroke of luck. For 15 years Nina Stemme has been reinvigorating Wagner’s female roles with the dramatic soul and vocal power previously attained perhaps only by her compatriot Birgit Nilsson. Nina Stemme’s role interpretations are met with great acclaim among both audience and critics, and 2013 she was the first recipient of the Opera Award for Best Female Singer. Nina Stemme was appointed Swedish Court Singer 2006, Austrian Kammersängerin 2012, and she has been selected ”Singer of the Year” twice, 2005 and 2012, in the German magazine Opernwelt. On this release she performs works from Tristan und Isolde, Siegfried, Hollander, and Die Walkure.

REVIEW:

MOZART Symphonies: No. 25; No. 40. Piano Concerto No. 14 • Wolfgang Sawallisch, cond; Friedrich Gulda (pn); Concertgebouw O • ORFEO 795 091, mono (69:37) Live: Salzberg 7/2/1958

This concert places the E? Piano Concerto (K 449) between the two G-Minor Symphonies (K 183 and K 550), resulting in an artfully constructed Mozart program. For a monaural recording, the sound quality is good, although a bit damped. Audience noise is not present except between movements and as applause at the end of each work.

Sawallisch’s beat is strong throughout, and orchestral clarity is good enough to allow part-writing transparency. Tempos are generally rapid, so that nothing ever drags. The opening movement tempo of K 550, however, could use a little braking. Exposition repeats are observed in the first and last movements of K 183 and in the first movement of K 550. The last movement of K 550, however, is played without repeats, and this leaves impressions of imbalance and unfinished business. Obviously, the conductor thought otherwise, and I bow to his judgment.

Friedrich Gulda at 28 and Wolfgang Sawallisch at 35 were, in 1958, among the most promising young pianists and conductors of the time. This account of Mozart’s Concerto No. 14 is a living example of that promise. The conductor reached great heights in the coming years, eventually being named conductor laureate of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The pianist was a maverick with a penchant for challenging the musical establishment and daring to display a strong interest in jazz. He eventually faded as a performer who was once sought-after by the more traditional concertgoers. His death in 2000 at age 69 revived interest in his early recordings. In the Piano Concerto, this disc offers a snapshot of promise of two artists in vintage Mozart. Twenty years earlier in a studio recording, 35-year-old Rudolf Serkin and conductor Adolf Busch and the Adolf Busch Chamber Players offered this Concerto in a different, more quickly paced style, but still as vintage Mozart. In both performances, there is no tempo tampering, no dynamics distortion, and no excesses of expression—there is just beautiful Mozart expressed by beautiful phrase shaping. The closest to these standards in a modern recording is Murray Perahia’s with the English Chamber Orchestra. Perahia’s tempos are closer to Serkin’s than to Gulda’s in the first movement, but closer to Gulda’s than to Serkin’s in the last movement. Where Serkin and Perahia perform with chamber orchestras, Gulda performs with a full, but suitably reduced, orchestra that Sawallisch never allows to overpower either the music or the piano sound.

This is a memorable Salzberg Festival program from which one comes away with a deeper understanding of Mozart. This is a very good disc to have.

FANFARE: Burton Rothleder

The whims of opera fans are legendary, and if justice were to be served, soprano Krassimira Stoyanova would be as famous as Anna Netrebko (perhaps) and Angela Gheorghiu (definitely). Hers is a grand sound, with metal behind it, formidable pitch-accuracy, and fine insights into the characters she’s portraying. She eschews exaggeration–possibly to her detriment: she easily could milk many of the arias here (Adriana’s opening monolog, Manon Lescaut’s final-act spiel) for that extra, Olivero/Scotto emotion, but she sticks very closely to written note values and dynamics. Her use of portamento is echt Italian, and her voice is made for this big-boned music when need be, and she can sing sweetly as well: her Liu is lovely, as is the start of “Un bel di”.

There’s great warmth in her singing of Adriana’s two arias; her “La mamma morta” is filled with tragedy, and she sings the heck out of Fidelia’s hand-wringing aria from Puccini’s Edgar. The lengthy scene from Mascagni’s Lodoletta is a welcome rarity, and she’s thoroughly involving. Wally’s aria may lack Callas’ unspeakable sadness, but it reaches great heights; ditto for her “Vissi d’arte”.

I get the feeling that if her conductor had been more of a dramatist than the accompanist Pavel Baleff is here, this fine CD would have worked its way into “magnificent”. I’d like to add that a bit more hysteria/overt emotionalism would not hurt–I saw her Aida live at the Met last season and admired it greatly, but even then I wished she had been a touch more earthy. As it is, this CD gives great pleasure and is well recorded. Stoyanova’s is a voice to hear.

– ClassicsToday (Robert Levine)

The Austrian composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) studied both piano and composition with his great countryman Mozart, and was also a friend of Beethoven, of which aspects of these relationships we can hear all throughout his septets. We can hear, too, why Robert Schumann's generation praised him so highly. As heard in these recordings, here is a Classical master on the cusp of the Romantic era, original in instrumentation and technique and subtle in his harmonies.

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Tchaikovsky Bavarian State Opera; Shuraitis The Queen of Spades

In this 1983 performance, Maazel conducts Beethoven's liberation opera full of energy and precision, partnered by a highly dramatic Leonore, a Florestan in heroic voice and the Vienna Philharmonic in brilliant form.

The longer the modern era lasts, the older “New Music” grows, and the more versatile it becomes. Upon closer listening, one quickly becomes aware of the many byways and backroads of the genre, in addition to the principal trends, and one composer who trod his own path decisively, with great success, is Gottfried von Einem. Since his breakthrough with the premiere of his opera Dantons Tod (the death of Danton) at the Salzburg Festival in 1947, through to the composer’s death in 1996, many of his works have been performed on the international music stage, as witness recordings featuring the likes of Böhm, Karajan and George Szell on this label. However, everyone knows that for a composer to continue to develop his artistic skills he needs more than glittering premieres, and so the Orfeo label is delighted to mark the 100th birthday of the composer born in 1918 by releasing, alongside other new recordings of his works from its catalogue, a retrospective of von Einem’s work featuring the very best performers of today.

The earliest work on this new release is the choral work with orchestra Stundenlied, which originates from a highly interesting cultural and historical source: a collaboration with the playwright Bertolt Brecht who from 1949 lived in the German Democratic Republic. The story of Christ’s passion is witnessed and presented in a popular, naive way as a dreadful event and brilliantly depicted by von Einem using simple and stringent compositional means to produce a work that is haunting and authoritative, performed here by the Singverein and Philharmonic Orchestra of Vienna under Franz Welser-Möst.

Although Luciano Pavarotti only took on a few roles during his career, his performances rewrote history and set a benchmark for vocalists that would follow him. This 2-disc set is a live recording of Pavarotti in his role as Riccardo in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. The Vienna State Opera Orchestra accompanies the vocalists in a raw, emotional performance under Claudio Abbado.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber (1782-1871) was long considered as one of the most typically French and most successful opera composers of the 19th century. His overtures were once favourites of the light Classical repertoire. This opera francais, first performed on 3 May 1825, relates to the venerable tradition of the rescue opera, topical since the French Revolution. Both book and score were equally successful. The opera represents a decisive development in Aubers style, a turning away from imitation of Rossini to Boieldieu’s simplicity and thereby to a specifically French tradition. It was the first of Auber’s mature opera-comiques, an international success, characterized by an Italianate sparkle with French grace and lyricism. The work remained in the repertoire from 1825 to 1896 and was performed 525 times. By the 1850s it had been translated into German, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Czech and Hungarian. On German stages this opera remained one of Auber’s most popular works, given as late as 1950 in Vienna.

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