Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

SLAVONIC DANCES

This recording by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Marin Alsop is the first of three discs of Dvorak symphonies taken from live performances at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

Mackerras unseated? This magical version from Australia comes close

Chandos certainly has guts, going toe-to-toe with Mackerras’s Gramophone Award-winning set. Hickox’s Australian forces need not fear the comparison. Cheryl Barker may not have the refulgent tones of Renée Fleming on Decca (who has?) but she is even more moving in conveying Rusalka’s desperation. Mackerras is still my must-own, but this runs it close.

-- Gramophone [3/2008]

Overtures and Finales

Selection includes Reminiscences of Václav Talich.
Selection includes Václav Talich rehearsing Dvorák's Cello Concerto.
Selection includes Speech by Václav Talich on his name day.
Selection includes Václav Talich rehearsing Dvorák's "New World" Symphony.
All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

R. STRAUSS Serenade for Winds. Symphonie for Winds. DVO?ÁK Serenade for Winds • Sabine Meyer Wind Ens • CAVI-MUSIC 553014 (70:14)


In the relatively insular world of classical music for wind ensemble, Mozart’s Serenade No. 10, “Gran Partita” is the towering colossus that profoundly influenced nearly all of the similar works that followed, though it must be stated that the literature for combinations of wind instruments is certainly limited. This is not a phenomenon on the level of the effect of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde on virtually every subsequent composer who was forced to deal with it in one way or another. The three pieces on this CD are important pillars of the wind-ensemble literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The music of Strauss and Dvo?ák reflects the influence of Mozart, but in their own highly personal and individual ways. The Strauss pieces essentially apply bookends to his career. The Serenade, op. 7, written at the age of 16, displays the expected rich, romantic, harmonic textures and a flowing melodic line, but there are also hints of Mozart’s “Gran Partita.” Strauss was apparently not completely satisfied with the scoring of his youthful Serenade for four horns and nine other wind instruments. Following the completion of his last opera Capriccio , he returned to the wind ensemble near the end of his life and produced the unconventionally large-scaled Symphonie for Wind Instruments (also known as “Cheerful Workshops”). It is elaborately scored for 12 winds, in addition to the same four horns utilized in his youthful Serenade . The Symphonie explores many of the brilliant and characteristic wind effects that appeared in many of his major orchestral works and operas throughout his career.


Dvo?ák’s well-known Serenade is filled with references to various Bohemian dances, but the influence of Mozart is also there. This is especially apparent in the Andante, where he ingeniously metamorphoses the melodic contours and bass line of the Adagio from the “Gran Partita” into something that is all his own, as an apparent homage to Mozart. The Sabine Meyer Wind Ensemble plays the music nearly flawlessly in an affectionate but low-key sort of way. The effect is augmented by sound that is quite different from the Eastman Wind Ensemble’s demonstration recording that includes Mozart’s “Gran Partita” and Strauss’s early Serenade . As expected, Mercury gives us analytical clarity with an up front aural perspective that clearly emphasizes the subtle timbral nuances and colorations of the different wind combinations. This approach also presents a lot of clicking and clacking that will be annoying to some listeners.


This Cavi-Music CD is recorded with a more distant mid-hall perspective in what sounds like a larger hall with a darker tonal color. The instruments sound more congealed and at times slightly muffled, but there is little or no audible clicking. I prefer the Mercury approach because of its tonal and timbral accuracy, immediacy, and presence, but that is also a matter of taste. The response of many listeners to what is undoubtedly great wind music, played excellently, will be about sonority. The sound of a wind ensemble is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. If you like it, you will undoubtedly enjoy this well-chosen and well-performed concert.


FANFARE: Arthur Lintgen

Classical Music

Includes work(s) by various composers, Henry Thacker Burleigh, Henry Holden Huss. Soloists: Rachel Barton Pine, Matthew Hagle.

Classical Music

Includes work(s) by Antonín Dvorák.

DVORAK, A.: Rusalka (Trotschel, H. Schindler, Keilberth) (19

Experience the lush sound of the Dresden Piano Trio performing classic trios by composers Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Janáček, and Josef Suk. This recording evokes the passionate nature of the repertoire, creating a memorable musical journey for the listener.

The Dresden Piano Trio, comprised of Roglit Ishay, piano, Kai Vogler, violin and Peter Burns, violoncello, was founded following a cooperation between Kai Vogler and Roglit Ishay at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. The ensemble debuted in 1990 in the Chamber Music Hall of the Berlin Philharmonie. The trio has given many concerts throughout Germany and the rest of Europe. The repertoire includes all the major works for piano trio from the late Romantic era to the early 20th century.

Classical Music

Classical Music

REVIEW:

This is the world premiere recording of Hindemith’s Piano Music with Orchestra (piano left hand), commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein in 1922 and completed within six months. Wittgenstein—a musical reactionary—never played it; the commissioning contract gave him exclusive performance rights for his lifetime, and he prohibited anyone else from doing so. After his death in 1961, his estate ignored all requests about the piece; in fact, it had lost the score. A flawed copy of the original manuscript turned up in a Pennsylvania farmhouse in 2002 and was successfully coordinated with sketches in the Hindemith archives. Fleisher gave the first performance with the Berlin Philharmonic in December 2004. Hindemith was just emerging from his avant-garde youth at that time. The radical firebrand still shows up in three of the four movements, which are played without pause.

The introduction is aggressive, loud, and brassy, but it does suggest the more staid Hindemith to come. The second movement is filled with outbursts from a large percussion group. A mysterious slow movement features a long duet between piano and English horn, which later gives way to a flute; it is reminiscent of the aborted love scene in the composer’s 1926 opera Cardillac. Fleisher believes that the movement’s basso continuo, which consists of 12 quarter notes (repeated) and uses 11 of the 12 tones, was poking fun at Schoenberg’s recently devised dodecaphonic system. The finale returns to the wild, nose-thumbing style of Hindemith’s 1920 opera Das Nusch-Nuschi.

Fleisher “owns” the left-hand repertoire, and is in this case the unique interpreter. He convinces one listener that this is exactly how the piece should go, revealing everything it has to say. The Curtis orchestra supplies solid, reliable accompaniment. If a few solos are not quite as beautiful as those from the New York Philharmonic, Eschenbach’s views of the music seem more sensitive than Maazel’s and the students more comfortable with the 85-year-old music than the New Yorkers.

Dvorak’s “New World” is played to top professional standards—the strings are gorgeous, as is Rebekah Daley’s first-desk French horn—but I don’t find the reading very interesting. The recorded sound is merely decent and a bit congested, far from the brilliance Ondine achieved for Martinu’s Memorial to Lidice, also a live performance, but admittedly an SACD. The booklet lists every player but oddly gives no credit for English horn, despite that instrument’s important solos in both works. The program writers for both the New York Philharmonic and this disc may have had no opportunity to study Hindemith’s score or hear his music, as they concentrate on its fascinating history.

--James H. North, Fanfare

Classical Music

Classical Music

DVORAK : Slavonic Dances and Rhapsodies

Classical Music

“Bohemian Stories" encapsulates an intimate introspection of some "musical tales" from the Bohemian Romantic chamber music repertoire for violin and piano. In the 19th century we are spectators to an awakening of national consciousness that spreads to literary salons and theaters through the tendency of musicians to want to emancipate themselves from the ways of the hegemonic musical art, through a revaluation of popular heritage, highlighting characters of different historical-musical traditions. Freedom, independence, political autonomy, love of country and the security of one's own identity are the main driving forces of this era. The intent of the musicians of this era is to create a style that will elevate the country's musical language to a musical language of art, infusing it with new elements and an authentic national "character." In Bohemia, then included in the Habsburg Empire, this nationalist movement has a particular intensity, and by the late nineteenth century one can speak of a true "Czech style."

Among the earliest composers devoted to the exaltation of the particular pitch of the Czech melody we have Bedrich Smetana: a style of descriptive music writing in which he tells stories inspired by national legends, very remote historical events, natural landscapes, folk motifs, and rhythms of village dances. The other distinguished representative of Czech music of the second half of the 19th century is Antonín Dvorák, who enriched his vast musical output with elements drawn from the folk heritage not only of the Czech but also of other Slavic peoples (of Slovakia, Moravia, Ukraine, Russia). Leoš Janácek, that poor professor of music in the Moravian province, with a life without any great adventures or illustrious acquaintances, without too much travel and without recognition until the age of sixty where he totally identified with his inner self and his worldview. And the long story of this life of artistic struggles is told by him through his musical work. A hereditary prince of A. Dvorák, Josef Suk is a proponent of a particular nuance of late Bohemian Romanticism that is distinctly coloristic, stretching harmony to the utmost to create a more creative and personal style. Unlike his compatriots, he does not include too many references to traditional Czech music in his compositions.

“Rachel” the debut album from American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørenson, showcases the depth and variety of her incredible voice, which leading French daily Le Monde cites as “without a doubt one of the most impressive voices in the opera world.” The album includes key arias and scenes from Verdi, Mozart, Puccini, Dvořák, and Lehár that reflect her stellar career performing on the world’s most prestigious opera stages. Ms. Willis-Sørensen is joined by one of her vocal idols on the famous duet from La Bohème: tenor Jonas Kaufmann, here making his first guest appearance of this kind.

The new album sees this immensely gifted singer, who possesses an impressive vocal and dramatic range, explore a wide swathe of repertoire to showcase her versatility, vocal depth, and artistry. An intimate portrait of the artist at this stage in her career, each piece included on the album was carefully selected by Ms. Willis-Sørensen as she presents a collection of her favorite arias and scenes that she hopes will move the listener as they have moved her. Her dramatic expressivity and vocal virtuosity are both on display in full force, in arias ranging from the album’s centerpiece Verdi scenes, with weighty roles such as Desdemona in Otello, Leonora in Il Trovatore and Violetta in La Traviata, to the ‘Vilja-Lied’ from Lehár’s operetta The Merry Widow and ‘Song to the Moon’ from Dvořák’s Rusalka.

The three compositions on this album were all created at turning points in Dvořák’s life, when radical changes in his situation impacted his creative career. His Serenade for Strings was composed in 1875, the year the impoverished musician became a successful composer almost overnight. Each of its five movements is a variation on ternary (A–B–A) form. The resourcefulness with which Dvořák invents novel ways of returning from the middle section to the opening motive and key is astounding.

Silent Woods has much to do with Dvorak’s relocation to America. He was engaged to establish and direct a new National Conservatory in New York. Based on his now established ability to blend Czech folk music with large-scale classical forms, it was hoped he would do the same in his new post with American folk music. In 1892, before leaving his home for the US, Dvorak gave something of a farewell tour of Czech cities, writing the cello version of Silent Woods for performance on these recitals. Ten years later, Dvorak created the version for cello and orchestra recorded here. At the conclusion of his time in New York and on his return to Bohemia, Dvorak was focused particularly on writing his Cello Concerto. At first believing the cello an unsuitable instrument for concertante music, his mind changed on hearing a concerto by American composer Victor Herbert; Dvořák’s masterpiece took on definitive form in 1895.