Award-winning composer Elena Ruehr’s Avie Records debut, Averno, introduced three of her big and bold works for choir and orchestra. For her follow up, Ruehr scales down to intimate solo and chamber works for strings and piano, all with references to older music in some way. Baroque elements infuse Klein Suite for solo violin, Prelude Variations for viola and piano, and The Scarlatti Effect for piano trio. The three movements of the jazz-tinged Second Violin Sonata, are dedicated to people who have influenced Ruehr’s work: her composition teacher William Bolcom, jazz teacher Eddie Russ, and Oscar Peterson whom Ruehr met on New Year’s Eve 1980. Adrienne and Amy was written in honour of the pioneering American composer Amy Beach and her biographer Adrienne Fried Block. The virtuosic and lyrical title track for solo cello was inspired by Nobel Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani school pupil and education activist. Boston-based Ruehr, whose wide-ranging works are performed from coast to coast, teaches at MIT. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

REVIEWS:

A gorgeous-sounding collection of Elena Ruehr’s lyrical and modern chamber music.

This collection of recent (1997 to 2012) chamber music by Elena Ruehr is a glorious-sounding and exquisitely performed disc. The reproduction is a perfect combination of detail and reverberation that is mesmerizing. As I mentioned in a previous review of an orchestral disc of music by this Guggenheim fellow, the music here is full of resplendent melodies that she describes as “the most complex and human of musical experiences.” Her background as a dancer provides her music with a rhythmic pulse, yet there’s depth here. “The idea is that the surface be simple, the structure complex,” she explains.

A common element in these works is the composer’s reference to older music and musicians who have taught and inspired these chamber works. The album title, Lift (2013)was inspired by Nobel Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai, the student activist who was shot by a Taliban gunman for promoting education and equal rights for women. She survived and has become an international spokeswoman for her cause. Its dedicatee, cellist Jennifer Kloetzel (of the Cypress String Quartet), is the soulful performer of this work that combines lyricism with sincerity that reflects Malala’s cause. The Second Violin Sonata’s (2012) three movements are tributes to the composer’s musical mentors: her teacher William Balcom; jazz pianist and composer Eddie Russ who taught her as a teenager and Oscar Peterson, who Ruehr met in 1980. It’s a jazz-inflected work that expresses a variety of emotions: contemplation; plaintive musings and funky utterances.

This is a collection of chamber music that reflects the current age of tonality with enough modern techniques to make it interesting.

-- Audiophile Edition

‘Neglected Treasures’ is the second release on Ondine by Anastasia Injushina, an award-winning pianist known for the poetry and sensitivity of her playing. + Featuring some of the lesser-known aspects of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756–91) piano music, this is repertoire particularly suited to her interpretive talents. + Ms. Injushina has made numerous radio and television recordings for such broadcasting companies as ARD, Bayerischer Rundfunk and Finnish YLE, performed at several international music festivals and is AD for her own Helsinki Chamber Music Festival.

The tragically early death from illness of Italian composer Mario Pilati (1903-38) abruptly terminated a career marked by rapid and deserving success despite early struggles both familial and financial. + This Tactus release, highlighting select piano works both solo and accompanied, features the playing of the young Italian pianist Giovanni Nesi (b. 1986). + He can be heard unaccompanied in Pilati’s two books of Bagatelles, and with the Orchestra Nazionale Artes in the composer’s Suite for Piano and Strings.

These arrangements for string orchestra of works by Alban Berg take their cue from Berg himself: he arranged three of the six movements of the Lyric Suite for string orchestra; the Dutch composer Theo Verby arranged the other three. The CD includes an arrangement of Berg’s Piano Sonata for strings by Wijnand van Klaveren. Ernst Kovacic arranged Berg’s early works especially for this recording. The arrangements chart Berg’s development as a composer, from prentice pieces composed under the tutelage of Schoenberg to the rich, mature style of one of his masterpieces, the Lyric Suite, written to express an impassioned and illicit love. Ernst Kovacic is one of Austria’s best-known violinists as well as a conductor. Among the composers who have written works for him are Krenek, Holloway, Gruber and Schwertsik. Ernst Kovacic and the NRM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra’s previous Toccata release of music by Ernst Krenek (TOCC 0199), was received with universal enthusiasm, the reviewer for Fanfare writing: ‘This Toccata Classics CD is a model of fine production values…(and) magisterial performances…an absolute must for Krenek fanciers’.

REVIEW:

The Lyric Suite is played complete. It gains from the extra players, not only in obvious richness of sound, but in nuances of phrasing. The arrangements accomplish a broad range of expressive tonecolor, with nearly every conceivable string effect on display. In the trickier parts where there are several extremely chromatic legato lines playing against one another, they play accurately and in tune. The album is a curiosity for a limited audience, but they’ll be happy.

-- American Record Guide

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“These heartfelt works are ideally suited to the open, expressive richness of the St John's, Cambridge choir. 'A Sad Pavan for these distracted times' is one of three pieces played by organ scholar Freddie James – a name to watch.” – The Observer (UK)

[T]ruly sumptuous. Although the standout solos sound as young as you would expect from a group of undergraduates, corporately there is the strongly identifiable John's sound of adult professional choir in microcosm. The John's acoustics, too, are particularly good for this music because they buoy up, warm and upholster the sound of the choir.

– Gramophone [10/2014]

All three of the works in this program reveal a young composer on the threshold of greatness, serving as his passport to the vast new world of orchestral music prevailing at the beginning of the 20th century. Inspired by the tone poems of Richard Strauss, Bartók’s Kossuth dramatically commemorates the struggle for Hungarian independence in 1848 with an alluring and provocative orchestration. The Two Portraits set moods of love and painful heartbreak into stark contrast, while the First Suite is a showcase of symphonic effects which caused a sensation in Vienna at its première in 1905.

Boris Tchaikovsky is revered in Russian musical circles as one of the most original and innovative composers of the post-Shostakovich generation. A work of great depth and beauty, the Piano Quintet is considered his finest chamber work and a stylistic milestone which would influence aspects of the later Piano Concerto (8.557727). Based on a the score for the 1964 film While the Front is in Defence, The War Suite is an evocative portrayal of the horrors of battle, but also of heroism, friendship and lost love, at the Volkhov Front, south east of Leningrad, during the winter of 1942.

This program brings together première recordings of Francis Poulenc’s own piano versions of his ‘ballet of atmosphere’ Les Biches and ‘choreographic concerto’ Aubade, as well as the first digital recording of the suite from Les Animaux modèles, inspired by the fables of La Fontaine and compiled by Grant Johannesen with the composer’s agreement. ‘Piano scores’ are an essential part of rehearsing and choreographing any ballet, but the piano was also indispensable to Poulenc’s compositional process. He owed his love of classical dance to years of working closely with Dyaghilev, and his music brims with subtlety, humor, genuine emotion, piquant harmonies and rhythmic lightness.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s stature as a composer of extraordinary talent and widespread influence is so firmly established in Western culture that it is difficult to believe that only 150 years ago his works lay in veritable obscurity, unknown to all but a small group of scholars. It is largely thanks to Mendelssohn, who essentially effected a revival of the composer’s music through his rediscovery and promulgation of the St Matthew Passion, besides other pieces, that his works are today regarded as pinnacles of music expression. That they are among the most performed and widely attended is in no doubt; in Holland alone, thousands of singers and musicians are involved in dozens of performances of the St Matthew Passion in Holy Week, with hundreds of thousands listening in churches and concert halls, or gathered around the radio, to what has been described as ‘the Gospel according to Bach’.

Bringing together all of his works, this dynamic 142-CD set offers a resounding impression of this great spirit of our Western culture, presenting dynamic performances – many period-based, many acclaimed by the international press – that are divided according to genre, thus making for a highly user-friendly compendium. The set draws on all periods of his career, tracing the development of a style that was much influenced by contemporary and past fashions but which was always adapted to Bach’s own purpose, often far surpassing the models on which he drew. The German composer travelled a great deal from city to city, and the different circumstances of his various positions are reflected in the great range of works comprising his output: while his early years are dominated by much keyboard music, on account of the numerous organist posts he held during this period, later positions at various courts accorded him more personal and artistic freedom – in Cöthen, for example, Prince Leopold’s passion for music-making and his renowned resident orchestra resulted in a string of unforgettable works including the great Brandenburg Concertos, the Solo Cello Suites and the Well-Tempered Clavier Part 1, beside many others.

Bach was a master of all genres, whether sacred, secular, instrumental or vocal, and his oeuvre is a rich mixture of severe Baroque craftsmanship and expressive Romanticism. Thomas Zehetmair, Kristof Barati, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, René Jacobs, Peter Schreier and Lucia Popp are just a handful of the first-class performers and ensembles gracing this set. It is a collection not to be passed up.

R E V I E W S:

"Brilliant Classics embarked on a daring project in the year 2000, the year of the 250th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach's death: this budget label decided to release a complete set of Bach's works...some 65% of the 155 CDs in this set were newly recorded (the remainder was licensed from other labels), including Bach's almost 200 sacred cantatas...I highly recommend this set. I have recordings of all of Bach's works and yet I was delighted and surprised as I listened to the many pearls that I discovered here...if you like Bach's music, you owe it to yourself to get this - at its super-bargain price, even those recordings you don't like will not cause too much disappointment, but the quality of the excellent ones is such that you will certainly be delighted...If only to have the 60 CDs of sacred cantatas, and to discover what is an incredible collection of moving and memorable music, this set is worth having. Treat yourself to 160 CDs of Bach, then, take a few weeks off to enjoy this music." -- Kirk McElhearn, MusicWeb International, reviewing the original version of this set

"Brilliant's 2006 recordings of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, performed by Pieter-Jan Belder and the Netherlandish original instruments ensemble Musica Amphion, have been reissued several times as two separate discs, though the original release containing all six concertos maintains a separate existence as a budget release. This volume contains the Concerto No. 4 in G major, BWV 1049, the Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050, and the Concerto No. 6 in B flat major, BWV 1051, all played in clean and colorful period style and recorded in a resonant church acoustic that gives the music a fresh, lustrous ambience. Because this, like other titles in Brilliant's catalog, has the drab appearance of a poorly produced cost-cutter release, some collectors may pass it by, but that would be a mistake since these are exceptional performances that can give many of the better-known authentic renditions a run for the money. As leader of the group and performer on recorder and harpsichord, Belder offers intelligent and expressive interpretations that closely follow accepted Baroque practices, and though he and his fellow musicians aren't widely known outside the circle of listeners interested in early music, they can be respected for their musicianship and scholarly credentials. While these Brandenburgs may not be everyone's favorite performances in the end, they deserve attention from experienced listeners and newcomers alike." -- Blair Sanderson, AllMusic.com, reviewing the Brandenburg Concertos

"In their fusion of grand rhetoric, sharp technique, and obvious musical intelligence, Baráti’s readings of this bedrock literature recall both the most majestic and the most thoughtful ones from an earlier era. Urgently recommended, especially to those who honor that tradition and who lament its coming to a premature and unfortunate end." -- Robert Maxham, FANFARE, reviewing the Sonatas and Partitas for Violin

"Jaap ter Linden's traversal of the Bach cello suites is exceptionally fine; right across these discs, his playing never falters. His painstakingly researching interpretations are vividly spontaneous, yet unusually acerbic and philosophically probing." -- Classic CD, reviewing the Cello Suites

Alfred Hitchcock commissioned his film scores from composers who were Hollywood’s master-craftsmen. The concert items prepared from those scores feature a dazzling variety of styles, from Baroque and jazz to dark Romanticism and angular angst, all using the orchestra with breathtaking virtuosity. The conductor John Mauceri, as at home with this repertoire as any other musician, has prepared a number of concert suites from the film scores and some of them receive their first recordings here. This recording was made live in concert in Danish Radio’s new concert hall in Copenhagen. The booklet contains an introductory text by John Mauceri and an extensive, illustrated essay on Hitchcock and his use of film music and work with composers by British film-music historian John Riley.

REVIEWS:

The concert recordings contain some ambient noises and quirks of balance (lots of bass tones). But the pluses are powerful: the orchestra's flair, the vivid colors and audible adrenalin. Even the most dedicated film buff should deepen their appreciation as Hitchkock's composers run the gamut.

– BBC Music Magazine

Hitchcock was the enabler of many hours of orchestral music that are part of the 20th century’s legacy. Herrmann’s scores for Vertigo and Psycho, and Franz Waxman’s for Rear Window, stand out. The Wagnerian Scène d’Amour, from Vertigo, comes over as one of the great slow movements.

– Sunday Times

“First recording of complete ballet” this CD tray card proudly proclaims. Sorry guys, that honor goes (at a minimum) to Karl Anton Rickenbacher with the Bamberg Symphony on Koch, released way back in 1995. Statements such as this are all the more annoying when they can be disproved in about two seconds simply by looking at the listings on Amazon.com. Anyway, the lapse is forgivable, in this case, because that earlier recording is long out of print and the present release features a much better performance. Still, it’s always good to double-check these things, if only to maintain one’s credibility with hard-core collectors, who are the people most likely to be interested in this repertoire.

In its suite form Nobilissima Visione, Hindemith’s ballet about St. Francis of Assisi, consists of five numbers out of a total of eleven. The Introduction and Rondo actually takes two sections from the ballet’s later stages: Meditation and The Wedding with Poverty. The March and Pastoral comes from the middle: the same march, and the Appearance of the Three Women, while the passacaglia concludes both the suite and the complete ballet, in the latter as The Songs of Praise of the Creatures Begin. The entire work plays for about forty five minutes (in this performance), and it deserves to be heard whole–it is very beautiful, sort of an apotheosis of the mature Hindemith’s individual lyricism.

Whether it works as a ballet is another matter, and one which need not concern us. As a concert piece, it is totally viable in terms of length, thematic content, and scheme of contrasts. Schwarz’s performance is markedly superior to Rickenbacher’s. Just compare Schwarz’s “Wedding with Poverty” to Rickenbacher’s comparatively droopy, bland version, and you’ll get the picture. I suppose you could say that Schwarz’s is the more “balletic” interpretation, but its characteristic emphasis on lively tempos, transparent textures, and strong rhythms serves the music best in any context, and the Seattle Symphony plays very well.

The Five Pieces for String Orchestra make an interesting coupling. Arranged from Hindemith’s teaching works, they are designed to acquaint students with modern harmony while remaining easy to play, and they accomplish this goal admirably (meaning Hindemith does not pull any punches). They are not major works, but like all of his music they are well-crafted, and in any event more substantial that Rickenbacher’s coupling, the brief but charming Suite of French Dances. Fine sonics make this a valuable addition to the Hindemith discography, restoring a major and unjustly neglected work to the catalog.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

It can come as quite a shock to a critic when, looking at the back of a CD he has been sent to review, he finds his own words trumpeted back at him. That was my experience when this release quotes my own review of October 2012 in respect of Slatkin’s Naxos recording of the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique: “quite simply one of the best on disc”. I shall accordingly take the opportunity occasionally to refer back to that review during the course of writing this one.

In the first place it is a real pleasure to find Slatkin and his Lyon players returning to the symphonies of Berlioz, for so long in the past neglected by French orchestras. In the second place it is also a pleasure to encounter again the playing of violist Lise Berthaud, whose performance in the Bruch Double Concerto I welcomed for the Seen and Heard pages of this site in June of this year. And it is also a pleasure to hear that Berthaud’s superb playing is integrated into the orchestral score without unnatural highlighting. Harold in Italy, despite its origins as a display piece for Paganini, is decidedly not a concerto – as Paganini himself recognised. It is rather a symphonic poem in four movements with the viola taking the part of a protagonist among equals. Many recordings with starry names, from Yehudi Menuhin onwards, have spotlighted the soloist, to the disadvantage of the music. Berthaud is never swamped here, but she is observed in a natural perspective which adds dramatic unity to the score.

I might take some issue with the strength of the violin body in places here. Berlioz generally asked for at least fourteen each of first and second violins — not that he generally managed to get them — and his orchestral balances were nicely judged with that sort of strength in mind. This is more than the usual symphonic strength carried by most orchestras. Whereas Wagner and Strauss with their elaborate string divisions made it impossible to perform their scores with fewer than the demanded numbers, Berlioz was less particular. It seems that a normal symphonic complement of twenty or so violins is employed here; that number is shown in the booklet photograph. For much of the time, and in the louder passages, the balance is eminently satisfactory; but there are places (for example, track 1, 5.51) where the quiet string figurative decorations are hardly audible. Also, at the beginning of the Pilgrim’s March (track 2) the pianissimo woodwind bell sounds are so noticeably louder than the ppp string melody that the tune of the march is somewhat obscured. Berlioz himself gives very specific instructions regarding this in the score, although they are not always free from obscurity of meaning; surely the intention is that the melody should sound louder than the accompanying bell, despite the contradictory dynamic markings. The Pilgrims themselves progress at quite a sprightly pace, but no faster than Berlioz’s metronome marking and indication of Allegretto at the head of the movement.

When reviewing the Symphonie fantastique, I did complain that Slatkin and his players tended to smooth the rough edges of the music away to some extent. In the less exuberant and more classically constructed Harold in Italy this is less of a problem, but there is one point, at the climaxes of the Orgy of the Brigands (track 4, 5.05 and 8.28), where one might welcome a little more sheer venom from the violins in their repeated quaver oscillations. Colin Davis among others separates the individual violin notes here with a real martellato attack, although Berlioz makes no such indication beyond the marking of sempre f. Here Slatkin, in conformity with the score, has the violins playing with more legato binding between the notes, but the result lacks the sense of sheer visceral excitement that one can find elsewhere.

As a filler, Slatkin enterprisingly presents us with the three orchestral pieces that Berlioz extracted from his opera Benvenuto Cellini following its disastrous Paris première in 1838, many years before Liszt’s triumphant vindication of the work in Weimar. All three have plenty of excitement, as well as playing which copes brilliantly with the tricky rhythmic cross-syncopations in the Roman Carnival Overture. Giovanni Radivo produces beautiful tone and poise in the Reverie and Caprice. It seems odd to conclude with Overture to the opera itself, but then Slatkin may not have intended the three items to be treated as an ‘operatic suite’.

The recording, as in the case of the previous Symphonie fantastique, is superb. Despite the fact that we are told that the performances were “recorded live” there is no sign of any audience presence, not even applause at the end of items. Applause would have been well deserved. The balance throughout is truthful, as I have indicated, and the offstage strings at the end of Harold (track 4, 10.29) have just the right sense of mysterious distance. Keith Anderson’s comprehensive notes are provided in English with French translation. I hope that Slatkin and his Lyon forces will go on to explore more of the Berlioz repertoire, and look forward to the results.

– Paul Corfield Godfrey, MusicWeb International

Although he remains best remembered for his solo songs, for the song cycle The Curlew, and for his evergreen suite Capriol, Peter Warlock’s choral works sit firmly in the great English lineage. The music ranges from Hymns to the Virgin to carols, many spiced with his own ‘melody of chords’ and his typically tangy harmonies. Some of Warlock’s most beautiful and sensitive settings are to be heard, not least Corpus Christi and Bethlehem Down, whilst there is also a very rare setting in Cornish (track 21), recorded for the first time in that language. - Naxos

Max Reger's (1873-1916) Suites for Solo Cello are technically demanding, harmonically complex and melodically attractive works of late-German Romanticism which look both backward and forward to J. S. Bach and the neo-classicism of the coming age. +Cellist Karen Buranskas is Associate Professor of Music, Cello at the University of Notre Dame and member of the Notre Dame String Trio. +As an active concert soloist, she has given recitals in major concert halls in the U.S., Europe and Asia