Jonathan Nott’s Mahler cycle has now reached the fourth installment. Recordings have already been issued of the First Symphony, the Fifth Symphony and the Fourth. This is the first in the series to come my way.

Before considering the performance I think a few words about the recording itself may be helpful – I listened to these hybrid SACDs as conventional CDs. When I first started listening I thought that the sound appeared almost too close. In fact, I found that my ears soon adjusted as the performance continued and that I didn’t find the closeness to be as much of an issue on further hearings. I suppose the effect is rather akin to sitting just a few rows back from the stage in the concert hall. The orchestra sounds very ‘present’. There certainly seems to be a good spread of sound from one side of the platform, as it were, to the other but I’m less sure that there’s adequate front-to-back perspective. Another feature of the recording is that Nott has divided his violins left and right – of which I heartily approve. However, until the finale, where the strings dominate the scoring for much of the time, I couldn’t hear much of the viola, cello or double bass lines. In fact the strings as a whole are too easily swamped by the wind and brass sections in the first three movements.

For comparison I put on Simon Rattle’s Berliner Philharmoniker recording, which I so much admired in 2008 (see review by Tony Duggan). Here too the recording is fairly close but much more inner string detail is evident. I strongly suspect that the Tudor engineers have used a limited microphone array in an effort to present a truthful concert hall sound image whereas the EMI team have probably used multiple microphones placed within or above the orchestra in order to capture much more detail. I think the Tudor sound does indeed present the sort of sound that you’d hear in a concert hall – and Mahler’s scoring is very often wind- and brass-heavy – and it depends whether you want a recording for home listening to give you a concert hall perspective or whether you want as much detail as possible.

So you might want to sample the recording before purchasing. However, even if the sound is not quite your ideal – and, as I say, my ears adjusted quite quickly – sonic considerations aren’t everything here for Nott leads a fine performance of this magnificent, complex symphony.

He takes a fairly spacious view of I. In fact, at 29:46 his is one of the longest performances I know. Rattle is slightly quicker overall (28:56) but it’s interesting to note that some, though by no means all, conductors of the previous generation have taken less time over this movement. Barbirolli, for example, took 26:53 in his famous EMI Berlin recording, while Kubelik’s live 1975 reading (Audite) took 26:44. The celebrated 1938 Bruno Walter recording flashes by in 24:47. Have Mahler performances broadened over the years?

Nott may be spacious but throughout the movement his control and concentration are impressive. His reading isn’t as passionate as Rattle can be at times; it’s more patient. There were one or two occasions when I thought his speeds were just a little bit too measured but as a whole his reading is impressive. The climaxes are thrust home – at these points one has the impression that the orchestra is playing flat out – but the quiet passages often impress. For example the ghostly passage between 8: 01 and 9:47 is imaginatively presented with lots of good detail – I like the distanced muted horns, for instance. I think it would be fair to say that sometimes the violins sound just a little thin in alt and the string bass line is certainly underpowered – no doubt because one is so used, with many other conductors, to hearing the cellos and basses prominently through the right hand speaker. But, set against that I must say straightaway that much of the playing is vivid, the orchestra’s response is totally committed and there’s a lot of fine solo playing to admire. I have heard more dramatic, angst-ridden accounts of this amazingly rich movement but drama isn’t the whole story by any means and Nott’s account is very convincing and never less than wholly musical. He seems to see the whole movement in one long sweep and I admire his way with it very much.

The two inner movements go very well. There’s a good deal of sharply etched, piquant playing in II. Nott paces the music very well and he judges the many tempo modifications expertly. His reading of III is dynamic and thrusting. He and the engineers bring out a great deal of the teeming contrapuntal detail in the score. The trio (from 5:55) is taken at a suitably relaxed pace. This is nostalgic music but I like the fact that Nott never wallows in the sentiment; on the contrary, forward momentum is nicely maintained – and praise too for the solo trumpeter, whose silvery tone is just right. When the Rondo resumes (10:23) the music is turbulent and exciting right to the last bar.

The strings come into their own in the finale. The opening paragraphs are full-toned but the emotion is not overdone – Nott doesn’t play his cards too soon. The string playing is very good, the tone just weighty enough - and now we do hear a satisfyingly strong bass line. One rather special moment occurs between 4:05 and 4:54 where Nott obtains the most atmospheric playing imaginable from his strings. At this point the bass line is spectral with a wafer-thin violin line on top.

Nott unfolds the finale compellingly and the Bamberg strings and horn section in particular do him proud. Once again, this isn’t perhaps the most overtly emotional reading I’ve heard but the patience – perhaps even a degree of reserve? – brings its own rewards. Nott’s ability to take the long view and to build the movement incrementally means that when we reach the sustained ardent passage that lies at the heart of the movement (14:18 – 17:03) the effect is all the greater. The closing pages of this movement are always a huge test for players and conductor alike. Here the test is passed very successfully. During the last four minutes or so, starting with the second violin entry at 21:07, the music gradually winds down, all passion spent.

This Mahler Ninth is a very fine achievement. A host of great conductors and leading orchestras have essayed this symphony on disc over the years and though the seventeen versions on my own shelves don’t quite go from A to Z they do go from Barbirolli to Walter. This new version can certainly contend with the best of them and it’s one to which I’m sure I shall be returning frequently in the future.

-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

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

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

L. MOZART Divertimento in F, “Musical Sleigh Ride.” Cassation in G, “Toy Symphony.” Symphonies: in D; in G, “ Sinfonia da caccia” • Hans Stadlmair, cond; Munich CO • TUDOR 737 (59:03)


Hans Stadlmair has been artistic director of the Munich Chamber Orchestra since 1956. This CD reveals an excellence of conducting and playing of Classical music off the beaten path. Leopold Mozart is more famous as the father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart than as a composer in his own right. The music on this disc supports history’s judgment as to the source of his fame. Yet some of this music can play an important role in propagating the greater Classical pieces.


The “Musical Sleigh Ride” and the “Toy Symphony” are among those vital pieces that serve young children as introductions to classical music. The “Toy Symphony” has been variously attributed to several composers, among them one of the Haydns (the famous Joseph and his lesser-known brother, Michael) and Leopold Mozart, who is the current winner of the attributions.


The most interesting piece in this collection is the “Sinfonia da caccia,” with its opening movement depicting a hunt ( a caccia ), complete with yelping hounds, galloping hoofs, and, most effectively, firing shotguns. This is another great piece for kids. Unless your child is another Mendelssohn/Mozart/Schubert genius, this music is a good way to lead him or her to discover The Art of Fugue 20 or 30 years hence, with a way station at the Beethoven symphonies.


Get this disc for your kids or grandkids! But not if you consider hunting and guns inappropriate for young children. Get it for yourself, to experience the caccia —vicariously perhaps, but without mammalian casualties!


FANFARE: Burton Rothleder

Includes partita(s) for winds by Franz Krommer. Ensemble: La Gran Partita.

HERTEL Concertos and Symphonies • Dominik Kiefer, cond; Sergio Azzolini (bn); Capriccio Baroque O (period instruments) • TUDOR 7182 (82:11)


Johann Wilhelm Hertel, born in 1722, was a Baroque composer whose name is vaguely familiar to me but whose music is not at all part of my listening repertoire. Following his father’s footsteps, and eventually exceeding his father’s musical accomplishments, Hertel displayed great musical erudition as he strove to spread the knowledge of music and contribute to its development. This CD consists of three bassoon concertos and three sinfonias, placed alternately on the disc, presenting more than 82 minutes of impressive Baroque music. At 2:11 greater than the putative 80-minute limit, is this a world record?


The Capriccio Baroque Orchestra (also called Capriccio Basel), founded in 1999, has a repertoire that includes Baroque, Classical, and early-Romantic works. It plays on period instruments with a sound that is both authentic and pleasing, and the current disc is a good example of its period-authentic manner. Dominik Kiefer is the artistic director and leader of Capriccio Basel. He began his studies on modern violin, but shifted to the Baroque violin and historical performance practice. He has become one of Switzerland’s foremost authorities in the field.


Sergio Azzolini is a 45-year-old Italian-born bassoonist. When barely in his 20s, he was first bassoonist in the European Community Youth Orchestra. A winner of several competitions, he plays both modern and Baroque bassoon. In 1996, he was appointed professor for bassoon and for chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik Basel.


My previous ignorance now admitted, Hertel was an important figure in Baroque music as it influenced the Classical forms that followed. This disc provides an excellent example of Hertel’s contribution to the field, with the added advantage of an excellent set of performances.


FANFARE: Burton Rothleder

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

JANÁ?EK Sinfonietta. Taras Bulba. The Cunning Little Vixen: Suite (arr. Jílek) • Jonathan Nott, cond; Bamberg SO • TUDOR 7135 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 61:42)


His Sinfonietta is almost unique among Janá?ek’s major works for having no story line (although he supplied suggestive movement titles for its 1926 premiere). His concertos are all programmatic, and both string quartets illustrate their subtitles. The 1877 Suite for Strings is in essence a “pre-Janá?ek” work; only the violin sonata steers clear of extra-musical associations. Yet the Sinfonietta encapsulates the essential Janá?ek: some of its sections scream in agony, others coo with the sylvan colors of The Vixen . It is a spectacularly original and endlessly fascinating piece, but one that drains the listener, so it’s not one to repeat too often. The fine young conductor Jonathan Nott brings the requisite extremes of ferocity and tenderness. He has done wonders with the Bamberg Symphony over the past decade, but comparisons with Mackerras’s famous Decca recording—a touchstone if ever there was one—make it clear that the Bambergers are still no match for the Vienna Philharmonic. One might argue that the burnished, smooth Viennese tones are not right for this gritty, elemental music, but those tones are irresistible. A solo trombone speaks at 2:19 into the Moderato; Vienna’s is slightly flat, but it is nevertheless lovelier and more effective than Bamberg’s more accurate instrument. I hope that such nits are worth picking, but they do not detract from either of two great performances. A monaural 1951 broadcast of the Concertgebouw under Klemperer gave us a fierce, bone-rattling Sinfonietta that stands at the opposite pole from the suave Mackerras. Between them, they define this music. Nott gives us an intermediate choice, not a compromise, but a successful realization of both sides of the Sinfonietta equation.


Nott’s Taras Bulba is closer to the consensus of many Czech performances than is Mackerras’s Vienna performance, which tends toward the grandiose. Nevertheless, the VPO’s playing, the acoustic of the Sofiensaal, and Decca’s marvelous 1981 sound—rare perfection for an early digital recording—remain overwhelming. I’m very taken with Libor Pešek’s Virgin Classics recording with the Philharmonia, which finds more colors and less bombast in the piece than most performances, but it seems not to be available in the U.S. nor from mdt.co.uk. There have been innumerable fine Czech recordings, by virtually every noted Czech conductor and orchestra. Particularly interesting is a 1952 monaural recording by the Brno Radio Symphony under B?etislav Bakala, who studied with Janá?ek and wrote the published two-piano score of Taras Bulba.


František Jílik’s arrangement of music from The Vixen is taken from different sections of the opera than Václav Talich’s suite. Both miss out on some of Janá?ek’s finest music: Talich basically rearranged the first act, ignoring the glorious final peroration; Jílik begins in the middle of act I, skipping the marvelous Prelude. Taken together, they cover much of the opera with little duplication. As had been the case with Mussorgsky, conservative musicians felt that Janá?ek’s revolutionary music had to be toned down, its “errors” corrected, to make it acceptable. Nevertheless, each suite contains magnificent music; Mackerras’s Vienna recording of the Talich and Nott’s Bamberg one of the Jílik are both gorgeous. Mackerras’s recent Supraphon recording with the Czech Philharmonic, which supposedly restores Janá?ek’s orchestration (but not the voices) has eluded Fanfare and this reviewer.


It would never occur to a European record producer to dumb down a CD so that the SACD will seem even more superior than it really is. While the SACD layer enlivens the Bamberg strings and softens the woodwind colors, it also brings out some unattractive rough edges among the Sinfonietta’s 11 trumpets. Oddly, surround sound disguises the problem, possibly because the ears are now bombarded with so much information that this single aspect does not register as strongly. The more conventionally orchestrated Taras Bulba blooms on SACD and in surround sound, its colors purified and polished. It also points up how ordinary Jílik’s scoring of The Vixen is by isolating a fine solo oboe. There is no further trouble with the brass, suggesting that the eight extra trumpeters were the problem in the Sinfonietta. This is the first SACD appearance for any of these works, and this fine disc should please everyone with surround-sound capability. Those who lack them needn’t fret, however: I find Mackerras’s Decca recordings to be even more glamorous in just plain digital stereo.


FANFARE: James H. North

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Recording information: München, Studio 1 des Bayerischen Rundfunks (05/13/2008-05/16/2008).

Classical Music

Kammermusik 1958'': for tenor, guitar and eight solo instruments, on the hymn ''In lovely business'' by Friedrich Holderlin, is one of Hans Werner Henze's most scintillating creations. Featuring a wide-ranging tenor part, a virtuosic solo guitar and brilliant contributions by the instruments Schubert chose for his great Octet, this masterpiece imaginatively confronts the mannered style of the Darmstadt school. In ''lovely blueness'' the emphasis is on ''blueness'' - but not only when lovely. The Mediterranean light and the nostalgia for Greek Antiquity give this music a special place in the composer's output: to the element of euphony, of consonance in its widest sense are added grittier sounds and sharper contrasts, as befits the hymn's heavily symbolic content. - ''The idea for 'Neue Volkslieder und Hirtengesange' is closely linked to my activity as cultural animator during the Eighties in the Steiermark. At the time I had made a nice collection of sketches on Styrian folklore and composed songs for an amateur play. From this material I have now assembled this small chamber music in folksong style, hoping to capture some of the atmosphere, of the mood of this melancholy landscape, like a dream or a painful memory''.

Classical Music

Classical Music

In this series of concerti, one senses a progression. The first six, all in major keys with clear, luminous themes, rely on a varied and singing virtuosity. Magnificently written for the flute, they remain – although more developed – in the tradition. The following concerti show the “French Mozart” at the peak of classical style, but also forward looking, notably through a more demonstrative conception of the Soli and the orchestration. The variety and quality of these concertos reveal François Devienne as one of the great masters of flute literature, and of the concertante genre in France.

Classical Music

In 1778, music was booming in Mannheim, thanks to its 90 players- strong orchestra’s unique blend of instrumental virtuosi and innovative composers: Johann and Carl Stamitz, father and son, the most original and prolific composers of the Mannheim school – a still somewhat underrated period. The importance of Carl Stamitz’s clarinet concertos cannot be overestimated; while laying the foundations for similar works by Mozart, Weber and Spohr, he also created inspiring masterpieces. Eduard Brunner is an ideal advocate, fusing the Mannheim idiom with modern sensitivity.