Sean Shibe's fifth PENTATONE album, Vesper, presents a striking collection of contemporary guitar works by the late Harrison Birtwistle, James Dillon, and Thomas Ades, all composed by musicians who do not play the instrument themselves. Recorded here for the first time, these recent miniatures explore the guitar's expressive range in profoundly different ways: ritualistic and evocative in Birtwistle, elemental in Dillon, and allusive in Ades. Shibe's interpretations reveal the instrument's extraordinary colour, subtlety, and capacity for transformation, bringing each work to life with imagination and nuance. For some of Birtwistle's pieces, Shibe performs on Sylvette (2021), a guitar made by luthier Simon Ambridge in collaboration with French-British artist Lydia Corbett. A muse to Pablo Picasso - who was himself an important influence for several of Birtwistle's works on this album - Corbett also inspired Picasso's celebrated Sylvette series. Modelled on the small, responsive instruments of the Andalusian luthier Antonio de Torres, the guitar features Corbett's artwork on it's body, adding a visual and symbolic layer to the performance. Shibe is a former BBC New Generation Artist, a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship 2012 winner, a Royal Philharmonic Society 2018 Young Artist Award winner, a multi-GRAMMY nominee, and the recipient of the 2022 Leonard Bernstein Award. His recordings have won BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone Awards.

Vienna Mandolin Stories�is Alon Sariel's first full concerto album, inviting listeners on a journey through late-18th- and early-19th-century Vienna. The album features works for mandolin and orchestra by Haydn, Mozart, Krahmer, and Paisiello. While some pieces were originally composed for mandolin, others have been skillfully adapted by Sariel.�The album thrives on Sariel's inventive and playful approach, as represented in "Haydn's Mandolin Concerto", an imaginative rearrangement combining movements from different concertos, including one by Malzat long misattributed to Haydn. Highlights also include the "bluegrass" cadence in the slow movement of the "Haydn" concerto and the clever nod to Bach's�Well-Tempered Clavier�in Sariel's arrangement of Mozart's�Andante for Flute and Orchestra.�Sariel brings to light Ernest Krahmer's works for mandolin and orchestra, recently found at the Bavarian State Library and recorded here for the first time.�The period musicians of�the�Kolner Akademie, under the direction of Michael Alexander Willens, deliver an ideal soundscape for these vibrant and colorful works. Alon Sariel is one of today's most versatile plucked-string performers, earning recognition as a multi-instrumentalist and a captivating Bach interpreter. Following the releases of�Plucked Bach�(2022),�Plucked Bach II�(2023), and�Schubert's Mandolin�(2024) on PENTATONE, he now presents his first concerto recording. The Kolner Akademie and it's music director Michael Alexander Willens, make their PENTATONE debut with this recording.

First released in May 2020, Piotr Beczala’s PENTATONE debut album Vincerò! has been one of the must successful and critically acclaimed opera recital albums of the last few years. During the 2021 Opus Klassik Awards, Piotr Beczala was crowned as Singer of the Year for this exceptional recording. Initially released on SACD, the album now returns in a more affordable Stereo version. Global star tenor Piotr Beczala presents Vincerò!, the first fruit of his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE. Vincerò! is a collection of heart-wrenching opera arias by Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Giordano and Cilea. For Beczala, this recording documents his vocal transition from the lyrical tenor repertoire to the more dramatic roles of Verismo, and thus simultaneously marks a significant new chapter in his stage career. Beczala is accompanied by the Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana and the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, led by maestro Marco Boemi; an extraordinary singer’s conductor who has worked with the greatest vocalists of our age.

Violins of Hope presents instruments that were owned by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust, representing strength and optimism for the future during mankind’s darkest hour. They have been refurbished by luthiers Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein, founders of the Violins of Hope project. On this album, recorded live at Kohl Mansion, the instruments are used to perform two string quartet masterpieces by Schubert and Mendelssohn, alongside a new composition by Jake Heggie, inspired by the violins’ histories.

Schubert’s unfinished Quartettsatz is often considered Schubert’s first mature work, and displays a typically Schubertian mix of impetuous agitation and sublime lyricism. Mendelssohn wrote his Quartet in F Minor as a “Requiem” for his deceased sister Fanny, not knowing that – tragically enough – he would follow her fate only two months later, at the age of 38. These two captivating works are performed by Kay Stern, Dawn Harms, Patricia Heller and Emil Miland, who join forces with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, violinist Daniel Hope, and the young violin talent Sean Mori on Heggie’s INTONATIONS: Songs of the Violins of Hope.

The recording took place in the context of Holocaust Memorial Day 2020. Jake Heggie has a vast PENTATONE discography, including the opera It’s a Wonderful Life (2017) and song recital albums by Jamie Barton (Unexpected Shadows, 2020), Melody Moore, Lisa Delan and Joyce DiDonato. Sasha Cooke returns to PENTATONE after having featured on Mason Bates’ Grammy Award-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (2018). Daniel Hope, Sean Mori, Kay Stern, Dawn Harms, Patricia Heller and Emile Miland all make their debut on the label.

REVIEW:

The world premiere of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer's Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope headlines this extraordinary concert, performed entirely on instruments owned by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust. The cycle, which tells the stories of instruments revivified by the Violins of Hope Project, begins with "Ashes," about a violin whose case was filled with the ashes of those burned in the ovens, and ends with "Liberation," inspired by the Liberation of Auschwitz. One of the most moving songs, "Motele," recounts the tale of 12-year-old violin prodigy Mordechai "Motele" Schlein. With excerpts from Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto weaving through the accompaniment, we learn that Schlein, who did not survive the war, smuggled gunpowder in his violin case to create a bomb he detonated in the basement of a Nazi Officer's Club.

Sasha Cook's warm, emotionally direct voice is perfect for these songs, and the heart-touching theme Heggie fashions for the final song is reminiscent of great tunes of the romantic era. How perfect, then, to conclude with Schubert's Quartettsatz in C Minor and Mendelssohn's last String Quartet, completed months before his death.

– Stereophile

Visions offers Tamara Stefanovich and Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s return to Pentatone, presenting a programme revolving around Messiaen’s intoxicating Visions de l‘amen for two pianos. This centrepiece is surrounded by Enescu’s Carillon nocturne, Knussen’s Prayer Bell Sketch and Clock IV from Birtwistle’s Harrison’s Clocks. The works performed all share a fascination for the sound of bells, and Stefanovich and Aimard invite the listener on a mesmerizing acoustic journey. Tamara Stefanovich is captivating audiences worldwide with a broad repertoire ranging from Bach to contemporary composers, and made her Pentatone debut with the critically-acclaimed album Influences (2019). Widely acclaimed as a key figure in the music of our time and as a uniquely significant interpreter of piano repertoire from every age, Pierre-Laurent Aimard enjoys an internationally celebrated career. His exclusive engagement to Pentatone has led to a complete recording of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux (2018) and a recording of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata and Eroica Variations (2021).

REVIEW:

Here’s a disc for pianophiles, those with a penchant for the mystical, and campanologists alike. As the song has it, “A bell’s not a bell ’til you ring it”, and here bells toll, peal, chime, carillon and knell throughout a cleverly programmed, acutely played recital by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich that dazzles with its poetry, intensity and clarity.

The disc’s title, Visions, alludes to the hallucinogenic effect of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen in which bells sound with an intoxicating allure that speaks of a sense of otherness rooted in self-interrogating interiority. In its searching dialogue between two pianos surface religiosity serves as the portal to something altogether more transcendental and intimate.

Aimard’s familiarity with the work is unimpeachable, having played it, he says, “from the age of 15, turned the pages when Yvonne Loriod and Messiaen performed it, worked on it with him, and played it countless times”. More recently, it has been a part of his concert appearances with Stefanovich, and such accrued acquaintanceship pays enormous dividends here.

With due seriousness and gravity, Aimard assumes the imposing first piano role originally inhabited by Messiaen himself, Stefanovich voicing the narcotic zeal and fantasy of the second piano part, written for and first performed by Loriod. The result, an exercise in atomised contrasts, is something special.

Aimard carries the disc’s adroit finale, Harrison Birtwistle’s Clock IV (from Harrison’s Clocks) inspired by Dava Sobel’s book Longitude about the race to invent a marine chronometer. One of the composer’s “chiming pieces”, it discreetly echoes Messiaen even as its prodigious chord clusters and dramatic dynamic contrasts belong self-evidently to him alone. Aimard dispatches it with due declamatory virtuosity.

Nigel Simeone provides detailed, informative, and accessible notes, the recorded sound, in Stefaniensaal, Congress Graz, Austria as exemplary as you would expect of Pentatone.

-- Limelight

Star violinist Arabella Steinbacher presents Antonio Vivaldi’s world-famous Four Seasons alongside Astor Piazzolla’s Cuatro estaciones porteñas, creating a lively combination of baroque and tango. The enormous popularity of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons tends to make us forget the original and ground-breaking nature of these violin concertos. Coupling them with Piazzolla’s tango-inspired Four Seasons of Buenos Aires makes both pieces sound fresher than ever before, thanks to Steinbacher’s personal engagement with the repertoire and the inspired accompaniment of the Münchener Kammerorchester. Piazzolla’s music is performed here in a new arrangement for violin and string orchestra by Peter von Wienhardt, whose Strauss song arrangements on Steinbacher’s previous album Aber der Richtige ... (2018) were extensively praised by the press.

Arabella Steinbacher, a multiple award-winner with an extensive PENTATONE discography, is accompanied by the players of the Münchener Kammerorchester, who make their PENTATONE debut.

-----

REVIEW:

Both soloist and ensemble approach the contrasting styles – baroque energy and bluesy Latin passion – with supple mastery, bows biting into strings, rhythms accentuated, mood at times aggressive. Vivaldi’s Summer, with its rushing storms and prickly, insect-ridden heat, sounds more than usually wild, with Steinbacher fearless in the rapid, high-flying outbursts. What a player.

– Observer (UK)

Recorder player Bolette Roed and Arte dei Suonatori present Vivaldi’s famous violin concertos, “The Four Seasons”, combined with other concertos that share a kinship with them, resulting in Vivaldi’s Seasons; a programme consisting of sixteen concertos, four for each season, including favorites such as Il rosignuolo and l’Amoroso. Roed’s use of the recorder in place of the violin brings a unique sound to these works, whilst simultaneously expanding the recorder repertoire. Bolette Roed is one of the most in-demand recorder players of Europe. After having released Telemann’s Garden with the Elephant House Quartet in 2019, she now extends her PENTATONE discography with this solo album. The players of Arte dei Suonatori make their PENTATONE debut, while their leader Aureliusz Golinski already featured on Telemann’s Garden.

Fourteen years after her victory at the XVI International Chopin Piano Competition, Yulianna Avdeeva documents her journey with the music of Frederic Chopin. Voyage focuses on his late works, all composed while surrounded by nature, and Avdeeva has recorded them at the rustic Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana, against the serene backdrop of the Beartooth Mountains. A pianist of fiery temperament and virtuosity, Avdeeva plays with power, conviction, and sensibility, having won over audiences all over the world. She returns to PENTA-TONE after her acclaimed label debut with Resilience (2023).

A most impressive sense of drama and excitement.

So to The Ring! Marek Janowski’s epic Wagner cycle enters the final strait as it begins the great tetralogy that crowned Wagner’s life’s work. Few conductors get to record The Ring twice, but Janowski is privileged to have done so. His first recording was from Dresden in the early 1980s, the third out of only five studio Rings to be recorded. It was blessed by the phenomenal playing of the Staatskapelle Dresden and first rate digital sound captured in the city’s Lukaskirche. However, despite some excellent individual turns, the set was often hobbled by the choice of solo singers, most notably Theo Adam’s desiccated Wotan and the rather overwhelmed Brünnhilde of Jeannine Altmeyer. It is interesting that, almost for the first time in Janowski’s Berlin Wagner cycle, we can now make some informed comparisons. I’m pleased to say that this Rheingold shines up very impressively.

I haven’t always praised Janowski’s approach to Wagner’s dramas - I found his take on Tristan maddening - but this Rheingold finds him at his best. He uses his preference for fast speeds to his advantage to make the drama buzz along from one exciting episode to another, pacing the work by tapping right into the sense of quickfire elation. At times it feels as energetic as a soap opera - a compliment - and the opera’s series of conversations has seldom sounded so energised. The Prelude, for example, has a sense of expectation that can hardly wait to get started, but in spite of the fast speed I never found it rushed. The transitions between scenes seem natural and well judged, and the showpieces are never less than excellent. The descent into Nibelheim is thrilling, threatening to overwhelm the listener at the entrance of the anvils, and you can sense the fragility of the rainbow bridge in a sound that is commanding yet ephemeral. Janowski controls the sound of the orchestra impressively, too: I particularly loved the sound made by the strings during Erda’s scene, menacing with a subtle sense of decay, casting a dusky veil over her warnings.

The orchestra and the clarity of its recording have been two of the principal assets of this series, and so it proves here. They take every opportunity to reveal Wagner’s score in all its astounding, delectable colour, as if holding it up to the light for fresh examination. There are lots of highlights - the trumpet at the first appearance of the gold, the clearly delineated semiquavers on the violins as the water ripples around the rejoicing Rhinemaidens, the delicate flecks of harp as we arrive in Valhalla, the rhythmic, almost comical, swagger of the giants’ theme, the ominous brass depth of the dragon, the stunning trombones of the curse - but we can summarise it by saying that the orchestra do a magnificent job of bringing the colours of Wagner’s score to the surface. Likewise, the Pentatone engineers have captured the whole performance brilliantly, both in stereo and surround.

So what of the singing? Well, I admit this doesn’t get off to a good start, probably due to the limitations of the live concert setting. The opening is not auspicious, with a rather hollery group of Rhinemaidens and an Alberich that, initially at least, struggles with accurate pitching. However, things settle down once everyone has warmed up. The Rhinemaidens’ invocation to the gold is very effective, and Schmeckenbecher manages a thrilling renunciation of love. What is more, by this time a momentum seems to have taken over the scene, so that Alberich’s curse on love launches us headlong into the swirling eddies of the transformation music that transport us, via some daring timing from Janowski, up to the cloudy heights of Valhalla, clearly and atmospherically enunciated from the brass. Elsewhere Schmeckenbecher is fantastic in the Nibelheim scene. His fantasies of world domination are played as the furious rantings of a deranged mind and it’s very effective to listen to. However, he then sounds remarkably pitiable when he pleads for Wotan not to take the Ring from him and he sings a masterclass curse that begins as a resentful whimper but grows into a powerful denunciation.

Tomasz Konieczny is a slightly gritty Wotan. He doesn’t have the grandeur or poetic beauty of, say, Hans Hotter or, more recently, René Pape, but he is undoubtedly dramatic. This feels like a lived-in performance, not a “mere” concert. He is brilliant at depicting the god’s conflicted sense of inner dilemma. Even when he is at his most contented, surveying his new home in the final scene, you can sense the unease that plagues the god, and the sense of entrapment that encircles him in the second and fourth scenes is well worth hearing. Christian Elsner makes a slightly nasal Loge, but I found him very effective. The vocal colour reinforces his role as the outsider among the gods and helps to enrich his character as the slightly disreputable fixer among the immortals. He is delightfully derisive during the passages after Freia’s departure when the gods begin to age and his interaction with Alberich in the Nibelheim scene is a case-study of wheeling and dealing. You can even sense a touch of pity for the despairing Alberich in the fourth scene. Elsewhere among the men, Andreas Conrad makes a surprisingly humane, sympathetic Mime, and the same is true for Günther Groissböck’s Fasolt. Timo Riihonen has enough darkness in his voice to mark out Fafner as the nastier of the two brothers.

The women are also very strong, led by a marvellously imperious Fricka from Iris Vermillion. Ricarda Merbeth does a good job with what limited material she has as Freia, but Maria Radner’s Erda is extremely impressive. She actually manages to sound quite youthful, even affectionate, avoiding any of the elderly warble that sometimes afflicts singers of this role. Her warning of the “dark day” that dawns for the gods is made all the more impressive by the spellbinding playing of the orchestral strings. The trio of Rhinemaidens grow into the first scene and sound good from offstage towards the end.

So the final chunk of Janowski’s Wagner cycle has got off to a good start. I would certainly choose to listen to this Rheingold over his Dresden one, mainly because of the conductor’s more impressive sense of drama and excitement. Now let’s see how the rest of this Ring is going to unfold.

-- Simon Thompson , MusicWeb International

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



WAGNER Der fliegende Holländer • Marek Janowski, cond; Albert Dohman ( Dutchman ); Matti Salminen ( Daland ); Ricarda Merbeth ( Senta ); Robert Dean Smith ( Erik ); Silvia Hablowetz ( Mary ); Steve Davislim ( Steersman ); Berlin RSO & Ch • PENTATONE PTC 5186 400 (2 SACDs: 126:30 Text and Translation) Live: Berlin 11/13/2010


This release marks the beginning of an SACD traversal from PentaTone of the 10 frequently performed Wagner operas. In a charmingly old-fashioned gesture, PentaTone will provide with each of the first nine sets a voucher that, if you collect them all, entitles you to a 50-percent price reduction for the final item ( Götterdämmerung, due in November 2013) or—for free—a “special CD collection box.” A cool marketing idea. I wonder if other Wagnerian promotion schemes were kicked around: “Collect them all, kids, and get a free Tarnhelm!”


Something can be said for concert performances of Wagner’s operas. (Studio recordings, for economic reasons, are largely a thing of the past.) There’s no possibility of directorial malpractice, something that these works seem to attract. I just returned from the 100th Bayreuth Festival where I encountered, among much else of questionable merit, a Lohengrin where the good citizens of Brabant were all laboratory rats, a Parsifal with a transvestite Klingsor sporting black fishnet stockings, and a Tannhäuser set in a chemical plant for no good reason. The focus in concert, by default, is on the music, and this inaugural release has got the goods. Marek Janowski provides dramatic impetus to the proceedings but also assures that the orchestra’s role is never slighted. He lingers appealingly as he plays the excerpt from Senta’s Ballad heard in the overture, and there’s a joyous swing to the Entr’acte leading into Holländer ’s final two scenes. Janowski makes the most of the Italianate aspects of the score, including a lovely, lyrical Steersman’s Lied in act I (courtesy of the excellent Australian singer Steve Davislim) and, of course, the very Verdian finale of act II. The chorus, prepared by Eberhart Friedrich, director of the Bayreuth Festival Chorus since 2000, does its job with an incredible precision that would be impossible in the context of a staged production.


An excellent cast was assembled for this live recording that documents a single performance at the Berlin Philharmonie on November 13, 2010. Leading the charge are Albert Dohman, highly regarded for his Wotan (as heard on Et’Cetera SACDs with Harmut Haenchen, and on Opus Arte with Christian Thielemann from Bayreuth) and Matti Salminen, one of the world’s go-to basses for Gurnemanz, Marke, Hagan, and Hunding. Salminen sings a hearty Daland and makes the most of Wagner’s songful passages. His aria toward the end of act II (“Mögst du, mein Kind”) has a Mozartean grace and fluidity. Dohman’s performance is equally impressive. His voice, like Salminen’s, is inherently appealing yet imbued with the tortured quality the role demands; we sense the same anguish that Wotan radiates in act II of Die Walküre or the beginning of Siegfried ’s last act. The Dutchman’s bitterness and sorrow are powerfully portrayed without scenery-chewing.


To my taste, Ricarda Merbeth’s soprano is a bit squally and insufficiently youthful-sounding. There could be more of a sense of “ever-increasing agitation” (“immer zunehmender Aufregung fort”) as she progresses through the three stanzas of Senta’s Ballad. On the other hand, Kansas-born Robert Dean Smith’s handsome Heldentenor instrument—he’s been Bayreuth’s Tristan since 2005—assures that Erik is a more compelling character than is often the case.


As usual, PentaTone’s high-resolution sonics are superb. Multichannel makes clear a mid-hall audience perspective that still provides plenty of involving impact, but places offstage horns way off in the distance. (Spatially, the sound is still more than satisfactory in stereo.) PentaTone’s 140-page booklet is bound into the cardboard package and there are heavy paper sleeves attached as well to hold the two discs. There’s a German/English libretto that, unfortunately, isn’t indexed to the tracks on the discs. The booklet also includes substantial liner notes by Steffen Georgi, the dramaturge for the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, which is to say that he gives lectures before many of the ensemble’s concerts. Recommended—and don’t lose that voucher!


FANFARE: Andrew Quint

WAGNER Götterdämmerung • Marek Janowski, cond; Lance Ryan ( Siegfried ); Petra Lang ( Brünnhilde ); Matti Salminen ( Hagen ); Markus Brück ( Gunther ); Edith Haller ( Gutrune ); Jochen Schmeckenbecher ( Alberich ); Marina Prudenskaya ( Waltraute ); Julia Borchert ( Woglinde ); Katherine Kammerloher ( Wellgunde ); Kismara Pessatti ( Flosshilde ); Susanne Resmark ( First Norn ); Christa Mayer ( Second Norn ); Jacquelyn Wagner ( Third Norn ); Berlin R Ch & SO • PENTATONE 5186 409 (4 SACDs: 243:42 Text and Translation) Live: Berlin 3/15/2013


In the fall of 2010, PentaTone announced plans to release new concert recordings of Wagner’s 10 mature operas—all with the same conductor, orchestra, and chorus plus top Wagnerian singers—by the end of the composer’s 200th birthday year. A given was that, as with all PentaTone releases, these would be hybrid multichannel SACDs featuring the best possible sound that the Polyhymnia engineering team could muster. Well, they did it. My copy of Götterdämmerung , recorded in May of last year, arrived on my doorstep on December 11, 2013. Almost three weeks to spare. It’s a successful conclusion to an ambitious undertaking, even if a couple of key singers here were not in top form.


Marek Janowski, as usual, favors brisk tempos. He brings in this Götterdämmerung in about 4:04:00; a quick check of five other audio-only versions of the work, of various vintages, revealed a range of 4: 17:00 (Keilberth, 1955) to 4:34:00 (Thielemann, 2010). Sometimes, this penchant for speed is quite evident, as with a third act Funeral March that’s something other than a dirge. Mostly, Janowski’s tempo choices translate into an increased sense of dramatic urgency rather than seeming rushed or perfunctory.


As signaled above, two key performers were not at the top of their game. Lance Ryan sang Siegfried for Zubin Mehta in the Valencia Ring —my favored video version—and, as I noted there, while no Melchior, he gave a dramatically effective account of the misguided hero. Here, his voice seems closed-in, pinched, sometimes even a little nasal in character—though his softer singing, as when he remembers his history to Hagen’s men right before he’s murdered, is better. Petra Lang is a top-tier Wagnerian who always brings intelligence and strong sense of character to her portrayals. Best here is her scene with Waltraute (capably sung by Marina Prudenskaya) where she begins with the same aura of radiant happiness she manifested when she waved goodbye to Siegfried in the Prologue—and then evolves into defiant fury. Lang’s Brünnhilde is set up perfectly for the gigantic disappointment in the form of Siegfried-as-Gunther who is the next visitor to her rock. “Verrat!”—“Betrayed!”—she cries out, and really sounds like she means it. In the last act, though, Lang’s vocal instrument does show some wear in more demanding passages: The voice is a little rough on top with some imperfect intonation. Violeta Urmana was the Brünnhilde for PentaTone’s Siegfried and she’s more technically secure—but, of course, the role in Götterdämmerung makes very different and more extreme demands on a vocalist than does the earlier drama.


But then there’s Hagen. Give me a choice between a grade B-plus Brünnhilde/Siegfried combination with a grade B Hagen, and a B-minus Brünnhilde/Siegfried with an A Hagen, and I’ll take the latter deal every time. And Matti Salminen is an A-plus Hagen: As Peter Rabinowitz noted in a review of the Valencia Ring in Fanfare 34:2, “he virtually owns the part these days.” Salminen’s act I monolog “Hier Stiz’ ich zur Wacht” is darkly horrifying, dripping with contempt not just for Siegfried but for the rest of humanity as well. Janowski backs him up with tritone-laden brass declamations of crushing power.


Markus Brück and Edith Haller capably sing Gunther and Gutrune. At least vocally, there’s no obvious attempt to make the former into a puffed-up fop and the latter into a floozy, as is so often the case in staged productions. They are there to function mechanistically in the scheme Alberich and Hagen have devised to recover the ring and there’s really no need to vilify them further. The trios of Norns and Rhine Maidens are dramatically and musically effective as well.


The choral work in act II is thrilling—and the recording lets you hear everything. Orchestral sonorities are wonderfully warm and richly textured: Listen to the blend of the eight horns in the music between scenes 1 and 2 of the second act (after Alberich and Hagen’s exchange), or to the glowing majesty of the work’s closing pages. The packaging is in the same luxuriant mode as the preceding nine releases: PentaTone provides a 320-page bound booklet that holds the four hybrid multichannel SACDs as well as a German/English libretto, another lengthy essay from Steffen Georgi, and plenty of information on the cast. By the way, I did it. I managed to hang onto the vouchers that came with the nine earlier releases in the series, so I’m entitled to a “special CD collection box.”


As the final D? chord so handsomely recorded by the Polyhymnia engineering team fades away, one is left marveling at the achievement of Marek Janowski and the many top-notch singers who joined him for PentaTone’s project. But mostly, one is left in awe at the remarkable staying power of the music penned by one Wilhelm Richard Wagner.


FANFARE: Andrew Quint

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

WAGNER Siegfried • Marek Janowski, cond; Stephen Gould (Siegfried); Christian Elsner (Mime); Tomasz Konieczny (Wanderer); Jochen Schmeckenbecher (Alberich); Matti Salminen (Fafner); Violeta Urmana (Brünnhilde); Anna Larsson (Erda); Sophie Klussman (Woodbird); Berlin RSO • PENTATONE 5186408 (3 SACDs: 227:30) Live: Philharmonie, Berlin 3/1/2013

This set has much to recommend it. In many ways, it is by far the finest installment of the PentaTone series so far, including the non-Ring items, and as such increases the impression that Janowski’s is a Ring that evolves and improves as it goes along (Rheingold got a lukewarm reception from me in Fanfare 37:2; Walküre was better: see Fanfare 37:3). The sound quality is superb in this Siegfried throughout. Perhaps this is shown best at the very beginning, where the timpani roll is just there, but audible. If, as it continues, this opening is not quite as evocative as Furtwänger at La Scala (who is more primordial), it remains an impressive achievement. The evil undercurrent of that roll seems to be mirrored by the descending bassoon figure. Janowski keeps it moving, and his orchestra is astonishingly well disciplined; yet there is space for lyricism, too. Janowski’s achievement is to provide a terrific sense of momentum, while never rushing.

The cast is strong, although inevitably one always finds oneself pining for perfection. (From this stance, it is easy to see Richard Caniell’s point over at Immortal Performances with his “Dream Ring.”) Christian Elsner’s Mime is wonderfully angry, not a caricature at all (Peter Bronder’s Mime, in Barenboim’s Ring at the BBC Proms this year, was lighter, and clipped and wheedling in the more traditional way). The Wotan/Wanderer here is Tomasz Konieczny, as it has been in the previous two installments. Here he seems to come into his own, a completely different take to that of Hotter yet still big enough of voice and interpretatively sound. Ironically, perhaps, for Head God, Konieczny’s Wotan is one of the most human interpretations on the market today. A darker sound would also have emphasized the differences between Wanderer and Alberich in the second act.

But it is the titular hero that carries the work. Gould has a wonderfully lusty voice (a shame he sounds a tad rushed, by Janowski, in the Forging Song). His exchanges with Mime throughout are expertly managed, and the extended Wanderer/Siegfried part of the final act is enlivened by Gould’s splendidly healthy voice, even at this stage.

Each act fits neatly onto a single disc (Janowski is generally not one to linger). Act II begins with a perfect sense of darkness and foreboding, and both Alberich (Jochen Schmeckenbecher) and Wotan are in top form, especially perhaps Schmeckenbecher in his invoking of Fafner. The grumpy (and excellent) Fafner on this occasion is the experienced Matti Salminen. For the final act, perhaps the “Heil dir, Sonne” is only well done by Urmana rather than radiantly done, but the fault really lies with Janowski, who after excelling so much in this reading does not quite step up to the final moments. Ecstasy is not quite achieved. The final act suffers from a loss of momentum around half way through, which contributes to this.

Despite this, this remains a valuable, involving and rewarding Siegfried that demands to be heard.

FANFARE: Colin Clarke

This is a Super Audio CD playable only on Super Audio CD players.

Maestro Marek Janowski leads a sensational cast — including star vocalists Lise Davidsen and Andreas Schager — on this new recording of Der Freischütz, the German Romantic opera par excellence. In the years after its 1821 premiere, the catchy melodies, picturesque charm and spooky scenes of Der Freischütz thrilled audiences throughout Europe. Janowski’s inspired reading lifts out the symphonic qualities of Carl Maria von Weber’s masterpiece, and makes clear why colleagues such as Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner raved about the work. The excellent cast consists of Lise Davidsen (Agathe), Andreas Schager (Max), Sofia Fomina (Ännchen), Alan Held (Kaspar), Markus Eiche (Ottokar) and Franz-Josef Selig (Eremit). Janowski conducts the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and MDR Radio Choir. For this recording, the original spoken dialogues have been replaced by short narrations, written by Katharina Wagner and Daniel Weber and recited by Corinna Kirchhoff and Peter Simonischeck. Marek Janowski is one of the most celebrated conductors of our times, and enjoys a vast PENTATONE discography, including complete recordings of Bruckner’s symphonies and Wagner’s mature operas. Frankfurt Radio Symphony has also released multiple albums on PENTATONE, including a recording of Richard Strauss’s Salome (2017).

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REVIEW:

Lise Davidsen gives her finest performance to date, with both her arias sung with a big, radiant voice, but always lyrically. She is well matched by Sofia Fomina’s perky Ännchen. Janowski conducts Weber’s masterly score with atmosphere and the choir are thrilling in the Huntsmen’s Chorus.

– Sunday Times (UK)

The St. Louis Symphony and their music director Stéphane Denève present a program featuring two of the most accomplished American composers in history: Leonard Bernstein with his Serenade and John Williams with his Violin Concerto, both performed by star James Ehnes, one of the most exceptional North American violinists. John Williams himself was present at the recording of his violin concerto, working together with the St. Louis Symphony, Denève, and Ehnes.

Both works evolve around love: Bernstein’s Serenade was inspired by musings on love from Plato’s Symposium while Williams’s work was arguably inspired and eventually dedicated to his suddenly deceased wife. By combining these two concert pieces, this album puts the symphonic work of Bernstein and Williams at the center, two composers who weren’t afraid of crossing the boundaries between film music and “serious” classical genres at a time when these worlds were generally kept far apart. Especially in Williams' concerto, there are still hints of his work as a film composer; the slow movement brings to mind a scene of emotional gravity.

Widely considered one of the world's finest orchestras, the SLSO maintains its commitment to artistic excellence, educational impact, and community connections. The St. Louis Symphony, Stéphane Denève, and James Ehnes all make their Pentatone debut.

REVIEWS:

Dutch label Pentatone continues to champion American orchestras with the Saint Louis Symphony’s recording of violin concertos by John Williams and Leonard Bernstein. Williams dedicated the 1974 Violin Concerto No. 1 to his late wife, the actress Barbara Ruick. It’s a serious-minded, sometimes bleak affair, and Williams has called it atonal, though it seems harmonically straightforward enough.

With a 30-minute, three-movement sweep, Williams's concerto is expansive too. Canadian violinist James Ehnes is the thoughtful soloist, investing the music with deserved gravitas and fully on top of its technical challenges. Stéphane Denève leads a weighty reading, darkly dramatic in the opening “Moderato,” consoling in the glowing slow movement (which Ehnes plays like an angel), and incisive in the intermittently clangorous finale.

Bernstein’s Serenade has been recorded many times, but this astute interpretation is a welcome reminder of both its wistful profundity and its headstrong vigor. Ehnes and Denève open the debate spaciously with an expressive account of the “Phaedrus” movement. “Aristophanes” seems to channel graceful elements out of Candide, while a weighty “Socrates” gives way to the jazzy joie de vivre of “Alcibiades.” The violin sound is clean and clear, offset against a slightly resonant orchestra.

-- Musical America (Clive Paget)

Violinist James Ehnes’ discography is so extensive that it was only a question of when he’d get around to recording Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade, not if. What’s more striking about his new recording with Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) is that it pairs Bernstein’s 1954 effort with John Williams’ Violin Concerto No. 1.

The Williams dates from the mid-‘70s and was written right after the untimely death of his first wife, the actress Barbara Ruick. Its brooding, volatile aspect perhaps owes something to that context – the central “Slowly in peaceful concentration” unfolds like an elegiac barcarolle – though this is hardly funereal music.

In fact, the Concerto marked a turning point in Williams’ concert music, allowing him to cultivate what he called the “Romantic [Atonal], but in an American way”-style he’d long been striving for...there’s a motivic rigor here that’s straight out of the Brahms-Schoenberg line and the writing for violin and orchestra is thoroughly idiomatic...[here, it is] exceptionally well played and draws out the tight thematic relationships between each movement. The Canadian violinist makes the most of the introspective spots – the middle movement, the reflective episode in the center of the finale, especially – while also suffusing its bravura passagework with purpose and direction.

Denève and the SLSO are right with him, teasing out the music’s gentle echoes of Hollywood and sometimes mercurial shifts of character with surety and ease.

They make for an impressive combination, too, in the Bernstein. Take or leave the score’s programmatic allusions to Plato’s Symposium: the Serenade is one of the American composer’s freshest and most satisfying concert works.

Here, Ehnes plays with gorgeous tone – the clarity of his bow arm is just marvelous, as is his left hand’s ability to cleanly and purposefully get the music’s knotty double and triple stops to sing. Over the Serenade’s first three movements, too, there’s a strong sense of shape and propulsion: this is well-focused, graceful, spry Bernstein.

-- The Arts Fuse

"No Wolf lover can afford to miss [this].

There are numerous felicities to savor, and many more to discover. Listen to how Fischer-Dieskau's rhythmic bite and impeccable diction in Jägerlied still manage to impart a sense of legato, or, by contrast, a dulcet sotto voce in the diminuendos of Peregina I's opening phrases. Who else can get away with outsize dynamics in Lebe wohl and avoid melodrama, yet manage a rare fusion of tenderness and austerity in the often sentimentalized Verborgenheit? I can answer that question in two words: Sviatoslav Richter. This pianist takes not one note of Wolf's frequently unwieldy piano parts for granted, whether making Fussreise's interludes sound simpler than they actually are to play well, or effortlessly sailing through Abschied's wacky postlude with a straight face."

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
Reviewing earlier release of this recording

Lisa Delan and Luna Pearl Woolf write of their new release: “We were dreaming of lullabies. Each of us, unbeknown to the other, imagined creating the kind of recording we wanted to hear as we tucked our children in at night. Meeting in this shared land, our commingled dreams sowed the seeds of Angel Heart. Buds broke through in the farm of songs that we gathered from disparate corners of the world, with vastly differing musical languages. Delighted with the landscape, what, we wondered, would it look like in full bloom? When we laid our seedlings at the feet of Cornelia Funke, the flowering began. Her words took root around the songs to form a single story: a tale told by voices in speech and in song, suspended above a rich bed of cellos. Bringing pictures in to play, our nursery blossomed with contrast and color. Come, lay a blanket down among the stalks and petals and experience Angel Heart through music, story, sight, and touch. Join us!”

Jacqueline is powerful, award-winning new opera that dives into the real-life struggle between famed cellist Jacqueline du Pre and the multiple sclerosis that ravaged her body, mind, and talent - robbing her of her identity, her breathtaking musical gift, and ultimately her life. The story is brought to life by celebrated American soprano Marnie Breckenridge (as Jacqueline) and former du Pre protege and world-renowned cellist Matt Haimovitz, playing the role of her constant companion: her cello. GRAMMY-nominated composer Luna Pearl Woolf and Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Royce Vavrek chart the development of great prodigy and, ultimately, great tragedy. Told in four movements - I. Star Birth; II. Super Nova; III. Meteorite; IV. Impact - the opera references Haimovitz's personal recollections of du Pre herself. Colorful and at times funny, raw, joyful and audacious, the form of the work echoes du Pre's iconic interpretation of Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto, using the concerto's four-movement structure to navigate a prismatic and passionate, if all too short, life in music.

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

"We have here more of the early 1970s quadraphonic recordings made by Philips but which had remained in their tape boxes untouched for 30 years or more because of the realization that none of the quad LP formats of the time was really a viable means of releasing these excellent surround sound recordings to the general public. Since they started in l970 by this time the Philips engineers had perfected their micing to achieve the utmost realism and naturalness in discrete four-channel recording."

--John Sunier, Audiophile Audition

REVIEW:

In the first place, the choral works featured on this disc put paid to the often-voiced contention that Gordon Getty is no more than simply a millionaire indulging himself as a dilettante composer. His insistence on producing music that is approachable on first hearing, which thirty years ago when he began his career might have appeared quixotic, is now thankfully restored to the musical mainstream; and the seriousness with which he approaches the setting of the words he chooses (or writes himself) makes a refreshing change from the purely decorative style of some modern composers who similarly seek to appeal to the general listener.

In the second place, the performances themselves – two distinct sessions with different sets of artists (the Moscow patch to one of the Victorian Scenes notwithstanding) – are generally of superior quality to those found on the later discs of Getty’s music. It makes a distinct difference having choral singers of the calibre of the American and Swedish bodies here, with their natural employment of the English language enabling them to engage more closely with the text, as well as established international symphony orchestras to accompany them – although that is not to gainsay the sterling efforts of the German broadcasting bodies responsible for the later issues.

In the third place, the reissue of the original material still brings with it the full texts and introductory notes both by the composer and by James Keller, the latter furnishing us with more information regarding the origins of the music than we find in more recent Getty issues from Pentatone. These notes also come with translations into both German and French, although the lyrics are provided in English only (the three Welsh songs are furnished with English translations by the composer).

The disc begins with the cycle Young America, which is altogether the most impressive of Getty’s choral works I have heard – all the more so since the poems, mostly by the composer himself, seem to strike just the right note with their subtly shifting but striking modulations and occasional outbursts of emotion. The opening Hark the Homeland is a Whitmanesque sort of apotheosis to America, and forms a marvellous contrast to the imitation folk ballad Heather Mary with its haunting cor anglais solo warmly played by Julie Anne Giacobassi. My uncle’s house has a mood reminiscent of Barber’s Knoxville, at once boisterous and dream-like, and after an ominous orchestral War Interlude the dance-like Daughter of Asheville has a haunted quality which continues into the final setting of Stephen Vincent Benét’s positively spooky When Daniel Boone goes by night. The settings of the poems are continuous, and despite their contrasts they cohere into a most convincing unity. The excellent San Francisco chorus also distinguish themselves in the sympathetic setting of Poe’s Annabel Lee, scored for male voices only.

The Victorian Scenes, originally composed as independent a cappella pieces and only subsequently provided with accompaniments, are less satisfactory as a whole. The three settings of Housman (rather oddly described as a Victorian poet, when his first verse was not published until 1896, and his sensibility is so quintessentially Edwardian) tend to lack the sense of desolation that underpins the words. The Tennyson treatments work better, and Getty does make a real attempt in The splendour falls to convey the mysticism of the “horns of Elfland faintly blowing”. Mind you, in that poem he is up against formidable treatments of the same text from Delius and Britten; but his distinct and different approach is equally convincing. On the other hand in the added orchestral accompaniments, the over-closely observed church bells in Tennyson’s The time draws near sound positively alarming.

The settings of the Three Welsh folksongs are effective, if not conspicuously Celtic in tone. His rich treatment of Ar hyd y nos (rendered into English as All through the night) is probably the best of the three, with the approach of night casting a long heavily romantic shadow across the music. The Swedish choir, both here and in the Victorian Scenes, give not the slightest hint of a non-English accent.

The final item on the disc gives us a complete performance of the ‘Jerusalem’ scene of the death of Henry IV from Getty’s opera Plump Jack. This is particularly interesting, as the later recording of the ‘concert version’ of the opera on Pentatone omitted the first four minutes or so from the score, with the extensive narration of the defeat of the rebellion which precipitates the king’s collapse removed. Unfortunately hearing the relevant passage in this older recording does not leave any sense of regret at its later loss; the delivery of the text is very trenchant and recitative-like in tone, with some of Shakespeare’s text at its baldest and most bombastic. The latter part of the scene, on the other hand, is here given with considerably more dramatic involvement; and Vladimir Chernov as the King makes his death into a positive parallel of a Russian czar – “How I came by the crown, O God forgive” has all the overtones of a Boris Godunov as delivered here. Indeed the singing, despite some variable English accents, is generally more effective than on the later recording of the abridged version.

This is probably the most enjoyable of all the recordings I have encountered of Getty’s music and its reissue is therefore conspicuously welcome. The sound of the various forces and venues involved is well matched, and the presentation is excellent. Those who are tempted to belittle the composer’s abilities are recommended to hear Young America.

-- MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

Marc Albrecht and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra present Zemlinsky’s lush symphonic poem Die Seejungfrau. Zemlinsky was a child of fin-de-siècle Vienna, who for decades has been overshadowed by colleagues such as Gustav Mahler – the man who married Alma, the woman Zemlinsky also loved – and Arnold Schoenberg – the man who would later become his brother-in-law. In recent times, Zemlinsky is finally gaining the recognition he deserves. The same applies to his symphonic poem Die Seejungfrau, based on Andersen’s Little Mermaid story. Zemlinsky withdrew the score after its premiere in 1905; the three movements were first reunited in the 1980s thanks to scholars, after which the piece could start its second life. Die Seejungfrau seems inspired by Zemlinsky’s love in vain for Alma, clothed in cinematic fin-de-siècle music with Debussy-like evocations of the sea. This new recording marks the final PENTATONE album of Marc Albrecht as chief conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. It is their sixth collective PENTATONE recording, and underlines their proficiency in German late-Romantic repertoire. Previously, they have released Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben/Burleske (2018), Mahler Song Cycles (2017), Brahms/Schoenberg (2015), Mahler’s Fourth Symphony (2015) and his song cycle Das Lied von der Erde (2013).

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REVIEWS:

Albrecht inspires his orchestra in this late-Romantic score, intoxicated with the chromatic ecstasy of Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night.

– Sunday Times (UK)

For sheer tonal allure Albrecht’s performance can’t quite match the two available from Riccardo Chailly and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (on Decca and the orchestra’s own label), but it’s still powerful enough to convince any sceptics that this is a score that deserves much more than the occasional dutiful revival.

– Guardian (UK)

Dutch National Opera presents Alexander von Zemlinsky's Eine florentinische Tragodie (1917), with Marc Albrecht conducting the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Ausrine Stundyte (Bianca), Nikolai Schukoff (Guido Bardi) and John Lundgren (Simone) as soloists. Eine florentinische Tragodie (1917) fully adheres to George Bernard Shaw's famous dictum that every opera is "when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone". Yet Zemlinsky's piece presents this core narrative in it's most condensed form, and it's conclusion is one of the most original and enigmatic in opera history. This suspenseful, opulent score is in good hands with Marc Albrecht and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, whose proficiency in late-Romantic repertoire was crowned with a 2021 Opus Klassik Award for their recording of Zemlinsky's symphonic poem Die Seejungfrau. The three soloists are all seasoned in Wagnerian and late-Romantic repertoire, having appeared on the world's greatest opera stages. Oper! Magazine has crowned Dutch National Opera as Opera House of the Year 2024, an accolade that the company also received from the International Opera Awards in 2016. To emphasise the continuous transcendence of a life, Lilja builds a solid sense of identity for each suite. The cello is embraced by the sonic world like an individual by the universe. Lilja's playing has influences from the span of 300 years of existence of the suites, evolving from the simplicity of the 1st suite to almost Romantic in the 6th. His interpretation is inspired by Bach's rhythmical ideas that expand suite by suite and, as life throughout the years, become more complex and multilayered. After years of pioneering cello artistry in rock and electronic music, as well as composing for various projects, Lilja returns to his classical roots. With Six Shades of Bach, he presents a first of a kind crossover work, contributing to dialogues about the cello suites and survival of classical music. Max Lilja makes his Pentatone debut.