Famous for his role as keyboard player in the progressive rock band Genesis, Tony Banks has always been fascinated by the idea of writing orchestral music. Five of the seven pieces in this orchestral suite were written specifically for the Seven project.

Here at last we have a recording of Barber's marvelous Piano Concerto to rival (if not surpass) the classic Szell/Browning recording for CBS (Sony), a performance which that company inexplicably has managed to reissue everywhere in the world except in the one place that it should: the U.S. While Szell and his Clevelanders remain unbeatable in terms of rhythmic precision and disciplined ensemble, Marin Alsop and her Scottish players offer ample excitement and drive, while pianist Stephen Prutsman certainly compares favorably to John Browning's pioneering effort (his later, more sedate remake for RCA doesn't factor into this particular equation at all).


Prutsman puts steel into the music where required (the opening cadenza and much of the finale), but he offers a slow movement of great delicacy and tenderness too. He knows when to back off and let the orchestra have the spotlight, and together with Alsop manages a genuine dialog in such passages as the finale's second calm episode (music that's pure Prokofiev in its ironic wit). It's interesting how closely this finale resembles that of Ginastera's First Piano Concerto, composed at the same time, and both seem to be taking the finale of Bartók's Second Piano Concerto as a model. In any case, aside from Szell/Browning, there is no finer performance of this work available, and it's very well recorded to boot.


As for the couplings, the catchy Commando March plays itself, and Die Natali, a marvelously inventive fantasia on Christmas carols, receives a lovely performance. Why this charming piece isn't hauled out every December and played to death, as it surely deserves to be, is a genuine mystery. Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance features an excellent "meditation", brooding but not too slow, that yields to a vividly detailed but somewhat underpowered "dance of vengeance", just fractionally under tempo and lacking the ultimate hysterical frenzy (as in Munch/Boston) at the climaxes. However, given the overall excellence of the other items on offer, this isn't a major liability, and for the Piano Concerto alone this disc will be an essential acquisition for anyone who cares about Barber's music.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

BAROQUE FAVOURITES

BAROQUE GUITAR FAVOURITES

Includes work(s) by Tomaso Albinoni, Arcangelo Corelli, George Frideric Handel, ? Marcello, Johann Pachelbel.

J.S. Bach’s Italian Concerto and monumental Chaconne (heard here in the famous Busoni transcription) form the cornerstones of this disc of Baroque favorites performed on two guitars by the Amadeus Guitar Duo. One of Vivaldi’s most famous concertos, the D major RV 93 originally written for lute is transcribed to excellent effect for guitar duo. Franck’s Prélude, Fugue et Variation, a work inspired by the organ transcriptions of J.S. Bach, illustrates further how adept the Amadeus Guitar Duo is at reinventing these popular pieces for its own medium.

BAROQUE TRIO SONATAS

BAROQUE VIOLIN FAVOURITES

Agustin Barrios Mangore was one of the greatest guitar virtuosi of his time and something of a pioneer in making recordings, which he began as early as 1910. His compositions offer a lexicon of technical and expressive devices for the guitar, from both the South American and European traditions. This penultimate volume in the series offers the scintillating Estudio No. 6, which demonstrates some of the composer’s finest artistic characteristics such as poignant treble melodies and a mastery of harmonic progression. Other works include examples of the Paraguayan polka, the Zamba, Creole airs, the Serenata, and many other pieces attesting to Barrios’s inexhaustible individuality and variety. Celil Refik Kaya was awarded First Prize at the JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition in 2012 and has since received multiple awards from several prestigious American guitar competitions, as well as the Rising Young Musician of the Year by the Donizetti Classical Music Awards in Istanbul in 2017. Kaya has performed in the most prestigious concert halls and festivals around the US and Turkey, including Carnegie Hall, The Frick Collection Museum, NYCGS, Round Top, Brevard and Ankara International Music Festival, and numerous radio and TV broadcasts.

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REVIEW:

The guitarist's performances perfectly capture the atmosphere of popular South American music. You have to go no further than the first track, Las Abejas, for a sample of his quite remarkable agility in both hands. The disc is rounded off with a fabulous account of Milonga.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Agustin Barrios Mangore’s first public appearance was as ‘the Paganini of the guitar from the jungles of Paraguay.’ This flamboyant image was soon retired, but his legacy as a composer has endured and flourished, as have the recordings he made as the first guitarist to take advantage of new technology from as early as 1910. Ranging from romantic enchantment to fearsome virtuosity via works with Bach-like restraint, this programme embraces Barrios Mangore’s art from his earliest known piece, Abri la puerta mi china, to the reconstruction of the substantial Diana Guarani from a recording made in 1943. Celil Refik Kaya was awarded First Prize at the JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition in 2012 and has since received multiple awards from several prestigious American guitar competitions, as well as the Rising Young Musician of the year from the Donizetti Classical Music Awards in Istanbul in 2017.

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REVIEWS:

Celil Refik Kaya is an eminent guitarist and the technical challenges, which are sometimes quite testing in Barrios’s music, are negotiated elegantly and effortlessly. The recording and production at large are in the safest of hands with radar couple Norbert Kraft and Bonnie Silver in charge and with Graham Wade’s all-embracing liner notes as guide book. There is also uncommonly extended playing-time, more than 84 minutes! You get a lot of music for your money.

– MusicWeb International

Barrios has the twin virtues of a disciplined, classical backbone and a lushly romantic outlook. Celil Refik Kaya brings a spontaneity to the more hackneyed salon pieces, and suitable gravitas for the more complex works. Virtuosity and musicianship galore are on display in this superb release.

– Music for Several Instruments

2 CDs with over 2 hours of music Illuminating essay by Stephen Johnson Illustrated with photographsWell over half a century after his death, Bela Bart k is held up as one of the twentieth century' great musical moderni.

Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, one of his greatest works, was written in the United States after the composer was forced to flee Hungary during World War II. It is not only a brilliant display vehicle for each instrumental section but a work of considerable structural ingenuity that unites classical forms and sonorities with the pungency of folk rhythms and harmonies. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta explores darker moods through a score of marvellously poised symmetry. This release follows Marin Alsop’s ‘riveting’ (Gramophone) Baltimore Symphony recordings of Dvorák’s symphonies.

REVIEW:

Marin Alsop leads a splendid performance of the oft-recorded Concerto for Orchestra, full of character, whether in the jocular “games of pairs” second movement, the ensuing spooky elegy, or the finale that begins (seemingly) a touch reserved but takes off like a shot in the coda. It’s a memorable and wholly successful effort, excellently engineered to boot.

– ClassicsToday.com (D. Hurwitz)

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.

Selections recorded May 30-June 4, 1989.

Bartok: Piano Music, Vol. 3: Out of Doors - Ten Easy Pieces

Bartok: Piano Music, Vol. 4: For Children

Béla Bartók’s formative years as a composer in Budapest were stimulated by fashionable musical salons hosted by the wealthy Emma Gruber (later Zoltán Kodály’s wife). His landmark Rhapsody, Op.1is dedicated to Gruber, while the earlier Variations are a romantic homage to his talented colleague Felicie Fábián, composer of the theme. The virtuoso Etudes focus on hand flexibility for pianists –the pieces For Children are based on Hungarian and Slovak peasant songs partly collected by Bartók. These revelatory sounds caused Bartók to change his approach to composing. He likened the arranging of a peas-ant melody to ‘the mounting of a jewel’, producing extremely effective miniature masterpieces of graceful perfection.

Volume 9 of this series presents two substantial works. Bartók’s ambitious late-Romantic Piano Sonata, Op.19, BB 12, is an early work, heard in Goran Filipec’s performing edition, prepared from the manuscript. Zongoraiskola or ‘Piano Method’, was devised in collaboration with Sandor Reschofsky who contributed the exercises.

Bartok: Rhapsodies Nos. 1 and 2 / Piano Quintet

In the years leading up to World War I, Bartók occupied himself with a series of works for the theater. He completed his first stage work Bluebeard’s Castle in 1911. The Wooden Prince (1914-16) is a fairytale ballet with an original story by Bartók’s literary acquaintance Béla Balázs, who wrote the libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle.

Set “once upon a time” in a forest whose trees rustle to life, the ballet runs continuously as a series of seven dances with connecting music and recurring musical themes. Though outwardly lighthearted in its subject matter, The Wooden Prince contains a mystical element that may explain Bartók’s attraction to the story. He crafted the work as a symmetrical, tripartite symphonic poem, with the final section recalling materials from the first part in reverse order.

Marin Alsop is the first conductor ever to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and was the first musician to win both Gramophone's "Artist of the Year" award and the Royal Philharmonic Society's Conductor's Award in the same season.

"Having a premiere recording of Bartok on Naxos makes an unmissable bargain. His Viola Concerto was the uncompleted work which, soon after his death, Tibor Serly put together from sketches. Now Bartok's son Peter, with the scholar Paul Neubauer, has re-edited those sketches. Though the differences are small, this first recording of the revised version, superbly played, proves fascinating, sounding closer to the Concerto for Orchestra. With the rich-toned Chinese violist Xiao as soloist, that version is here presented alongside Serly's. The warmly atmospheric Two Pictures and a viola work make a good coupling."

– The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs & DVDs - 2005/6 Edition, page 114

Classical Music

Conan the Barbarian is a 1982 adventure film, directed and co-written by John Milius. It was his intention to create an opera in the form of a film. Since the opera contains very little dialogue, he used the music to support the story line. The music composed by Basil Poledouris (1945-2006) conveys a sense of power and energy but also expresses many tender moments. The superb Glatter-G�tz/Rosales organ in Claremont, California was designed to inspire creativity and innovation, and Philipp Pelster's vision in making a complete film-score transcription especially for the unique possibilities of this instrument transforms the orchestral colors of the original to generate a completely new and richly rewarding musical experience.

Batthle Music

How to depict scenes of battle in music is a task that has long fascinated composers. From the dawning of the Renaissance the first successful programmatic works appeared from Susato, Dowland and Biber. But it was the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that witnessed a true flourishing, when composers utilized the full resources of contemporary symphonism to evoke the tumult of battle. Later the medium of film, notably those produced in Hollywood, brought with it colorful and gripping scores.

Recognised as rising stars of their generation, pianist Ashley Wass and the Tippett Quartet join forces to present two contrasting yet equally engaging British piano quintets. Conceived on a grand, expansive scale and influenced by Celtic music, with all manner of harmonic and instrumental colours exploited to super effect, Arnold Bax’s Quintet is arguably a precursor of his later symphonies. Frank Bridge’s early work (1904–5, revised 1912) combines his admiration for the music of Fauré with the highly integrated ‘fantasy’ techniques he honed when composing music for the famous Cobbett Prize.

Includes work(s) by Hans-Eberhard Ross. Ensemble: Gould Piano Trio. Soloists: Benjamin Frith, Lucy Gould, Alice Neary, Robert Plane.

Sir Arnold Bax wrote his seven symphonies between 1921 and 1939, embracing a prolific period that drew inspiration from a variety of sources. From the dramatic impact of the Second Symphony through to the seascapes of the Fourth and hints of Sibelius in the later works, Bax’s powerful symphonic world is one of surprising and at times stormy vigor contrasting with the most intense lyrical expressiveness and serenity. The selection of additional orchestral works evoking nature and atmospheric landscapes fascinates and rewards in equal measure, providing an essential overview of Bax’s music in critically acclaimed recordings.

REVIEW:

Listeners should come away mightily impressed by David Lloyd-Jones's clear-headed conducting of this intoxicating repertoire.

-- Gramophone

Past praise of previously released individual volumes included in this set:

Symphony No. 1 - In the Faery Hills - Garden of Fand

This first disc in the Naxos Bax series offers warmly idiomatic readings of two early symphonic poems, as well as the First Symphony…finely detailed. In the two symphonic poems, more specifically inspired by Irish themes, Lloyd-Jones draws equally warm and sympathetic performances from the Scottish Orchestra, bringing inner clarity to the heaviest scoring. First-rate sound...

-- Penguin Guide

Symphony No. 4, Nympholept, Picaresque Comedy Overture

The RSNO handle the difficulties of these scores well, with some wonderful solo playing from oboes and horns. The conductor David Lloyd-Jones allows those refulgent textures time to breathe, without letting the music sprawl.

-- Times of London

Symphony No. 5 - The Tale the Pine-Trees Knew

Lloyd-Jones's intelligent, meticulously observant and purposeful direction pays handsome dividends, and that a well-drilled RSNO in turn responds with sensitivity and enthusiasm. In short, another terrific coupling within what is turning out to be one mightily rewarding enterprise.

-- Gramophone

Having admirably survived Bax's discursive piano sonatas, Ashley Wass devotes all of his third volume of this composer's piano works to relatively smaller-scaled fare. Actually, the opening selection, What the Minstrel Told Us, times out to 11 minutes. The outer sections feature a bardic melody gently supported by slow moving, impressionistic chords and arpeggiated figures, while a middle section develops this material more agitatedly. Wass summons up all the tone color and sustaining power needed to convey the orchestral sensibility of the piano writing.


He plays the nocturne-like Princess's Rose Garden a bit straighter than Eric Parkin's more garishly-voiced Chandos recording, yet he shapes the chromatic motives with plenty of affection. By contrast, Wass doesn't clarify A Hill Tune's left-hand melodic content and right-hand accompaniment to Parkin's more fluid distinction. However, he scores with more rhythmic snap in the Spanish-tinged Mediterranean and renders the Gopak steadier, sharper, yet slightly slower in contrast to Parkin's brisker, looser approach. In short, collectors who've enjoyed Wass' previous Bax discs also will find this well-recorded, superbly annotated release to their liking. I look forward to this cycle's fourth and final volume.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Ah, such pleasing, dreamy music! You can almost see fluffy, feathery clouds drifting across a bright blue sky looking down on a lily-covered pasture. Picturesque? You bet. This is atmospheric music, pure and simple. Beauty of sound is given such a priority that concerns of form and structure seem irrelevant, though it's readily apparent that the four-movement Fantasy Sonata for harp and viola is a most substantial and seriously crafted work. The Sonata for flute and harp unavoidably conjures up images of Pan, while the Quintet, with its briefly dark and disturbing moments, shows evidence of having been composed in the wake of the First World War. However, it is the Elegiac Trio that presents Bax's real response to those events, particularly the death of his friend, Irish poet Padraig Pearse. Yet, there is no rage in this music; on the contrary, it inhabits a similar sound world to Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp, which was composed six months earlier. Throughout all these works, Alison Nicholls draws exquisitely beautiful sounds from her harp, playing with the imagination so essential to the music's expressive character. She is handsomely partnered by Mobius, an ensemble of seven young musicians from four different countries. Their commitment and enthusiasm are evident from the first note to the last on this vividly recorded program. [10/17/2000] --Victor Carr, ClassicsToday.com