Early Exclusive: This title will ship exclusively to ArkivMusic customers starting on January 12th, 2018, three weeks before its wide street date!

Over the course of almost 10 years, Yevgeny Sudbin has been recording Sergei Rachmaninov’s works for piano and orchestra. The journey began in the U.S.A. in 2008 with the Fourth Piano Concerto in what Classic FM Magazine described as ‘a glorious recording’ with the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra under Grant Llewellyn. For the Paganini Variations and Piano Concerto No. 1, Sudbin continued to Asia and highly praised collaborations with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and conductor Lan Shui. Reviewers remarked on the soloist’s ‘transcendental virtuosity and kaleidoscopic keyboard colour’ (BBC Music Magazine) and enjoyed piano-playing with ‘depth of tone, subtlety and richness of texture, and scintillating dynamism allied to acute lyrical sensibility’ (Gramophone). The grand finale of the cycle combines the two most popular of Rachmaninov’s concertos – No. 2 in C minor and No. 3 in D minor – but it also constitutes a home-coming of a kind, as it was recorded in London, Yevgeny Sudbin’s base since 1997. For his partners in these monumental and almost iconic concertos, Sudbin has chosen the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Sakari Oramo.

Classical Music

Classical Music

"If you want to show people how fine a conductor in the old style Litton is, this version of The Isle of the Dead will do nicely, since it offers little to distract by way of surface brilliance. There’s an attention to structure, a matter not only of the tone poem’s all-important dynamic arch, but of carefully teasing out thematic cross-references in the orchestral texture. Inner lines are clarified, but not at the expense of vitality, momentum, or expressive power. As much can be said of this version of The Rock. It is in some respects a study for The Isle of the Dead, and Litton turns in a performance every bit as detailed and authoritative."

-- Barry Brenesal, Fanfare

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

Since his appointment as chief conductor and later music director in 2003, Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra have richly proven a particular affinity for Russian repertoire, both on their numerous tours and in recording. Works by Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Medtner and Scriabin have featured on discs which have been welcomed by the international music press with distinctions such as Editor's Choice (Gramophone), Disc of the Month (Classic FM Magazine and ClassicsToday.com), Empfohlen (Klassik-Heute.de) and IRR Outstanding (International Record Review). As Litton now steps down from his post with the Bergen orchestra, the team marks the event with their rendition of Sergei Rachmaninov's gigantic Second Symphony, with its playing time of 60+ minutes as broad and expansive as the Russian steppes. The work followed upon a first symphony which in 1897 had had a disastrous reception, and it took the intensely self-critical Rachmaninov ten years before making another attempt at the genre. Fortunately the first performance of the work in 1908 was a complete success, the broad melodic gestures and the arduous journey from the brooding melancholy of the symphony’s introduction to the triumphant liberation at its close speaking directly to the St Petersburg audience. Later criticism of the symphony’s broad scale prompted Rachmaninov to sanction several cuts, however, and it was only in the mid-1960s that it became common practice to perform the symphony complete – as in the present recording. Rachmaninov is joined on the disc by his older colleague Anatoly Liadov, whose brief and shimmering tone poem The Enchanted Lake provides an atmospheric ending to the recording – in the words of Liadov himself an image of nature, as ‘fantastic as a fairy tale’, in which the listener will feel ‘the change of the colours, the chiaroscuro, the incessantly changeable stillness…’

Review:

Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony is often accused of being gargantuan, schmaltzy and overblown. In Andrew Litton’s new recording with the Bergen Philharmonic, it sounds gargantuan, schmaltzy – and just blown enough, if you like your Rachmaninov big and extrovert.

– Guardian (UK)

His parents, Italian immigrants to Brazil, named Radamés Gnattali after the male lead in Verdi’s Aida, and his mother began to teach him the piano at the age of six. But even though he did become a highly skilled pianist, performing Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto in B flat at Rio de Janeiro’s Teatro Municipal at the age of 23, it was as a composer (and arranger) of music of a distinctly Brazilian cast that he would make his name. Gnattali developed an individual style, which today might be called cross-over, by infusing inflexions of popular music into a classical framework, over a fluid harmonic technique. Jaunty rhythms and striking melodic lines appear in a wholly uncontrived manner: they formed his everyday working material, as an arranger of popular music for record companies and radio stations. When composing concert music Gnattali usually did so for musicians that he collaborated with in popular music, such as the guitarist Laurindo Almeida, as well as for himself. A large production includes works for a great variety of scorings, but for this disc Franz and Débora Halász have chosen to present chamber and solo works for guitar and piano, inviting the cellist Wen-Sinn Yang to join in for the composer's Sonata for guitar and cello. As reflected in some of the titles, Brazilian dance forms (samba, batuque, choro) play an important role in this music, which for a long time was disregarded by a musical establishment suspicious of its great fluency and popular appeal; music which in every bar expresses the soul of Brazil – Alma brasileira.

Classical Music

Einojuhani Rautavaara and Kalevi Aho, teacher and pupil, are both key figures in the Finnish music of their respective generations. Rautavaara's musical language evolved from neoclassicism through dodecaphony and the stylistic freedom of the 1960s before he eventually allowed himself to choose his expressive idiom according to the individual requirements of his works. Towards the end of his career, his works took on a very consistent, soft-toned character. For his part, Aho also began his career using a freely applied neoclassical style before gradually progressing to a more varied, at times modernist expressive and incisive approach. The works featured on this disc offer a glimpse into the choral output of these two composers who, in addition to demonstrating their stylistic versatility, also reveal their literary curiosity. While Aho draws on contemporary Finnish literature, Rautavaara has recourse to poets of various origins and periods. They are entrusted to the expert voices of the Helsinki Chamber Choir and it's conductor, Nils Schweckendiek, who recently won an American Grammy for their disc devoted to the choral works of the late Kaija Sariaaho.

The Czech Bohuslav Martinů and the Finn Einojuhani Rautavaara may not seem to have much in common, but both have adopted an attitude free of musical puritanism, constantly finding new sources of inspiration which they explored without taboos. Explaining the heterogeneity of his musical language over the years, Rautavaara stated that, as a Finn, he stands ‘between East and West, between the tundra and Europe, between Lutheran and Orthodox faith’. Premiered in 1999, his Piano Concerto No. 3 has managed to join the small group of late twentieth-century concertos that are now part of the repertoire. Its subtitle, ‘Gift of Dreams’, seems to describe perfectly the character of the music in the first two movements, before a finale that exhibits a more driven, anxious manner.

Eclectic, prolific and capable of composing in all genres, Bohuslav Martinů is nevertheless a composer who is difficult to categorise and the word that seems to best suit his music is ‘cosmopolitan’. The Piano Concerto No. 3 shares many features with the Romantic concerto and recalls both Brahms and Stravinsky. Reflecting the tragic events in Prague at the time of its composition, the concerto ends in a macabre dance and appears as a defiant, almost belligerent gesture.

REVIEWS:

BIS is to be commended for producing an imaginatively programmed disc and giving the music brilliant performances and superb recorded sound. To round out the picture, Jean-Pascal Vachon’s program notes are helpful introductions to both pieces.

-- Fanfare

This enticing disc pairs the third piano concertos by two masters – works separated by a half-century in composition but that are highly expressive, vibrant, even complementary. At least that’s how they sound when played so eloquently by soloist Olli Mustonen, accompanied by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under the sensitive baton of conductor Dalia Stasevska. Rautavaara’s 1999 concerto, subtitled Gift of Dreams, shimmers in an array of musical colors, and Martinů’s 1948 third, which has a foot in both Romantic and modern styles, is eclectic in the best sense.

-- The Flip Side

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

In 1971, Einojuhani Rautavaara was asked to compose a Finnish Orthodox church service, an all-night vigil similar to that of Rachmaninov, comprising Vespers as well as Matins. Soon after the first performance he reshaped the music into what we now know as Vigilia, a concert version forming a musical whole. As his inspiration, Rautavaara has himself described a visit to the Valamo monastery in the middle of Lake Ladoga in 1939: ‘The bells began to ring, low-pitched booms and higher, shrill clinks: the world was filled with sounds and colors…’ The music is marked by dark colors, the heady smell of incense and the crepuscular church lit only by small candles. Divided into two parts, Vespers and Matins, the 70-minute work consists of 34 sections, and features prominent parts for a bass and a tenor soloist, as well as a number of solo voices emerging from the mixed choir. The work is enriched by the constantly changing combinations of choir and soloists, the perspective shifting from the personal to the universal.

It is here performed by the 21-strong Helsinki Chamber Choir, under its artistic director Nils Schweckendiek – a team that has made several recordings for BIS in recent years. These include Riemuitkaamme!, a Christmas album (‘Schweckendiek’s immaculately blended singers make a glorious noise’, The Arts Desk), as well as a two-album survey of the choral works of Finnish modernist Erik Bergman (‘The Helsinki choir produces a radiant sound throughout’, Choir & Organ).

Classical Music

In 1892, when Camille Saint-Saëns started on his Piano Trio No. 2, almost 30 years had passed since his first, widely celebrated work in the genre, his Op. 18. In the meantime the composer had come to be regarded as hopelessly old-fashioned by many of his colleagues. In writing the trio, Saint-Saëns remained true to his principles as a composer, striving for balance and clarity and avoiding the chromaticism that had become so prevalent in the wake of Wagner. It is nevertheless an unexpectedly personal work, cast, in the unusual form of a symmetrical arch in five parts: two substantial and dramatic Allegros frame three shorter movements, without a proper scherzo or a true slow movement. Some 20 years later, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, Maurice Ravel set about composing his own piano trio, in spite of his conviction that the percussive sound of the piano and the sustained singing of the string instruments were fundamentally incompatible. According to Ravel, only Saint-Saëns – who he admired greatly – had managed to solve this problem. If Saint-Saëns was an inspiration to Ravel when composing his Piano Trio in A minor, there were also other influences: the work was written during a stay in the Basque country where Ravel was born and the theme that opens the first movement displays what he himself called ‘a Basque color’, employing the characteristic rhythms of the zortziko. The two works are here performed by the Sitkovetsky Trio, who have previously won great acclaim for their recordings of Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Dvorák.

Classical Music

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

When Maurice Ravel in 1909 was commissioned by the ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev to write a score based on the ancient Greek novel Daphnis and Chloe, he decided to compose 'a huge musical fresco, concerned less with archaism than with faithfulness to the Greece of my dreams'. Three years later, when Daphnis et Chloé was first performed by the Ballets Russes, it had indeed grown into Ravel’s longest work, playing for about an hour and requiring a large orchestra with an extended percussion section, not to mention a choir. The first production was fraught with difficulties and the première in Paris was less than successful. It was only the following year, in London, that the composer received proper recognition for his music, which Stravinsky later described as 'not only Ravel’s best work, but one of the most beautiful products of all French music'. Ravel himself labelled it a ‘choreographic symphony’, and although he did extract two suites from it, the complete ballet score has also entered the concert repertoire. It is here performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a team with the best possible credentials for realizing the full spectrum of this sumptuous music – from the idyllic evocation of dawn in Lever du jour to the orgiastic Danse générale which closes the work. If Daphnis et Chloé is one of Ravel’s most highly regarded works, his Pavane pour une infante défunte is one of the most popular. The brief piano piece from 1899 was orchestrated by the composer in 1910, while he was working on Daphnis. Its profound melancholy has caught the imagination of listeners ever since, in combination with the poetic title – which was only chosen because of its agreeable sound, however: Ravel never had a particular dead princess in mind, and finding many interpretations too sluggish, famously remarked that the piece was not, after all, ‘a dead pavane for an infanta’.

-----

Nézet-Séguin seems to have this music in his soul, and he unquestionably has it at his fingertips, with a secure hold on the drama, the unfolding of events and the ballet's cohesive span… [T]he Netherlands Radio Choir add wordless halos to a characterful, involving interpretation.

– Gramophone

Maurice Ravel composed many works which stand as classics for both solo piano and for orchestra. On this disc, all except one work were first conceived for piano, which raises the question how it is possible to transfer such pianistic music to the orchestra without making it sound like a mere ‘colorized’ version. Ravel’s orchestral writing was the result of a long apprenticeship and careful study. Although his skills as an orchestrator are much admired today, his ability to coax new sounds out of the orchestra wasn't always appreciated in his own time, however – in 1907 the critic Pierre Lalo complained that ‘in Ravel’s orchestra, no instrument retains its natural sound…’!

Among the works performed here by Sakari Oramo and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra are some of Ravel’s earliest compositions, including the much-loved Pavane pour une infante défunte, but the album closes with a later work: La Valse, written in 1920 as one of only four works by Ravel originally conceived for orchestra. The idea of composing a tribute to Johann Strauss had pursued Ravel since 1906, but it took a commission from Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes for him to return to the project. When Diaghilev found it unsuited for ballet, Ravel gave it the subtitle ‘choreographic poem’. It was premiered in concert in 1920 and enjoyed immediate success.

REVIEW:

The ostensible title of this disc is “La Valse,” which is actually the least interesting performance on it. Oramo delivers a quick, lithe and lean interpretation of a work that ought to sound like a decadent, high cholesterol indulgence that explodes in a giant orchestral aneurism at the end. Here, he leaves the music no room to increase in urgency through the apocalyptic closing pages, although the playing is excellent and the sonics, as usual, first class. No, the real treat here is Le Tombeau de Couperin, here given with the two movements of the piano original that Ravel left off the orchestral version (Fugue and Toccata) very idiomatically arranged by Kenneth Hesketh. I particularly like Oramo’s decision not to take the opening too quickly, so that we get to savor the melody as well as Ravel’s gorgeous harmonies. It’s a splendid performance all around.

After Le Tombeau, the highlight of the program must be Une barque sur l’océan, still something of a rarity (even the score used to be hard to find), and I suppose a work that seems to fail next to Debussy’s La mer. The truth is that it’s a totally different beast, mostly dark and mysterious, and that’s just how Oramo plays it. The remaining works are mostly good. The inevitable Pavane for a Dead Princess and the Minuet antique are unkillable, but Alborada del gracioso needs more swagger towards the end. Why doesn’t Oramo give the trombones a chance to inject a little healthy vulgarity into the concluding bars? Of course, it’s not as if we’re short of worthy alternatives in most of this music, but the excellence (and novelty) of Le Tombeau and Une barque make this release impossible to dismiss.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

Between 1803 and 1968, the Grand Prix de Rome marked the zenith of composition studies at the Paris Conservatoire. In Maurice Ravel’s time the competition included an elimination round (a fugue and a choral piece) followed by a cantata in the form of an operatic scena. The entries were judged by a jury which generally favoured expertise and conformity more than originality and Ravel’s growing reputation as a member of the avant-garde was therefore hardly to his advantage, and may explain why he never won the coveted Premier Grand Prix, and the three-year stay at Rome’s Villa Medici that went with it.

The present set brings together all the vocal works that Ravel composed for the Prix de Rome – five shorter settings for choir and orchestra and three cantatas, each with three characters taking part in a plot which followed a more or less fixed sequence of introduction, recitative and aria, a duet, a trio and a brief conclusion. First published more than half a century after Ravel’s death, these test pieces for the Prix de Rome have never acquired the popularity of his other early works, such as Pavane pour une infante défunte, Jeux d’eau or the String Quartet. They are worth more than their reputation as academic exercises might suggest, however, and deserve to be better known, especially when performed by Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and Pascal Rophé and a team of vocal soloists including Véronique Gens and Michael Spyres.

REVIEWS:

This two-disc set brings together all of these rare vocal pieces by the composer: five shorter settings for choir and orchestra, and three cantatas, each with three characters taking part in the plot, which followed a more or less fixed sequence of introduction, recitative and aria, a duet, a trio and a brief conclusion. First published more than half a century after Ravel's death in 1937, these test pieces for the Prix de Rome have never acquired the popularity of his later and more mature works, but they are no mean pieces and are worth more than their reputation as academic exercises might suggest. These are compositions that are deftly crafted, full of attractive melodies, harmonically refined, and very often deeply sensitive. Indeed, they encapsulate all of the future Ravel hallmarks that were to make him one of the twentieth century's leading French composers.

Pascal Rophé draws some convincing performances and, in his hands, the music has an immediacy that keeps it consistently fresh and vivid. More than a collector's item which should attract the interest of all music lovers - Ravel aficionados in particular. Sonics and booklet notes are first-rate.

-- Classical Music Daily



Throughout history men have feared madwomen, burning them as witches, confining them in asylums and subjecting them to psychoanalysis – yet, they have also been fascinated, unable to resist fantasizing about them. For their new release, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton have created a programme that explores the responses of a variety of composers to women whose stories have left them vulnerable and exposed. As a motto they have chosen an aphorism by Nietzsche: ‘There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.’ Brahms’ Ophelia Songs, composed for a stage production of Hamlet, appear next to those by Richard Strauss and Chausson, while Ophelia's death is described by both Schumann (in Herzeleid) and Saint-Saëns. Goethe’s mysterious and traumatized Mignon appears in settings by Hugo Wolf as well as Duparc, while his ill-used Gretchen grieves by her spinning-wheel in Schubert's matchless setting. Sadness and madness tip into witchery and unbridled eroticism with Pierre Louÿs's poems about Bilitis, set by Kœchlin and Debussy. Sampson and Middleton end their recital as it began, with a suicide by drowning: in Poulenc’s monologue La Dame de Monte-Carlo, the elderly female protagonist has been unlucky at the gambling tables and decides to throw herself into the sea.

Andrzej Panufnik’s (1914-91) three original works for solo piano, spread out over almost four decades, are all highly crafted, demonstrating the composer’s fascination with mirror forms and symmetrical patterns. + Also included here are two ‘posthumous collaborations’ between the composer and his daughter Roxanna, herself an acclaimed composer, as well as two of Ms. Panufnik’s own compositions. + The young British pianist Clare Hammond devised the present disc for her first BIS release.

Classical Music

“Everything that is included is substantial… the hugely impressive Symphonic Prologue to a Tragedy is dark, brooding and intricately wrought. It's invaluable to have these works available in such lucid, well-played and committed performances.” – The Guardian (UK)

REGER Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart, op. 132. Symphonic Prolog to a Tragedy, op. 108. Piano Concerto 1. Suite in Olden Style, op. 93. Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Beethoven, op. 86. A Ballet Suite, op. 130. Four Tone Poems after Arnold Böcklin, op. 128 • Leif Segerstam, cond; 1 Love Derwinger (pn); Norrköping SO • BIS 9047 (3 CDs: 203:54)

This new compilation of Leif Segerstam’s Reger recordings, originally issued on three separate CDs in the 1990s, makes an outstanding introduction to the work of a composer still largely known by many classical lovers for his organ music and one song, Maria Wiegenlied. When I reviewed the 2-CD Guild set of historic Reger recordings ( Fanfare 37:6), I said how much I liked the works presented there. I can say much the same thing of this set, despite Segerstam’s penchant for slower tempos, simply because as a composer himself he approaches each work from a structural standpoint and brings out many subtleties.

Surprisingly, only two works are duplicated in the two sets, the Mozart Variations and the Ballet Suite . The Guild collection also included the Lustpielouvertüre, Serenade in G, Romantic Suite, and Eine vaterländische Ouverture. Possibly one may also want to hear Reger’s Violin Concerto, Sinfonietta, and the Variations on a Theme of Hiller, but otherwise, between these two sets, you have the bulk of Reger’s orchestral oeuvre . Early on in life, Reger became infatuated with both Bach and Wagner, and from these twin fonts of Teutonic culture he created remarkably interesting structures in music. And, surprisingly, his music is not only interesting but also fun to listen to, a point I made in regards to the Guild set.

Of the music new to me via this release, I was particularly impressed with the Symphonic Prelude to a Tragedy (which one might describe as a more modern, and more tragic, incarnation of Brahms’s Tragic Overture ), the piano concerto, and the Beethoven Variations and Fugue. My sole complaint of the recordings, and this probably has more to do with the engineering than with Segerstam, is that in quiet passages the music sometimes fades out of earshot. Unless you are listening with your ears very close to the speakers or, on headphones, with the volume turned up high, you will miss some of those softer passages. Other than that, however, I was very pleased overall with Segerstam’s readings. As usual with this conductor, transparency of texture is paramount, often revealing details that go unnoticed in others’ readings, and his subtle plasticity of phrasing keeps the music fluid and moving forward. Thus in a work like the Mozart Variations, one may prefer the more straightforward conducting of Eduard van Beinum in the Guild set, but one will find much more to hear in the Segerstam performance.

I was not particularly impressed by the Suite in Olden Style, which just toodled along and sounded nice but not much else. The Variations on a Theme of Beethoven is based on the last of the op. 119 Bagatelles. He originally wrote it for two pianos, but when preparing the orchestral score he eliminated four of the 12 variations and, according to the notes, changed both the playing order and the arrangement of keys. When he finished this score in August 1915, he had less than a year to live. In this case, I felt that Segerstam’s performance was a bit too airy for my taste, making the music sound less energetic that it might have, but the Ballet Suite came off pretty well. Segerstam’s problem, like the famous criticism of Bruno Walter, is that “when he comes to something beautiful, he melts.”

The liner notes suggest that the reason Reger’s Piano Concerto has failed to gain a place in the standard repertoire is that it is technically demanding but does not allow the soloist to “show off.” I would also suggest that the dark, brooding quality of the music is another reason. Most people like their piano concertos to sound cheerful or dramatic or, if somewhat brooding, then brooding in a Romantic Russian (read: Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff) sort of way, neither of which Reger gives us. This is a very complex piece, too, continually evolving yet knitting together its various sections within each movement with consummate mastery. (I would particularly commend this concerto to many modern American composers who write “clever” music that does not develop properly.) Derwinger is a committed interpreter, throwing himself into this complex score with emotional fervor, and Segerstam, too, is particularly dramatic here.

What makes this packaging even more attractive is that BIS is selling the 3-CD box at a special price. I found it listed for $32.75 at Presto Classical and $38.49 at ArkivMusic, an excellent bargain considering BIS’s normal price tag for single discs, which run around $21.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Classical Music

Classical Music

Having released their debut album In motion in 2020, the musicians that make up United Strings of Europe (USE) return with another innovative program: Renewal. The title refers in part to the fact that the majority of the works included are heard in arrangements and adaptations tailormade for the ensemble by Julian Azkoul, who also directs it from the violin. In Winter’s House by Joanna Marsh and Caroline Shaw’s and the swallow are both originally choral works while a second work by Shaw, Entr’acte, was conceived for string quartet, but is here heard in the composer’s own version for string orchestra. A similar treatment has been given Mendelssohn’s F minor String Quartet, one of the composer’s final works, written in reaction to the unexpected death of his beloved sister Fanny. For the centerpiece of the disc, Osvaldo Golijov’s Three Songs, USE is joined by soprano Ruby Hughes. The three songs were written for different occasions, but were rearranged by the composer to form a single work, capturing various strands of his immigrant identity as well as specific moments of inspiration, both felicitous and tragic. This is the first time all three songs appear with string orchestra on album.

The Swedish choral tradition enjoys a very high reputation, with music lovers often claiming to be able to recognize a uniquely Swedish choral sound. Exactly what this sound consists of is difficult to pinpoint, but often mentioned are keywords such as melancholy, the Scandinavian countryside, folk music and traditional ballads. The selection of works on this disc exemplifies all of these, and the performance of them has been entrusted to one of the choirs that have shaped Swedish choral music: Allmänna Sången, an Uppsala student choir with a history going back for more than 175 years. The choir's position in Swedish cultural life was demonstrated in 2005 by an invitation to sing at the Nobel Banquet. That performance was televised throughout the world, and in fact included three of the works on this disc - Biegga Luothe, Glaspolskan and Byss-Kalles slängpolska. Great traditions notwithstanding, this disc offers a new perspective on its subject, as the choir brings out new resonances in the often well-known music. A collaboration with Swedish jazz pianist Anders Widmark lends unusual colours to settings of ancient folk chorales (I Himmelen) and traditional harvest songs (Slåttervisa), as well as to classics from the treasure of Swedish choral music such as Stenhammar's Three Choral Songs and Alfvén's Evening ('Aftonen'). Both Allmänna Sången and Anders Widmark have made a number of successful recordings, and now that they join forces for the first time, it is an occasion not to be missed.

:"Crepuscolo" is the final song in Ottorino Respighi’s song cycle Deità silvane (‘woodland deities’), but as an album title it also stands for the twilight during the interwar years of everything that Respighi represented, as various trends such as atonality, spiky neoclassicism, and Italian futurism flourished. In reaction to these developments, Respighi in 1932 famously signed a manifesto calling for music with a ‘human content’ – in other words, a continuation of Romanticism. His songs certainly live up to this: as Elsa Respighi, the composer’s wife, once said, it was to his songs that he ‘entrusts his heart’s hidden secrets, when he lets his soul sing freely.’ From L’ultima ebbrezza, composed when Respighi was only 17 years old, to the Four Scottish Songs from 1924, the songs recorded here attest to the variety of his musical interests, influences and styles, and are at turns lyrically operatic, expressionist, impressionist or symbolist. Respighi’s love of the Renaissance is also manifest in the Cinque canti all’antica, settings of poets including Boccaccio.

Timothy Fallon and Ammiel Bushakevitz have previously released a Liszt recital described as ‘superb’ in Gramophone. They have now devised a varied program which takes in three complete groups as well as a selection of individual songs, including Respighi’s most popular songs (Nebbie, Stornellatrice) as well as less well known ones.

REVIEWS:

With every new exposure to Respighi’s vocal music – whether opera or song – I find that his much better-known orchestral works fade in significance, especially with this new cross section of the composer’s songs...this newcomer makes a great case for a single-disc collection thanks to a smart sense of musical variety in the sequencing plus the passionate, elegant performances by lyric tenor Timothy Fallon and his longtime collaborator, pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz.

Fallon is no newcomer...but maintains a youthful sensibility that takes the poems at face value, never looking outside of them, aided by a warm, Italianate tone that lends itself to the musical simplicity of the Scottish folk songs as well as the operatic histrionics of ‘Stornellatrice’ (‘Balladeer’)...Bushakevitz’s sonority and sense of comprehension suggest the lilac-scented, silk-upholstered parlours seen in Luchino Visconti movies, but make such a good case for the more distilled piano versions that, at least for the moment, you wouldn’t want to hear the music any other way.

-- Gramophone

Mathew Arnold observed: “It always seems to me that the right sphere for Shelley’s genius was the sphere of music, not of poetry”. Certainly, music was both a major influence on Shelley’s work, and a frequent subject of that poetry. In turn, his work has repeatedly attracted the attention of composers. Amongst English composers there are fine settings by, amongst many others, Geoffrey Bush, Roger Quilter, Vaughan Williams, Granville Bantock, Delius and Tippett; a less expected English setting can be found (‘Adonais’) on the B-side of The Cure’s 1996 single ‘The 13th’! Amongst modern American composers, there are intriguing settings by David Diamond and Ned Rorem. The number of settings, indeed, is such as to justify the publication in 1974 of Burton R. Pollin’s Music for Shelley’s Poetry: an annotated bibliography of musical settings of Shelley’s Poetry (New York, Da Capo Press).

Of immediate relevance to this particular CD, Italian composers attracted to Shelley’s work include Giorgio Ghedini, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco – and Ottorino Respighi. Respighi set several poems by Shelley, in Italian translations. Amongst them is the gorgeous Il Tramonto, which sets a translation by Roberto Ascoli of Shelley’s early poem ‘The Sunset’ (written in 1816). A minor masterpiece which belongs in a sound-world compounded of, say, Mahler and Zemlinsky, Strauss and Puccini, Respighi’s music beautifully complements and articulates Shelley’s poem of love and death, of “gentleness and patience and sad smiles” and “wisdom-working grief”, of “passionless calm and silence unreproved”. The vocal line is exquisitely handled by Stella Doufexis, her voice at times floating raptly where “lines of gold / Hung on the ashen clouds” and at times unbearably pained in evocation of the bereaved woman’s death-in-life. There are other fine recordings, including performances by Magdalena Kozena with the Henschel Quartet (Deutsche Grammophon 4715812) and Anne Sofie von Otter with the Brodsky Quartet (Vanguard Classics 99216). Kozena’s performance is part of a recital of songs by Ravel, Shostakovich, Schuloff and Britten; von Otter’s performance is part of an all Respighi programme along with the Quartet in D major and the Quartetto Dorico. Doufexis and the New Hellenic Quartet are not seriously disadvantaged by comparison with such big names – this is a dignified, moving performance, which refuses excessive melodrama.

Respighi played both violin and viola. While studying with Rimsky-Korsakov he played viola in the orchestra of the Imperial Opera in St. Petersburg; in Italy played viola in the Mugellini Quartet from 1903-1908. Not surprisingly, his writing for string quartet is clearly founded in secure knowledge of instrumental possibilities. The Quartet in D minor is perhaps not especially individual in idiom, but is thoroughly well made. The opening allegro is full of rich harmonies and warm humanity; the second movement – marked lentamente con tristezza – is steeped in romantic yearning, with some long melancholy melodic lines; the third movement is neatly made, a model of balance, with some attractively lyrical episodes; the finale sparking with controlled energy. A satisfying piece which deserves to be heard more often.

The Quartetto Dorico – written some fifteen years later – is, however, an altogether more distinctive work. It was written at about the time when Respighi – in part because of the influence of his wife, the singer and composer Elsa Olivieri-Sangiacomo – was reshaping his musical thought in the light of his study of Gregorian chant – an interest also reflected in such compositions as the Concerto gregoriano (1921) and the Concerto in modo misolidio (1925). The quartet is written as a single long movement, though made up of clearly distinct sections. There are passages indebted to folk materials; there are alternations between contrapuntal and homophonic writing; there is much fine writing for the viola, in particular. There is suggestion of subdued passion in much of the writing, a sense of passion reflected upon and contained, its sources and outcomes only hinted at in the insistent returns to a single theme. The whole has a strange beauty, simultaneously – somehow – both lush and austere.

In both quartets the New Hellenic Quartet play with commitment, intelligence and instrumental assurance. Their work resonates with honesty and freshness. The singing of Stella Doufexis is of a similarly high standard – any listener wanting to explore Respighi beyond the familiar orchestral works could do a great deal worse than start here.

-- MusicWeb International (Glyn Pursglove)