Wilhelm Stenhammar’s Serenade is unquestionably an orchestral masterpiece, one of two that he wrote (the other being the Second Symphony), and this remains its finest recording. Järvi remade the work for DG, and very well too, with this same orchestra, but as is so often the case the second effort doesn’t quite measure up to the initial outing. In the first place, this performance includes the “Reverenza” movement that Stenhammar later deleted. It’s a charming minuet, and since it’s followed by the Canzonetta, a slow waltz, it’s easy to understand why he decided, however reluctantly, to leave it out. I’m not entirely sure it fits here as the second movement–that means a lot of slow music between the opening Overture and the Scherzo–but it’s still good to have and you can always just skip it if the result turns out to be boring in your opinion.

Second, Järvi offers the most exciting and rambunctious performance of the Scherzo yet recorded. This movement really can and should be a virtuoso extravaganza, and here it has a huge impact, assisted in no small degree by some of the best recorded sound that BIS ever managed in Gothenburg. The rich bass, wide dynamic range, and superb balances permit Järvi and his players to let it rip in thrilling fashion. Add to that a lovely, flowing Notturno and a meaty, muscular finale and the result is one of the glories of the BIS catalog. The Serenade has been lucky on disc, and has received a striking number of fine recordings, but this is the one to own to get to know the work.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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Between 1894 and 1916 Wilhelm Stenhammar composed a total of seven string quartets, of which one (F minor, 1897) was withdrawn immediately after its first performance. In Scandinavian music of its time, this series of quartets is unique both in its consistency and in its musical aspirations. Taking its name from the composer, the Stenhammar Quartet with this recording signs off on the first ever complete traversal of the cycle on CD. (The only other previous cycle was recorded in the 1980's by three different ensembles, and did not include the then still unpublished F minor quartet.)

On this final disc, the Stenhammar Quartet performs the Swedish composer’s first two attempts in the genre. The C Major Quartet was composed only a few months after Stenhammar had made a sensational breakthrough with his Op.1, the piano concerto in B flat minor which he himself had premièred as soloist with the orchestra of the Royal Opera in Stockholm. But already two years earlier he had begun a close collaboration with the Aulin String Quartet, and it was for this ensemble that he composed his first quartet, as well as the following four. Like the piano concerto, the C major quartet is influenced by Brahms, whose quartets Stenhammar had been studying, and may to some extent be regarded as a highly promising apprentice work in the genre. In contrast, the String Quartet No.2 in C minor, written just two years later, represents a more independent approach, with a highly imaginative treatment of themes and motifs.

REVIEW:

The Stenhammars conclude the first-ever complete cycle of their namesake's quartets on disc with characteristically energetic and well-explored readings of his first two essays in the genre.

– Gramophone

If there is one Swedish composer in the early 20th century who in some way can compare with Sibelius and Nielsen, it is Wilhelm Stenhammar - incidentally a personal friend of both these towering figures in Nordic music. And in Stenhammar's production - which includes songs, piano music and large-scale orchestral works - his string quartets form a special chapter. The seven quartets (of which one, in F minor, was withdrawn by the composer soon after its first performance) were written over the space of 22 years, and mirror Stenhammar's development, from full-blown Romanticism to a more sparse and formally concentrated idiom. As a pianist, Stenhammar worked closely for many years with the Aulin Quartet, the finest Swedish string quartet of its time. (It was the Aulin Quartet that gave the first performances of all Stenhammar's quartets up to and including No.4 in A minor, Op.25.) His familiarity with the medium is evident in these works which have been described as 'the most important written between those of Brahms and Bartók', but which still remain less well-known internationally than they deserve. In a bid to change this, the Stenhammar Quartet here present the first disc in a trilogy which will include the six quartets published during the composer's lifetime, as well as the F minor quartet - for the first time on disc - and other music for string quartet. Making its first appearance on BIS, the Stenhammar Quartet was formed in 2002 and has made a name for itself in Sweden and internationally as interpreters of Stenhammar's music, as well as of core repertoire and contemporary works.

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Considered to be one of the great Nordic symphonies of its time, Wilhelm Stenhammar's Symphony No. 2 in G minor was a long time in the making. Stenhammar the conductor and pianist was a leading figure in the musical life of Sweden and Scandinavia, but in his role as composer he struggled with self-doubt, feeling that his knowledge of musical theory was insufficient. In 1910 he decided to address this perceived shortcoming, and began an intensive study of counterpoint which included setting himself several thousand assignments over the following decade. At the same time, between 1911 and 1915, Stenhammar composed his G minor symphony, and against this background it is hardly surprising that it displays his preoccupation with counterpoint, its final movement a grandiose double fugue. If the symphony is one of Stenhammar’s most celebrated works, his music for Strindberg’s A Dream Play is one of the least-known. It was composed for a production of Strindberg’s existential drama in 1916, a year after the completion of the Symphony. Rarely performed after that, the music was arranged into a concert version in 1970 by Hilding Rosenberg. Christian Lindberg and the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra have previously recorded Stenhammar’s Serenade to critical acclaim.

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REVIEW:

Lindberg’s reading of the 2nd Symphony moves with the sense of urgency Stenhammar most assuredly had in mind. The Andante lilts, the Scherzo swings, and he wisely keeps the busy contrapuntal finale bustling along. This glorious release should not be missed.

– Gramophone

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Called a 'symphony' by its composer, Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony is nevertheless a symphonic poem, and as such it is the last in a series of works that includes such masterpieces as Don Juan, Also sprach Zarathustra and Ein Heldenleben. In 1900, when Strauss first mentioned any plans for the work, he spoke of a symphonic poem in two parts that would begin with a sunrise in Switzerland. When he returned to the idea some ten years later, the work soon grew so vast that he decided to be content with one single movement, depicting the 'worship of eternal glorious nature'. To regard the Alpensinfonie simply as an impression of landscape would be a mistake, however. It does make use of Strauss' entire repertoire of orchestral pictorialism, but behind it are ideas much less simple: nature is being worshipped in the intoxicated spirit of Nietzsche's superman, the liberation of the soul is achieved through hard work - the climber's struggle to gain the mountaintOp.The work is divided into 22 sections that flow in an unbroken sequence, marking the ascent and descent of the mountain, from before sunrise to after sunset. It was scored for the largest orchestra ever used by Strauss for a purely orchestral piece, and he later said that it was in the Alpine Symphony that he had 'finally learned how to orchestrate'. The experience must in any case have been useful when he composed his next work, the opera Die Frau ohne Schatten, with an even more opulent orchestration. The opera was premièred in 1919, but it wasn't until 1946 that Strauss, in his 82nd year, returned to the score in order to make his Symphonic Fantasy, based on high points from the opera. These huge, and enormously colourful works are performed here by the eminent São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, whose highly praised recordings of the Choros by Villa-Lobos have been described as 'an orgy of colours and rhythms' (Diapason) and 'an assured blend of lush colours, pulsating rhythms and supple phrasing' (International Record Review). The orchestra is conducted by Frank Shipway, with fine credentials in late-Romantic Austro-German repertoire.

The first recording by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra for BIS centred on Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique, a work which stands squarely on the threshold between Classicism and Romanticism. Nézet-Séguin's interpretation brilliantly demonstrated this ambivalence, as the reviewer in CD Review on BBC Radio 3 remarked: 'A Fantastic Symphony that relishes in the transparency and the delicacy of Berlioz's scoring while remaining true to its vivid imagination and dramatic punch'. On the follow-up to that exciting release is another work that straddles a musical divide, namely Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs. Composed in 1948, these late blooms of an unabashed Romanticism stood in the midst of a musical landscape which featured the twelve-tone serialism of the Darmstadt School, John Cage's prepared piano and the first examples of musique concrète. In accordance with Strauss's wish, it was the dramatic soprano Kirsten Flagstad who first performed the songs, but they also became closely associated with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. On the present recording, it is Dorothea Röschmann, one of today's foremost Mozart sopranos who lends her voice to what is often regarded as an expression of the composer's acceptance of death's inevitability, at the age of eighty-four. We meet Strauss in a completely different mood in the disc's opening work - the large-scale symphonic poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) composed fifty years before the songs. By casting himself in the role of the Hero, Strauss managed to provoke generations of music-lovers for years to come. A study of aggressive egotism, the work has been called, as well as the most conceited piece of music ever written. But it is also widely regarded as one of the most brilliant, and virtuosic, orchestral scores in the history of music, displaying the possibilities of a large symphony orchestra to the fullest.

Despite his advanced age and the chaos surrounding him, Richard Strauss remained highly productive well into the 1940's. As the Second World War was coming to an end in 1944-45, the eighty-year-old composer was working on his Oboe Concerto and Sonatina No. 2 for winds, as well as the Metamorphosen for strings. While the latter work was an explicit response to the destruction Strauss was witnessing, in the Concerto and the Sonatina the composer seemed to be turning his mind away from the events surrounding him. There is a pastoral quality to the oboe concerto, with a highly tuneful solo part and more than occasional touches of nostalgia for the 18th century. Similarly, Strauss headed the score of the sonatina with a dedication ''to the spirit of the immortal Mozart at the end of a life full of thankfulness''. To an extent, one might say that Strauss at the end of his life returned to the musical models of his youth. It is therefore fitting that these two works frame the Serenade in E flat major for wind ensemble, composed more than sixty years earlier in the tradition of entertainment music by Schubert and Mendelssohn. Alexei Ogrintchouk, one of today's leading oboists, has proven himself in previous recordings for BIS ranging from Bach to Nikos Skalkottas and Antal Dorati. With sterling support from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Andris Nelsons, he here makes light of the considerable difficulties of the solo part of the oboe concerto, and also directs his colleagues from the orchestra's wind section in the works for wind ensemble.

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REVIEW:

Late Strauss has a sound very different from the sumptuous, huge-orchestra one of earlier Strauss, and the 1945 Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra, one of the composer’s final works, shows this quite clearly. The live recording of the concerto for BIS by Alexei Ogrintchouk is a very fine, well-played one, and the conducting by Andris Nelsons is sensitive and nicely paced.

Ogrintchouk is both oboist and conductor in the other works on the SACD, which are studio recordings. The short, charming, lively and quite self-assured Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments is from the opposite, earliest part of Strauss’ career, dating to 1881.

The final work on this disc is much more substantial — longer than the other two put together. The label Sonatina therefore seems something of a misnomer. It features very skillful wind writing — a Strauss characteristic that does not always get adequate attention — and an overall warm and mellow sound somewhat reminiscent of that of Brahms. Strauss was something of a natural in wind writing, as the excellent playing on this recording makes abundantly clear.

– Infodad.com

Generally acknowledged as one of the great masters of the late-Romantic symphony orchestra, Richard Strauss understood like few others how to use the rich palette of instrumental colours to portray larger-than-life passions and emotions. He did so in a series of pioneering symphonic poems – often choosing as his subject extraordinary characters such as Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel and Don Quixote. But before either of these, in his very first tone poem, he composed a portrayal of Macbeth, his ferociously ambitious wife and their downfall. It is with this rarely played work that Lan Shui and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra open their all-Strauss disc. Also included is another early tone poem, Tod und Verklärung, which Strauss started composing very shortly after Macbeth, and which was actually premièred before that work. In his new work, Strauss didn’t make use of an existing character or story – instead he set out to depict the emotions of a man struggling against and finally giving in to death. These two works, which both end in death, frame a suite from one of the composer’s most lighthearted ventures – the opera Der Rosenkavalier, set in mid-eighteenth century courtly Vienna. Premièred in 1911, this sophisticated aristocratic comedy, proved a perennial favourite and towards the end of his life, Strauss gave his blessing to the Suite recorded here, which manages to include a fair selection of the opera’s best-loved moments.

Stravinsky, Bartok and Martinu were established international figures when they wrote these works for violin, travelling across Europe as well as the United States. With the onset of World War Two, all three composers would ultimately emigrate because of their rejection of fascism. In an age of political upheaval and cultural displacement, each of them found an individual approach to reinventing the language of tonal music, laying down roots in the west without abandoning their Eastern European identities. While the Russian-born Stravinsky was experimenting with possibilities of modern violin technique in his concerto, Martinu took these efforts a step further in his Suite concertante by blending the sounds of his native Bohemia with the colours of French neo-classicism. In the Rhapsodies, Bartok turned to the folk music of Hungary and Romania.

Frank Peter Zimmermann, joined here by the Bamberger Symphoniker and its conductor Jakub Hrůša, continues his exploration of the great violin works of the 20th century after his acclaimed recordings of works by Hindemith (BIS-2024), Shostakovich (BIS-2247) as well as Martinu and Bartok (BIS-2457), a recording unanimously acclaimed by the critics, gaining a Diapason d’or and named ‘Concerto Choice’ by BBC Music Magazine, ‘Editor’s Choice’ by Gramophone and one of Classica’s ‘Chocs de l’annee’.

REVIEW:

With Jakub Hrůša and his super-attentive Bamberg orchestra, Frank Peter Zimmermann trumps the self-confident projection of his younger self. Stravinsky’s framing movements seem defter now, particularly the opening Toccata with its chortling bassoons.

-- Gramophone

Their interpretation of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto becomes an equally sarcastic and seriously elaborated confrontation. Even in the opening Toccata, taken from the baroque form, the notes buzz and chirp like a summer meadow full of birds and insects. In general, the performers give the work a floating lightness that dispels everything earthly. At no point do you notice the technical demands.

In the two arias, too, the participants maintain the intensity and musical pressure. The concluding Capriccio then gives Zimmermann another opportunity to let his violinistic fireworks leap, jump, and shine in an artfully choreographed manner. He knows he is in the best of company with his accompanists, as they also carry the sarcastic aspects of the score as well as demonstrating the ambiguity with pointed articulation.

Bartok’s rhapsodies are constructed in two parts, like a Csárdás, which has a slow and a fast part. Bartok has retained much of the character of the music here, which he borrowed from folk melodies. The performers know how to show this raw side of the music of the people with verve and well-dosed energy.

The first version of the Suite concertante already had a difficult genesis, as Martinů was, to put it casually, lovesick during its composition. The elegiac music of the meditation therefore has a special depth of expression, which Zimmermann and his accompanists shape with deep feeling.

Martinů created the fundamentally new second version of the suite primarily at the request of the soloist Samuel Dushkin. The Aria from this version links up with Stravinsky’s concerto, as does the same original soloist. Many of the elements that characterize Martinů’s works – references to Czech folk music, vitality, changing rhythmic patterns and a mostly traditional harmony that does not exclude harsh dissonances – can also be found in the suite.

Zimmermann also demonstrates his violinistic skills in the suite, which are characterized by elegance and mastery of the instrument, in an engaging and memorable, yet spontaneous manner, so that the suite shines with fresh brilliance and brings Martinů to the trapeze. Hruša and the Bambergers are still to be found at his side and are audibly at ease with the music of their not only geographical neighborhood.

-- Pizzicato

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In his autobiography, Igor Stravinsky wrote of his not having had an ''great liking'' for the combination of strings and piano. That there nevertheless are a number of chamber works by him featuring the violin is to a large extent due to the violinist Samuel Dushkin. The two were introduced to each other by Stravinsky's german music publisher who wanted to persuade him to compose a violin concerto. They obviously hit it off: their collaboration continued after the concerto had come into being in 1931, and they devised a recital programme to perform together on tours. The centrepiece was Duo concertant which Stravinsky completed in 1932 as his only original composition for violin and piano. Rather than looking for common ground between the two instruments, Stravinsky aimed to emphasize their individuality in a work that he himself claimed was ''determined by my love of the pastoral poets of antiquity and their scholarly art and technique''. The other pieces on this album are, with one exception, arrangements of Stravinsky's own works including The Firebird, Petrushka and Le rossignol. The majority were made for and in collaboration with Dushkin, but a few come from the 1920's and were intended for the violinist Paul Kochanski. One of these is the Suite for Violin and Piano, arranged from the ballet Pulcinella - material that Stravinsky revisited in the 1930's in order to make a new version for Dushkin. With this programme, and in the company of the eminent Russian pianist Peter Laul, the highly virtuosic and temperamental violinist Ilya Gringolts makes his return to BIS.

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REVIEW:

On this fine new BIS release, young Russian violinist Ilya Gringolts turns to music of Igor Stravinsky, featuring his two major works for violin and piano, the Duo Concertante and the Suite for Violin and Piano, among other works. All is played to perfection. Excellent, natural sonic picture. Recommended!

– Classical CD Review

This is a fabulous recital showcasing a stunning array of musical invention by the great shape-shifting composer of the 20th century. The engineers at BIS have deft hands when it comes to arranging microphones, and the presentation of the CD is especially fine with photogravure fern images on front and back. For fiddle or Stravinsky fans, this production is not to be missed.

– Audiophile Audition

A leading authority on Bach, conductor Masaaki Suzuki now tackles his first album by a twentieth century composer. Collaborating with the acclaimed ensemble Tapiola Sinfonietta, Suzuki has chosen the works of Stravinsky for this release. Tracks include Pulcinella Suite, Apollon Musagete, and Concerto in D for Strings.

Igor Stravinsky is not a composer who is usually associated with symphonic form. Five of his compositions bear that name, however, even though they have little in common. The first major work Stravinsky composed entirely in the United States, the Symphony in Three Movements seems to pick up where the Rite of Spring left off with it's rhythmic ostinatos and shock effects. It can be interpreted as the composer's response to the Second World War, which was ravaging Europe at the time of it's composition, and it's striking and triumphant conclusion appears to echo of what the composer must have felt. The Symphonies of Wind Instruments, a short, compact work, was a tribute to Stravinsky's friend and colleague Claude Debussy. Although it's kaleidoscopic formal conception disconcerted audiences at it's premiere, it is now considered to be one of Stravinsky's finest works, showing daring originality. The Symphony in C was composed on two continents during a difficult period for the composer, though this is in no way betyrayed by it's simplicity, good humour and 'classicism'. With this disc, the Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia and Dima Slobodeniouk present a fascinating aspect of the multifaceted output of a composer whose style was constantly evolving.

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CHRISTMAS Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â?Â? LUND CHAMBER CHOIR, LUND CATHEDRAL BOYS CHOIR, CANTORES CATHEDRALES, BOHLIN, dir. NU STIGE JUBLETS TONÂ?Â?Â?Â?Swedish choirs present seasonal carols and folk songs along withworks by LEISRING, LILJEFORS, NORDQVIST, EKLOF, VOGLER, HANDEL, OLSSON, TORLIND, HERNTH-GRIPPE, LUNDEN, PRAETORIUS, PALM, TEGNER,BOHLIN, WADE, NIELSEN, SANDSTROM, and GRUBER.

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On Synergy, flautist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends demonstrate that one plus one can be much greater than two. Featuring works that celebrate the coming together of like-minded musicians, this project is a reminder, after more than two years of a pandemic that has affected all of us, that true musical synergy can only be achieved 'face-to-face’, rather than ‘remotely’. With his Concerto for flute and recorder, Telemann not only creates a fusion of different musical styles of his time – namely Italian, German and French – but also shows a gift for borrowing elements from popular music. Saint-Saëns brings swirling colors and energy with a Tarentelle for flute, clarinet and orchestra, that at times displays obsessive, even threatening undertones. From the same period, Doppler’s Concerto for two flutes is not far from the world of opera, providing the two soloists with ample opportunity to shine like two singers in front of an orchestra. In addition to celebrating the synergy created between musicians, the last two works featured on this disc, Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 and Suite from the Orchestral Works, are telling examples of synergy between composers: it is as if Villa-Lobos and Mahler were shaking hands with Johann Sebastian Bach across distances of thousands of miles and hundreds of years.

REVIEW:

The principal attraction of this SACD, as good as the performances are, is the uniqueness of the program. Sharon Bezaly, one of the outstanding flutists of our time, has brought together composers not particularly associated with each other, and from different eras. While each performance is enjoyable, the real success of the disc is how the imaginative program flows in such a lovely way.

On Telemann’s Concerto in E Minor for Recorder, Flute, and Strings with harpsichord continuo. Bezaly is joined by one of the world’s premier recordists, Michala Petri, and their interplay is delightful. The final Presto is particularly inventive and sparkling in the way the two soloists play off each other.

Michael Collins and Bezaly play Saint-Saëns’s Tarantelle with total communication, lingering lightly over lyrical passages while clearly enjoying their virtuoso moments as well.

The big surprise for me was the Concerto in D Minor for Two Flutes by the flute virtuoso and composer Franz Doppler (1821–1883). The music is almost vocal in its melodic shape, but the remarkable aspect of the score, surprisingly, are the passages where the two flutes must play in unison. Bezaly and Walter Auer come close to making us believe that they are a single flute.

Next comes the one work without orchestra, Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas brasileiras No. 6, scored for flute and bassoon. Bram van Sambeek is a brilliant technician, but more importantly he produces a rich sound from his bassoon and provides harmonic support for Bezaly’s flute.

Her combination of rich tone and rhythmic precision is just right for The Mahler-orchestrated selections from the Second and Third Orchestral Suites. While no one would mistake this for an historically informed performance, it is an extremely stylish one. Michael Collins and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra bring elegance to the Air and energy to the Gavotte from the Third Suite. As an encore Bezaly give us a repeat of the Badinerie from the Second Suite.

BIS’s usual high standards of engineering and informative program notes round out a truly lovely disc.

-- Fanfare (Henry Fogel)

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