This disc is very BIS. It brings together several extraordinary talents in a programme that skillfully links together the old and the new. The unifying factor is Kalevi Aho - the leading compoer of his generation in Finland. It features his third symphony - Sinfonia concertante for violin and orchestra. Jaakko Kuusisto, the leading Finnish violinist of his generation, is the soloist. The other work on this disc is Mussorgsky's song cycle 'Songs and Dances of Death' which Aho orchestrated for the great Finnish bass Martti Talvela. Here the soloist is the most fêted bass of his generation, Matti Salminen. To complete this glamorous package we have Osmo Vänskä conducting his Lahti Symphony Orchestra. The recordings were supervised by the celebrated BIS team of Robert Suff and Ingo Petry and took place in the stunning new all-wood concert hall in Lahti.

The songs of the American composer Charles Ives (1874 - 1954) have been well-served on CD, but they have never before been recorded in their entirety on a budget-priced label or arranged, for recording purposes, in alphabetical order. The American Classics series of the budget Naxos label is in the midst of doing both. This CD is the third of a complete recording of the Ives songs arranged, quixotically, in alphabetical order. The performers are a group of young musicians affiliated with the Yale University School of Music. They offer readings of Ives as varied, idiosyncratic, and unpredictable as the songs themselves. In 1922, Ives gathered 114 of his songs, arranged them in reverse chronological order, added comments, and self-published them in a book called simply "114 songs". All told, Ives composed about 200 songs. The songs dating from his early years frequently draw heavily upon German lieder, parlor music, or hymns. The songs of Ives's maturity are deeply complex, varied, and musically adventurous. Throughout his life, Ives freely shifted musical material between his songs and his other compositions. From the beginning to the end of his career as a composer, Ives drew heavily on other music, incorporating many quotations from both classical and popular sources.

Vocal Recital: Oelze, Christiane - Schubert, F. / Schumann,

One of the truly grand old men on the music scene today, György Kurtág composed his Kafka-Fragmente in the mid-1980s, and these forty settings of text fragments by Franz Kafka remain one of his most often-performed works. Although the cycle contains no single narrative thread and tells no coherent ‘tale’ it has become quite common to present it in staged versions – perhaps because of the hypnotic images that emerge in the texts, as well as in the music. Many of the movements are extremely brief; in the present recording 11 of the movements are less than half a minute long, and the shortest (Es zupfte mich jemand am Kleid / Someone tugged at my clothes) lasts only 13 seconds. However, to quote the insightful liner notes by the musicologist Philippe Albéra: ’Within these miniature spaces, expressivity – as if through a process of crystallization – is pushed to its utmost limits.’ Collected by the composer, the texts have been extracted from Kafka’s letters, diaries and notebooks; shards that together form a mosaic at times sardonic, absurd, lyrical or humourous. Kurtág’s ability to convey a wide range of situations and emotions transforms each fragment into a vision of dreamlike intensity, where the real becomes surreal, and Albéra finds a symbol of the spirit of Kurtág’s music in the 16th fragment, Kein Rückkehr, and Kafka’s aphorism: ‘From a certain point on, there is no going back. That is the point to reach.’ The often highly virtuosic and demanding score is here interpreted by the soprano Caroline Meltzer and the violinist Nurit Stark, both performers with a strong commitment to contemporary music who collaborated with composers such as Aribert Reimann, Sofia Gubaidulina and Viktor Suslin.

Reviews:

Caroline Melzer and Nurit Stark yield nothing to previous performers in penetrating the depth and breadth of emotion that Kurtag conveys, and it helps that this is the best recorded version available, allowing their wide range of tone, colour and dynamics to be heard to full effect.

– BBC Music Magazine

The 40 separate fragments are divided into four groups…linked less by a definable concept than an intuitive sense of what constitutes unity within the author's bleak and fractured world-view. It is in this latter respect that Caroline Melzer and Nurit Stark make so gripping an impression - characterising the many fragmentary shards with an explosive intimacy…a likely first choice for those new to this enigmatic and intriguing work.

– Gramophone

A thoroughly enjoyable conspectus of lute songs and lute solos from Renaissance Europe, mixing familiar and unfamiliar and played by two modern masters of these forms. There’s music here from England, Italy, Germany, France and Poland. Of course the composers concerned were, in many respects, more ‘international’ than ‘national’. Their persons – and their music – crossed many boundaries and many musical exchanges were effected in this period.

Dowland, for example, spent some four years in Paris as a young man, visited and performed (and listened to others perform) at such important musical courts as those of Heinrich Julius, Duke of Brunswick, at Wolfenbüttel, and Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse, at Kassel. He travelled in Italy, with spells in Venice (where he met Giovanni Croce), Padua, Genoa, Ferrara, and Florence. From 1598 to 1606 he was lutenist at the court of Christian IV of Denmark. Or, to take two more examples, Giovanni Kapsberger was born Johann(es) Hieronymus Kapsberger, supposedly born in Venice, son of a German gentleman; the Polish lutenist and composer, Wojchiech (Albertus) D?ugoraj had his music published in France by Jean-Baptiste Brossard and lived most of his mature life outside his native Poland. So, though it makes some sense to talk of national styles in this period, it also makes sense to create an anthology such as this which stresses the internationalism of the prevailing musical idioms.

On this CD, Lindberg plays a restored lute of c.1590, identified as the work of Sixtus Rauwolf, a lute-maker of Augsburg, claimed, quite plausibly, to be the oldest surviving lute in playable condition, still retaining its original soundboard. The instrument’s lovely sound is quite beautifully captured in this recording, both in solo pieces – not least the quite ravishing Fantasia by Gregory Huwet (who was born in Antwerp, worked at Wolfenbüttel and was held in high regard by Dowland) – and as accompaniment to the voice of Emma Kirkby.

Most readers of MusicWeb have presumably long since made up their mind about Kirkby. If, like me, you find her voice, and the intelligence with which she uses it, one of the great joys to be had in hearing this repertoire, then this, you will want to know, is another excellent CD, on which the voice seems yet to have lost very little and the intelligence (or musical experience) is even greater than on her youthful recordings. If you never fell under Kirkby’s musical spell than this is not, I imagine, a recital likely to effect any kind of sudden conversion.

The subtlety of interpretation on offer here is remarkable, but entirely unostentatious. Listen, for example, to Kirkby’s phrasing in Heinrich Schütz’s ‘Eile mich, Gott, zu erreten’ – few singers, in whatever style, can so wonderfully give equal weight to the demands of text and music; or listen to the marvellous interplay between singer and accompanist in Sigismondo d’India’s beautiful ‘Quella vermiglia rosa’; or to Lindberg’s exquisite presentation of three short pieces for lute by Michelangelo Galilei (another ‘international’ figure, born in Italy, who worked in Poland and Bavaria). These are jewels indeed.

The recorded sound is perfect; intimate but not over-close. Full texts and translations are provided.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

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

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

When, in 1922, Charles Ives published a volume entitled 114 Songs, he was indirectly drawing attention to the fact that the genre had played a central part in his output. 85 years on and, for all that his wider reputation may now rest on his orchestral, chamber and piano music, songs represent the heart of his creative thinking. Nor was that initial volume comprehensive; Ives having written almost 200 songs, of which this present edition includes all those he completed. The expressive variety encountered is accordingly vast: indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting, from those drawing overtly on the Austro-German Lieder and English parlor-song traditions to ones that evince anarchic humor as keenly as others do a profound vision, is analogous to the evolution of American music over the last quarter of the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth centuries. Although it would be possible to collate Ives's songs according to type, the alphabetic approach adopted by this edition ensures each volume (of which this is the sixth and last) contains a representative cross section of his achievement. A wide range of poets is set (Ives could be highly interventionist when it suited his purpose), including (mainly early) German settings as well as forays into French and Italian writers. Moreover, the temporal distance (1887-1926) traversed by the songs is as little compared to their stylistic diversity or their emotional range. The extent to which Ives reworked songs throughout his career is considerable, whether substituting a text or reworking the actual music. To this end, songs with a musical or textual connection are cross linked accordingly (i.e. in brackets at the end of the relevant paragraph). The setting of Rudyard Kipling's Tarrant Moss (1902) uses just two verses, treated in a peremptory fashion as if to suggest that the text was merely the nearest one to hand (see also Volume 5, track 27, Naxos 8.559273). Set to an anonymous text, There is a Certain Garden (1897) has a tripping and irregular piano part against which the vocal line unfolds a little awkwardly, though the charm of the song is undoubted. A revision of an earlier German song, now to Ives's own text, There is a Lane (1902) is a brief but winsome setting; the fond nostalgia of it's vocal line underscored by the piano (see also below, track 27). A late addition to his song canon, They are There! (1942) was Ives's contribution to the American war effort; setting his own (updated) text with a conviction aptly summed up by the subtitle 'Fighting for the People's New Free World'. It can be performed (as here) by unison voices, and with a lively ad lib instrumental part. Ives left a memorable, breathlessly enthusiastic recording.

Amy Beach's songs are pleasant enough, and certainly well-crafted, with smartly chosen texts--Burns, Longfellow, Browning, Shelley, and some lesser-known poets, including Beach herself. But most of their appeal lies with the composer's deftness in borrowing from and incorporating the styles of major artists such as Schubert, Brahms, Wolf, Richard Strauss, and Debussy into her writing. She even takes directly from Beethoven in her quite lovely song "The Rainy Day". In other words, there's nothing really original here, but melodically and in terms of overall accessibility and singability, Beach understood the genre and knew how to create music that nearly everyone--singers as well as listeners--could enjoy. There are lullabies, German lied, and French chansons, as well as a nod or two to English and American parlor-song. And we're fortunate to have as our interpreter a singer who is one of the world's experts in this repertoire: mezzo-soprano Katherine Kelton did her doctoral dissertation on Beach's songs. She exhibits a voice of rich color and easy, inviting expressiveness, and her technique effortlessly conveys the varied moods and cleverly imitative styles so that we can just sit back and appreciate each one of these charming if not particularly profound works. Beach's piano accompaniments are carefully thought-out and add essential, characterful aspects of tone, color, and texture that are often very technically challenging. Catherine Bringerud is completely at home with this music and at one with Kelton's vocal interpretations. The sound is complementary to vocal and instrumental timbres and presents the performances in realistic perspective. Fans of American song--and especially of Amy Beach (who did much of her writing just down the road from where I'm writing this review, at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH)--shouldn't miss this interpretively considerate, solidly performed recital.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

ARIOSTI “Stockholm” Sonatas: No. 15 in f; No. 16 in G; No. 17 in B?; No. 18 in d; No. 19 in a; No. 20 in g; No. 21 in a. Pur alfin gentil viola 1 • Thomas Georgi (vda); Lucas Harris (lt, gtr); Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann (vdg); Emma Kirkby (sop) 1 (period instruments) • BIS 1675 (63:57 Text and Translation)


Attilio Malachia Ariosti (1666–1729) led an amazingly varied life, one that could only have played out amid the opulence of the Baroque era. He started out as an altar boy in Bologna and later took monastic vows, possibly also entering the priesthood. All along he assiduously pursued his musical studies, eventually assuming the post of organist at the basilica of Santa Maria dei Servi. There he attracted the attention of the Duke of Mantua, for whom he began composing operas. Ariosti’s first opera, Tirsi (1697), was such a success that the Duke was encouraged to lend him out to the Berlin court, whose ruler was Sophie Charlotte of Hanover, Electress of Brandenburg and sister of the future George I of England. Ariosti quickly became Sophie’s favorite court musician (Bononcini was employed at the court as well), and became friends with the great Gottfried Leibniz. After Sophie died in 1705, Ariosti declared his (reluctant) desire to return to his monastery, by way of Vienna. The Vienna sojourn at the court of Joseph I stretched to seven years, where he composed operas, oratorios, and cantatas. After Joseph’s widow, Wilhelmina, kicked him out of Vienna (for his ostentatious, non-ecclesiastical behavior) in 1711, Ariosti found employment at the court of the Duke of Anjou (the future Louis XV), in Munich, Württemberg, Durlach, Baden, Lorraine, and at the court of the Duke of Orléans. In 1716 Ariosti sailed for England, where his opera Almahide had been staged in 1708, albeit with two-thirds of the numbers replaced by arias of Bononcini. Ariosti’s first appearance on the London stage was on July 12, 1716, when he played his “New Symphony … upon a New Instrument call’d Viola D’Amour,” between the acts of a Handel opera. Subsequently, the Royal Academy was to commission several operas, but Ariosti was still preoccupied with his diplomatic intrigues and had trouble meeting the deadlines; only one of the operas, Caio Marzio Coriolana (1723), was an unmitigated success, thanks in part to the participation of Cuzzoni and Senesino.


Exactly 21 viola d’amore sonatas survive from the pen of Ariosti; 15 of them owe their existence to Ariosti’s contemporary Swedish musician Johan Helmich Roman, who copied them down while on a visit to London. These survive in manuscript form in a Swedish library, hence the designation. The concluding cantata, Pur alfin gentil viola , is a valedictory work that survives in manuscript in a Darmstadt library. Written in an idiom reminiscent of Handel, the sonatas are remarkable for their brevity. Most movements are less than two minutes; only two of the Adagios are more than three. The structure is usually simple bipartite: AABB, or even ABa (the lower case indicating a brief restatement of the opening theme). The suites typically consist of four movements, in the traditional slow-fast-slow-fast grouping of the Italian sonata da chiesa.


The viola d’amore is one of those colorful “accessory” instruments so popular with Baroque composers. Played under the chin like the violin, it has six or seven sympathetic strings running under the fingerboard that are responsible for the instrument’s characteristic silvery sound. Like the oboe d’amore and the voice flute, the viola d’amore was newly invented; it came into use during the second half of the 17th century, but never became a permanent member of the orchestra. Bach, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Quantz wrote sparingly for the viola d’amore, but it dropped out of sight during the Romantic era. Surprisingly, the instrument has persisted until the present day; composers as diverse as Strauss, Janá?ek, Hindemith, Martin, and Villa-Lobos have been attracted to its gentle, ethereal sound.


Thomas Georgi is an American who performed with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra of Australia for many years, and since 1989 has been a member of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra of Toronto. After joining that group he began to champion the viola d’amore, and has recorded two previous volumes of Ariosti for BIS. Apparently those CDs were never received by Fanfare for review. Georgi is joined by two excellent instrumentalists, lutenist Lucas Harris and gambist Mimi Yamahiro Brinkmann, and the renowned English soprano Dame Emma Kirkby. The performances are models of their kind, with colorful, expressive playing from Georgi, and first-rate contributions from the two continuo players. I applaud the decision to employ archlute (theorbo) and guitar as continuo instruments; a harpsichord would have overwhelmed the delicate sound of the viola d’amore. Of particular interest is the cantata—it demonstrates that Dame Emma’s voice is as beautiful and controlled as ever, even after nearly 40 years before the public.


When the pressures and madness of modern life press in, I can think of nothing better than to retreat into the delicate sound world of Ariosti for rejuvenation. Highly recommended.


FANFARE: Christopher Brodersen

Classical Music

Classical Music

Composer: Mahler, Gustav Lyricist: Bethge, Hans Arranger: Schoenberg, Arnold Conductor: Vanska, Osmo Ensemble: Sinfonia Lahti Chamber Ensemble Artist: Groop, Monica; Silvasti, Jorma

Gustav Mahler wrote a number of songs of singular beauty, some re-used in his orchestral works, including settings of poems from the Romantic anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn), Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) and Rückert’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs of the Death of Children). These songs have for a long time been in the concert repertoire of baritone Peter Mattei, one of the most sought-after singers of his generation, who is heard here singing these very Mahler songs with the Norrköping Symphony under the baton of Jochen Rieder.

Includes song(s) by Toivo Kuula, Leevi Madetoja. Soloists: Kirsi Tiihonen, Satu Salminen.

Classical Music

The American composer William Bolcom (b. 1938) is best-known for his large-scale setting of William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Experience," which is available on a 3-CD Naxos set. This new collection of Bolcom's songs also on Naxos shows the composers's lifelong fascination with Blake. It includes an early lyrical setting of Blake's poem, "Mary" which deals with a beautiful and intelligent young woman and her rejection by her society. In the several torch and cabaret-style works it includes, the collection also shows Bolcom's attempts to fuse classical with popular styles of music. Bolcom also has done so in his piano music, much of which is heavily influenced by ragtime. The songs on this CD are performed and selected by soprano Carole Farley with Bolcom himself at the piano.

24 Bit Digitally Remastered, rare photos, vintage memorabilia, detailed liner notes.

Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from eighteenth-century German authors, early Romantics, Biedermeier poets, and Heine.

Classical Music

BACH Cantatas: No. 51; No. 210: Spielet, ihr beseelten Lieder. Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn? ihn, BWV 1127 ? Masaaki Suzuki, cond; Carolyn Sampson (sop); Bach Collegium Japan (period instruments) ? BIS SACD-1471 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 71:17 & )


Volume 30 of Masaaki Suzuki?s highly regarded Bach cantata cycle is devoted mainly to Bach?s ?newest? work, the strophic aria ?Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn? ihn,? discovered in May 2005, and quickly authenticated and assigned the BWV number 1127 (thus, it?s separated from the cantatas, which occupy the first 200-plus spots in the catalog). Suzuki?s is the work?s first complete recording; abridged versions came first from Gardiner on his own Soli Deo Gratia label (12 minutes, combined with several other bits and pieces into a sort of cantate imaginaire ), and then from Koopman (17 minutes, in Volume 20 of his Challenge cantata series). Frankly, despite the beauty of Carolyn Sampson?s performance with Suzuki?s expert ensemble, Gardiner?s is the version of choice, simply because we don?t need to hear the same damn thing performed 12 times in a row over the course of 48 and a half minutes.


That?s what happens in a complete performance. In 1713, to celebrate the 53rd birthday of Bach?s early employer, Duke Wilhelm Ernst, a local town superintendent named Johann Anthon Mylius wrote 12 stanzas, each verse beginning with the German translation of the duke?s motto, ?Omnia deo et nihil sine eo? (?Everything with God and nothing without him?). The second line of each stanza and the following B section would change, but that second line would evolve in an odd way: only the third word would be replaced, and if you align the first letters of each of those third words you spell out the duke?s name. This is the sort of acrostic game that Bach loved, but it?s strange that he was assigned the task of setting the words to music. He was merely the Weimar court organist, and wouldn?t have any responsibility for writing cantatas until his promotion the following year. Perhaps more senior composers, including several in the Mylius family, had turned down the potentially tedious job. Perhaps the ambitious Bach lobbied for the assignment, hoping it would gain him the sort of attention that would result in the promotion he indeed received within a few months. At any rate, Bach merely wrote out the music for the first verse, intending it to be repeated as the text changed. To understand the acrostic, you need to see the entire text, but hearing the whole thing is hardly necessary. Bach provided an attractive, melismatic melody and an appealing instrumental accompaniment, but enough is enough.


To their credit, Suzuki and his elegant players do vary the instrumental bridges somewhat, and Sampson handles the melody with lovely grace, but it?s not enough to sustain interest for more than three quarters of an hour. All are heard to better effect in Cantata No. 51, a performance that floats and twirls, without losing its center of gravity in the weightier sections. For some reason, the aria ?Spielet, ihr beseelten Lieder? from BWV 210 is appended as a bonus track.


The 5.0 surround sound is, as expected from this source, outstanding in its balance and timbral fidelity, except that the important trumpet part in the outer movements of BWV 51 is too recessed, almost offstage. If you?re compulsively collecting the Suzuki series, there?s no reason to pass this up, but if all you want is BWV 1127, in this case there?s no merit to completism, and the Gardiner sampler is a more attractive option.


FANFARE: James Reel

Handel, G.F.: Crudel Tiranno Amor / Ah, Che Troppo Ineguali

Includes yiddish song(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Elli Jaffe. Soloists: Robert Abelson, Bruce Adler, Robert Bloch, Joanne Borts, Amy Goldstein, Benzion Miller, Elizabeth Shammash, Nell Snaidas, Simon Spiro.

When, in 1922, Charles Ives published a volume entitled 114 Songs, he was indirectly drawing attention to the fact that the genre played a central part in his output. 85 years on and, for all that his wider reputation may rest on orchestral, chamber and piano music, songs represent the heart of his creative thinking. Nor was that initial volume comprehensive; Ives having written nearly 200 songs, of which this edition includes all those he completed. The expressive variety is vast: indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting, from those drawing on Austro-German Lieder and English parlor-song traditions to ones that evince anarchic humor as keenly as others do profound vision, is analogous to the evolution of American music over the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth centuries. Although it would be possible to collate Ives's songs according to type, the alphabetic approach adopted by this edition ensures each volume (of which this disc is the fifth) contains a representative cross-section of his achievement. A wide range of poets is set, including a number of (mainly early) German settings as well as forays into French and Italian writers. The temporal distance (1887-1926) traversed by these songs is as little compared to their stylistic diversity or their emotional range.