Classical Music

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

Hermann Goetz's lifespan was no longer than Mozart's, and though much admired by contemporaries, as a tragic genius his music became almost forgotten, and the domain of but a few connoisseurs such as Gustav Mahler. Goetz's style remained closer to schumann and Mendelssohn, preferring lyricism and clarity to the more radical approaches of Liszt and Wagner. The virtuoso First Piano Concerto was a student work, its lovely central adagio sharing a use of colorful wind parts with the freshly optimistic Second Piano Concerto composed six years later.

As the excellently written notes to this release point out, Beck probably would be far more highly regarded today had he not give up symphonic composition in the mid 1760s, turning his attention instead to that black hole of musical ambition: opera. The three works that constitute his Op. 4 (and the six of Op. 3) are quite wonderful, full of imaginative ideas, shapely forms, and effective orchestration. Consider the finale of Op. 4 No. 3, with its unusual harmonic scheme, tricky rhythm, and dynamic contrasts. It was the ability to make his music interesting by characterizing multiple parameters simultaneously that gives Beck’s symphonies their special kick, and allows them to be compared favorably to middle-period Haydn.

The principal competition for this release comes from CPO, and its set of Op. 3/4 played by La Stagione Frankfurt. Those performances employ period instruments, and these do not, but they are every bit as good. The strings play with appropriate rhythmic verve and (typically) smoother timbre, while the harpsichord continuo remains happily where it belongs–in the background. The oboes have a sweet tone characteristic of the Czech school of woodwind playing, and the horns blend well with them. Czech horn playing tends to be softer and more mellow in sonority then most modern schools, and I have to wonder if this is not in fact more “authentic” than the brassy, brazen tone typical of so many period instrument groups.

Whatever the reality, conductor Marek Stilec leads with well-jedged tempos and brings plenty of life to the music–energy without crudeness. This release will give a great deal of pleasure to anyone interested in the best symphonic works of the early classical period.

-- David HurwitzClassicsToday.com

Prokofiev, S.: Eugene Onegin

It's usual to say, somewhat condescendingly, that Leroy Anderson was a great "light music" composer, but the fact is that he was a great composer. Period. The ability to write a memorable tune is priceless, as Brahms (no slouch in the tune department) recognized in speaking of Dvorák, and it more than compensates for any amount of failings in other departments. Anderson had remarkably few of those: his orchestrations are masterly, his craftsmanship always top-notch. The three suites included here (Scottish, Irish, and Alma Mater) are beautifully put together and incredibly catchy.

The vocal items (see work list above) are fetchingly sung by Kim Criswell and William Dazeley, and here receive their world premiere recordings. The program ends with one of Anderson's larger works, the dazzling Christmas Festival. Leonard Slatkin, an old hand in this music, conducts with unassuming mastery, and the BBC Concert Orchestra sounds entirely at home in the idiom. Very good engineering completes this delectable package. Like the rest of this series, this is definitely worth collecting.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

REVIEW:

Furtwängler famously considered himself a composer who conducted, rather than vice versa, and his most familiar surviving work is without question his Second Symphony. It’s a lovable outpouring composed in the last year of the Second World War but that has both its head and its heart buried among the dying embers of late Romanticism. Bruckner, Strauss, Brahms and Reger are all there in attendance and, although the work is well worth sampling, one laments the fact that, while we have at least four recordings of Furtwängler conducting it, we have none of him conducting the Missa solemnis or Parsifal. The 1954 Stuttgart RSO recording of Furtwänger’s Second, reissued here by Hänssler Classic, comes paired with a typically marmoreal account of Beethoven’s First. Both performances are characteristic...it’s nice to have seven minutes’ worth of Furtwängler in (German) conversation with the conductor Hans Müller-Kray, a privilege included only on the Hänssler Classic set.

-- Gramophone

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski is successful both as a composer and as a conductor. In 1946 he became the Director of the Breslau Philharmonic. After that, he occupied the posts of Principal Conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestras in Katowice, Krakow and Warsaw. When he won the International Conducting Competition in Rome in 1956, his international career was assured: George Szell invited him to conduct the Cleveland Orchestra for several weeks in 1958. In 1960 Skrowaczewski became Principal Conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, remaining there for 19 years.

In late 1994 Skrowaczewski was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Saarbrucken Radio Symphony Orchestra, with which he has enjoyed a close collaboration for many years, both in the concert hall and in the recording studio. In Japan, Skrowaczewski is honored almost like a saint. Oehms Classics is proud of the extent of the recordings and is delighted to be able to continue the Brahms Cycle with the Second and Third Symphonies. - Oehms

“If all his compositions were to be destroyed except for two, I would say: rescue the last two symphonies.” Such were Antonín Dvořák’s words about Schubert in 1894, and such is the attitude of many today. While Schubert’s six earlier symphonies were esteemed, his last two are known as works of immense beauty and complexity.

Musical America’s ‘Conductor of the Year’ for 2015 Gianandrea Noseda continues his Chandos ‘Musica Italiana’ series with select works of Niccolò Castiglioni (1932-96), an intellectual and an aesthete who occupied a singular place in the profound renewal of Italian and European musical life of the 1960s-‘70s.Having a predilection for clear sonorities and airy, transparent textures, Castiglioni created his own unique and original artistic philosophy, from tonal harmonies to the more fragmented and experimental.Mr. Noseda leads the Danish National Symphony and guest vocalists.

With 49 tracks spanning two CDs, DISCOVER-FILM MUSIC is an informative package designed to lure the casual listener into the larger world of film music. Disc One largely consists of major Hollywood releases, including KING KONG, BEN HUR, STAR WARS, and SPIDER-MAN. Disc Two explores the more classical-centric foreign film scores, originating in Britain, Europe, and Japan. The set is accompanied by a 72-page booklet / learning guide, composed by British film music lecturer John Riley.

This recording of orchestral works by Karol Szymanowski form part of the Polish Music series on Chandos, and is performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Edward Gardner. These performers have impressed in their Lutoslawski survey, which is part of the same series; in a review of volume 1, Gramophone described them as a veritable ‘dream team’.

Symphony No. 2 by Szymanowski is a work of great power and ingenuity, with many passionate and varied contrasts in its use of solo instruments. Composed in 1909 – 10, it is widely considered the greatest orchestral work of the composer’s early period, not to mention one of the most important Polish symphonic compositions to date. Szymanowski himself thought very highly of it, and in August 1911 wrote in a letter to his fellow Polish composer Zdzis?aw Jachimecki: ‘How happy I am that this Symphony impressed you as I had wanted. I will frankly admit that I feel somewhat proud about its value. In some miraculous way I have managed during my work on it to resist all those garish phantoms which seduce “young and inexperienced” artists and to produce pure and uncompromising beauty in the way I personally understand it.’

The internationally acclaimed pianist Louis Lortie joins the orchestra and conductor in Symphony No. 4 of 1932, which the composer subtitled ‘Symphonie concertante’ in recognition of the near-soloistic role played by the pianist. Whereas Szymanowski’s early and middle works clearly reflect Wagner, Strauss, and Scriabin, this work is strongly influenced by Prokofiev, particularly in the finale, an agitated and daring movement reminiscent of the Russian composer’s Piano Concerto No. 3, composed about a decade earlier.

Written in 1904 – 05 in a style recalling Wagner and Strauss, the Concert Overture is characterised by enormous expressiveness and gusto in the way it handles the expanding themes. Szymanowski inscribed the original score with part of the poem Wite? W?ast by his friend Tadeusz Mici?ski: ‘I will not play you sad songs, O Shades! but will give you a triumph proud and fierce…’. This vivid imagery is perfectly in keeping with the music’s exuberant and vivacious character.

- Chandos

This ‘2-for-1’ reissue brings together the best performances by Neeme Järvi of the music by Bartók, taken from his extraordinarily prolific recording career with Chandos Records. The four works span Bartók's career and include some of the greatest music he ever wrote.

The Concerto for Orchestra has remained one of Bartók’s most popular orchestral works since its triumphant premiere in 1944. Its title signals that each section of instruments is treated in a soloistic and virtuoso way. According to Bartók himself, ‘the general mood of the work represents, apart from the jesting second movement, a gradual transition from the sternness of the first movement and the lugubrious death-song of the third, to the life-assertion of the last one’.

The ballet The Miraculous Mandarin is heard here in its complete form. Set in a seedy urban underworld, it tells the tale of a prostitute, the three thugs that control her, and their mysterious encounter with the eponymous Mandarin. In portraying this scenario Bartók creates an astonishingly vivid score with some of the most colourful music he ever wrote.

The Wooden Prince, an earlier ballet, could not on the surface be further from The Miraculous Mandarin. Lacking its daring modernism, it instead shows the influence of Debussy, Strauss, and Wagner. However, its outwardly sunny character obscures a strange and surreal undertone.

The Hungarian Pictures are skilful and imaginative orchestrations made in 1931 of five earlier piano pieces. Each with its own distinct character, these pieces give the impression of being an authentic folksong arrangement, although this is true only of the last of the five. - Chandos

Classical Music

Classical Music

Another album presenting the output of Pawel Lukaszewski (DUX Lukaszewski Collection). The characteristic stylistic language of Lukaszewski is close to artists such as Arvo P�rt, John Tavener and Mikolaj G�recki, and at the same time it strongly refers to the pre-modern traditions of the Renaissance vocal music and Gregorian chant. "Among Polish composers younger than Penderecki and Lutoslawski, Lukaszewski has become by far the best known. Although he has composed orchestral and chamber music, his reputation is based on his sacred music. He is an ardent Roman Catholic and sets texts mostly in Latin, which, whatever it's difficulties, is for English-speaking listeners more accessible than Polish. He has accumulated an extensive discography and this latest album is listed as the fifth in a series called Musica sacra - though the earlier albums are not in fact all of sacred music." (Stephen Barber, MusicWeb)

This program completes the Comédie et Tragédie project with Tempesta di Mare, and consists of suites made up of orchestral excerpts from three dramatic works of the French stage, spanning seventy-three years, all highlighting the importance of dance as a part of drama.

The comédie-ballet was the brainchild of the French comedic actor, singer, dancer, and playwright Molière. After ten years of collaborating with Lully, a Suite from whose Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme features in Volume 1, he turned to Charpentier. The outcome was Le Malade imaginaire whose fourth performance would prove Molière’s last, as he died on stage.

Scylla et Glaucus is the only stage work by Jean-Marie Leclair, the foremost violinist of his generation and a composer whose late opera shows the clarity of his orchestration and places its focal point on the strings, as one would expect.

Les Fêtes de Polymnie is contemporary with Leclair’s opera but more forward looking in its approach, and famous for the ingenuity of Rameau’s colorful orchestration, particularly obvious in the overture.- Chandos

Review:

I particularly liked Tempesta di Mare's vigorous, spiky strings in Leclair's 'Air des silvains' and the 'Premier air de demons'…delightful music, delightfully played.

– Gramophone

Classical Music

The NFM Wrocław Chamber Orchestra LEOPOLDINUM brings together high-calibre musicians and has earned substantial critical and popular acclaim with its appearances at such venues as the Philharmonie and Schauspielhaus in Berlin, the Tivolis Koncertsal in Copenhagen, the Teatro Victoria Eugenia in San Sebastian as well as numerous prestigious events.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music