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ONCE UPON A TIME

RUBICON

$20.17 Jun 18, 2021

Esther Birringer has chosen three great Russian ballets for her recital album. Petrushka and Romeo & Juliet are filled with drama, love and tragedy and The Nutcracker with fantasy. Tchaikovsky's suite from ballet was arranged for piano by Mikhail Pletnev. Prokofiev, a superb pianist, arranged numbers from his ballet Romeo & Juliet for piano, and Stravinsky took three sections from his ballet Petrushka and created the Three Pieces. It is a superb showcase for any pianist and makes great demands upon the performer.

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ONCE UPON A TIME
RUBICON Jun 2021
CD
$20.17

ONCE UPON A TIME: THE LOST 1965 NEW YORK STUDIO
RESONANCE RECORDS Aug 2020
Vinyl
$20.49

Once Upon a Time: The Lost 1965 New York Studio Sessions

RESONANCE RECORDS

$17.49 Sep 04, 2020

Previously unissued release of studio recordings from pianist Bob James at Wollman Auditorium at Columbia University in 1965. Features James in two different trio settings: one from January 20, 1965 with bassist Larry Rockwell and drummer Bob Pozar, and one from October 9, 1965 with bassist Bill Wood and drummer Omar Clay, performing a mix of jazz standards and original compositions. Includes an extensive booklet with essays, new interviews, plus rare archival photographs. Tracks 1 through 4 were recorded on January 20, 1965 with Larry Rockwood on bass and Robert Pozar on drums. Tracks 5, 6, 7, and 8 were recorded October 9, 1965 with Bill Wood on bass and Omar Clay on drums.

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Once Upon a Time: The Lost 1965 New York Studio Sessions
RESONANCE RECORDS Sep 2020
CD
$17.49

MUKASHI-ONCE UPON A TIME
SUNNYSIDE Apr 2014
CD
$16.63

Ennio Morricone conducts Morricone: His Greatest Hits

Sony Masterworks

$11.98 Nov 11, 2016

Sony Classical presents “Ennio Morricone conducts Morricone – His Greatest Hits”, celebrating Morricone’s 60 years of music making in October. The album features his most popular movie themes, selected and conducted by Morricone himself. It contains music from films including "Once Upon a Time in the West", "Cinema Paradiso", "The Good The Bad And The Ugly", "The Mission". In 2016 and 2017 Morricone will present parts of this repertoire internationally on his "The 60 Years of Music Tour".

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Ennio Morricone conducts Morricone: His Greatest Hits
Sony Masterworks Nov 2016
CD
$11.98

CHARLIE'S ANGELS - THE COMPLETE SERIES DVD

SONY PICTURES HOME

DVD

$47.18 Sep 06, 2016

Once upon a time, Jill, Sabrina & Kelly were police officers whose skills were being wasted in menial duties. A mysterious millionaire named Charles Townsend took them away from all that by opening his own private investigation agency and hiring these gorgeous ladies as his operatives with John Bosley acting as their assistant and liaison. Starring all of the Angels in all their adventures from one of the most classic shows in television history.

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CHARLIE'S ANGELS - THE COMPLETE SERIES DVD
SONY PICTURES HOME Sep 2016
DVD
$47.18

PLAYS ENNIO MORRICONE

IMPORTS

Vinyl

$48.99 Apr 08, 2016

Gatefold 180-gram vinyl. Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone is a 2004 album of recordings from Morricone's various film scores by brilliant cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Ennio Morricone. The album was recorded with the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra and Gilda ButtA on piano. Morricone functioned as orchestrator, conductor and producer. The album stayed 105 weeks on the Billboard Top Classical Albums. Not only did the great cellist honor the the iconic screen composer on this 2004 album, but he teamed with him here, too. Morricone orchestrated, conducted and produced this, as Ma and pianist Gilda Butta joined forces with the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra on "Sergio Leone Suite" (music from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "Once upon a Time in America"), "Brian de Palma Suite" (music from "The Untouchables" and "Casualties of War"), "Moses and Marco Polo Suite," "Giuseppe Tornatore Suite" and more. Music on Vinyl.

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PLAYS ENNIO MORRICONE
IMPORTS Apr 2016
Vinyl
$48.99

Lange-Muller: Der Var Engang / Renaissance / Sange Ved Havet
BIS Jun 2005
CD
$21.99

Sheehan: A Christmas Carol / Walker, Skylark Vocal Ensemble

Sono Luminus

Blu-Ray

$9.49 ~~$18.99~~ Save 50% Sep 23, 2022

This is a Blu-ray Audio disc, playable on Blu-ray players only.

“In the Summer of 2019, we recorded our album Once Upon a Time, our first recorded version of a “story concert.” Although we had explored this concept for several years prior with storyteller Sarah Walker, Once Upon a Time was our first collaboration with Benedict Sheehan, who composed incidental music (almost like a choral movie score) to accompany Sarah’s dialogue and to connect the musical dots between existing works by an array of composers. That summer, it became clear that we had stumbled onto something unusual and special. First, the idea of a continuous choral story score – combining elements of classical performance, storytelling, film scoring, and theatricality – seemed to be a rich new idiom for choral performance art. Second, the collaborative team of the project seemed like a dream come true – there was a strong sense of mutual respect for everyone’s unique talents, and a rare ability for creative push and pull…” (Matthew Guard, Artistic Director)

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Sheehan: A Christmas Carol / Walker, Skylark Vocal Ensemble
Sono Luminus Sep 2022
Blu-Ray
~~$18.99~~ $9.49

MORRICONE CONDUCTS MORRICONE

EUROARTS

$22.49 Dec 05, 2025

Spectacular western movies and moments to remember from and with the Maestro himself. Ennio Morricone composed over 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works. This concert from 2004 with the Munchner Rundfunkorchester is one of the very few recordings where he conducts his own music. The album contains a representative collection of his most famous film music including The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, A Fistful of Dynamite, Once Upon a Time in America, Cinema Paradiso, The Untouchables and many more.

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MORRICONE CONDUCTS MORRICONE
EUROARTS Dec 2025
CD
$22.49

Mix & Match

Bruno Walter Conducts Bruckner's 4th And 9th Symphonies

Music and Arts Programs of America

$32.99 Jul 31, 2012

BRUCKNER Symphonies: No. 4; 1 No. 9. 2 MOZART Symphony No. 35 in D “Haffner” 3 • Bruno Walter, cond; 1 NBC SO. 2 Philadelphia O. 3 New York PO • MUSIC & ARTS CD-1262 (2 CDs: 127:30) Live: 1 02/10/1940, 2 02/28/1948, 3 02/06/1944

Having recently obtained an extensive collection of acetates from the estate of a private music collector, the Music & Arts label is issuing some fruits of that here in the form of live performances by Bruno Walter. Two items—the Bruckner Ninth and the Mozart “Haffner” symphonies—are previously unissued items; the Bruckner Fourth was released on Pearl GEMM CD 9131 but here enjoys slightly but tangibly superior sound. While still constricted, it is tolerably listenable by the standards one would expect for a recording of that vintage. Here the weak bass register is noticeably stronger and clearer, background hiss is slightly reduced, occasional fluctuations in pitch have been evened out, and assorted clicks and pops and similar extraneous noises excised or reduced. However, the Pearl release is still not superfluous, as this issue does not include the filler pieces by Weber and Smetana (the overtures to Oberon and The Bartered Bride ).

While none of these items is, strictly speaking, a novelty in the Walter discography, the performance of the Bruckner Fourth preserved here is of particular interest to both Brucknerians and Walterians. The Walter discography contains only two versions of this score: the live one presented here, and the conductor’s studio recording with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, recorded from February 13-25, 1960. (The discography of the CSO is complex, because Columbia used that moniker for several different studio orchestras in various locales. In Walter’s case, the monaural recordings are with a reduced contingent of the New York Philharmonic and other local musicians, while his stereo recordings are with a core ensemble drawn from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Festival Orchestra, supplemented by members of various Hollywood film studio orchestras.) The Sony SMK 64 481 issue of the studio performance is presently available—as are most of the titles in Sony’s erstwhile “Bruno Walter Edition”—as an ArkivMusic reprint.

What is most remarkable is how radically Walter’s conception of this piece changed over 20 years, with the respective timings providing an initial indication: 16:32, 14:32, 8:27, and 18:32 versus 18:40, 15:37, 10:59, and 20:46. Walter does use different editions of the score—the 1888-89 Löwe/Guttmann version in 1940, and the 1936 Haas edition of the 1878/80 version in 1960. (For the 1960 recording I am taking the word of John F. Berky on his abruckner.com discography site over that of Sony, which states in its CD booklet that Walter used the 1953 Nowak edition.) However, this in no way accounts for the differences, as most of them are matters of instrumental detail (e.g., the radically reduced orchestration in the Scherzo at 8:13-8:16 in the 1940 performance as compared to the same passage at 8:20-8:23 in the 1960 recording) rather than cuts in the score. Instead, Walter’s earlier interpretation is far more volatile, not only in terms of significantly faster tempi but also in more generous use of accelerandi and other tempo modifications. For example, in 1940 there is an adrenaline rush on an ascending scale from 1:41 to 1:52 not employed in 1960, while in the fourth movement the 1940 performance takes only a mild ritardando at 8:13 to 8:16 but in 1960 a very emphatic one in the same passage at 8:20 to 8:23. In 1940 the Scherzo movement is taken at an exceptionally brisk pace, whereas in 1960 it is stately, with the trio section being positively languorous. Similarly, whereas in 1960 Walter squares off phrases in the more emphatic manner common to most Bruckner performances nowadays, demarcating discrete units as aural equivalents of the giant stone blocks used to construct Gothic cathedrals, in 1940 the phrasing is noticeably more fluid and linear, particularly in woodwind runs that ripple like rapidly flowing rivulets (cf. at 15:24 in the first movement). How much these changes owe to the oft-noted differences in Walter’s recordings made before and after his March 1957 heart attack, and how much they may owe to the conductor possibly seeking to elaborate greater distinctions between his approaches to Bruckner and Mahler, can only be a subject of speculation. In any case, in these respects the 1940 performance is akin to the relatively few complete Bruckner symphony performances that survive from before WW II, and suggest an earlier school of performance which is now well-nigh extinct. Both for that reason, and for the intriguing snapshot of how Walter’s interpretation of this piece shifted over the years, this recording is of particular interest for collectors of historical performances.

The companion performance in this set of the Bruckner Ninth lacks the same degree of intrinsic value, in that there are eight surviving recorded performances from Walter’s baton, variously given with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Columbia Symphony. The table below provides details for comparison. In this and the succeeding tables, if a particular performance has appeared more than once on CD, I have cited the best version currently in print; studio recordings are marked with an asterisk. For the timings in this instance, I have used those provided by Mark W. Kluge in his notes to the 2003 Music and Arts release of the 1946 performance, except for the 1948 and 1950 performances not listed by him.

FANFARE: Date Orchestra CD Issue (if any) Timings

03/17/46 NYP Music & Arts CD-1110 21:42 9:37 19: 42

02/28/48 PO Music & Arts CD-1262 21:19 9:43 19:28

02/02/50 NYP none (private collection) 20:12 9:55 19: 15

08/20/53 VPO Andromeda ANDRCD 9092 21:10 10:09 19:17

12/27/53 NYP Tahra TAH 571 20:32 10:09 19:46

02/10/57 NYP Music & Arts CD-1212 19:59 10:01 19: 14

11/13/59 LAP none (private collection) 22:30 10:53 21: 58

11/16-19/59 CSO Sony SMK 64 483* 23:51 11:29 23:16

As Kluge rightly states in the booklet notes to the 2003 disc of Walter’s 1946 performance, “Walter’s live performances of the Ninth Symphony preserved on tape show a certain consistency, varying in individual nuance rather than interpretive outline”. In the booklet notes to the present release he further observes, “All of his live performances of the score display certain common interpretive details,” of which he provides several examples, such as “the very precise (almost clipped) brass interjections in the opening bars.” Unremarked upon by Kluge, except for a passing observation that the studio account “lacks the fire of Walter’s live performances,” is the extraordinary speed and drive of Walter’s conception of the work, which in the pre-1959 performances clocks in at between 49:22 (the fastest recorded performance by any conductor) and 51:01. Among the almost 400 complete performances listed in the abruckner.com discography, only Volkmar Andreae, Jascha Horenstein, Georg-Ludwig Jochum, Roger Norrington, plus (amazingly) John Barbirolli and Hans Knappertsbusch, have timings within three minutes of Walter. This work alone gives the lie to the stereotype of Walter as a cushy, gentle interpreter given solely to Gemütlichkeit rather than Sturm und Drang.

Despite their overall similarity, the pre-1959 performances do not suffer from lack of variety or interest. With the exception of the live 1959 performance, which stems from a relatively poor source, the sound quality improves incrementally with the more recent performance date, though the sonic differences between the three performances from 1953-57 are rather minimal. For me, the key factor in evaluating the first six performances is Walter’s approach to and follow-through from the fortissimo recapitulation of the first theme of the opening movement, beginning at about halfway through the movement. For the approach to the recapitulation, the recap itself, and the section immediately thereafter, Walter demarcates each of the three sections with a marked caesura and tempo adjustment. There are noticeable differences to how he does this in several of the performances; although these may simply be differences of the moment, they suggest instead that he was not entirely satisfied with his handling of these sections and was constantly searching for new and better solutions. I find the 1946 performance to be the least satisfactory; as the timing of the first movement indicates, Walter there inserts greater pauses and slows down each section more than usual, causing the whole to lose coherency and momentum and to bog down. Walter also takes two major ritardandi early on, at 1:55 and 3:00, that he drops after the 1948 Philadelphia performance, which has a similarly hobbling effect. (For a more positive response, see Robert McColley’s review back in 26:6.) By contrast, the unreleased 1950 performance is the most successful, having a fierce energy and the least pronounced breaks and tempo deceleration.

The three performances from 1948 and 1953 occupy a middle ground between these extremes; here the differences are to be found more in the distinctive timbres of the respective orchestras. In his booklet notes to the 1946 performance, Kluge states that “the warmer style of the Vienna Philharmonic added a sense of plasticity and nuance not as evident in the later [1953] New York performance,” given the latter orchestra’s “virile, even aggressive playing style.” I would agree, but I find a certain slackness present in the Vienna performance as well, and its recorded sound is slightly more recessed. Comparing the New York and Philadelphia ensembles in the present booklet notes, Kluge correctly finds “a contrast in style between the two ensembles. The Philharmonic sonority is bold and brassy, making the most of Bruckner’s dramatic climaxes. However the Philadelphia ensemble, even in its first encounter with the score, adds a patina of refinement”—due no doubt to the orchestra’s fabled string section. Finally, in 1957 Walter attempts a hybrid solution that combines pronounced Luftpausen with his briskest tempi, a solution I prefer to all but the 1950 performance (see also the positive review by Jeffrey J. Lipscomb in 32: 3).

The two 1959 performances are, as their timings indicate, of a very different character—ultimately no less dramatic, but more monumental and in line with the mainstream of Bruckner interpretations, while also evincing the more rounded edges of Walter’s trademark lyricism in other repertoire. Given both the relatively poor sound of the preceding live performance, and some ill-fitting junctures in it that suggest Walter’s new interpretation not to be fully settled, the studio recording is easily preferable between those two. Along with the 1957 performance—and that of 1950, for those few who can find it from private sources—the studio recording is also one of the top choices for Brucknerians who want Walter represented in their collections.

Despite Walter’s intense devotion to Bruckner following his recovery from a near-fatal bout of double pneumonia in 1927 (Walter credited his convalescence with giving him the spiritual repose needed to comprehend Bruckner rightly), many commentators have regarded his studio Bruckner recordings, especially that of the Ninth, as relative weak points in his discography. Devoted Walterian that I am, I nevertheless agree with that assessment; Walter never mastered the timing of the numerous pauses in Bruckner’s symphonic movements, and choosing the manifold subtle shifts in tempi needed to make the sprawling movements cohere, to the same degree as did Wilhelm Furtwängler and Eugen Jochum, my own Bruckner reference standards. Part of the fault here, however, lies not with Walter but with Columbia’s miscalculated decision to use an orchestra of only 65 players for the recording sessions—possibly due to a degree of parsimony, but also because the extremely lively acoustics of Legion Hall would have caused a full-sized orchestra to be swamped with reverberation. The fact that Walter almost fully succeeds in disguising the paucity of string players and producing a genuine Brucknerian orchestral sound testifies to near-miraculous conductorial skills.

The 1948 performance of the Bruckner Ninth in Philadelphia was paired in concert with a performance of Mozart’s “Haffner” Symphony. Since only the Bruckner was broadcast for a one-hour time slot, the performance of the Mozart was not preserved. In its stead, Music and Arts has thoughtfully provided a previously unreleased 1944 New York Philharmonic broadcast of the work. Mozart occupies a large and special place in Walter’s discography. In terms of frequency of surviving performances, the “Haffner” has seven recordings—five live and two studio, with the NBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Columbia Symphony. It thus ranks behind No. 40 (eleven performances, eight live and three studio) and No. 39 (eight recordings, five live and three studio), and is tied with the “Prague” (seven recordings, four live and three studio). The following table again provides details for comparison; note that Tahra misdates the 1953 performance to January 5 instead of January 4.

Date Orchestra CD Issue (if any) Timings

02/17/40 NBC SO Andromeda ANDRCD 9012 5:02 4:31 3:10 3: 33

02/06/44 NYP Music and Arts CD-1262 5:15 4:44 3:16 3: 33

01/21/47 BSO Wing WCD 58 (Japan) 5:11 4:29 3:17 3:37

02/05/50 NYP none (private collection) 5:33 5:05 3: 25 3:43

01/04/53 NYP Tahra TAH 571-572 5:29 4:54 3:33 3:55

01/16/53 NYP Sony SMK 64 473* 5:27 4:44 3:21 3:46

01/13-21/59 CSO Sony SM3K 46 511* 5:58 5:13 3:49 4:04

Here one notes that until the final, post-heart attack, stereo recording, Walter’s interpretive approach remains remarkably consistent, broadening very slightly in tempi with the passing years. As before, sound quality generally improves in successive performances, save for the decidedly poor-sounding Boston Symphony issue and the somewhat tubby sound of the unedited source for the 1950 performance. Yet here, too, there are subtle differences, with the 1944 performance under review being the most distinctive. At 1:15 in the first movement, Walter slows the tempo for the lyrical counter-subject to a far greater degree than elsewhere, and likewise beginning at 4:40 accelerates the tempo to a far greater degree to provide a whirlwind close. Not unexpectedly from an ensemble drilled under Toscanini, the NBC performance features particularly strong, crisp accents on chords and fluid runs on strings and winds. The live 1953 performance has a higher voltage than the studio recording that followed it, though it suffers from a rather glassy, shrill treble register (for a different opinion on the last point, see Mortimer H. Frank’s review in 14:4). The stereo recording has of course by far the best sound, but its slower tempi drain it of the vitality characteristic of Walter’s earlier performances. The 1944 performance is in surprisingly good sound for its time, and I would rate it alongside the two 1953 versions as the best of his performances of this work.

The remasterings of the original sources have obviously been done with the meticulous care that marks all Music and Arts issues. Mark Kluge’s booklet notes are exemplary; they include a brief discussion of recent Bruckner scholarship that defends the Löwe/Guttmann edition of the Fourth as one genuinely authorized by Bruckner rather than riding roughshod over his true intentions, and also discuss Walter’s various retouchings of the timpani and brass parts in different performances of the Ninth. (Kluge does not discuss the 1950 performance, but the excision of the trombone parts from certain passages of the Scherzo that occurs in the 1957 and 1959 performances also occurs there, though curiously not in the intervening ones from 1953.) The booklet and tray card have a typographical error that gives the total time of the second disc as 50:30, which is the timing of the Bruckner Ninth alone; the correct total time is 68:20. For Walterians, this release is self-recommending; for Brucknerians and collectors of historic performances, it will be of interest primarily for the Bruckner Fourth, and secondarily for the “Haffner” and the Ninth. To each of these interested parties, this release is warmly recommended.

James A. Altena

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Bruno Walter Conducts Bruckner's 4th And 9th Symphonies
Music and Arts Programs of America Jul 2012
CD
$32.99

Bartók: The Wooden Prince / Alsop, Bournemouth Symphony

Naxos

$19.99 Mar 25, 2008

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

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

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

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Bartók: The Wooden Prince / Alsop, Bournemouth Symphony
Naxos Mar 2008
CD
$19.99

Dvorak: Piano Quartets / Sucharova-Weiser, Vlach Quartet

Naxos

$19.99 Dec 15, 2009

DVO?ÁK Piano Quartets: in D, op. 23; in E?, op. 87 • Members of the Vlach Quartet; Helena Suchárová-Weiser (pn) • NAXOS 8572159 (71: 11)

In the history of chamber-music-ensemble configurations, the piano quartet is a relative newcomer to the scene. The first such works are believed to have been written by Mozart in response to a commission from composer-publisher Anton Hoffmeister. His first, in G Minor, appeared in 1785, and a second, in E? Major, followed in 1786, but not before Hoffmeister, who was expecting string quartets, had expressed his displeasure and released Mozart from further obligation. Around this same time, however, a teenaged Beethoven, still living under his parents’ roof in Bonn, also penned three piano quartets (see Fanfare 33:2 for further details). Whether he came upon the same idea as Mozart simultaneously but independently, or the light bulb went on when he heard Mozart’s quartets during a visit to Vienna in 1787, remains unknown. What is known, or strongly believed, is that before Mozart and Beethoven, the piano quartet did not exist. For all of his string quartets and piano trios, Haydn never made the leap, nor, as far we know, did anyone else.

It seemed like a really good idea—better than a string quartet in not being so treble oriented with two violins, and better than a piano trio in not sacrificing the alto viola string voice. Yet, for some reason, the piano quartet never caught on like its older siblings, and even among those composers who did make the effort—Weber (1), Mendelssohn (3), Marschner (2), Schumann (1), Theodor Kirchner (1), Dvo?ák (2), Brahms (3), Fauré (2), Enescu (2), Martin? (1), Walton (1), Bridge (2), Copland (1), Turina (1), and one or two others—the results are not generally cited at the top of their best works lists (except perhaps in the cases of Brahms and Fauré). Moreover, the number of piano quartets written following Mozart and Beethoven pales in comparison to the number of string quartets and piano trios.

Dvo?ák tried his hand at the medium twice, once in 1875, and again in 1889. Dvo?ák is a composer I periodically fall in and out of love with; currently, I think I’m in one of my not so loving phases. As I’ve had occasion to say before, his predisposition to prolixity seems to present itself in inverse proportion to the interest and sustainability of his musical material. In simple terms, the less he had to say, the longer he went on about it—not unlike some of my reviews. The D-Major Quartet is an excellent example. At 34-and-a-half minutes, it’s only two minutes shorter than its E?-Major companion, but one must take into account that the earlier work is in only three movements, compared to the more standard four-movement layout of its sibling. To be sure, the piece has some charming Czech-inflected melodies and lovely moments, but in between is much that would have ended up on the cutting room floor if Brahms had been the editor. The most memorable movement is the Andantino con variazioni, in which Dvo?ák spins a number of very imaginative variations over a plaintive, dumka-like theme.

The E?-Major Quartet is a much more tightly constructed work, and its movements are more proportionally balanced. Dvo?ák’s writing is also bolder, more assured, and more technically demanding, especially of the pianist. By this time, the composer had learned there was more to the art of thematic development than simply padding a piece with filler. The Lento, in the hideous key for the strings of G? Major (six flats), is clearly indebted to Brahms for its melodic outlines, harmonic vocabulary, and keyboard figuration. This is not your Dvo?ák of the dumka-colored slow movement. The Allegro moderato, grazioso is also not Dvo?ák’s typical high-spirited scherzo. It’s more of a waltz, and anyone really familiar with the composer’s work will instantly recognize the opening strain (after the introductory chords) as being almost identical to the fourth item in the set of Romantic Pieces, op. 75. Only with the last movement do we finally get the ruddy-cheeked Czech peasant dance that is so characteristic of Dvo?ák’s music.

These are excellent performances from members of the Vlach Quartet joined by pianist Helena Suchárová-Weiser, thoroughly idiomatic, as one might expect from this venerable Czech ensemble, and an excellent recording made at the Lobkowitz Palace, Prague, in 2008. Surprisingly, there isn’t as much competition as one might expect, at least not that couples both piano quartets on the same disc. Two that have long occupied favored status in my collection—one with the disbanded Domus on Hyperion, and the other with the Ames Piano Quartet on Dorian—are both still listed. But they are also both full-priced albums, and I wouldn’t argue that either holds a significant edge over this budget-priced Naxos disc. If you don’t already have one or more versions of Dvo?ák’s two piano quartets on your shelf, this is a sure bet for when you’re in one of your own Dvo?ák-loving phases.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

These captivating performances are a salutary reminder that, while Dvo?ák's chamber music is readily accessible to musicians and listeners alike, it uniquely blossoms when performed by native Czech performers - and, as we shall see, by their well-trained fellow-travelers - who bring it an intuitive sense of expressive phrasing and an understanding of its various components.

The D major quartet's opening theme, the first thing we hear, underscores the point. It includes a hiccough of a syncopation: hit it too hard, and it impedes the motion; underplay it, and it's just a distraction. These players articulate it within the overall arch of the phrase, so the rhythmic gesture intensifies the forward impulse as it should.

Such felicities abound in these performances. The players launch all the cantabile phrases with a sure sense of their broad, arching shape. The waltzlike passages - the 6/8 variations of the D major's central movement, the Allegretto scherzando of its Finale, and the third movement of the E-flat - go with a lovely lilt and swing, and carry an authentic, open-hearted lyricism.

The D major quartet is formally rather interesting. It begins with a fully-fledged Allegro moderato sonata movement, fifteen minutes long. There follows a lovely eleven-minute Andantino with five variations. The seven-minute Finale begins with the brief Allegretto scherzando cited before heading into an Allegro agitato, thus encompassing elements of both a scherzo and a conventional finale. The structure looks as off-balance in the track-listing as it undoubtedly sounds in this description, but in fact the two latter movements constitute a plausible counterweight to the first. The four-movement E-flat quartet shows Beethoven's influence. The themes are no less fetching than in the earlier work, but they lend themselves more readily to "symphonic" working-out and development, and the whole leaves an impression of greater weight and importance.

Of the players, I was particularly taken by cellist Mikael Ericcson - who, I imagine, is probably not a native Czech - whose dusky, deep tone provides special pleasure on the numerous melodic phrases the composer supplies. At the piano, Helena Suchárová-Weiser spins out pearly, articulate passagework with full tonal weight and "support", and her well-balanced chords ring out. Violinist Jana Vlachová never quite soars as one wants; her tone is thinner and her articulation less meticulous than ideal. But she's a stylish and effective player, and violist, Karel Stadtherr, produces a tone sufficiently darker than hers to render their sounds easily distinguishable.

The engineers capture just enough hall resonance to enhance the beautiful playing, but not so much as to obscure it. One would have expected to find this sort of release on an expensive, imported Supraphon disc, where it still would have been a must-buy; at Naxos prices, it's absolutely a steal.

-- Stephen Francis Vasta, MusicWeb International

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Dvorak: Piano Quartets / Sucharova-Weiser, Vlach Quartet
Naxos Dec 2009
CD
$19.99

Jones: Missa Spes Nostra - Ludford: Ave Cujus Conceptio - Hunt: Stabat Mater

Blue Heron Renaissance Choir

$21.99 Aug 14, 2015

At their most fanatical, the radicalized Reformists of England’s Church sought to purify the Church of everything worldly—and for our purposes, that included music set to Latin texts or requiring professional performance. It didn’t need a mass uprising to achieve this cleansing, this destruction. Merely a few small gangs of determined individuals in a time and place when the rule of law was in abeyance was probably sufficient, though the appointment of several influential Puritans to high office certainly didn’t help matters. Much music is known to have been lost, though a justified level of fear encouraged forethought in a few instances. It wasn’t until 1926 that a servant at Peterhouse revealed a hidden cupboard behind the Perne library’s paneling, for instance, where three Caroline partbooks were hidden.

Still, some of the partbooks have gone missing over time; and given that a set, one voice to a part, is required for performance, any loss has proven sufficient to silence so much fine Tudor polyphony. The Henrician Peterhouse group—Peterhouse MSS 40, 41, 31 and 32, a total of 72 works, 39 of which are unica—furnish a sad example of this. Of its five partbooks, the tenor is missing, as well as several leaves removed at some point from the treble. Various scholars long asserted that the kind of florid style frequently found in these books was no longer being composed in the later years of Henry’s rule, and paid no attention to the partbooks because they were little known and their contents unperformable. It is thanks to musicologist Nick Sandon, who has supplied the tenor part (and when necessary, the treble), that we have a working edition of those compositions that can’t be found elsewhere.

This fourth volume of the series once again features a work by Nicholas Ludford (c. 1490–1557). He is easily the best-known composer on the disc, which, given that he was almost entirely unknown until the last half century, says much about England’s musical discontinuity. (As well as the importance of Peterhouse’s Henrician partbooks; for a fair amount of what they include isn’t unica by well-known composers, but by those who lived, worked, died, and were completely forgotten.) Though his Ave cujus conceptio is not the centerpiece of the album as the Missa Regnum mundi (Blue Heron 1003) and Missa Inclina cor meum (Blue Heron 1004) were of theirs, it is a brightly buoyant work without shadows, launching lengthy melismatic phrases like so many streamers.

The central work on the program is the Missa Spes nostra of Robert Jones (fl. 1520–1535). His is a cantus firmus Mass, and as was the custom in England at the time, there is no pre-composed, polyphonic Kyrie. (Blue Heron supplies a plainchant one from the Sarum use sung, as was this Mass, on Trinity Sunday.) Metcalfe points out in his excellent liner notes that Jones “plays with the idea of alternation between major and minor harmonizations of the third scale degree” throughout the Mass. This, along with some simpler homophonic statements among the wealth of imitation, gives it at times an almost folk-like quality, though upon other occasions Jones relishes the passing dissonances his juxtapositions invite. Sandon notes in his doctoral dissertation that Jones can be unpredictable, and that he “sometimes writes very neat motivically generated counterpoint, but at other times he can be quirky and wayward.” This Mass is a highly individualized work, and amply repays repeated listening.

The final composer on the program, Robert Hunt, is so obscure that he hasn’t even been further identified yet. Only two pieces of his survive, both in the Peterhouse partbooks: an Ave Maria mater dei, and the Stabat mater dolorosa heard here. It is the only work on the disc missing both its tenor and treble parts, which Sandon has supplied. In a manner that recalls the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, it invites the listener to partake in the successive emotions experienced at the foot of the Cross by Mary, and manages this brilliantly in a very free, intensely emotive fashion. It should be required listening of anyone who feels that imitative counterpoint can’t be expressive.

It is also a superb example of what Scott Metcalfe has achieved with Blue Heron: an ensemble that yields to none for intonation, blend, and clarity, yet also utilizes both overall and part-related dynamics as an expressive device in a way most other professional choirs of its quality do not. Metcalfe is alive to the lyricism that was a remarked-upon feature of 15th-century English music, and the beauty of Blue Heron’s phrasing displays this everywhere on this disc. That the choir isn’t better known is no doubt a result in part of its rarified repertoire, but also Metcalfe’s desire to retain control over all aspects of his recordings. So you won’t find Blue Heron on such labels as Hyperion or Harmonia Mundi, but you will find that the excellent engineering on this album provides a close, rich sound with just enough reverberation to give body to the voices.

Complete texts and translations are included. Really, the entire series to date is worth the purchase. And if you want to sample some of Blue Heron’s recordings, as well as buy them, the place to go is blueheronchoir.org. Strongly recommended.

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Jones: Missa Spes Nostra - Ludford: Ave Cujus Conceptio - Hunt: Stabat Mater
Blue Heron Renaissance Choir Aug 2015
CD
$21.99

Witt: Symphony, Flute Concerto / Gallois, Sinfonia Finlandia Jyvaskyla

Naxos

$13.99 ~~$19.99~~ Save 30% Aug 31, 2010

WITT Symphony in C, “Jena.” Symphony in A. Flute Concerto in G, op. 8 • Patrick Gallois (fl, cond); Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä • NAXOS 8.572089 (69:37)

Born in the same year as Beethoven, the longer-lived Friedrich Witt (1770–1836) is acknowledged today, if a bit shamefacedly, as the composer of the so-called “Jena” Symphony once attributed to Beethoven. Not a single note of the score changed between the time it was believed to be by the great Ludwig Van and when it was discovered not to be; yet critical opinion of the work plummeted like the stock market on the report of bad news. Funny how that happens—yesterday buy, today sell, though nothing but the name of the note issuer of record has changed.

Recordings of Witt’s works represent but the tip of a sizeable iceberg; fewer than 10 of his works, as far as I can tell, have been recorded. Yet he is believed to have written as many as 23 symphonies, numerous concertos for various instruments, a considerable volume of chamber music, a number of operas, and an oratorio, Der leidende Heiland (The Suffering Savior), which secured him an appointment as Kapellmeister at the court of the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg in 1802.

Prior to this, however—sometime around 1792 or 1793—while Witt was serving as cellist at the court of Oettingen-Wallerstein and taking composition lessons from Antonio Rosetti, he laid eyes upon four of Haydn’s latest “London” Symphonies—Nos. 93, 96, 97, and 98—which Haydn had sent to Wallerstein. This, according to Keith Anderson’s booklet note, and other biographical sources I’ve come across, was Witt’s moment of dawning light, a light that, paradoxically, would eventually dim his own lamp in the pages of music history. Witt’s worst “crime,” it seems, was not simply imitating Haydn to the point of near plagiarism, but doing so at a time when Beethoven was busy “liberating music” from the strictures of classical content and style, if not quite yet classical form. In other words, Witt chose the path of the arch-conservative. History thereby ended up lumping him together with the lesser contemporaries of Haydn and Mozart instead of with the lesser contemporaries of Beethoven and Schubert, whom Witt outlived by the better part of a decade. Which lumping would have been better for Witt’s posthumous reputation I’m not sure; neither changes the music he wrote.

Witt’s G-Major Flute Concerto, newly recorded here, has been recorded before. It was included on an MDG Gold disc that also contained the composer’s Sixth, so-called “Turkish,” and Ninth symphonies. Johannes Moesus led the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, and the concerto was played by flutist Susanne Barner. That release, which I happen to have, was reviewed by Barry Brenesal in Fanfare 29:2.

As for the “Jena” Symphony, don’t believe everything you find, or don’t find, at ArkivMusic. As of this writing, the site lists only the current Naxos recording. But the work has appeared on disc before as far back as the 1950s. An LP on the Concert Hall label with Walter Goehr conducting the Netherlands Philharmonic has been transferred to CD, and there is a downloadable Deutsche Grammophon version with Franz Konwitschny. Versions on Urania with Rolf Kleinert leading the Leipzig Philharmonic and with Wolfgang Hoffmann leading the Rhineland Philharmonia on Musical Heritage Society also exist.

In hindsight, it’s hard to imagine how Witt’s “Jena” Symphony, written sometime before 1796, could ever have been mistaken for a work by Beethoven. Even Beethoven’s earliest orchestral works, namely the first two piano concertos, present an entirely different sound world from Witt’s symphony. Beethoven’s melodic contours are different, as is his way of writing for winds and of extending and developing his thematic material. Witt’s symphony is pure Haydn. Listen to the first movement’s second theme beginning at 2:13. In shape and style, it’s close to a dead ringer for the first movement’s second theme in Haydn’s D-Major Symphony No. 93, which was one of the four “London” Symphonies that Witt had access to at Oettingen-Wallerstein.

The Adagio likewise proceeds in Haydnesque melodic phrases and harmonic gestures, while the Menuetto is big on formal flourishes, curtsies, and that big ballroom-band sound common to so many of Haydn’s minuet movements. It contains none of the sprinting, whiplash elements that, in Beethoven’s hands, would transform the minuet into a scherzo. The last movement, a spirited Allegro, would have brought a London audience to its feet, just as Haydn’s finales did. If you love Haydn (and who doesn’t?), and his 106 symphonies aren’t enough for you, you can listen to Witt’s “Jena” Symphony and pretend it’s Haydn’s 107th, or you can listen to it and appreciate it for what it is, the work of a master copycat.

The A-Major Symphony, written perhaps a year or two before the “Jena,” seems somehow lighter and fleeter of foot. A passage or two in the first movement sounds as if it’s about to lapse into the bubbly, scintillating passagework one hears in Mozart’s “Linz” Symphony. The one surprise Witt has in store for us is that he places his Menuetto in second position, before the Andante. Though not unprecedented—Haydn did it in his C-Major Symphony No. 32—the practice was uncommon before 1830. Beethoven, in fact, didn’t reverse the order of the two inner movements in any of his symphonies until the Ninth, though it’s arguable whether the Eighth even has a slow movement at all.

Though Haydn wrote close to four dozen concertos for various instruments, the medium was not his in the way it was Mozart’s, and Witt seemed instinctively to realize this, turning instead to Mozart’s concertos as the model for his own G-Major Flute Concerto of 1806. With so few of Witt’s works available on record, it would be rash to say that this concerto is his crowning achievement. I think it’s safe to say, however, that it displays a wealth of melodic invention, ample virtuosic challenges for the soloist, a richness of orchestral writing, and an originality of ideas that seemed lacking in the symphonies. With as fine a flute concerto as this, I’m surprised that flutists aren’t lining up to add it to their repertoires.

Until I received this recording, I thought that Susanne Barner on the aforementioned MDG disc was perfectly fine, but compared to renowned flutist Patrick Gallois on this new Naxos CD, she sounds rather laid-back and a bit mechanical in her delivery. Gallois sparkles and tosses off Witt’s arpeggios, runs, and roulades with panache. The Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä, under Gallois’s direction, also sounds more spirited and alert, not to mention better recorded than the Hamburgers under Moesus.

Taking that into account, along with the fact that this, to my knowledge, is the only modern recording currently available of Witt’s “Jena” Symphony, Gallois becomes the entry of choice. A selling point of the MDG is that it contains two of Witt’s other symphonies not duplicated on the current disc. So, I shall be keeping both; but for those wanting to sample Witt’s work that has netted the most ink—the “Jena”—and what may be one of his most masterly works—the flute concerto—Naxos’s CD is a no-brainer and a bargain to boot.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Hands up who has heard of Friedrich Witt. Not many probably, for Witt seldom even makes it to the footnotes of musical history books. His main claim to fame is that his Symphony in C major - which is the first work on this recording - was once mistakenly attributed to Beethoven. In the early 1900s musical researchers uncovered the score and found the master’s name written next to two parts of the manuscript. Remembering that Beethoven himself had intimated that he had once attempted a symphony in C, the researchers put two and two together and got it wrong. It was left to H.C. Robbins Landon to prove that the work was really by Witt, a cellist and composer from Wallerstein.

Nevertheless, the Naxos tradition of bringing the obscure to light has paid off in this recording. The three works presented give a fascinating insight into the kind of music that was being written in the tin-pot courts of Germany while the likes of Beethoven were developing revolutionary new means of expression in Vienna. This does not mean that the music is poor. Quite the opposite. It is bold and attractive stuff.

The C major symphony (nicknamed ‘Jena’ after the city’s university, where the manuscript was discovered in 1909) was composed in 1796 and is clearly influenced by Haydn. This is no coincidence. It is known that in 1792 or 1793 Haydn sent four of his London symphonies - Nos. 93, 96, 97 and 98 - to Wallerstein, where Witt must have seen them. The opening allegro is upbeat and playful, with a touch of Haydn wit. The ensuing ‘Adagio cantabile’ contains an attractive melody, while the finale is a fast-paced race to the finish that makes good use of the comparatively large orchestra at Witt’s disposal - including timpani and trumpets, as well as flute, oboes, bassoons, horns and strings.

The Symphony in A major is less riveting. Written about six years earlier, it lacks Haydn’s positive influence and is hemmed in by simple and rather restrictive sonata-form structures. The Flute Concerto in G is much more satisfying. This work was published in 1806 and benefits from a fuller, heavier, orchestral sound. Nevertheless, it still inhabits the sound-world of Haydn and Mozart rather than ‘Eroica’ Beethoven. Patrick Gallois ably tackles the tricky flute solos while simultaneously conducting the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä. There is a quasi-Romantic opening to the second movement, followed by a fine flute melody which is developed and decorated. But the final Rondo brings us safely back to the late eighteenth century.

-- John-Pierre Joyce, MusicWeb International

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Witt: Symphony, Flute Concerto / Gallois, Sinfonia Finlandia Jyvaskyla
Naxos Aug 2010
CD
~~$19.99~~ $13.99

Bull: Violin Concertos / Folleso, Ruud, Norwegian Radio Orchestra [Hybrd SACD + Blu-ray Audio]

Blu-Ray with SACD

$44.99 Apr 27, 2010

BULL Sæterjentens Søndag . Violin Concerto in A. Concerto Fantastico in e. I Ensomme Stunde. La Verbena de San Juan. Et Sæterbesøg • Annar Follesø (vn); Ole Kristian Ruud, cond; Norwegian RO • 2L 67 (Blu-ray audio: 69:21)

& SACD

Tall, preternaturally handsome Ole Bull captured the fancy of concertgoers in Europe, and in the United States as well. In fact, at a time when classical artists like Henri Vieuxtemps had trouble making inroads in the American hinterland (supposedly after an initially disappointing reception, he composed his first set of variations on Yankee Doodle ), Bull made immediate connections with his program of atmospheric, sentimental, and technically dazzling pieces that he had composed himself—and always with his audiences in mind. Nevertheless, as had Paganini, whom he idolized, before him, he proved himself able to win the admiration of first-rank composers. The opening work on this program, Sæterjentens Søndag (The Herd Girl’s Sunday Morning), represents just such a simple song, one that must (and seems calculated to) have drawn an admiring tear from his listeners. Annar Follesø gives an appropriately sensitive and atmospheric account of it (with the accompaniment arranged for orchestra by Johan Svendsen), along with Ole Kristian Ruud and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. The two concertos, recently discovered, represent the more virtuosic side of Bull’s personality. The first, in A Major, opens with a long and symphonically conceived tutti, with some of the quieter passages sensitively orchestrated. The soloist enters with a showy cadenza that must have been in part just what Bull’s audiences wanted—and even expected. The writing for violin sounds like a (derivative?) mix of Paganini’s pyrotechnical wizardry and De Bériot’s suave tunefulness. Still, many listeners may doubt that Bull has integrated his thematic materials as successfully (or at least consistently) into the passagework as did his contemporaries the Henris (Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski). But Follesø displays the natural virtuosic flair to play some of these seemingly aimless passages without retaining his tongue in his cheek, as well as an affinity for the concerto’s genial ethnic harmonic and melodic atmosphere. The brief slow movement also opens with an extended orchestral passage; but the soloist claims the limelight upon his entry in an affecting passage on the G string. The Rondo pastorale that brings the concerto to a close features thematic fireworks in double-stops, and while some of the later material grows almost maudlin, Bull always manages to hold his listeners’ interest.

The nominally programmatic Concerto fantastico (with movements representing night, dawn, and day) also begins with a long tutti and features even more flamboyant passagework, which Follesø plays with aplomb. As in Bull’s Concerto in A Major, the streamers seem to be stretched pretty thinly over their underlying framework. Once again, though, Follesø (and Ruud and the orchestra) play their roles without sounding smugly superior to the program. The slow movement, built on a simple, heartfelt tune, sounds affecting in the same way as did the other concerto’s corresponding movement. The finale, a short but intoxicating romp with lyrical pauses for breath, seems even more shrewdly calculated for effect than does the other concerto’s finale. Once again, Follesø provides a rollicking, technically dazzling account. I Ensomme Stunde (La Melancolie), here arranged by Johan Halvorsen and Wolfgang Plagge, offers Grieg-like fare like that in Sæterjentens Søndag . The more extended fantasy, La Verbena de San Juan , however, with its percussion-rich orchestration, sounds like a sort of Norwegian counterpart to Sarasate’s ethnic concoctions, although it seems to go a step further in local color. According to the notes, Bull wrote it for Queen Isabella of Spain upon the occasion of a tour in 1846. The queen, again according to the notes, enjoyed Bull’s music—and perhaps other attentions. According to the notes, Bull incorporated Sebastian Yradier’s Jota Aragonesa out of gratitude to that composer; audiences should recognize it. They should also recognize Sarasate’s whistling harmonics (also familiar from Paganini). And Bull, as did Sarasate, incorporated left-hand pizzicatos liberally in his works. Follesø is equal to the challenges both these techniques pose.

Et Sæterbesøg includes references to folk fiddling with drones that I’ve always associated with the Hardanger fiddle or at least its style. The notes relate that, coupled with the words to Sæterjentens Søndag, it’s become a part of Norway’s cultural heritage. For those inclined, as many have been, to dismiss Bull as a sort of musical charlatan, the lyrical outpouring in the song’s middle should invite at least a second look. Arve Tellefsen played a program of Bull’s music for violin and orchestra with Andrew Karsten and the Bergen Symphony Orchestra in 1988 (Norsk Kulturraå ds Klassikerserie 50008), including two works on Follesø’s, Et Sæterbesøg, I Ensomme Stunde , and the Adagio sostenuto from the Concerto fantastico . Tellefsen’s version of Et Sæterbesøg takes advantage of bells to enhance the mountain atmosphere, and his “Hardanger” sounds twangier, even if he doesn’t draw as deeply affecting a cantabile from its lyrical passages (or those of I Ensomme Stunde— though Tellefsen’s version of the concerto’s slow movement throbs with a warmer expressivity despite his edgier tone production).

The Blu-ray version (audio only), to which I listened (although I used the CD version of Follesø’s program in making the comparison with Tellefsen’s program), provides extraordinarily sharp definition, hardly losing clarity in the midst of a somewhat reverberant setting. Whether or not this medium will offer relief to listeners fatigued by the roughness of even the best CDs, in particular in recordings of violin tone, it represents an improvement over CDs, as did DVD-Audio, among formats dependent on high-storage media (the sound: 24 bit and at least 192 kHz, with a choice of 5.1 DTS HD, 7.1 DTS HD, or 2.0 LPCM). Notes in the highest registers hiss and spit, yet with a relaxing smoothness and stimulating three-dimensional (a metaphor only) projection. The entire program, in this rich smorgasbord of formats, should appeal to lovers of the violin and perhaps to general listeners as well. As did Paganini and figures like Sinatra and Presley, Ole Bull represented a cultural phenomenon that should interest at least historians. His success in his own time demonstrates that, at least to the extent that his effect didn’t depend on his personality, genuine musicality underlay his work. It’s apparent in this collection. Recommended on that account, as well.

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

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Bull: Violin Concertos / Folleso, Ruud, Norwegian Radio Orchestra [Hybrd SACD + Blu-ray Audio]
2L Apr 2010
Blu-Ray with SACD
$44.99

Lorraine at Emmanuel / Lieberson

Avie Records

$9.99 ~~$19.99~~ Save 50% Apr 01, 2008

"When the Wigmore Hall Live label released an archival recording of a 1998 recital by the great mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson last year, it raised the hope of more such posthumous finds. And just as that hope had begun to fade, here comes another treasure, this one unearthed from the archives of Emmanuel Music in Boston.

As it happens, this release serves as tribute not only to Hunt Lieberson, who died in 2006, but also to her frequent close collaborator Craig Smith, the founder of Emmanuel Music, who died in November. And the material is choice: spacious arias from two Bach cantatas and extended excerpts from Handel’s oratorio “Hercules.”

The disc begins with a 1992 recording of the aria “Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder” from Bach’s Cantata No. 30: Something of a tease as the opening instrumental passage heightens the anticipation of Hunt Lieberson’s entrance, more than two minutes into the disc. But that glorious Voice, when it appears, meets every expectation.

The “Hercules” excerpts, from 1999, trace the travails of the hero’s wife, Dejanira, culminating in a harrowing mad scene.... Although Hunt Lieberson’s compelling stage presence added mightily to any performance, the voice alone amply conveys her characteristic intensity here....

Dare we hope for more?"

– James R. Oestreich, New York Times [8/10/2008]

The early death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson deprived the world of an exceptional artist and one, moreover, who left all too few commercial recordings. However, some archive recordings are now beginning to emerge and this new release, featuring previously unissued live recordings is one such. The CD also forms a tribute to one of her mentors, Craig Smith, Music Director at Emmanuel Church, Boston from 1970 until his death in November 2007 at the age of sixty.

Smith founded Emmanuel Music, which, besides fulfilling a liturgical function at the church, evolved also into a concert ensemble of no little distinction. Perhaps Smith’s greatest achievement was to inaugurate the practice whereby each Sunday between October and April, the main Sunday morning church service includes a cantata by Bach appropriate to the day. That tradition continues to this day and later this year the thirty-ninth consecutive season of liturgical cantatas will commence.

It was through Emmanuel Music that the then Lorraine Hunt took some of the first steps on her solo singing career and she maintained the connection, I believe, for the rest of her life, including appearances in the Sunday cantata series. This disc, therefore, takes us back to her singing roots.

The disc begins and ends with arias taken, I presume, from complete Sunday service performances of Bach cantatas. The aria "Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder" comes from the cantata Freue dich, erlöste schar, written for the feast of St. John the Baptist. Alfred Dürr writes thus of the cantata: "The underlying mood is joyful, relaxed and unproblematical, not only in the opening chorus but in the four arias, where a dance-like style is often clearly evident." Unfortunately, to judge by this aria at least, Craig Smith seems to have a different conception. Presumably with the agreement of his soloist, he sets and extremely slow tempo and the aria lasts 8:46.

This sent me scurrying to my shelves for comparisons. John Eliot Gardiner, in his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage performance takes a mere 5:27 but he is surely too fleet – at his pace the aria sounds like a gambol through the Elysian meadows. So that might seem to suggest that Smith is "simply" old fashioned in his conception. But turn to Fritz Werner’s 1971 performance and you find a tempo that seems to me to be just right – he takes 6:03. Beside Werner I’m afraid Smith sounds laboured. What saves the performance is the sheer beauty and inwardness of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s singing. On its own terms the performance is quite lovely and no admirer of the singer will be disappointed but I just think the basic conception is wrong.

Things are much more satisfactory in the other Bach aria, which is placed at the opposite end of the programme. This aria is from the cantata Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, which is for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. Again, Miss Hunt Lieberson’s singing is beautiful and communicative and this time the pace is much more sensible, I think. The conductor here is the composer, John Harbison, who has also had a long association with Emmanuel Music and who, in fact, is currently the Acting Artistic Director. He adopts a slow pace, but this aria can take it. Again comparisons were instructive. Eliot Gardiner’s tempo is almost identical and he takes exactly as long as does Harbison. Werner didn’t record this cantata but another celebrated Bach traditionalist, Karl Richter, did. In his 1976/7 recording he takes 9:34 but his soloist, Julia Hamari, sounds cool besides either of her rivals and she and Richter, whose direction is smooth and relaxed, convey no real sense of trepidation. Nathalie Stutzmann, for Eliot Gardiner, is perhaps a touch more inward than Hunt Lieberson but she’s equally involving and it’s only by the merest whisker that I come down in favour of this present, excellent performance.

The remainder of the disc is devoted to excerpts from Handel’s oratorio, Hercules and these excerpts contain all the music for Dejanira, the wife of the eponymous hero. I presume, though it’s not clear from the documentation, that these extracts are taken from a live account of the complete work.

The role of Dejanira is an exceptionally demanding one, both vocally and emotionally. She is, in Craig Smith’s words, a "monumental character." I can well imagine that Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was a pretty formidable presence in the performance of the oratorio for these extracts show us a vivid character portrayal.

In her first aria, "The world when day’s career is run," she is fully the grief-stricken wife, yet she still retains dignity. Much of Dejanira’s music is in moderate or slow tempo but when swifter music arrives, in "Begone, my fears, fly, hence, away," Miss Hunt Lieberson excels in the passagework.

As her jealousy of the captive princess, Iole, begins to take hold and her certainty that Hercules has been unfaithful increases there’s great sadness in the aria ‘When beauty sorrow’s liv’ry wears’ and that is splendidly conveyed here. Particularly outstanding is the account of "Cease, ruler of the day, to rise," where the singing is particularly expressive. Writing of this disc elsewhere, but of another aria in the programme, the critic Michael Kennedy spoke of Miss Hunt Lieberson’s "power to humanise every note and bring the music to new life." How I agree and I’d say that this comment applies even more strongly to this deep aria.

The final excerpt is the Mad Scene. Here Miss Hunt Lieberson is intensely dramatic without ever going overboard. This is extremely demanding music and she performs it vividly and, once again, when the divisions arise she displays fine vocal agility. Hers is a tremendous performance of this recitative and aria and, unsurprisingly, it sparks an ovation from the audience who, otherwise, are commendably silent throughout.

These extracts contain some superb Handel singing. Frequently I was reminded of Dame Janet Baker’s assumption of Handelian roles and I can pay no higher compliment than that.

Despite my reservation over the one Bach item – a reservation that does not concern the singing per se – this is a superb disc that all admirers of this much-missed singer will want to have. And if you’ve not heard Lorraine Hunt Lieberson before, buy this disc and discover for yourself what all the fuss is about.

– John Quinn, MusicWeb International

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Lorraine at Emmanuel / Lieberson
Avie Records Apr 2008
CD
~~$19.99~~ $9.99

The Rediscovered RCA Victor Recordings / José Iturbi

Sony Masterworks

$62.96 ~~$125.98~~ Save 50% Mar 03, 2023

This collection stands as a valuable time capsule from which one comes away with a fuller understanding of Iturbi’s prominence in American wartime and postwar culture.

The complete RCA Victor Recordings by José Iturbi from 1933 to 1953, include his piano duo recordings with sister Amparo Iturbi as well as Amparo Iturbi’s solo recordings on 16 CDs, restored and remastered from the original lacquer discs and analogue tapes using high-resolution 24 bit/192 kHz mastering technology with about 95% of the recordings appearing on CD for the first time and 23 pieces previously unreleased. As well as a new, captivating essay by Grammy-nominated singer, pianist, and music anthropologist Michael Feinstein on the life and work of José Iturbi and a photo book with previously unseen photos and facsimiles from the Iturbi Archives in Hollywood.

There was a time when classical music was a natural part of Hollywood. From the moments with Jascha Heifetz in They Shall Have Music (1939) to the unrivaled performances of Oscar Levant and Isaac Stern in Humoresque (1946). In its Golden Era, Hollywood adorned itself with the Who's Who of classical music. Today, alongside icons such as Marylin Monroe and James Dean, the names of Leonard Bernstein, Maria Callas and Arturo Toscanini, as well as Rudolf Serkin, Joseph Szigeti, or José Iturbi were immortalized on the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame. This edition is a loving homage to Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s, made possible through the generous support of the José Iturbi Foundation and the Hollywood Museum Board of Directors, who contributed to the lavish restoration of many previously lost unpublished recordings. The publication was also made possible by contributions of singer, pianist, and music archivist Michael Feinstein, the Ambassador for the Great American Songbook.

REVIEW:

During the 1940s and 1950s the “World’s Most Popular Classical Pianist” mantle fell comfortably upon José Iturbi (1895-1980). His recognition as a radio personality led to a movie career that yielded ten feature films between 1943 and 1951 where the pianist mostly starred as himself. Yet for all of Iturbi’s renown, he was hardly a poseur. He worked with Wanda Landowska in Paris, and gave Stravinsky’s Piano Rag Music its world premiere, as well as the first complete Carnegie Hall performance of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes.

He also conducted. When Eugene Ormandy assumed the Philadelphia Orchestra’s music directorship in 1936, his chief rival for the position was Iturbi, who wound up taking charge of the Rochester Philharmonic that same year. Once Hollywood beckoned, however, Iturbi became the brunt of intellectual critics, who basically wrote him off as a sell-out and an artistic lightweight.

Time, of course, brings perspective, and Sony/BMG’s lavishly produced 16-CD collection containing Iturbi’s complete RCA Victor recordings invites a fairly thorough examination of the musician behind the personality, plus an opportunity to reassess a largely forgotten body of recorded work. A 188-page coffee table book contains photos in abundance, with all original-jacket artwork represented, including the most politically incorrect cover art ever to grace Dvorák’s “New World” symphony. We get complete session and release discographies, an Iturbi filmography, plus a brilliant in-depth biographical essay by Michael Feinstein, who co-produced this collection with Robert Russ.

It’s a pity that the session discography is not cross-referenced to corresponding CD tracks, not to mention the absence of a discography by composer. This makes it difficult to navigate the contents with ease, especially in works that Iturbi recorded more than once. For example, it took some sleuthing on my part to discover that Discs 5 and 11 each contained the Liszt Liebestraum No. 3, Schumann Arabeske, Debussy Reverie, and Chopin Polonaise in A-flat Op. 53, and that the performances were not identical.

With few notable exceptions, Iturbi’s solo recordings mostly consist of short, encore-length pieces. He’s especially at home in Spanish music: Iturbi’s accentuation, phrasing, and timing throughout Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance define perfection, while he shapes Granados’ Spanish Dance No. 2 (“Oriental’) with sensitivity and tenderness. Classical selections also stand out for Iturbi’s bracing articulation. True, the outer movements of his Mozart K. 331 and 332 sonata recordings are overly facile and insufficiently inflected when measured alongside contemporaneous Mozartean rivals like Schnabel, Gieseking, Fischer, and Haskil. Yet the sheer evenness and poised symmetry of Iturbi’s finger-work easily explains why pianists like Julius Katchen and William Kapell praised his Mozart.

Iturbi also revels in the Haydn C major Theme and Variations’ sly wit. By contrast, introspection and sobriety characterize Iturbi’s measured unfolding of Beethoven’s Andante favori. Similar gravitas elevates Paderewski’s Minuet in G to near-masterpiece status. Iturbi’s virtuosic glitter befits his dashing Saint-Saëns Allegro appassionato more than in his glib Liszt Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este.

Iturbi’s Chopin hits and misses. His Mazurkas lack the ardency and rhythmic snap that distinguishes a Second Scherzo that gets better as it progresses. Also note the pianist’s dotting the duple rhythms in the A-flat Polonaise’s main theme that Horowitz, Rubinstein, and Lhevinne play straight on their rival RCA versions.

The later recordings reveal Iturbi’s pianism losing some of its erstwhile luster and subtlety, possibly exaggerated by the close microphone placement and twangy patina typical of late 1940s/early 1950s piano recordings stemming from RCA’s Hollywood recording studio. For example, the two Debussy Arabesques recorded in New York in 1939 have a supple elegance missing in their glassy-sounding 1950 Hollywood counterparts (sound clips). The blustery, hard-toned, and harshly engineered Liszt Concerto No. 1, Mendelssohn Concerto No. 1, and Beethoven Concerto No. 3 were non-starters in their day, with the piano way up in the mix, relegating the crackerjack RCA Symphony musicians to doormat status. Still, the Mendelssohn’s outer movements feature some of Iturbi’s most scintillating pianism on disc.

While Iturbi’s two-piano distribution of the solo part of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is surprisingly effective and discreet, he and his pianist sister Amparo turn in a crass, alternately whipped up, and sappily sentimentalized interpretation. Works of Mozart, Debussy, and Milhaud better represent their dazzling ensemble rapport, but again, the boxy, claustrophobic engineering undermines their efforts. Similar dryness typifies Amparo’s idiomatic solo recordings of Spanish repertoire. Still, it’s nice to have her rare 1954 Granados Goyescas back in circulation, although it pales alongside Alicia de Larrocha’s far more nuanced and texturally differentiated interpretation from the following year.

The collection also showcases Iturbi’s work on the podium. His 1940 Rochester Philharmonic versions of the Mozart D minor and Beethoven C minor concertos are more judiciously balanced than his orchestrally superior 1952 RCA Victor Symphony remakes. Each contains lively and engaging outer movements that flank wooden, hard-toned slow movements.

Iturbi’s 1951 Liszt Hungarian Fantasy with the Valencia Symphony Orchestra has a snarling rawness that differs from the sheen and suavity of the 1952 Arrau/Ormandy and late 1940s Solomon and Moiseiwitsch editions. As with many second-tier American orchestras in the 1940s, the Rochester Philharmonic boasted strong strings but less proficient winds and brass. Consequently, Iturbi’s Mendelssohn “Scottish” Symphony took a back seat to Mitropoulos’ powerful 1941 Minneapolis version, while the aforementioned Dvorák New World lacked the Szell/Czech Philharmonic recording’s flavorful ensemble discipline.

The prize of Iturbi’s Rochester discography is a snazzy and brilliantly turned-out Morton Gould “Latin American” Symphonette, which is surprisingly well-engineered for its 1944 vintage. Another delightful curiosity is William J. Reddick’s Espanharlem, a brief orchestral work whose quick changing moods and jazzy underpinnings wouldn’t be out of place in a Carl Stalling Bugs Bunny cartoon soundtrack. There’s also a previously unpublished recording conducted by Werner Janssen of Iturbi’s orchestral composition Soliloquy. The piece amounts to 14 and a half minutes’ worth of rambling 1940s film music clichés filtered through third-rate Lecuona. Why Iturbi is credited as piano soloist when there’s no piano to be heard is anyone’s guess!

Notwithstanding the artistic unevenness of Iturbi’s recorded output he always had the self-respect to keep his technique in world-class repair, unlike his rival classical pianist turned media personality Oscar Levant. Still, music lovers who don’t want to go the whole hog, so to speak, are directed to APR’s 2016 three-disc solo Iturbi compilation. I also hope to see Iturbi’s post-cinema EMI recordings restored. However, beyond purely musical considerations, Sony/BMG’s collection stands as a valuable time capsule from which one comes away with a fuller understanding of Iturbi’s prominence in American wartime and postwar culture.

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

CONTENTS:

Mozart: Concerto for 2 Pianos and Orchestra No. 10 in E flat, K365
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K466
Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, S124
Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37
Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
Chambers, J C: All American
Gould, M: Symphonette No. 4 'Latin-American'
Reddick: Espanharlem
Iturbi: Soliloquy
Mozart: Sonata for 2 pianos in D major, K448
Chabrier: Trois Valses Romantiques
Iturbi: Spanish Dance
Debussy: En blanc et noir
Milhaud: Scaramouche, suite for two pianos, Op. 165b
Nepomuceno: La siesta
Infante: Guadalquivir
Infante: Sevillana
Debussy: Suite bergamasque: Clair de lune
Liszt: Liebestraum, S541 No. 3 (Nocturne in A flat major)
Debussy: Rêverie
Beethoven: Für Elise (Bagatelle in A minor, WoO59)
Schumann: Arabeske in C major, Op. 18
Debussy: Deux arabesques, L. 66
Falla: Dance of Terror (from El amor brujo)
Rachmaninoff: Prelude Op. 3 No. 2 in C sharp minor
Liszt: Les jeux d'eaux à la Villa d'Este, S. 163 No. 4)
Falla: Ritual Fire Dance (from El amor brujo)
Saint-Saëns: Allegro appassionato, Op. 70
Albéniz: Malagueña (No. 3 from Espana, Op. 165)
Chopin: Étude Op. 10 No. 12 in C minor ‘Revolutionary'
Chopin: Polonaise No. 6 in A flat major, Op. 53 'Héroïque'
Debussy: Estampe No. 3 - Jardins sous la pluie
Schumann: Romance in F sharp major, Op. 28 No. 2
Chopin: Prelude Op. 28 No. 9 in E major
Chopin: Prelude Op. 28 No. 10 in C sharp minor
Chopin: Prelude Op. 28 No. 15 in D flat major ‘Raindrop'
Chopin: Nocturne No. 9 in B major, Op. 32 No. 1
López-Chavarri: El viejo castillo moro
Iturbi: Cancion de cuna
Granados: Orientale (No. 2 from 12 Danzas españolas)
Chopin: Mazurka No. 6 in A minor, Op. 7 No. 2
Chopin: Mazurka No. 7 in F minor, Op. 7 No. 3
Chopin: Mazurka No. 24 in C major, Op. 33 No. 3
Chopin: Mazurka No. 27 in E minor, Op. 41 No. 2
Chopin: Mazurka No. 25 in B minor, Op. 33 No. 4
Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 31
Debussy: Children's Corner
Ravel: Jeux d'eau
Guastavino: Gato
Mozart: Concerto for 2 Pianos and Orchestra No. 10 in E flat, K365
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K466
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37
Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
Ravel: Pavane pour une infante défunte
Bach, J S: Passacaglia in C minor, BWV582
Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K331 'Alla Turca'
Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 12 in F major, K332
Chopin: Impromptu No. 4 in C sharp minor, Op. 66 'Fantaisie-Impromptu'
Chopin: Waltz No. 6 in D flat major, Op. 64 No. 1 'Minute Waltz'
Chopin: Waltz No. 7 in C sharp minor, Op. 64 No. 2
Chopin: Mazurka No. 5 in B flat major, Op. 7 No. 1
Albéniz: Sevilla (from Suite Española, Op. 47)
Granados: Goyescas: Quejas ó La Maja y el Ruiseñor
Scarlatti, D: Keyboard Sonata K27 in B minor
Scarlatti, D: Keyboard Sonata K159 in C major 'La caccia'
Paradies: Toccata in A
Iturbi: Pequena danza espanola
Beethoven: Andante Favori in F, WoO 57
Albéniz: Cantos de España (5), Op. 232, No. 4
Lazăr, F: Piano Sonata No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 15: III Tempo di Marcia funebre
Saint-Saëns: Caprice arabe, Op. 96
Debussy: L'isle joyeuse
Infante: Danze andaluse (for 2 pianos): No. 2 Sentimento
Debussy: Deux arabesques, L. 66
Bach, J S: Fantasia in C minor, BWV906
Granados: Danza española, Op. 37 No. 10 'Melancólica'
Gould, M: Boogie Woogie Etude
Gould, M: Blues
Falla: Ritual Fire Dance (from El amor brujo)
Falla: Dance of Terror (from El amor brujo)
Debussy: Suite bergamasque: Clair de lune
Liszt: Liebestraum, S541 No. 3 (Nocturne in A flat major)
Chopin: Polonaise No. 6 in A flat major, Op. 53 'Héroïque'
Schumann: Arabeske in C major, Op. 18
Debussy: Rêverie
Haydn: Theme and Variations in C major, Hob.XVII:5
Paderewski: Minuet in G major, Op. 14 No. 1
Beethoven: Für Elise (Bagatelle in A minor, WoO59)
Schumann: Träumerei (from Kinderszenen, Op. 15)
Ravel: Pavane pour une infante défunte
Rachmaninoff: Humoresque in G major, Op. 10 No. 5
Infante: Danses andalouses
Tchaikovsky: The Seasons, Op. 37b: June (Barcarolle)
Tchaikovsky: The Seasons, Op. 37b: November (Troika)
Mussorgsky: Une Larme (A Tear)
Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 'Scottish'
Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 'From the New World'
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody, S244 No. 14 in F minor
Falla: El sombrero de tres picos: Dance of the Neighbours (Seguidillas)
Falla: El sombrero de tres picos: Danza del molinero (farruca)
Falla: El sombrero de tres picos: Final Dance (Jota)
Palau Boix: Marche burlesque
Palau Boix: Hommage a Debussy
Iturbi: Seguidillas
Cuesta: Danza valenciana in A major
Falla: Siete Canciones populares españolas
Turina: Homenaje a Lope de Vega, Op. 90: I. Cuando tan hermosa os miro
Granados: Danza española, Op. 37 No. 8 'Sardana'
Granados: Danza española, Op. 37 No. 12 'Arabesca'
Granados: Danza española, Op. 37 No. 9 'Romántica'
Turina: Mujeres Españolas, Series 1, Op. 17: 2. La andaluza sentimental
Turina: Mujeres Españolas, Series 1, Op. 17: 3. La morena coqueta
Infante: Pochades andalouses: Canto flamenco
Infante: ochades andalouses: Danse gitane
Infante: Pochades andalouses: Aniers sur la route de Seville
Infante: Pochades andalouses: Tientos
Albéniz: Granada (from Suite española No. 1, Op. 47)
Albéniz: Córdoba (No. 4 from Cantos de España, Op. 232)
Cuesta: Danza valenciana in G major
Lecuona: Malagueña
Griffes: The White Peacock
Infante: Guadalquivir
Infante: Pochades andalouses: Ritmo
Mozart: Sonata for 2 pianos in D major, K448: Allegro molto
Granados: El Pelele
Granados: Goyescas (piano suite)
Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales
Chabrier: Scherzo-valse (No. 10 from Pièces pittoresques)
Chabrier: Idylle (No. 6 from Pièces pittoresques)
Chabrier: Bourrée Fantasque
Schubert: Valses Sentimentales, D 779 Op. 50 (Excerpts)
Schubert: 12 Valses Nobles, D 969 Op. 77: selection
López-Chavarri: Danza de las labradoras Valencianas
Shostakovich: Prelude for piano, Op. 34 No. 2 in A minor
Shostakovich: Prelude for piano, Op. 34 No. 14 in E flat minor
Shostakovich: Prelude for piano, Op. 34 No. 24 in D minor
Fauré: Impromptu No. 3 in A flat major Op. 34
Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 13 in B flat major, K333

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The Rediscovered RCA Victor Recordings / José Iturbi
Sony Masterworks Mar 2023
CD
~~$125.98~~ $62.96

BACH: COMPLETE KEYBOARD CONCERTOS

HYPERION

$22.99 Jul 10, 2026

Never has Bach seemed less dry and more full of fantasy, stated The Telegraph. Mahan Esfahani's mammoth project to record the complete keyboard works of Bach reaches it's zenith with The Complete Keyboard Concertos. At every stage in the series, Esfahani has sought to challenge long-held assumptions about the composer we seek to know. By teaming up with the Britten Sinfonia, he dispels any assumptions that the harpsichord might be seen as an "ancient" instrument, eschewing period instruments in favor of modern ones. In his typically scholarly but engaging liner notes, Esfahani writes of Bach the trendsetter, putting the keyboard front and center in a concerto for the first time. In addition to his roles as harpsichordist and director, Esfahani adds a compositional feather to his cap with the first recording of his own reconstruction of the "lost concerto" No. 8 (BWV1059), once available only as a small fragment. 2-CD set.

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BACH: COMPLETE KEYBOARD CONCERTOS
HYPERION Jul 2026
CD
$22.99

Mix & Match

Seven Come Eleven - A Gaming Gambol

Sony Masterworks

$8.99 ~~$17.99~~ Save 50% Jul 01, 2013

"The merriest ninety minutes in the town's night life." -- The New Yorker

"There isn't a gayer, wittier or subtler cabaret show in town than 'Seven Come Eleven'... The enterprising Julius Monk has again assembled a group of six versatile performers, furnished them with material from about a dozen bright song-and-sketch writers and mounted the whole thing with fluency and verve." -- Arthur Gelb, The New York Times [10/9/1961]

Seven Come Eleven - A Gaming Gambol

With Philip Bruns, Ceil Cabot, Rex Robbins, Steve Roland, Donna Sanders, Mary Louise Wilson.

William Roy and Carl Norman at the plural pianos.

Musical and vocal arrangements by William Roy.

It all began (way back in 1956) in a dark, dank cellar, located beneath an ancient brownstone on New York City’s Sixth Avenue. It was here that Julius Monk, with a few yards of velvet and a handful of performers, presented his first subterranean sensation, Four Below. Notwithstanding some mild competition from a musical called My Fair Lady and an occasional attack of bends, Four Below romped happily through a six-month run. It was followed, quite naturally, by The Son of Four Below (1956) and, in time, Take Five (1957), the latter fondly recalled as a classic nightclub entertainment.

By 1958, The Downstairs Room was firmly established as a favorite late-night spot for New Yorkers on the town. But the tranquility at 51st Street and Sixth Avenue was disturbed by the ominous approach of demolition squads, which looked jealously at a street corner that they hadn’t yet battered down. It was not long before Julius and his companions were homeless, as The Downstairs Room was politely removed in the name of architectural progress. Vagrants for but a trice, they moved to West 56th Street, where they took up permanent residence in a congenial mansion formerly owned by John Wanamaker. There, Take Five took its second wind and was later followed by Demi-Dozen (1958), Pieces of Eight (1959), Dressed to the Nines (1960) and now Seven Come Eleven, which opened to rave notices on October 5, 1961. Dorothy Kilgallen expressed the attitude of the critics by referring to Seven Come Eleven as “the wittiest cafe show in town.”

Aware that there still may be one or two people who have not yet seen a Julius Monk opus, we offer the following description. It is New York at night. Taxicabs wind perilously in and out of traffic, along glittering, noisy avenues. Soon they drive up an attractive, quiet side street, lined with shops in remodeled town houses and stop in front of a canopied entrance that announces “Upstairs at the Downstairs.” A uniformed doorman greets the couples arriving from Broadway shows or late dinners and ushers them inside to join a crowd waiting to ascend the circular marble staircase leading to the Upstairs Room, where the show is about to go on.

The Upstairs Room, formerly the sitting room of the mansion, is lined with rich, red fabric and softly lighted by glowing globes from the last century. Visitors are seated at little tables, and soon the lights dim. Suddenly, a half dozen bright, young Thespians leap onto the tiny stage at one end of the room. Accompanied by twin pianos, they spend the next hour and a half singing songs and performing sketches which touch upon just about every event in the newspapers, every phobia in the textbooks, and every celebrity in the history of the world. Seven Come Eleven, for example, contains hilarious spoofs on the John Birch Society, the Peace Corps, sick comedians, Cuban highjacking of airplanes and other topics close to the hearts of New Yorkers: school scandals and the construction of a new hotel designed in typical Miami Beach fashion. If all this sounds terribly, terribly sophisticated, it should be pointed out at once that the performers in this show come from such remote spots as Pipestone, Minnesota; Pierre, South Dakota; Eldred, Pennsylvania, and Greenville, Texas.

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Seven Come Eleven - A Gaming Gambol
Sony Masterworks Jul 2013
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Wagner: Parsifal / Haenchen, Richards, Larsson, Rootering, Mayer, Tomasso

BelAir Classiques

DVD

$31.99 Jan 28, 2014

A mythical performance from la Monnaie - Bruxelles.
Parsifal is a strange and enigmatic work. At the end of his life, did Wagner wish to celebrate asceticism, which he himself had never practised? Did he fall upon his knees before the Cross, as claimed by Nietzsche? And what does the secret society of knights based on pure blood signify, desperately waiting for the saviour to regenerate it? What is the true nature of the opposition between the worlds of Klingsor and the Grail? What can Parsifal tell us today? In his artistic will and testament, Wagner condenses his moral idea of the world and returns to the roots of love and religion - to the very heart of art according to him.
With the participation of conductor Hartmut Haenchen who is passionated by the score, Italian stage director Romeo Castellucci proposes an original reading of this brilliant work and explores the essence of Wagnerian ‘Kunstreligion’ in a different light.

“Thanks to the telling contributions of Mr. Castellucci and Mr. Haenchen, the Monnaie’s ‘Parsifal’ casts new light on a difficult opera.” NY TIMES

Parsifal: Andrew Richards
Kundry: Anna Larsson
Gurnemanz: Jan-Hendrik Rootering
Amfortas: Thomas Johannes Mayer
Klingsor: Tómas Tómasson
Titurel: Victor von Halem

Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie
Hartmut Haenchen

Stage direction: Romeo Castellucci
Choreography: Cindy Van Acker
Set & costume designs, lighting: Romeo Castellucci
Dramaturgy: Piersandra di Matteo
Recording: La Monnaie / De Munt, Bruxelles - 20/02/2011

R E V I E W: 3763560.az_WAGNER_Parsifal_Hartmut_Haenchen.html
WAGNER Parsifal • Hartmut Haenchen, cond; Andrew Richards (Parsifal); Anna Larsson (Kundry); Jan-Hendrick Rootering (Gurnemanz); Thomas Johannes Mayer (Amfortas); Tómas Tómasson (Klingsor); Victor von Halem (Titurel); O symphonique de la Monnaie; Ch de la Monnaie; Ch de jeunes de la Monnaie • BELAIR (DVD: 239:00) Live: Brussels 2/20/2011

The Parisian daily Le Monde called this 2011 Le Monnaie production “un Parsifal hallucinaire.” That’s putting it mildly. Wagner’s operas have long inspired “extreme” treatments and this is one of the most extreme I’ve encountered. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t. It’s not for the faint of heart. And I wouldn’t want to be without it.

Parsifal is the first operatic undertaking for the Italian playwright and stage director Romeo Castellucci, well known for his avant-garde tendencies. In the hyperbolic language sometimes employed by men and women devoted to dramaturgy, Castelluci explains his method in the liner notes. “As I approached Parsifal, I tried to forget everything I knew. I put myself in the shoes of someone who knew nothing. I closed my eyes, and I listened once, twenty times, and then a hundred times to the music, this thing. Then I slept. I reworked the whole of Parsifal in a state of amnesia, from the beginning to the end. A work like this needs a vision coming from one’s deepest places … not just an illustrative approach.” OK, that’s a little over the top. But there truly is a dreamlike quality to what you witness here. One remembers images rather than scenes when it’s all over. Act I’s setting is a dense and dark forest in which one can, at first, barely make out the principal singers. (Gurnemanz’s costume covers him from head to toe in leaves, so he fits right in.) Act II is borderline pornographic, as Castelluci dispenses with singing Flowermaidens on stage and, with the vocalists out of sight, has Parsifal tempted by platinum-wigged nude dancers (and, as the credits acknowledge, “Shibari bondage performers” and “contortionists.”) One dancer lies down on a pedestal and aims her external genitalia at the audience for a good 20 minutes. Kundry’s and Amfortas’s act of sexual congress, barely alluded to as a historical event in run-of-the-mill Parsifals, is graphically projected as a hologram. Act III is a complete change of gears, with the chorus joined by a large crowd of non-singing supernumeraries in modern-day dress that, from the Transformation Scene onward, are seen to be slowly striding forward, presumably to a better future world. There are clichés, to be sure—the face paint, Kundry’s application of a few words, graffiti-style, to a blank wall, etc.—and some familiar visual theatrical features are missing: there’s no spear, no non-healing wound, no sign of the Cross when Klingsor’s realm is vanquished. But for contemplative Wagnerians, this will be a very rich experience indeed.

It helps enormously that the musical values are first-rate. Hartmut Haenchen is an experienced and insightful Wagner conductor and, as with his excellent Ring cycle for Etcetera (Fanfare 31:3), he consults the notes of Wagner’s assistants and other artists involved in the first Bayreuth performances. Haenchen definitely eschews the draggy tempos that have become common, but this Parsifal is not the least bit rushed. (For the record, the timing is a half-hour longer than Pierre Boulez’s famously brisk 1970 Bayreuth recording.) Castellucci is not alone in finding Kundry to be the central character in Parsifal—she’s alive and well when the curtain comes down at the close of act III—and Anne Larsson does a terrific job with the wide-ranging dramatic requirements of her role. Jan-Hendrick Rootering is a magisterial Gurnemanz and the American tenor Andrew Richards has a pleasing, well-supported voice well suited to Parsifal. This is Richards’s first Wagner role and, from the sounds of it, Siegmund and Walther, at least, should be on his radar. Thomas Johannes Mayer appears and sounds agonized without scenery chewing. (Remember, he’s got no wound to show off.) Tómas Tómasson is an excellent singer, though perhaps his Klingsor should be a bit less robust to contrast better with the other male characters that still have their “equipment” intact.

Most opera videos released nowadays are carefully planned, with a film director assigned to the project; this video, we are told, is “purely an archive.” No apologies are necessary. The camera work is skillful and editor didn’t feel obliged to always show us who was singing at the moment. (How long can you watch Gurnemanz explaining the back-story, anyway?) The medium was clearly analog film. The sound is good and even though the resolution of Dolby Digital is lower than the stereo PCM option on a DVD, the surround sound program here is sonically very satisfactory. Subtitle choices are English, French, Dutch, and German.

Clearly, this shouldn’t be anyone’s introduction to Parsifal. But for those who want to explore new levels of meaning and emotional power in Wagner’s final work, BelAir’s release deserves the strongest consideration.

FANFARE: Andrew Quint

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Wagner: Parsifal / Haenchen, Richards, Larsson, Rootering, Mayer, Tomasso
BelAir Classiques Jan 2014
DVD
$31.99

Songs of Orpheus

Sono Luminus

$17.99 Aug 22, 2025

At once sensual and existential, this collection of songs-composed across 125 years-meditates on nature and nostalgia, sex and love, the ephemerality of the human spirit, and the eternal, transformative power of art. These song cycles of Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, George Crumb, and Robert Spano coalesce into a testament to the limitless potency and fragility of love-both it's resplendent joys and it's tender sorrows. Despite love's transience and riskiness, the album compels us to ruminate on Rilke's witticism that "for one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks...' Each of the cycles presents us with existential questions of life and death, love and loss, but the album is structured in couplets. Debussy and Spano draw upon Ancient Greece, Grieg and Crumb draw upon enchantments of nature, the temporality of love, life, and memory. Claude Debussy's ethereal Chansons de Bilitis (1899) evokes a lusty, Grecian fever dream where the tumescence of love and desire comes to the fore. Robert Spano's Sonnets to Orpheus (2020) lends voice to Rilke's enigmatic eponymous poetry. Spano's setting of the songs-the intimate conversation between piano and soprano-"draws one voice out of two separate strings." Meanwhile, George Crumb's Three Early Songs (1947) emerge as whispered secrets, darkly-hued odes to impermanent nature-night, a flower, and wind. The songs lead us to ponder the difference between the actual and the seeming. Chansons de Bilitis is a sensual, sultry tease in more ways than one. The poetry penned by Pierre Louÿs is a literary forgery. Louÿs, in an introduction to his original poems, claimed that the verses were found in the tomb of a sixth-century (fictional) poetess named Bilitis. She was made out to be a contemporary of Sappho and the poems were written as pastiches in the style of Sapphic erotism. This deception only fueled the work's popularity. And although Debussy only sets three poems, Louÿs wrote 143 poems separated into three volumes that span scenes of pastoral youth (Book I: Bucoliques en Pamphylie), to burgeoning Lesbian-referring both to same-sex attraction and to acts associated with the isle of Lesbos-sexuality (Book II: elegies à Mytilene), and to life as a courtesan at the employ of Aphrodite (Book III: Epigrammes dans l'île de Chypre). In this way, maturation narratives-bildungsroman-form a motif throughout this album. Louÿs was inspired by sex tourism, to be blunt. At the insistence of friend and fellow writer, Andre Gide, Louÿs traveled to Algeria to indulge in sensual exoticism (and orientalism). A young Arab woman, Meriem, had come highly recommended by Gide who wrote of her and her music as something that "stupefied me like an opiate" as it "drowsily and voluptuously benumbed my thoughts." Meriem would become the muse for Chansons, which Louÿs began to draft in Algeria; the dedication of the collection reads "in memory of Meriem ben Atala." The turn of the twentieth century was rife with literary and musical games-anagrams, witticisms, forgeries, and puns. Louÿs even includes a fake scholar in the introduction to his work named G. Heim, meaning "mysterious" in German. And the title seems to me to be a play on words suggesting the feebleness, the feeblemindedness, debilite (de Bilitis) of love, sex, and the trickery of artistry. Exoticism too was par for the fin de siecle course-just think of the Orientalism of Delibes's Lakme (1883), Ravel's Sheherazade (1898/1902), and Debussy's own "Pagodas" from his piano suite, Estampes (1903). Each piece relies on coded musical identifiers that suggest otherness-nonconventional percussion instruments, incessant and layered rhythms, and sonic chinoiserie. For those sonic elements, Louÿs called upon his dear friend, Debussy, to orchestrate music to underscore his poetry. Debussy complained that the turnaround time was too short. Nevertheless, he was hard up and needed the money.

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Songs of Orpheus
Sono Luminus Aug 2025
CD
$17.99

Christmas Concert - Classical to Carols / Helen Donath

Orfeo

$8.49 ~~$16.99~~ Save 50% Oct 07, 2022

Recorded here is something which normally is evanescent over the airwaves or in the Philharmonie am Gasteig: the pre-Christmas evening in the series of Munich Sunday concerts, featuring Helen Donath as one of the most distinguished lyric sopranos of her times, the boys’ choir Regensburg Cathedral Sparrows and the Munich Radio Orchestra under the musical direction of Kurt Eichhorn. On this special evening, excerpts from Händels Messias could be heard, followed by Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto grosso Op. 6,8 Concerto per la notte di natale, Mozart’s Motette Ave verum corpus KV 618 and the Laudate Dominum from the Vesperae solennes de confessore KV 339, Christmas carols performed a cappella by the Regensburg Cathedral Sparrows (dating mostly from the 17th and 18th century) and Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate KV 165.

REVIEWS:

Here is a reissue of a Christmas Concert (Weihnachtskonzert) from Munich’s Philharmonie am on December 11, 1988 which begins with a sequence of six Messiah excerpts, starring as soloist the great soprano Helen Donath. It has been issued before – as you can see, the YouTube excerpts have a different cover – and it sees daylight once more to grace Yuletide 2022.

These concerts were a regular event in Munich, with the Regensburger (literally, “Regensburg Cathedral Sparrows”) and the Munich Philharmonic under Kurt Eichhorn. When it comes to Corelli and Handel. This is pretty much good old-fashioned modern instrument interpretation of Baroque music, but injected with energy. Here are a couple of movements from the Corelli Christmas Concerto (Concerto grosso, Op. 6/8) to give you an idea. The Messiah (Messias) excerpts are all sung in German – so “Glory to God” becomes “Ehre sei Gott”; but what a choir this is.

Three Mozart pieces bookend the carol part of the programme: initially the choral Ave verum corpus (K 618), restrained and beautiful, and this, a supremely beautiful “Dominum” from Vesperæ solennes de confessore, K 339. The carols are heartwarming, and performed a cappella. Johann Stobäus’ Nun laßt uns mit den Engelein is a lovely chorale carol, each phrase beautifully sculpted, as are the phrases of Bach’s Ich steh’ an deiner Krippen hier. I admit a weakness for Johannes Eccard’s O Freide über Freund’. But I think it is Adeste fideles, beloved of all, surely, that sums up the glory of this choir.

…and what a perfect way to close, with that lovely Mozart Exultate, jubilate, K 165, festive and joyous (and listen tot he trills in her solo vocal cadenza in the first part. After a tender “Tu Alleluja ,” with Donath’s voice bright and agile, each note like a pinprick of light. There is a rather nice, extended interview with Helen Donath by Bruce Duffie available here, laced with many photos, plus scans of Donath’s famous record sleeves. A real treasure of a disc, and a step back in time! At a generous 77 minutes in duration, this is a lovely, heart-warming Christmas disc.

-- Classical Explorer

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Christmas Concert - Classical to Carols / Helen Donath
Orfeo Oct 2022
CD
~~$16.99~~ $8.49

Gouvy: Oedipe a Colone

CPO

$36.99 May 28, 2013

GOUVY Oedipe à Colone • Joachim Fontaine, cond; Christa Ratzenböck ( Antigone ); Joseph Cornwell ( Polynice ); Stephen Roberts ( Thésée ); Vinzenz Haab ( Oedipe ); Kantorei Saarlouis; La Grande Société PO • CPO 7778252 (2 CDs: 93:05 Text and Translation)

Back in 34:3 I reviewed a premiere recording of Louis Théodore Gouvy’s secular oratorio Iphigénie en Tauride , conducted by Joachim Fontaine. While admiring the composer’s “usual fastidious craftsmanship and superior technical command of orchestration and of vocal and instrumental part-writing,” I expressed reservations about “a lack of dramatic contrast and real passion” and added: “The music is too cultivated for its often harrowing subject....Instead, one elegant and decorous set piece follows another, all inhabiting a temperate emotional climate zone that fails either to inflame or chill. There is also a certain stasis and lack of flow from one number to the next.” Having had a similar reaction to another one of the composer’s oratorios, Électre , I speculated that “Gouvy may deliberately have been cultivating a degree of emotional restraint in these works in order to convey a stylized sense of classical antiquity that would have fit 19th-century sensibilities.”

Fontaine now leads the same choral and instrumental forces, though with mostly different vocal soloists, in the premiere recording of yet another oratorio by Gouvy on a mythic Greek subject, Oedipe à Colone . What a difference from Iphigénie ! Here there is no such emotional restraint or stasis; the beautiful and inventive music positively surges with genuine dramatic contrast and intense passion. While still remaining mostly within the melodic and harmonic bounds cultivated by Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Max Bruch, the richness of orchestration reflects Gouvy’s expressed admiration for the masterful orchestration (though not the vocal writing) of Wagner. This is by far the finest oratorio I have heard (and I’ve listened to a fair number) from the half-century interval between Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius . At its premiere in Leipzig on December 6, 1881, it enjoyed a tremendous success—indeed, to such a degree that Gouvy told his sister that it was the happiest day of his entire life. While it received further performances during his lifetime, upon his death it immediately fell into the same neglect that all his works have, until recently, so unjustly suffered.

The libretto of Oedipe has a somewhat complex lineage. As with Iphigénie , Gouvy once again did not write or commission an original libretto, but instead borrowed and adapted an existing one penned by the 18th-century librettist Nicolas-François Guillard (1752–1814). In this case, the original tragedy of Sophocles was first adapted by the great 17th-century tragedian Pierre Corneille (1606–1684). Guillard then turned it into a libretto for a tragédie lyrique by the composer Antonio Sacchini (1730–1786), premiered in 1785 at the royal court in Versailles.

The action of the plot, divided in the oratorio into three parts, is subsequent to that of the better-known Oedipus Rex . Oedipe (the French name for Oedipus), having blinded himself after learning that he had unwittingly fulfilled the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, was exiled from Thebes with the consent of his sons Etéocle (Eteokles) and Polynice (Polyneikis), to wander as an exile with his daughter Antigone as his guide. In Part 1, the citizens of Colonus offer sacrifices to Poseidon in thanksgiving for the safe return of their king, Thésée (Theseus), who brings with him Polynice. The latter, having lost out in a power struggle with Etéocle for the throne of Thebes and being now also an exile, is filled with shame and remorse for having spurned his father. He has gathered a band of armed supporters and hopes to launch an attack to regain the Theban throne. The two men kneel before the altar to discern the will of the gods and implore their favor, but are answered first by ominous silence and then by a thunderstorm that extinguishes the altar’s sacred flame and terrifies the people.

In Part 2, Oedipe and Antigone approach Colonus, which the gods have prophesied is where the blind refugee shall at last find rest. Oedipe longs for death, while Antigone pleads for him to live. The exiled king experiences a terrifying vision of being pursued by the Eumenides, and curses Polynice for betraying him, before Antigone brings him back to his senses. The two of them unknowingly trespass on the sacred precincts of the temple; Thésée confronts and denounces them for sacrilege. Antigone begs for mercy and reveals the identities of herself and her father. The people react with horror and demand that the accursed pair be driven away, but Thésée angrily opposes the mob and, taking pity on the duo instead, offers them refuge.

In Part 3, Antigone and Polynice are reunited. Antigone brings her brother to their father so that Polynice can confess his guilt to Oedipe, beg forgiveness, and seek support for his scheme to dethrone Etéocle, offering to restore his father to the throne instead by way of atonement. Oedipe, however, rejects him and curses both of his sons, whereupon Polynice flees in horror. Oedipe then declares to all that the hour of his death has come, as he will descend to a secret burial place at the banks of the river Acheron. Antigone begs to be allowed to join him, but is commanded to live instead. Thésée leads Oedipe away as the people implore the mercy of the gods for the exile’s final moments.

In reviewing Iphigénie , while I was a bit cool toward the work itself, I thought it received a fine performance from a very good, though not great, quartet of soloists. Here, to my considerable frustration, the situation is reversed: I am unabashedly enthusiastic for the music, but have reservations about the solo quartet. Easily its best member is the one holdover from the recording of Iphigénie , Vinzenz Haab, whose soft-grained, mellow bass-baritone makes a most sympathetic figure of Oedipe, even if it lacks the granitic timbre needed to make the most of the passages of imprecation. While all of the other singers are sensitive interpreters who capture all the varied dimensions of their roles, they all have problems with control of vocal production. Baritone Stephen Roberts as Thésée has a persistent unevenness to his vibrato that verges on a full-scale wobble; tenor Joseph Cornwall as Polynice has an attractive voice that repeatedly becomes unsteady when he attempts to push and swell a note for intensified expression; soprano Christa Ratzenböck lacks vocal sheen and turns both harsh and squally to some degree in her upper register. None of them is so defective as to be unlistenable, but compared to their predecessors in the recording of Iphigénie they are collectively a disappointing step downward. By way of compensation conductor Joachim Fontaine, who I previously said “has a conscientious command of the score, though I can imagine podium maestros who would give the work considerably more punch,” here delivers a first-rate interpretation that combines and balances elegant lyricism and dramatic urgency in equal measure. As before the orchestra and chorus are excellent, and CPO once again provides its trademark excellent recorded sound, detailed booklet notes, and a trilingual French-English-German libretto. Despite my reservations about some of the soloists, this recording is enthusiastically recommended, especially as another version is unlikely to appear any time soon.

FANFARE: James A. Altena

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Gouvy: Oedipe a Colone
CPO May 2013
CD
$36.99