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Rosner: Music for Symphonic Wind Band

Toccata

$20.99 Mar 07, 2025

Arnold Rosner (1945-2013) was a New Yorker through and through, but his musical language reached across time and cultures, clothing the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony in rich Romantic colours, thus producing a style that is instantly recognisable and immediately appealing. Having written his Eighth Symphony for symphonic wind band, he took a liking to the idiom, composing seven more works for this archetypical formation of American university life, none of them recorded before now. Their inspiration is eclectic - they range from descriptive tone-poems via the recreation of an Indian raga and other folk-based pieces to more formal structures - but Rosner's unerring balance of dignity and energy is common to all of them and stamps them with a sound that is uniquely his.

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Rosner: Music for Symphonic Wind Band
Toccata Mar 2025
CD
$20.99

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 In F Minor, Op. 36, Th 27
Orfeo Sep 2011
CD
$20.99

Bruckner: Symphony No 7 / Janowski, Orchestre De La Suisse Romande

PENTATONE

SACD

$21.99 Apr 26, 2011

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

"The orchestra is fine, its brass smooth, clean, deeply sonorous...the Pentatone SACD recording is clear and solid with exceptional dynamic range, and clean as a whistle...Janowski knows his Bruckner as well as anyone around." - American Record Guide

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Bruckner: Symphony No 7 / Janowski, Orchestre De La Suisse Romande
PENTATONE Apr 2011
SACD
$21.99

GALAXYMPHONY - THE FINAL ODYSSEY

EUROARTS

Blu-Ray

$29.99 Dec 19, 2025

Explore distant galaxies with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. These legendary film soundtracks from the world of science fiction will transport you to the infinite vastness of space with epic sounds and powerful choirs. Experience the music from Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, and many other masterpieces: enjoy stirring solo passages and majestic themes with outstanding soloists Sinne Eeg, Isabel Schwartzbach, David Bateson, and Kristoffer Appel.

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GALAXYMPHONY - THE FINAL ODYSSEY
EUROARTS Dec 2025
Blu-Ray
$29.99

Mix & Match

Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 / Haitink, Bavarian Radio Symphony

BR Klassik

$19.99 Nov 03, 2017

Well what d’ya know? The old man’s got some piss and vinegar in him still. I’ve never quite forgiven Haitink for giving an interview in Gramophone magazine over a decade ago decrying the tendency of conductors to remake recordings of the same repertoire over and over, and then hypocritically becoming one of the very worst offenders. Perhaps the reason that this account of the Sixth is so fabulous is because it’s only his second “official” recording of the work (well, third if, as a reader kindly reminded me, you count a live Dresden version released on Profil). Anyway, the point is that it seems that he left it alone, relatively speaking, until he had something new to say.

Mind you, his earliest version, part of his very first Bruckner cycle in Amsterdam, was quite good, if perhaps a touch faceless, but here he retains all of those qualities of freshness and vitality that characterized the previous performance, while adding an extra bit of gravitas to the Adagio, and a trenchancy of rhythm everywhere else that elevates this recording to another level entirely. It’s particularly salutary to hear how Haitink zeros in on the music’s special, rambunctious character within Bruckner’s symphonic output as a whole. That means the first movement’s ostinato rhythm doesn’t just repeat: it really moves. The scherzo’s gossamer lightness floats over the bar lines as Bruckner intended, while the finale benefits from having vividly differentiated thematic material. Too often, the movement comes off as a disappointing, generalized trudge across the finish line.

Indeed, the whole performance acts as a tonic to the modern tendency to conduct Bruckner as an experiment in sluggishness: slow, slower, and as slow as humanly possible. The composer considered this work to be his “boldest” symphony, and Haitink clearly got the message. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra plays magnificently, the warmly burnished brass riding a rich cushion of strings–noble, expressive, grand but never crude. It’s the genuine Bruckner sound, while the engineering does the interpretation full justice. A great release.

– ClassicsToday (10/10; David Hurwitz)

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Bruckner: Symphony No. 6 / Haitink, Bavarian Radio Symphony
BR Klassik Nov 2017
CD
$19.99

Franz Schmidt: Symphony No 4, Variations On A Hussar's Song / Sinaisky, Malmo Symphony

Naxos

$19.99 Nov 16, 2010

Franz Schmidt was an inconsistent composer, and his Variations on a Hussar's Song is an odd work. The best thing about it is the song; the variations are nothing special. It's a jolly, diatonic tune that Schmidt decorates with increasingly ugly chromatic doodads as the music proceeds. A note in the score makes a special point of the fact that the composer uses no divisi strings at any point, as if this matters. Still, this is a good performance; it may be that the first trumpet fails to assert himself ideally, and the percussion is a touch recessed, but the work's 28 minutes pass pleasantly enough.

The symphony, on the other hand, is a masterpiece, and it has been well treated on disc. Mehta's Vienna Philharmonic recording remains the benchmark, and if you want modern sound, Kreizberg's (PentaTone) also is quite good. So is this one. To be sure, the Malmö strings haven't the weight and richness of the Vienna Philharmonic, but the performance is very well paced and the Naxos engineers see to it that textures remain clean and clear (the harp is particularly well caught). Given the fact that the Variations constitute a genuine rarity, and you may well enjoy that work more than I did, this release is certainly recommendable as a supplement to the Mehta recording of the symphony.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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Franz Schmidt: Symphony No 4, Variations On A Hussar's Song / Sinaisky, Malmo Symphony
Naxos Nov 2010
CD
$19.99

Film Music Classics - Newman / Stromberg, Moscow Symphony

Naxos

$19.99 Sep 25, 2007

An excellent reissue of music by a much underrated composer. The sound is excellent … be slightly brighter than the original. A must for all fans of film music and this composer.

The eldest of ten children, Alfred Newman was a musical prodigy, starting piano lessons at the age of five, and studying composition with Rubin Goldmark, who also taught Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. By 1920 he was working as a Broadway conductor, and, in 1930, he accompanied Irving Berlin to Hollywood. There he took private lessons from Arnold Schoenberg and wrote his first film score for Goldwyn’s adaptation of Elmer Rice’s 1929 Pulitzer Prize winning play Street Scene in 1931. Seventeen years later Kurt Weill made an opera from the same play.

Writing in a late romantic idiom, but with a more American voice than either Max Steiner or Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Newman has never received the wider attention of so many of his contemporaries. Writing in 1996, Fred Steiner lamented, “Some of the films (he) scored then don’t have drawing power today. Wuthering Heights (1939) may be OK, but whoever heard of Beloved Enemy (1936)? It’s not like the popularity of The Adventures of Robin Hood (Korngold) or Gone With the Wind (Steiner).” Between 1930 and 1970 Newman wrote music for over two hundred films and acted as musical director for many more. He won nine Oscars and, between 1938 and 1957; he was nominated in twenty consecutive years.

P C Wren’s Beau Geste is a desert drama concering three brothers (played by Gary Cooper, Robert Preston and Ray Milland) and their undying devotion to each other and family. Newman’s score is rumbustious, humourous and tender by turns. The Prelude has a swagger before turning to orientalism, and after some delicate work the March Out is a defiant cue for the Foreign Legion. After the brilliantly scored Battle, with the addition of a female chorus, death spreads through the doomed Fort Zinderneuf in A Viking’s Funeral – the most heart-felt music in the Suite. The Finale is reserved before giving way to a quick reprise of the March for the End Cast.

In his biography of Charles Laughton (Charles Laughton: An Intimate Biography, Doubleday New York, 1976 and W H Allen, London, 1976), Charles Higham wrote that The Hunchback of Notre Dame was “… an operetta without songs, accompanied by … Newman’s crashing chords and celestial choirs, suggesting menace or exaltation.“ Fred Steiner said, “It’s a truly remarkable score, especially in regard to the character of the themes. The great thing about the themes for the hunchback, Esmeralda, the young soldier she falls for and the poet Gringoire is that they all fit their personalities so well … it’s real music.” This is a big, colourful, score; motifs come and go and are developed throughout the film. There’s more orientalism in Esmeralda’s Dance, and, very surprisingly, in Thank You Mother of God, there’s a solo for flute which is uncannily like the flute solo in the final movement of Gustav Holst’s Beni Mora! Celestial choirs, strange, Bernard Herrmann-like timbres from the low woodwinds, delicate string writing and almost Parry-like choral odes abound in this score. Please note that I make these comments not because the music sounds like Holst, Herrmann or Parry but to give some idea of the wide range of the music.

All About Eve doesn’t have a big score and this little suite is tantalizing: a jaunty opening titles sequence, followed by various incarnations of Eve’s theme from tender and innocent to its climactic appearance reflecting envy, lust and the intoxicating allure of the theatre limelight.

The musical performances are assured and if the Moscow Symphony Orchestra doesn’t quite have the verve of the RKO Studio Orchestra they play the music for all it is worth; textures are clear and the various sections acquit themselves well. William Stromberg directs strong, forthright performances with great attention to every detail of the scores.

One thing the notes don’t tell us is exactly what restoration and reconstruction work John Morgan and William Stromberg had to do for these scores. This is odd as the booklet for the original release (Marco Polo 8.223750 – 1997) contains a note by John Morgan, and it is most interesting. He tells us that the All About Eve Suite uses the original orchestrations by Eddie Powell. Stromberg created the Beau Geste suite from “Scantily annotated conductor books” and Morgan himself consulted “… the surviving scores and the piano/conductor short scores …” to prepare The Hunchback of Notre Dame Suite, and orchestrated about half of the music to “… bring it more in line with what is heard on the film soundtrack … I was also able to restore many bars and one entire cue dropped from the finished film.” Also missing from the Naxos booklet are almost all the photographs and Bill Whitaker’s excellent notes have been slightly truncated. The original issue also had a better sleeve illustration.

Incidentally, Newman was born in 1900 not 1901 as stated on the rear of the CD and in the booklet.

Ultimately, it is the music that matters and this is an excellent re-issue of music by a much underrated composer. The sound is excellent and seems to be slightly brighter than the original. A must for all fans of film music in general and this composer in particular.

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

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Film Music Classics - Newman / Stromberg, Moscow Symphony
Naxos Sep 2007
CD
$19.99

SYMPHONY NO.2
Sterling Records Aug 2013
CD
$20.99

Shostakovich: Symphonies 5 & 9 (Live)

ICA Classics

$20.99 Oct 23, 2026

Arvids Jansons (1914-1984) was born in Liepaja on Latvia's west coast. He studied violin from 1929 until 1935 at the Conservatory of Liepaja, then composition and conducting (under Leo Blech) at the Conservatory of Riga from 1940 until 1944 while working as a violinist at Riga Opera. In 1944 he was appointed conductor of Riga Opera, then of the Latvian Radio Orchestra (1947-1952). In 1952 he was appointed associate conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky and toured frequently with them, as well as with other Russian orchestras, to the UK and to the Continent from 1970 onwards. Jansons became principal guest conductor of Manchester's Hallé Orchestra in 1965 at the personal invitation of Sir John Barbirolli, who knew of Jansons as an expert orchestral conductor but a genius in the rehearsal studio. It was in Manchester that Jansons collapsed and died from a heart attack in 1984 while conducting a concert with the Hallé. Arvids was the father of Mariss Jansons (1943-2019).

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Shostakovich: Symphonies 5 & 9 (Live)
ICA Classics Oct 2026
CD
$20.99

VLADIMIR JUROWSKI CONDUCTS MAHLER SYMPHONY NO. 9

LPO

$16.99 Feb 27, 2026

This recording of the Ninth Symphony marks LPO Conductor Emeritus Vladimir Jurowski's fifth Mahler release on the LPO Label, captured live with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall on December 3, 2022. Jurowski has garnered an international reputation for his interpretation of Mahler's music, both on the podium, and through his distinguished recording legacy with the LPO. Mahler's Ninth was the composer's last symphony to be published during his lifetime. Written in the shadow of personal tragedy and his own heart condition, the work has often been heard as a farewell - to life, to Vienna, and to the world he knew. It's premiere was given in Vienna in June 1912 by Bruno Walter, Mahler's protege. Landmark performances with Walter and the LPO in the 1930s and 1940s helped ingrain Mahler's music into the Orchestra's DNA, a legacy that continues to shape the LPO's sound and spirit today.

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VLADIMIR JUROWSKI CONDUCTS MAHLER SYMPHONY NO. 9
LPO Feb 2026
CD
$16.99

Mix & Match

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 / Bohm, Bayreuther Festspiele

Orfeo

$16.99 Nov 17, 2017

The well-known “classical” exception to the canon of ten Wagner works that can be performed on the Green Hill goes back to the master himself: it is of course Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. The most famous recording of one of the rare Bayreuth performances of the symphony is of the legendary concert that reopened the Bayreuth Festival after the war, in 1951, with Wilhelm Furtwangler on the rostrum. That recording was released for the first time, officially and uncut, by Orfeo in association with the Bayreuth Festival in 2008 (C754081). In 1954, Furtwangler conducted the Ninth a second time (ORFEO C851121). Much less well-known and issued here for the first time in a live recording is a performance conducted by Karl Böhm in 1963 to mark the 150th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth and the 80th anniversary of his death. Here we witness the emergence of a new musical generation.

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REVIEW:

While a distinct improvement on previous exhumations which have done the rounds, Orfeo's excellent new transfer from a Bavarian Radio source only serves to clarify how much Gundula Janowitz dominated her colleagues on this occasion, though they were all more seasoned Bayreuth performers. A significant release from an historical point of view.

– Gramophone

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Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 / Bohm, Bayreuther Festspiele
Orfeo Nov 2017
CD
$16.99

Schubert: The Complete Symphonies (4 CD Set)

Challenge Classics

$24.99 Aug 16, 2024

We at Challenge Classics are proud to present the complete edition of Schubert's symphonies in the interpretation offered by Jan Willem de Vriend conducting the Residentie Orkest Den Haag. - Even among experts, these symphonies were regarded as second-rate copies of the great Viennese classics. de Vriend's exceptionally fresh and pulsating interpretation, however, decisively corrects the old prejudices and points to Schubert's own emerging symphonic concept (Crescendo - DE - on CC 72739, vol.1 I soon became accustomed to the sheer brio of de Vriend's approach, which included striking variations in volume, decisive accents and many lickety-split finales... combination of delicacy, decisiveness and drive (Fanfare - USA - on CC 72802, vol.2) ... The feeling is of musical values leading at every point. (BBC Music Magazine - UK - on CC 72863, vol.3) The enchanting opening theme of Symphony No. 5 sets what will be the preponderant tone, vigorous and elegant, and that agreeably bracing idiom is maintained throughout both symphonies. (BBC Music Magazine - UK - on CC 72803, vol.4)

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Schubert: The Complete Symphonies (4 CD Set)
Challenge Classics Aug 2024
CD
$24.99

Roussel: Symphony No. 3 / Eschenbach, Orchestre de Paris

Ondine

$18.99 Jan 31, 2004

REVIEWS:

The Third Symphony was...favored by Karajan in the 1950s. It was the product of a composer in his sixties writing in his Normandy home at Vasterival. It was premiered by the Boston SO and Koussevitsky on 24 October 1930. The thud and thunder of the first movement contrasts with the pastoral melancholy meditation of the Adagio. This is followed by the fairground pleasantry of the Vivace and the massive fountains of exultation of the last movement. No wonder the audience - whose applause forms part of the track - greeted this performance with such warmth.

Le Festin is here given complete across 21 tracks. You are likely to enjoy this music - if you do already know it - if you already number Ravel's Ma Mère l'Oye and Debussy's Prélude a l'après midi d'un faune among your favorites. It has the magical elegance of the Ravel and the sultriness of the Debussy. Add to this the motorized thunder of Roussel's last two symphonies. It is superbly recorded - listen to the whispering distant gold of the violins in The Ants Dance in a Circle (tr. 16). The instrumental howls in the Funeral of the Gadfly (tr. 24) are memorable. Also in the same movement how similar some of the writing is to Ravel's dawn rustlings in Rapsodie espagnole. Those gentle rustles from the tam-tam suggest Ma Mère l'Oye. Eschenbach heartbreakingly captures the valedictory melancholy of Night falling on the deserted garden but brings out the solace too. This makes for an easy full price choice - poetically done in every aspect.

– Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

The liner notes for this release make the argument that French modernist Albert Roussel was the greatest composer of his time. It is an argument Christoph Eschenbach and the Orchestre de Paris do much to advance in these live performances. Coupling Le Festin de l'araignée from 1912 and the Symphony No. 3 from 1930, Eschenbach and the Parisian orchestra give Roussel's music the kind of clear-eyed, strong-willed performances that make the most of the composer's best features. Though distinctly of its prewar time, Le Festin de l'araignée nevertheless sounds brightly colorful, lightly ironic, and surprisingly inventive in this smoothly polished and vigorously rhythmic performance. The postwar Third Symphony sounds both of and above its time here, its angular themes, gleaming colors, and muscular rhythms brilliantly brought out by the German conductor and the French orchestra. If Eschenbach and the Parisian musicians' racing finale for the symphony, with its relentless polyrhythms, doesn't get your heart pumping, consult a doctor immediately. Recorded in vibrant live sound complete with appreciative applause, these performances may well convince the listener that Roussel is indeed underrated.

– James Leonard, All Music Guide

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Roussel: Symphony No. 3 / Eschenbach, Orchestre de Paris
Ondine Jan 2004
CD
$18.99

Lloyd: Symphony No. 7 - Study Score

Lyrita

Sheet Music

$99.99 Apr 05, 2024

Because George Lloyd's personal attention is a dominating influence on the scores and recordings - which he mostly conducted himself - we have decided to headline this representation the 'Signature Collection'. Scores will be cleaned, and new orchestral parts created, recordings will be reorganised into affordable sets with new notes commissioned from Paul Conway. All digital platforms will have access to a unified and comprehensive offering from a single source.

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Lloyd: Symphony No. 7 - Study Score
Lyrita Apr 2024
Sheet Music
$99.99

Shostakovich: Symphony No 10, Festive Overture / De Preist
Delos Jan 1990
CD
$18.99

Jones: Symphonies No 4, 7, 8 / Groves, Thomson, Et Al

Lyrita

$20.99 May 01, 2007

JONES Symphonies: No. 4, “In memory of Dylan Thomas” ; No. 7; No. 8 1 • Charles Groves, cond; Bryden Thomson, cond; 1 Royal PO; BBC Welsh SO 1 • LYRITA 329 (78:05)

Welsh composer Daniel Jones (1912–1993) was born in Pembroke and raised in Swansea, where he forged a friendship with the poet Dylan Thomas. After study in Swansea, Jones moved to London’s Royal Academy of Music. His output included concertos for violin, oboe, and cello; choral music, including the Oratorio, St. Peter ; an opera, The Knife ; chamber music; and 13 symphonies. Jones’s musical language is essentially tonal. He originated a rhythmic method for heightened expression—a device that he called “complex meters” involving maintaining and often juxtaposing, complex and often-irregular time signatures over a long timespan. Musically, Jones was influenced by Purcell, Haydn, and Janá?ek, but his language is personal. His symphonies can be broadly divided into three groups: Symphonies Nos. 1–5 (1944–58), conceived within the late-Romantic symphonic tradition and scored for large forces; Symphonies Nos. 6–9 (1964–72) moving towards greater structural experimentation, unusual combinations of instruments, and shorter lengths; and Symphonies Nos. 10–13 (1976–92) concerned with concision and paring down germ ideas to the barest essentials.

Daniel Jones’s Fourth Symphony, considered to be one of the composer’s finest achievements, was composed in memory of the poet Dylan Thomas, who had died, tragically young, in New York on November 17, 1953. Their relationship had been close; they had shared a zest for life. It was Jones who had written the folk-like music for Under Milk Wood. The Symphony is, understandably, elegiac; the opening Maestoso movement speaks bleakly of tragedy and loss, with a sometimes funeral-march tread, but also of defiance. The central Allegro capriccioso scampers along; it is light-hearted and capricious. Its playfulness might suggest the larger-than-life characters from Under Milk Wood , and perhaps the real-life antics of composer and poet, while its slower, sadder, middle section is more reflective, sometimes darkly so; it has a vulnerability, a sadness—and regret? The final Adagio-moderato-adagio is turbulent and disturbing; the music’s violence seemingly released reluctantly in a brief coda that highlights a solo violin with pizzicato cellos and basses.

The Seventh Symphony is cast in five movements, although the fourth and fifth share the same track. Completed in 1972 and dedicated to Sir Charles Groves, it was written as a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The work has an unsettling ambiguity, the music often lurking in dark corners and having many abrupt contradictions. The most immediately appealing material is in the quicksilver Scherzando that employs a xylophone to heighten its puckish, tipsy fun, but even here tragedy stalks. The Eighth Symphony has five movements too. The music is enigmatic and ferocious, lyrical and searching, and not without a sardonic wit. Its extraordinary, arresting opening chords are sounded on marimba. Imaginative orchestrations abound: the often-spectral third movement has some amazing interchanges between piano and vibraphone; the elegiac fourth movement includes harmonic passages for kettledrums under heartfelt music for strings, muted trumpets, and softly played trombones; and the high-spirited finale sounds triumphant trumpets and tubular bells.

Strong performances of some quite original music. A rewarding disc for the adventurous.

FANFARE: Ian Lace

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Jones: Symphonies No 4, 7, 8 / Groves, Thomson, Et Al
Lyrita May 2007
CD
$20.99

Bruckner, A.: Symphony No. 7
IDIS Apr 1999
CD
$16.99

Mahler: Symphony No. 1, Version for Chamber Orchestra by Fla

Brilliant Classics

$12.99 Oct 16, 2026

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the large Wagnerian orchestra reached unprecedented dimensions, pushing listeners' expectations toward a gigantic sound overloaded with colour. Mahler continued this tendency, further enlarging the ensemble: additional winds, triple brass, and a rich percussion section became the norm. Today we naturally expect overwhelming power from Mahler's Titan, as if the very title evoked an immense orchestra. Scogna, by contrast, overturns this expectation through subtraction: he does not like to speak of arrangement, but rather of chiselling work. His idea is to reduce excessive doublings while leaving intact the principal lines chosen by Mahler, almost as if carving from marble only the contrapuntal skeleton of the work. Arnold Schoenberg (1918-21) had already theorized a similar idea with the Society for Private Musical Performances: the aim was to 'create a thinned-out sound in order to examine the essence' of symphonic works. In transcribing the First Symphony for only fifteen instruments, Scogna carries out a subtraction of the utmost rigor. Mahler's commanding orchestra dissolves into a small chamber ensemble, yet each fundamental timbre remains 'typically Mahlerian.' The result is a revelation, as if hearing Mahler with a new set of ears. Played by a select group of young Italian instrumentalists, conducted by Flavio Emilio Scogna himself.

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Mahler: Symphony No. 1, Version for Chamber Orchestra by Fla
Brilliant Classics Oct 2026
CD
$12.99

TIPPETT: PIANO CONCERTO & SYMPHONY NO.2

LPO

$16.99 Nov 29, 2024

LPO Principal Conductor Edward Gardner loves the music of Michael Tippett, he says, because of it's 'otherworldly, luminous and elemental' qualities, which 'strike right from his inspiration to a listener's heart.' In 2022 the LPO and Gardner released a landmark live recording of Tippett's opera The Midsummer Marriage, which won a Gramophone Award, and on this disc Gardner continues to shine a spotlight on this fascinating 20th-century composer. The ferociously difficult Piano Concerto is executed flawlessly by Steven Osborne, while the Second Symphony revels in the newfound clarity, intricate textures and formal rigor that would become the hallmarks of Tippett's later works.

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TIPPETT: PIANO CONCERTO & SYMPHONY NO.2
LPO Nov 2024
CD
$16.99

SYMPHONY NO.3 IN B FLAT MAJOR,
Sterling Records Aug 2013
CD
$20.99

SYMPHONIC METAMORPHOSIS MATHIS DER MALER

HYPERION

$18.49 Dec 10, 2013

This album contains Hindemith's most popular orchestral works, including the Balanchine-choreographed Symphonic Metamorphosis, performed with lapidary precision and great empathy by Hyperion regulars the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins, who have proved themselves consummate interpreters of this composer. Countermanding his reputation a composer of grim, gritty music, this is Hindemith at his most genuinely enjoyable - as Gavin Plumley writes in his informative booklet notes, "Hindemith's music is both intelligible and intellectual, as entertaining as it is finely wrought."

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SYMPHONIC METAMORPHOSIS MATHIS DER MALER
HYPERION Dec 2013
CD
$18.49

Dvorak, A.: Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" / Serenade
Bella Musica Jan 1995
CD
$10.99

Pettersson: Symphony No. 13 / Lindberg, Norrkoping Symphony

BIS

SACD

$21.99 Jan 08, 2016

Beginning his first (never completed) symphony in 1951 and working on his 17th when he died in 1980, Allan Pettersson during three decades concerned himself almost exclusively with the symphonic genre – and this at a time when many composers considered the symphony (and indeed the symphony orchestra) to be hopelessly old-fashioned. Pettersson, however, was deeply committed to the genre, something which in Sweden during the early 1960s was so unusual that he was called ‘the last symphonist’. He completed his Symphony No.13 in August 1976, as a commission by the Bergen Festival for its 25th anniversary the following year. The complexity and large scale of the work was such that the first performance was postponed for another year, however – and in fact the work had never been performed in Sweden until Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra played it in concert in 2014. As the majority of Pettersson’s symphonies it is in one movement, harbouring the great contrasts between an atonal and a traditional, tonal idiom that characterize the composer’s musical language. A noteworthy feature in the present work is the presence of many brief allusions to other composers – from Beethoven (with the theme to the Fifth Symphony) to D-S-C-H, the musical cryptogram of Shostakovich’s name. Over the course of four previous discs, Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra have demonstrated a true affinity with Pettersson’s music, an affinity that deepens with each new recording.

Review:

The Norrköping Symphony Orchestra articulate the music's 'soaring melodies and grippingly searing polyphony' [convincingly] and Lindberg shapes the structure compellingly. Lindberg seems to feel keenly the work's intense range of mood - the ferocity and depth of its emotion, the consolation that this engenders - and communicates this to his orchestra in masterly fashion.

– Gramophone

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Pettersson: Symphony No. 13 / Lindberg, Norrkoping Symphony
BIS Jan 2016
SACD
$21.99

Langgaard: Symphony No. 1 "Cliffside Pastorals" / Oramo, Berlin Philharmonic

Dacapo Classical

SACD

$17.99 Nov 04, 2022

Despite being eccentric and at odds with his fellow human beings for most of his life, Danish composer Rued Langgaard was convinced that his time would come – and so it did. In Langgaard’s Symphony No. 1, we find its teenage composer celebrating his love of beauty and harmony in the most hedonistic terms. With this recording the symphony sees it return home, performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker, the first orchestra that understood what a masterpiece perhaps the greatest talent that had ever been seen in Danish music had created.

REVIEWS:

Unjustly misunderstood, and at times even ridiculed or dismissed as an eccentric kook by critics of his day, Danish organist and composer Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) deserves to be ranked alongside Wagner, Richard Strauss, Bruckner, Mahler and the like.

Brilliantly orchestrated for large orchestra, with motivic and thematic development on par with the music of Gustav Mahler [the First Symphony's] final movement alone is a revelry of ideas brought together to great effect. Seriously, if the five or so minutes near the end don't capture your full attention, and the final minute doesn't leave you slack-jawed in amazement, maybe you should check your pulse. In this live recording of the world premiere recording of the 2010 critical edition by Bendt Viinholt Nielsen, conductor Sakari Oramo and the members of the Berlin Philharmonic certainly seem to be having the time of their lives.

-- Classical Music Sentinel

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Langgaard: Symphony No. 1 "Cliffside Pastorals" / Oramo, Berlin Philharmonic
Dacapo Classical Nov 2022
SACD
$17.99

The Royal Edition - Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 3 / Bernstein

Sony Masterworks

$17.99 Jan 25, 2010

The excitement and passion Bernstein brought to Tchaikovsky is well known, but what strikes me even more forcibly on rehearing [this interpretation] is [the] intelligence and thoughtfulness... [W]itness the clarity of the canonic exchanges between lower strings and woodwinds in Romeo and Juliet's initial fight sequence... The New York Philharmonic also gives the conductor 100 percent effort. Ensemble isn't always perfectly tidy (note the occasionally slightly "off" cymbal crash in Romeo), but when Bernstein drives the players hard..., they respond with extreme bravura.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com [reviewing Romeo and Juliet, reissued as part of Sony 93076]

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Among Tchaikovsky's symphonies the Polish too often appears as the charmless one. I have long been hoping for a new version which would present the music with balletic flair, with a Beechamesque swagger. After Bernstein's disappointingly brutal account of the Little Russian last December (CBS 73047) I was not counting too much on this issue, but in fact far more than the two versions listed above Bernstein does give the music charm, disguises the rather square structure and encourages resilient rhythms. Bernstein is at his best in the first movement. Some may feel that after the superb panache of the first subject Bernstein relaxes too much for the second, which after all is marked merely pow meno mosso. But more than his rivals Bernstein relates this music to the Tchaikovsky ballets. That oboe melody is pure Swan Lake (a work contemporary with this), and so is the 'little swans' music of the trotting bassoon a couple of pages later. There are also hints of The Nutcracker in the delicate string scoring as the climax of the exposition is reached... Arguably Bernstein is too gentle in the second movement Alla tedesca, which is far slower than usual with a gentle flexibility which allows such moments as the reprise after the central triplet-based Trio to emerge with delightful delicacy. When for the coda Bernstein slows unashamedly, I personally am convinced by this approach, but anyone who prefers a straight approach to Tchaikovsky might object.

The remaining three movements are not given quite such a distinctive reading, but they are never less than persuasive. Bernstein again opts openly for dual speeds in the slow movement (for that matter so does Maazel) and though the opening tempo is slow for Andante elegiac° it is perfectly apt for the introductory idea with its hints of lazy fanfares in the distance. The surprisingly Elgarian second idea then comes in at a genuine Andante. The scherzo brings some splendid woodwind playing (the oboe here and elsewhere outstandingly good), and the tempo allows clean definition, which is more than one can say for the HMV Russian version. The finale again has plenty of space round it, a genuine tempo di polacca. The relaxed tempo means that the contrapuntal development which immediately follows the first theme runs the risk of sagging (Maazel is altogether faster, which makes things easier). The principal theme returns with splendid swagger after a very delicate conclusion to the central episode, and the patriotic theme returns with no apology, only just skirting the cliff-edge of vulgarity.

-- Gramophone [9/1973, reviewing the LP release of the Third Symphony]

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The Royal Edition - Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 3 / Bernstein
Sony Masterworks Jan 2010
CD
$17.99