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Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 3 / Sudbin, Oramo, BBC Symphony Orchestra
BIS · Feb 2018SACD$21.99 -
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SaleChopin-Godowsky: Complete Studies - Passacaglia, Transcriptions / Delucchi
Brilliant Classics · Jan 2023CD$18.99$14.99 -
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SaleMuffat: Componimenti Musicali per il cembalo (1739) / Loreggian
Brilliant Classics · Feb 2024CD$16.99$8.49 -
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Dohnányi: Violin Concertos No 1 & 2 / Ludwig, Falletta, Royal Scottish NO
Naxos · Apr 2008CD$19.99 -
American Ballet Theatre Vol 1 - Pillar Of Fire, Theme & Variations, Bruch Concerto
RCA · Jun 2012CD$17.99 -
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Brahms: Symphonies 1 & 4 / Jansons, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
BR Klassik · Jun 2012CD$29.99 -
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Chopin: Mazurkas / Fou Ts'ong
Fou's forceful, creative Mazurka style commands attention. He dishes out lots of rubato and elongated beats, together with wide dynamic extremes and outsized accents. Yet somehow the interpretations rarely sound fragmented, and no matter how far out things get, you almost always can discern the Mazurka rhythm. What is more, Fou is not afraid to blur the pedal for coloristic and expressive purposes.
He's also fond of subjecting repeated phrases to subtle variations in nuance and touch (Op. 6 No. 1's main theme; Op. 7 No. 1's trills; Op. 63 No. 3's intense canonic dialogue; Op. 30 No. 4's dramatically contoured inner voices). Only occasionally does Fou's approach produce cloying results (Op. 17 No. 4 and Op. 68 No. 4).
The pianist also makes the most of transitional passages, be it a single, solitary upbeat or a quick succession of chords; Op. 24 No. 4, Op. 56 No. 3, and Op. 41 No. 2 are particularly striking in this regard. You easily can listen past the strident, harsh engineering, albeit not for long periods of time. That's just as well, since it's wisest to absorb Fou's multi-layered, hyper-detailed Mazurking in small doses.
Incidentally, Fou presents the Mazurkas in near-chronological order rather than according to opus, as is so often done. While Rubinstein's stereo and Ohlsson's digital Mazurka cycles remain safer, sonically superior versions of reference, Fou Ts'ong certainly casts individual and thought-provoking light on this repertoire.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
Brahms: Works for Piano Solo, Vol. 2 / Plowright
The second volume in what one hopes will be a complete Brahms piano music cycle from Jonathan Plowright charges from the starting gate with engines ablaze and fingers primed for action. In other words, behold the most incisive, dramatic, and multi-dimensional account of the composer’s Piano Sonata No. 2 on disc since Katchen and Arrau!
Part of the excitement lies in the pianist’s absolute rather than approximate observation of Brahms’ difficult-to-execute articulation marking in the first-movement exposition, the vivacity and point of his arpeggiated chords, and his ability to project the keyboard writing’s textural mass with minimum pedal and equal attention between registers. Using very little rubato, Plowright conveys the Andante’s “con espressione” largely through minute dynamic gradations and quality of touch. He makes effortless light of the Scherzo’s rapid broken chords while insightfully contouring the finale’s imitative right-hand writing against leaner than usual left-hand pedal-points. In the Op. 21 No. 1 Thema, Plowright’s straightforward tempo anchors all sorts of delicious inflections and altered voicings, although the variations themselves cohere by virtue of the pianist’s tightly-knit tempo relationships and relative simplicity from an expressive standpoint.
The three Op. 117 Intermezzi are no less masterful. Plowright plays No. 1 with a kind of classical understatment that avoids underlining the central section’s across-the-barline phrasings and lush harmonies. By contrast, No. 2 is measured, rounded, and more wistful in relation to the faster, business-like interpretations many younger pianists favor. Rather than veil No. 3’s unison opening in mystery, Plowright parks it in neutral, so to speak, with little hint at the more impassioned than usual major-key climax just around the bend.
If the Op. 4 Scherzo’s opening motive is not so characterfully spelled out as in the old Backhaus, Friedberg, and Kempff recordings, Plowright’s awesome legato control and supple rhythmic sense convey a lithe, elfin shimmer rarely heard in this score. Malcolm McDonald’s terrific booklet notes and BIS’s bracing surround-sound engineering are worthy of their own review. Even in a catalog packed to the rafters with great Brahms piano recordings, this stunning release should not be missed.
-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com
Gottschalk: Symphonies No 1 & 2 / Rosenberg
Listen to a Sound Sample (Night in the Tropics)
" A perfect delight of a disc, of music from that grand pioneer Louis Gottschalk, who charmed the crowds here and abroad up through Civil War days with flamboyant, virtuosic display pieces. From last year’s Hot Springs (Arkansas) Festival comes a whole disc of Gottschalk’s orchestral works, and it’s a hoot. It includes the hilariously lovable Célèbre Tarantelle and Night in the Tropics, guaranteed to lift you off your seat on first hearing, and Gottschalk’s own arrangement for five pianos, nine horns and 112-piece orchestra of The Young King Henry’s Hunt (don’t ask). There’s even an opera, 13 minutes long, something Cuban... " -- Alan Rich, LA Weekly
A child prodigy pianist who was touring Europe as a virtuoso concert soloist while still a teenager, Louis Moreau Gottschalk provides one of the most colorful chapters in the history of American music. Dubbed ‘the Chopin of the Creoles’, he was, above all, the first to capture the syncopated music of South Louisiana and the Caribbean in enduring works that anticipate ragtime and jazz by half a century. His orchestral works show a composer of considerable skill who could create memorable and catchy tunes. Included in this disc of the complete surviving orchestral music are several works recorded for the first time in the composer’s original version, as well as the world première recording of La Casa del Joven Enrique.
Symphony No. 2, 'À Montevideo' RO257
Restoring the Symphony No. 2 for modern performance posed many of the same challenges as the Symphony No. 1 ( A Night in the Tropics ) and Escenas Campestres Cubanas in that Gottschalk rarely notated complete percussion parts. For this performance and recording, the timpani part was reconstructed according to the stylistic pattern Gottschalk used to excellent effect in other works of the same period, such as the Variations de concert sur l'hymne portugais.
Listen to a Sound Sample
Célèbre Tarentelle pour piano et orchestre, RO259
During his lifetime, the Célèbre Tarentelle was Gottschalk's "warhorse", the work he presented whenever he needed to dazzle concert-goers. The composer was notorious for his practice of publicly performing his own works but leaving it to his disciples to notate them for publication. Of the more than 25 versions of Célèbre Tarentelle that appeared following Gottschalk's death, the best known was notated by his friend Nicolas Ruiz Espadero (1832-90), who published his edition in 1874. Very recently, however, Gottschalk's own original manuscript has surfaced. Thus, both his solo piano part and his orchestration appear for the first time on this disc.
Listen to a Sound Sample
Escenas Campestres Cubanas, opéra en 1 acte, RO77
As with many of the works that Gottschalk created for his Havana concerts, Escenas Campestres Cubanas (Cuban Country Scenes) brilliantly combines high art, populist sensibilities and mass appeal. For example, the manuscript indicates that Gottschalk intended the use of timpani, but there is evidence that a Caribbean güiro and the three-string tiple added local spice at the first performance. For this performance by the Hot Springs Music Festival, the nearly illegible libretto was painstakingly deciphered by renowned musicologist Marcello Piras, so that the original Ramírez text could be paired with Gottschalk's music for the first time since its première. The score's final five bars, which appear only skeletally in the manuscript, were also orchestrated to match the full instrumentation.
Listen to a Sound Sample
Variations de concert sur l'hymne portugais du Roi Louis I, RO289
The march tune on which Gottschalk based his Variations de concert was written by the grandfather of the Portuguese King Luís I (1838-1889), the Brazilian Emperor, Pedro I. Were it not for the political capital it afforded him in both Brazil and Portugal, it is unlikely that Gottschalk would have given the tune any attention whatsoever. Gottschalk enlivened the Italianate march with frequent chord substitutions and contrasts of mood. The music truly comes to life during the first slow variation, bringing to mind similar works by early Bohemian national composers.
Evident in the manuscript of the Variations de concert is its hasty composition. Although the orchestration is fully fledged, Gottschalk simply neglected to jot down the solo piano part after the first variation, with the exception of one dramatic scale leading to the finale. The present performance edition represents the interweaving of Arthur Napoleon's (born Arthur Napoleão dos Santos, 1843-1925) solo piano arrangement of the work (c. 1873) into Gottschalk's orchestra. Since Napoleon made some chordal modifications in order to claim the piano reduction as his own and reap the financial benefits, this restoration to the original required extensive editing with the collaboration of pianist Michael Gurt.
Listen to a Sound Sample
Ave Maria, RO10
(c.1864, arranged by Richard Rosenberg for two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, harp and strings)
Ave Maria, gratia plena.
Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
Et benedictus fructus ventris.
Ave Maria, gratia plena.
Hail Mary, full of grace.
Hail Lord, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
Hail Mary, full of grace.
Listen to a Sound Sample
La Caza del Joven Enrique por Méhul, Gran overture
( La Chasse du jeune Henri or Young Henry's Hunt, overture) arranged by Louis Moreau Gottschalk after the overture by Étienne-Nicolas Méhul (reconstructed by Richard Rosenberg)
A prejudice against Americans kept the thirteen-year-old Gottschalk from being admitted to the Paris Conservatoire (" America is only a land of steam engines", he was told by the school's director), but he stayed in Paris to study privately with Charles Hallé, Frederic Chopin and Hector Berlioz. Thus inspired, he wrote in 1849 a highly original and elaborate fantasy on Méhul's La Chasse du jeune Henri overture.
Early in 1861, seeking material to include in a "monster concert" he was staging in Havana, he recast the La Chasse du jeune Henri fantasy as a gigantic concerto for multiple pianos and huge orchestra. Owing to confusion over rehearsal arrangements for so large an ensemble, the performance was never completed. In 2003, the manuscript of this concerto was rediscovered in the New Jersey basement of the composer's great-great-grandnephew. Thus, it was discovered that there were only five separate piano parts (three pianos, ten hands), which Gottschalk had divided among the forty pianists. For the sake of clarity, the work's première performance in Hot Springs on 8 June 2006 and this subsequent recording used one pianist a part and an orchestra of "only" 112.
Listen to a Sound Sample
Symphonie romantique, 'La nuit des tropiques', RO255
(Symphony No. 1, 'A Night in the Tropics'), edited and completed by Richard Rosenberg
Gottschalk's A Night in the Tropics (1859) had only been performed since his death in condensed and 'corrected' versions. My reconstruction of this work is based on the composer's autograph manuscript, with instrumental forces not quite as large as those employed at Gottschalk's own performances (which featured over 650 musicians) but quite large nonetheless. It retains Gottschalk's unusual voice leading and notation. I believe that the meticulous care Gottschalk took in consistently adding rests and dotted rhythms is a key to the 'tropical' passion he sought to evoke. The arrangement of this symphony for two pianos by Gottschalk's friend and colleague, Nicolas Ruiz Espadero, provided the basis of my orchestration of the lost forty-two bars at the end of the orchestral score. I incorporated the sound of 'harmonieflautas' at the end of the first movement (based on Gottschalk's own account of where and how it was employed), using an antique South American concertina. In the final movement of A Night in the Tropics, Gottschalk indicated only the first measure of the Afro-Cuban percussion, using the notation 'Bamboula'. He fully expected the ensemble to improvise the remainder of that samba movement in a manner that places it as a sort of 'missing link' between nineteenth-century concert music and a musical language that would soon evolve into that of Jazz.
Listen to a Sound Sample
Richard Rosenberg, 2006
STATIC
Bowles: Complete Piano Works, Vol. 2 / Invencia Piano Duo
Bowles had been an inveterate traveller even before 1947 as the Four Piano Pieces demonstrate. The first, the rather neo-classical Impasse de Tombouchtou also refers to a dingy street in Thiviers in Southern France. Café sin Nombre and Carretera de Estapona refers to Southern Spain. Estapona, now a glamorous seaside town can almost be seen from Tangiers, and is, I recall, a pleasant boat trip away. Surrounded by a dry and desert landscape it was much more basic and village-like in Bowles’ day. The opening, with its massive chords, reminds us that it is surrounded by those startlingly blue, imposing mountains. In between these pieces is an elegant and tonally ambiguous Theseus and Maldoror inspired by Greek legend.
Bowles’ travel diaries continue with the Three Latin American Pieces. It’s Mexico which is celebrated in movement 1 with its lively rhythms (El Bejuco) and Costa Rica in 3 (Sayula). Despite their brevity these pieces attract immediately. Movement 2 (Orosi) is delicate and is succeeded by a dance-like episode reminding me of Mompou’s Canço i dansa which was also composed during the mid-1940s.
In the detailed and helpful booklet notes Andrey Kasparov describes the Sonatina Fragmentaria as having “crystalline sonorities”. The tiny middle movement is somewhat Spanish in flavor while the outer ones are more thoughtful and enigmatic. All in all, this amounts to a series of attractive mosaics.
South of Morocco, in the Atlas Mountains, is Tamanar. Views from this village inspired this austere, striking and unusually dissonant mini-tone poem. Bowles went there with Aaron Copland who had just completed his equally austere Piano Variations. Bowles discovers some intriguing sonorities. It's a great shame that he did not pursue this style very often.
The Four Miniatures are practically polytonal and pointillistic but are in Bowles’ usual light-hearted manner with Reverie having a touch of Spain about it again. The Sonatina is neo-classical, almost Poulencian. There is no sense of classical development; in other words the Germanic influence Bowles so disliked is disregarded in favour of the interconnection of fragments. The middle movement is a lyrical Andante Cantabile with a long line which reaches a strong climax.
The last seven tracks are devoted to arrangements for piano duet of miscellaneous Bowles pieces. Kasparov selected four songs, apparently quite popular, originally from 1946, all in a light jazz style and called them Blue Mountain Ballades. Gold and Fizdale took three miscellaneous pieces. The first, Colloquy Sentimental is the only surviving material from a lost Bowles ballet score. The next, Caminata again betrays a Spanish influence and is part of a ballet set in Mexico. The last, Turkey Trot is a sort of wild Scott Joplin essay and brings the CD to a zany conclusion.
This disc proved more attractive and interesting than I had expected. Although Bowles may be a better writer than a composer he certainly deserves his place in the Naxos American Classics series.
– MusicWeb International (Gary Higginson)
The performances are beautifully idiomatic, capturing the brittle character, whimsicality and subtle power of the music.
– Gapplegate Classical/Modern Music Review
A Bridge To Bach - Gibbons, Bach, Et Al / Andrew Rangell
R E V I E W S:
Andrew Rangell always has something interesting to say. After making a series of provocative recordings, mostly Bach and Beethoven, for the Dorian label, Rangell was adopted by the good folks at Bridge, where he has continued to make unusual recordings that are both intellectually and emotionally satisfying.
This time around, Rangell has assembled a program of music composed mostly during the first half of the 17th century – several generations before Johann Sebastian Bach was active. In his extended yet very readable booklet note, Rangell explains this disc's overall title. In some of this music, "one can hear fleeting soundprints of Bach," but that is not precisely what Rangell is trying to get at. "The resemblances are noteworthy," he writes, "but the larger point, for me, is that in the area of articulation, contrapuntal balance, imaginative ornamentation, and rhythmic definition, Bach himself has been my most valued tutor in the study and appreciation of his predecessors."
I'm sure that Glenn Gould, one of the past century's most outstanding interpreters of Bach, would have agreed. Among Gould's recordings is a collection of music by William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (Sony SMK 52589). At one point, Gould claimed that Gibbons was his favorite composer, and that composer's Lord of Salisbury Pavane and Galliard is common to both the Gould disc just referenced and the Rangell disc here reviewed.
For Gould, Gibbons also must have been a "bridge to Bach." There's no mistaking Gould for Rangell, or vice versa, but both pianists clearly adore this music. Both performances are quietly contemplative, and with their perfect proportions and clarity, they make listeners feel that all is right with the world. The same can be said for everything on A Bridge to Bach. The dexterous Rangell uncovers the beauty in all that he touches. He is like one of those professors in college who makes biology or physics not just understandable, but miraculous – even to English majors!
Like Gould, Rangell plays this music not on the keyboard instruments of the early to mid 1600s, but on a modern piano. (In Rangell's case, this is a Hamburg Steinway D.) These recordings, then, will be of little use for authenticists – forgive the neologism, but it seems appropriate – but will deeply satisfy those who believe that the message is more important the medium. Even more than Gould, Rangell uses the piano's full resources to play this music, and this gives his performances colors, excitement, and relevance of their own. Rangell also has a clear advantage in terms of engineering. Bridge's sound is far superior to what Columbia was giving Gould in the 1960s.
Copyright © 2007 by Raymond Tuttle, Classical.net
Also Available - Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1"Andrew Rangell's free-spirited Bach is distinguished by its powerful drive and intensity and a remarkable articulation that illuminates contrapuntal intricacies with microscopic clarity."
-- Vivien Schweitzer, The New York Times [2/3/2008]
Bernstein: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 / Alsop, Baltimore Symphony
Leonard Bernstein’s legendary 1943 Carnegie Hall conducting début brought his name to national attention, and the event was followed a few months later by the triumphant reception of his Symphony No. 1 ‘Jeremiah.’ This major symphonic statement explores a crisis in faith and employs Jewish liturgical sources, its final movement, Lamentation, being an anguished cry at the destruction of Jerusalem. Sharing the theme of loss of faith, Symphony No. 2 ‘The Age of Anxiety’ takes W.H. Auden’s poem of the same name and follows its four characters in their spiritual journey to hard-won triumph.
REVIEW:
It’s great to see this music being played with such conviction. We all know that Alsop is a superb Bernstein conductor, and Naxos already has a terrific account of the First Symphony from James Judd and the New Zealand Symphony, but this newcomer is, if anything, even finer–certainly sonically–and conducted with even more pizzazz. In the central Profanation movement, Alsop really does outdo Bernstein himself; the playing of the Baltimore Symphony here is sensational, and in the finale Jennifer Johnson Cano sings with great sensitivity and a beautiful tone. The tragic climaxes hit you right in the gut.
In the Second Symphony, Jean-Yves Thibaudet offers a first class account of his solo part. The Masque is especially outstanding–virtuosic but at the same time nicely “cool.” Prior to that, in the opening variation sets, Alsop knits the music together expertly, ensuring that the glum bits never bog down, and that the entire first part builds inexorably to its exciting conclusion. The following Dirge is is a barn-burner, and somehow after all of this the Epilogue never turns hollow. Again, I don’t think that Bernstein could have done better, and as suggested above the engineering is also rock solid and brilliant by turns. A marvelous release by any standard.
– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz, 10/10)
Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 3 / Sudbin, Oramo, BBC Symphony Orchestra
Over the course of almost 10 years, Yevgeny Sudbin has been recording Sergei Rachmaninov’s works for piano and orchestra. The journey began in the U.S.A. in 2008 with the Fourth Piano Concerto in what Classic FM Magazine described as ‘a glorious recording’ with the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra under Grant Llewellyn. For the Paganini Variations and Piano Concerto No. 1, Sudbin continued to Asia and highly praised collaborations with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and conductor Lan Shui. Reviewers remarked on the soloist’s ‘transcendental virtuosity and kaleidoscopic keyboard colour’ (BBC Music Magazine) and enjoyed piano-playing with ‘depth of tone, subtlety and richness of texture, and scintillating dynamism allied to acute lyrical sensibility’ (Gramophone). The grand finale of the cycle combines the two most popular of Rachmaninov’s concertos – No. 2 in C minor and No. 3 in D minor – but it also constitutes a home-coming of a kind, as it was recorded in London, Yevgeny Sudbin’s base since 1997. For his partners in these monumental and almost iconic concertos, Sudbin has chosen the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Sakari Oramo.
ELGAR: ORCHESTRAL WORKS CELLO CONCERTO
Scott: Piano Concertos No 1 & 2, Early One Morning
He died nine years short of his centenary. Had he lived to experience that iconic event he would have seen a couple of articles and very little else. In the 1980s things moved on a little as it did for his copains Granville Bantock and Josef Holbrooke. For Scott this took the form of a rather lacklustre orchestral collection from Marco Polo. Since then there has been a Chris Howell anthology of piano solos on Tremula and three double CD sets of the solo piano music played by Wilfred De’Ath on Dutton. The BBC broadcast the one act opera The Alchemist as well as the choral piece La Belle Dame Sans Merci and most recently the Violin Concerto, itself rumoured to be included on the next Chandos Scott volume. Latterly the real impact on the musical public’s consciousness has come from those two Chandos collections which in repertoire terms substantially overlap the present disc; the only completely new works there being the symphonies 3 and 4 and Neptune.
There’s no direct competition between this disc and the Chandos pair. Lyrita have here gathered the contents of two LPs issued in 1975 and 1977 giving us Scott’s principal output for piano and orchestra. The recordings were the result of a volatile collaboration between Richard Itter, John Ogdon and the irascible Anglophile conductor and composer Bernard Herrmann.
Do not expect from these three works frank heroics in the Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov or Brahms mode. This is not solo pianist in adversarial contest with orchestra, pugilistic and then subdued. The First Piano Concerto was written just before the Great War. Beecham conducted at the premiere and the composer was the soloist. Latterly it was taken up by Kendall Taylor, Moura Lympany and Esther Fisher. The work is subtly perfumed with solo textures abounding and an overpowering atmosphere of mystery and idyllic lambency. After the Chinese hieratics of the first movement the second shares the enigmatic ritualism of John Ireland’s Legend and Forgotten Rite. The arcane beauties of the piece can be sampled in the dialogue of gong and celesta. Liquid Debussian touches create a meditative art nouveau kaleidoscope – a Klimt canvas in motion. The mood changes for the finale with its Handel-out-of-Grainger jocularity.
The beguilingly glittering waywardness of the First Concerto can also be heard - though with none of the oriental edge - in Early One Morning. The folksong itself is for the most part deeply subsumed, rising in enchanting Copland-like mist at 4:18. It is most clearly limned by the piano at 5:03 onwards. This is by no means the sort of conventional variations on a theme that Stanford produced for Down Among the Dead Men. The recording sessions were the first performance of the revision for single piano and orchestra. The original was for two pianos and orchestra.
The Second Concerto cannot be precisely dated but it is known that the composer was working on it in 1956. It is quite short and is in three movements. A tougher nut than the First Concerto, its themes are more subtle. Its haunted swaying harmonic world recalls an overgrown, lichen-festooned castle. Herrmann’s Xanadu was perhaps an influence; I wonder if Scott saw Citizen Kane? More plausibly we might hazard that the concerto was influenced by Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. There is a positively Baxian war-dance trope at 00:32 in I. Otherwise the stylistic links are as with the other works: with the last two piano concertos by Nicolai Medtner, the Symphonic Variations of Arnold Bax (contemporary with Scott’s First Piano Concerto) and with John Foulds’ Dynamic Triptych and Essays in the Modes.
The cover of the CD booklet is a detail from the cover of the LP SRCS81: a portrait of Scott at age 52 painted by George Hall Neale. The notes are by Christopher Palmer and Roger Wimbush and are taken from the original LPs which are:
SRCS-81 Piano Concerto No. 1 in C / Ogdon (piano) Herrmann LPO
SRCS-82 Piano Concerto No. 2; Early One Morning (Poem for Piano and Orchestra) / Ogdon (piano) Herrmann LPO
This is a generously timed disc presenting Scott’s subtly beguiling piano concertos. The first is the more instantly captivating of the two but the second has much to commend it. Superbly done.
-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International
Franck: Symphonie, Variations Symphoniques / Flor, Firkusny
Claus Peter Flor leads a sober, "Germanic" performance of Franck's symphony, noteworthy for its clarity of texture and sensitivity to dynamic nuance. This is evident at both ends of the dynamic spectrum, whether in the delicate tracery of the second movement's central section, or in the distinct audibility of the trumpets in their final lick just before the work's closing chords. I do miss the rhythmic lift that Monteux brings to the finale (it's not entirely free of Teutonic heaviness, but then that's Franck's fault too), and the Royal Philharmonic strings could have a sweeter timbre now and then, but this is a good performance, strong on basic musical values. The sonics are also well-balanced and pleasing.
The Symphonic Variations is even better, and valuable for enshrining yet another telling example of the artistry of Rudolf Firkusny, whose "Indian summer" recordings for RCA comprise his most important artistic legacy aside from his Janácek piano music discs on DG. For some reason, perhaps because of its brevity and lack of virtuoso fireworks, the Variations doesn't often feature on concert programs anymore, but the piece was a favorite of Artur Rubinstein, and Firkusny gives us a performance very much in that class. The variations proper, actually the central episode sandwiched in between the dramatic introduction and the fully developed finale, have just the right serenely graceful flow, while the conclusion is simply delightful. Clearly the pianist's Czech roots give him an enlivening sense of rhythm, allowing him to convey high spirits with impeccable poise and style.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
Chopin-Godowsky: Complete Studies - Passacaglia, Transcriptions / Delucchi
According to Leopold Godowsky (1870–1938), the aim of the Studien über die Etüden von F. Chopin “is to develop the mechanical, technical and musical possibilities of piano playing, to expand the peculiarly adapted nature of the instrument to polyphonic, polyrhythmic and polydynamic work and to widen the range of its possibilities in tone coloring…” Godowsky employs various forms in his Studies on Chopin, including variations on the études, transcriptions for the left hand, free transcriptions, cantus firmus, and metamorphoses.
The magnificent C major of Study No.1 opens this extraordinary set: a mighty chorale, the text of the original study in the left hand and its inversion in the right hand are all combined in order to create a polyphonic work in full pianistic tone. In the final pages, the piano seems to express its highest dynamic degree and, as Godowsky writes, “in the coda the player must not show the slightest sign of fatigue”. Also based on Op.10/1, Study No. 2 is a perfect example of Godowsky’s left hand writing. A revolutionary use of the fingering and of the right pedal allows a polyphonic effect similar to the original. Godowsky wrote three studies (Nos. 23–25) for the left hand alone based on Chopin’s Op .25/1. Of these, No. 24 is intended to give the impression of a piece for four hands. The rippling texture of No. 25 is reminiscent of an Aeolian harp.
The final study (No. 43), based on Op. 25/12, is a tour-de-force for the left hand alone, covering the entire range of the keyboard by itself in homage to Chopin's 'Revolutionary' Étude. This set contains a selection of original compositions and transcriptions of works by composers other than Chopin and was recorded on the Steinway D 1906.
REVIEWS:
It’s a critical cliché to equate pianists attempting Leopold Godowsky’s complete Studies based on Chopin’s Études with mountaineers ascending Mount Everest, yet it’s the truth. Emanuele Delucchi serves up half of the cycle (all of the studies based on Chopin’s Op. 10 originals), and proves every inch a viable contender alongside the Marc-André Hamelin and Carlo Grante reference versions.
While Delucchi’s mastery of the daunting “Revolutionary” Étude for the left hand alone impresses on its own terms, the faster edge of Boris Berezovsky’s terrific live recording still dominates the competition. Still, Delucchi’s total comfort with and absorption of Godowsky’s serpentine idiom makes itself felt in every measure. Needless to say, I look forward to Delucchi’s performances of the remaining studies.
-- ClassicsToday.com
By and large, Delucchi proves a more gentle and yielding Godowsky interpreter when measured alongside Carlo Grante’s firmly etched filigree and Marc-André Hamelin’s supple élan.
He doesn’t quite attain Hamelin’s effortless paradigm insofar as the left hand taking over the “Winter Wind” Etude’s stormy passagework, or Op. 25 No. 6’s infamous double thirds. And given his lyrical proclivities, I was slightly disappointed by Delucchi’s pianistically well-groomed yet slightly square readings of two sublime favorites: the E major transformation of the A-flat Nouvelle Etude and the intricate “Aeolian Harp” makeover. Yet Delucchi’s high craft and devotion to this repertoire deserve attention, without, however, displacing Hamelin’s reference edition nor Grante’s formidable Chopin/Godowsky cycle on Altarus, which may be hard to source.
-- ClassicsToday.com
Muffat: Componimenti Musicali per il cembalo (1739) / Loreggian
Gottlieb Muffat’s oeuvre, dedicated almost in its entirety to keyboard instruments and skilfully straddling the stile antico and stile moderno, deserves more detailed attention than it has ever been afforded. The majority of sources containing music by Muffat are unpublished, with only two collections published at the composer’s own behest during his years in the Emperor’s service in Vienna. One of these is the Componimenti Musicali per il Cembalo (Augsburg, 1739).
This collection contains 6 Suites and a Ciacona with 38 variations for solo harpsichord. The composer describes these seven works as capricci or galanterie to be performed in the stile moderno and to suit modern tastes. Although arranged in the conventional order of Allemande–Courante–Sarabande–Gigue, Muffat also added various optional dances, displaying no shortage of innovation. The first movements are introductory in nature, often fugal in form and varying in style and pace: Ouverture (Suites 1 and 5), Prelude (Suite 2) and Fantaisie (Suites 3, 4 and 6). The seventh piece in the collection, the Ciacona con 38 Variazioni, is a special case. As Christopher Hogwood suggests in his introduction to the modern edition (Orpheus, 2009), the Ciacona could be another tribute to the imperial family, as the number of variations matches the age Charles VI’s niece, Maria Amalia, would have been on 22 October 1739.
Muffat’s interest in contemporary harpsichord composition is most clearly evident in his transcription and reinterpretation of works by George Frideric Handel, based on a manuscript copy of the Suites des pièces pour le clavecin he held in his library. Muffat reworked the suites in Handel’s collection, suggesting new ornamentation, distributing the notes differently between the hands, changing the clefs and sometimes note values, and adding slurs and cadenzas. He then applied everything he had observed while rewriting Handel’s suites to his own Componimenti musicali: including a table of ornaments, which the composer asks be played with ‘art and discretion’; he considers the positioning of the player’s hands on the keyboard in his writing and avoids using multiple clefs on one line to prevent confusion; he describes the optimum way to use the thumb for accidentals; and he provides the correct technical interpretation of trills and slurs.
Study of the Componimenti reveals what could be defined as a pedagogical intent, as well as a clear desire to make the score unambiguous and accessible by means of his introductory instructions. The collection contributed greatly to setting a new benchmark for keyboard writing in the lands of the Viennese Empire.
Haydn: String Quartets Vol 2 / Leipzig Quartet
HAYDN String Quartets: op. 50/1, 4, 5 • Leipzig String Quartet • MDG 307 1585-2 (67:48)
From the six string quartets of op. 20 (preceded by 31 string quartets) to the two of op. 77, there are 45 remarkable works (excluding the Seven Last Words, which itself is also remarkable) in this form from Haydn’s pen. My familiarity with these quartets began relatively late in life, leaving me with the ambivalence of regret for being so tardy and of thankfulness for not being too late. The six op. 50 quartets lie at about the 40-percent mark of the total 45, and the three offered here are in my view the most attractive of this group of six. All six, however (all 45, for that matter), are strongly attractive pieces—remarkable in invention, distinctiveness, and musicality.
In these performances, the Leipzig String Quartet uses moderately restrained vibrato and observes all repeats (except those in the da capos ). Both of these practices are important contributors to the success of these performances. The Leipzigs approach the music cautiously, sometimes soulfully, yet know to let loose when appropriate, for example, in the memorable Vivace final movements of No. 1 and No. 5. At all times, each of the four voices is discernable. While Haydn’s string quartet part-writing was not as consistently developed as Mozart’s, its importance remains. Haydn was more open than Mozart in his use of humor, and he was more daring than Mozart in resorting to unconventional keys; e.g., E? Minor in the second variation of the op. 50/1 Adagio and F? Major to conclude the first movement and to begin the Menuetto of op. 50/4 (which is in the un-Mozartean key of F? Minor, the slow movement of Mozart’s K 488 piano concerto notwithstanding).
In competition, the Lindsays have recorded all 45 quartets in performances that excel in their verve and in the success of that group’s willingness to take chances in its interpretive approach, but intonation weakness is too often its principal failure. In its op. 50/4, there is too much out-of-tune playing by the first violin to make it a competitor to the Leipzig performance of that quartet.
The members of the 21-year-old Leipzig String Quartet on this disc are Stefan Arzberger and Tilman Büning (violins), Ivo Bauer (viola), and Matthias Moosdorf (cello). Three of its members were first chairs of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. The quartet has concertized throughout the U.S. as well as throughout the world. It has recorded the complete string quartets of Schubert and of other composers. I can only hope that a “complete” (op. 20 and above) Haydn would be one of its eventual goals.
This is a Haydn quartet disc that I highly recommend.
FANFARE: Burton Rothleder
Vladimir Feltsman: The Complete Columbia Album Collection
In summer 1987, nine years after he first requested permission to emigrate, the 35-year-old Russian pianist Vladimir Feltsman was finally allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Feltsman, who had studied at the Moscow Conservatory with the legendary Yakov Flier and won first prize at the prestigious Long-Thibaud Competition in Paris at the age of 19, arrived in New York amid a welter of publicity. CBS Masterworks offered him a recording contract, while President Ronald Reagan welcomed him to the White House for a recital that was glowingly reviewed in the New York Times.
When Feltsman made his Carnegie Hall debut two months later, the Times hailed him as “an artist of wide musical interests who on this occasion included three pieces from Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésusto set off more popular works by Schubert and Schumann … Mr. Feltsman took an aptly spacious and relaxed approach to the first two movements [of Schubert’s A major Sonata D 664)] … He then let loose in the more brilliant Allegro finale with an impressive display of breathtaking scales … In the Messiaen, Mr. Feltsman drew out its great, clashing sonorities and made light of its technical terrors. At the conclusion of Schumann’sSymphonic Etudes, any lingering doubts about Mr. Feltsman’s pianistic strengths or artistic instincts were blown away.”
Interest in Feltsman’s pianism had already been piqued before the pianist set foot in the New World by a performance, released by CBS in 1986, of the Chopin Preludes recorded in Moscow. “Feltsman sweeps through the 24 Preludes with genuine poetic bravura,” wrote the Los Angeles Times. “There is a daring and Romantic fire in the playing which only add to the agony of his plight.”
Now Sony Classical is reissuing that Carnegie debut recital from 1987, a Russian Chopin recording that preceded it and an even earlier Schubert recital, from Paris in 1978, along with all the other Feltsman performances captured by CBS mics before his collaboration with the label ended in 1989. Among them are a live Liszt recital including the B minor Sonata and a live Rachmaninoff coupling of the Third Concerto andRhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic: “Feltsman’s pianistic control compels admiration. He is a commanding player.” (Gramophone).
He also recorded the First and Third Tchaikovsky concertos with Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich, who, wrote Gramophone’s reviewer, “coaxes out playing of the very highest quality – rich-toned, idiomatic in inflexion, with just the right degree of thrust when required … [Feltsman’s] is a relatively laid back view of the First Concerto – no screaming in the outer movements, no flash-fingered shallowness in the central prestissimo of the slow movement. The big first movement cadenza is wonderfully fluid and continuous, and the transition into the following coda is a dream. There is much sensitive dialogue between piano and orchestra, well captured by the recording … a performance one can learn from, and the Third Concerto goes splendidly.”
Feltsman’s last CBS recording featured the first two Prokofiev Piano Concertos and ten pieces from Romeo and Juliet: “One has only to hear the refinement of colour he produces in ‘Romeo bids Juliet farewell’ … or the clarity and lightness of articulation in the First Concerto to realize that he possesses not only formidable fingers but very considerable artistry … The LSO under Michael Tilson Thomas produce excellent support … Again [in Concerto No. 2] there is splendid pianism from Feltsman and cultured playing from Tilson Thomas and the LSO.”
SET CONTENTS:
DISC 1:
Chopin: Préludes, Op. 28
DISC 2:
Schubert: Fantasy in C Major, Op. 15, D. 760 "Wanderer"
Schubert: Moments musicaux, Op. 94, D. 780
DISC 3:
Schubert: Sonata for Piano in A Major, Op. 120, D. 664
Messiaen: Vingt regards sur L'enfant-Jésus
DISC 4:
Schumann: Symphonic Études (Variations) in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 13
Rachmaninoff: Prélude in G-Sharp Minor, Op. 32, No. 12
Beethoven: 6 Variations on an Original Theme in D Major, Op. 76
DISC 5:
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
Conductor: Zubin Mehta
Performer: Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
DISC 6:
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-Flat Major, Op. 10
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 16 (1923 Version)
Prokofiev: 10 Pieces from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 75: No. 10, Romeo and Juliet before Parting
Conductor: Michael Tilson Thomas
Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra
DISC 7:
Liszt: Sonata in B Minor
Liszt: Tre Sonetti di Petrarca
Liszt: St. Francis d'Assise: La predication aux oiseaux
DISC 8:
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 75: Allegro brillante
Conductor: Mstislav Rostropovich
Orchestra: National Symphony Orchestra
Buxtehude: Trio Sonatas, Op. 1 & 2
Itzhak Perlman: Complete RCA & Columbia Album Collection
In celebration of the great Israeli-American violinist’s 75th birthday, Sony Classical is proud to present the first-ever collection of Itzhak Perlman’s complete recordings for RCA and CBS/Sony in a single box set: 18 CDs spanning the years 1965 to 2012.
Itzhak Perlman has dominated the world of violin virtuosos for half a century. His TV appearances had already made him a household name in the US by the time he was 13. A few years later came his Carnegie Hall debut, then the prestigious Leventritt Award, followed by triumphant tours of Israel, North America and Europe between 1965 and 1968. By then he was an international celebrity and recognized “not just as the finest violinist of his generation but as one of the greatest musical talents to emerge since World War II” (leading string authority Tully Potter writing in the NEW GROVE).
And it was then that Perlman began his illustrious, virtually unparalleled career as a recording artist. His first sessions for RCA, accompanied by pianist David Garvey – with works ranging from sonatas by Handel, Leclair and Hindemith to showpieces by Paganini, Bazzini, Sarasate and Falla – took place in New York in 1965 but were not issued for nearly 40 years because the label felt concertos would make a more suitable commercial debut for the rising star. When an album of these pieces was finally released – as “Perlman Rediscovered”, in 2004 – it was hailed “an outstanding tribute to one of the great names among violinists of any age, as well as a remarkably varied and interesting recital in its own right” (ClassicsToday). These tracks are, of course, included in the new collection.
Perlman’s first concerto efforts for RCA – the Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Prokofiev Second, with Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony – were set down in 1966/1967 and released the following years as his recording debut. ClassicsToday acclaimed them in a recent reissue as “offering playing that is gutsy and shamelessly virtuosic, and with a sharper rhythmic focus than Perlman often achieved subsequently. The finale of the Sibelius remains a potent example of the playing’s youthful fire.” In 1969, Perlman recorded what was arguably one of the finest albums of his career, the two Prokofiev Sonatas (which he never remade), partnered by pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy at the beginning of their long and distinguished collaboration: “Delicate where needs be … and yet with a Heifetzian resilience that both sonatas willingly respond to … Perlman and Ashkenazy play with astonishing virtuosity” (Gramophone).
Itzhak Perlman’s work for American Columbia began in the mid-1970s and – apart from Bach and Vivaldi multi-violin concertos with Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman and the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta – cover a wide swath of chamber music with special partners: pianists Daniel Barenboim and Emanuel Ax, cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Lynn Harrell and guitarist John Williams. The Mendelssohn Piano Trios with Ax and Ma, first released in 2010, appear here for the first time in a Perlman collection (“…ensemble balance, clarity of inner part-writing, drama, lyricism, and phrase shaping of the highest order … I find these performances not just outstanding; I find them astounding” (Fanfare).
That other John Williams, the legendary composer for the silver screen, was Perlman’s collaborator in another medium, the movies: his two best-selling “Cinema Serenade” albums arranged and conducted by Williams, with Perlman featured in selections from such classic films as Modern Times, Gone with the Wind, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Out of Africa, Cinema Paradiso, The Color Purple and, of course, the theme that Perlman memorably performed on the soundtrack of Williams’s Oscar-winning score for the Spielberg masterpiece Schindler’s List.
New to Perlman CD editions are two complete soundtrack albums: John Williams’s “elegant and thoughtful score” for Memoirs of a Geisha in which the violinist is joined by Yo-Yo Ma and to which Perlman “brings a magical and peculiarly oriental sound to his violin-playing” (Gramophone), and the music for Yimou Zhang’s Hero by Tan Dun: “Few composers today write more effective melodies for bowed strings” (Gramophone). And to round off this uniquely wide-ranging survey of the violinist’s musical passions and triumphs, in its first appearance in a Perlman collection, the artist is joined by golden-voiced cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot in Eternal Echoes, a highly praised album of liturgical and traditional selections which the violinist has affectionately described as “Jewish comfort music – everything that I recognize from my childhood is in this program.”
SET CONTENTS
DISC 1:
Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 63
Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47
DISC 2:
Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, TH 59
Dvořák: Romance in F Minor, Op. 11, B. 39
DISC 3:
Prokofiev: Violin Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 80
Prokofiev: Violin Sonata in D Major No. 2, Op. 94bis
DISC 4:
Lalo: Symphonie espagnole, Op. 21
Ravel: Tzigane, M. 76 (Version for Violin & Orchestra)
DISC 5:
Paganini: Centone di sonate, Op. 64, MS 112 (Sonata No. 1 in A Minor)
Paganini: Sonata for Violin and Guitar in E Minor, Op. 3, No. 6, MS 27
Paganini: Sonata concertata in A Major, Op. 61, MS 2
Giuliani: Duo concertante in E Minor, Op. 25 "Grand Sonata"
Giuliani: Cantabile in D Major, Op. 17, MS 109
DISC 6:
Dohnányi: Serenade in C Major, Op. 10
Beethoven: Serenade in D Major, Op. 8
DISC 7:
Bach, J.S.: Concerto for 2 Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043
Vivaldi: Concerto for 3 Violins in F Major, RV 551
Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante in E-Flat Major, K. 364
DISC 8:
Chausson: Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet in D Major, Op. 21
DISC 9:
Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Major, Op. 78
Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, Op. 100
Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 108
DISC 10:
Mozart: Duo for Violin & Viola in G Major, K. 423
Mozart: Duo for Violin and Viola, K. 424
Leclair: 6 Sonatas for 2 Violins, Op. 3, No. 4
DISC 11:
Lubbock/Rosenbaum/Jones/Temperton: The Color Purple: Main Title
Gardel: Scent of a Woman: Tango (Por Una Cabeza)
Legrand: Yentl: Papa, Can You Hear Me?
Bacalov: Il Postino: Theme
Bernstein: The Age of Innocence: Theme
Williams: Theme (From "Far and Away")
Legrand: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg: I Will Wait for You
Previn: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Theme
Williams: Sabrina: Theme
Barry: Out of Africa: Main Title
Bonfa: Black Orpheus: Manha de Carnaval
Williams: Main Theme (From "Schindler's List")
Morricone: Love Theme (From "Cinema Paradiso")
DISC 12:
Raksin: Theme from "Laura" (1944)
Steiner: Theme from Now, Voyager (1942)
Chaplin: Smile from "Modern Times" (1936)
Rózsa: Love Theme from Lost Weekend (1945)
Young: St. Patrick's Day from The Quiet Man (1952) (Traditional)
Korngold: Marian & Robin Love Theme from "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938)
Hupfeld: As Time Goes By from "Casablanca" (1942)
Walton: Touch Her Soft Lips and Part (From "Henry V")
Young: Stella by Starlight from The Uninvited (1944)
Young: Theme from My Foolish Heart (1949)
Steiner: Tara's Theme (From "Gone with the Wind" 1939)
Newman: Cathy's Theme from "Wuthering Heights" (1939)
DISC 13:
Tan Dun: Works
DISC 14:
Paganini: 24 Caprices for Solo Violin, Op. 1, MS 25
Ben-Haim: Berceuse Sfaradite
Sarasate: Navarra, Op. 33
Handel: Violin Sonata in E Major, Op. 1 No. 15, HWV 373
Hindemith: Violin Sonata, Op. 11 No. 1 in E-Flat
Leclair: Violin Sonata, Op. 9 No. 3 in D
Bloch: Baal Shem: II. Nigun (Version for Violin & Piano)
Falla: Spanish Dance No. 1 (from La vida breve)
Bazzini: La ronde des lutins, Op. 25
DISC 15: John Williams: Works
DISC 16:
Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49
Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor Op. 66
Mendelssohn: Songs without Words, Op. 19, No. 1 Sweet Remembrance" - Andante con moto"
Mendelssohn: Songs without Words, Op. 38, No. 2 - Allegro non troppo
DISC 17:
Berditchever: A Dudele
Shenker: Mizmor L'Dovid
Goldfaden: Shoyfer Shel Moshiakh
Schwartz: Romanian Doyne
Rosenblatt: T'filas Tal
Traditional: Yism'chu
Schloßberg: R'tzay
Traditional: Dem Trisker Rebns Khosid
Schorr: Sheyibone Bays Hamikdosh
Traditional: Kol Nidrei
DISC 18:
Tchaikovsky: Sérénade mélancolique, Op. 26, TH 56
Tchaikovsky: Valse-Scherzo, Op. 34, TH 58
Dvořák: Romance in F Minor, Op. 11, B. 39
Dvořák: 8 Humoresques, Op. 101, B. 187: No. 7, Poco lento e grazioso (Transcribed by Oscar Morawetz for Violin, Cello & Orchestra)
Dvořák: Piano Trio No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 90, B. 166: "Dumky", V. Allegro
Dvořák: Slavonic Dances, Op. 72, B. 147: No. 2, Dumka. Allegretto grazioso
Halvorsen: Passacaglia and Sarabande for Violin and Viola (With Variations on a Theme by Handel)
Walton: Canzonetta from Henry V
Williams: Air and Simple Gifts
Dohnányi: Violin Concertos No 1 & 2 / Ludwig, Falletta, Royal Scottish NO
The opening theme of Ernö Dohnányi's Violin Concerto No. 1 (1915) sounds strikingly like something out of a Harry Potter film, creating the same kind of minor-key-mysterious atmosphere--that is until the solo violin enters with its agitated pronouncements. Often it sounds as if the violin were not at all pleased with this introductory mood and does its best to dispel it. But then the soothing second theme steals in, and the violin is at least temporarily calmed. Dohnányi's solo writing is stunning in its originality and virtuosity, yet violinist Michael Ludwig presents it with confidence, poise, and polish. The serene Andante ushers in a beguiling tranquil mood before the lively scherzo dances about. Dohnányi's theme and variations finale blatantly borrows from the same movement in Brahms' Symphony No. 1, but happily, Dohnányi's less pretentious finale is a lot more fun, even with the return of the first movement's darker theme.
Violin Concerto No. 2 was completed more than three decades later in 1949, and right away the change in the composer's harmonic language shows in the dissonant opening violin cadenza. But far from being atonal or modernist, Dohnányi's work continues the tradition of consonant tonality, albeit a little stretched at the edges. This gives the music great expressive range, and the first movement surges with drama and emotion. As with the First concerto, this one also is in four movements, though they fit within the usual concerto duration (about 30 minutes--10 minutes shorter than No. 1). A charming intermezzo comes second, followed by a lovely and lyrical Adagio. The buoyant allegro finale brings the work to a happy conclusion. Again the violin writing is superb (wonderfully rendered by Ludwig), as is the accompaniment, fleshed out in the composer's robust and colorful orchestration, and beautifully performed by JoAnn Falletta and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Naxos' spacious recording has satisfying bloom, presence, and wide dynamic range. These are excellent pieces that ought to be in the modern performance repertory. If you don't know these works, you owe to yourself to hear this disc.
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com
Brahms: Symphonies 1 & 4 / Jansons, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
This disc follows close on the heels of these artists’ recording of the Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3 on BR Klassik (SACD) 900111. Both Symphonies were recorded in the splendid acoustic of the Herkulessaal and audience applause has been retained at the conclusion of each symphony. In May 2011 I experienced at first hand just how empathetic the relationship is between Jansons and the Bavarian RSO. I eagerly await the opportunity to attend one of their Munich concerts.
Brahms was aware that by writing symphonies he was encroaching on the territory ruled by Beethoven. In fact Brahms had written to Hermann Levi that he could feel the presence of Beethoven marching behind him. Many Brahms supporters, notably Eduard Hanslick, were happy to acknowledge the close relationship of the First Symphony to the music of Beethoven. Hans von Bülow went further, referring to the C minor symphony as “Beethoven’s tenth”. Brahms was 43 and at the height of his maturity when his Symphony No. 1 was completed in 1876 although the gestation period had been protracted, making sketches for the score, it seems, over twenty years earlier.
The grave and leaden thuds of the threatening drums that open the first movement Un poco sostenuto - Allegro are implacably convincing. Impressive too is the beautiful oboe playing of the rising motif at 2:16. Throughout this movement an assured Jansons successfully provides generous quantities of beauty, sadness and even menace. Compared to many rivals it took me a while to get used to his rather measured pace. One senses that he is rather holding back his forces. Although Rattle comes close with the BPO in truth no one I have heard on record has managed to provide an opening of such raw power. It approaches that of Klemperer and the Philharmonia. There is a burnished autumnal countryside feel to the E major Andante sostenuto. One could imagine walking at the edge of an eerily tranquil and shadowy forest whilst anticipating the ominous onset of severe weather. In the midst of such glorious playing I was struck how much the rising melody for solo violin at 6:05 reminded me of a section in Brahms’ Violin Concerto. Warm and magnificently lyrical melodies abound in the short Un poco allegretto e grazioso right from the swaying opening measures. Its manner is reminiscent of Mendelssohn. This is fresh music of the great outdoors and is evocative of cool early morning dew over a backdrop of wonderful Alpine scenery. Jansons conveys a sense of intense activity in the closing Adagio - Allegro non troppo ma con brio as if lying on a verdant grassy bank gazing up at the tones and shapes of a swiftly changing sky. I loved the inspiring and highly memorable chorale melody. The writing really evokes the finale to Beethoven's ‘Choral’ Symphony.
It was in 1884 and 1885 that Brahms worked on his Symphony No. 4 at the Austrian summer resort of Mürzzuschlag in the Styrian Alps. Hans von Bülow, who had conducted a rehearsal of the score enthused that the symphony was “stupendous, quite original, individual, and rock-like. Incomparable strength from start to finish.” It’s esteem has endured and remains for many Brahms’s most popular symphony. Walter Niemann found an intense degree of sadness in the fourth movement and wanted to describe the score as Brahms’s ‘Elegiac’ symphony.
A comforting mood of warm serenity and joy suffuses the swaying opening Allegro non troppo. In splendid performances such as this I am reminded of the verse, “perfectly cultivated earth. Honey of dawn, sun in bloom” from the poem Glimmer by Paul Éluard (1895-1952). Commencing with a striking horn-call in Jansons’s hands the E major Andante moderato feels like a dreamscape attaining beguiling heights of fantasy and grandeur. I love the good humour and vigour of the Scherzo as Jansons takes the music forward with majestic strides. In the dark key of E minor the final movement marked Allegro energico e passionato is a heroic drama constructed out of a theme and variations in the form of a chaconne often described as a passacaglia. Here Brahms introduces contrasts of the broadest imagination including chorale-style variations featuring horns and trombones. I especially enjoyed the lovely and moving passage for solo flute at 3:05-3:56 as well as the following woodwind interplay and the fierce and defiant hammer-blows.
Jansons and the Bavarian RSO provide highly accomplished performances even if they are unable to match the pervasive aura of heart-searching and the strong sense of excitement provided by Klemperer/Philharmonia and Rattle/BPO. The warm and well balanced sound quality from live concerts at the Herkulessaal, Munich is impressive.
It has been a ‘rite of passage’ for conductors to record a complete cycle of the Brahms symphonies and I have several splendid sets in my collection. My benchmark is the set of evergreen performances from Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia. These are aristocratic, powerful and expressive. They were recorded with the great producer Walter Legge at his favoured venue: London’s Kingsway Hall in 1956/57 and can be heard on EMI Classics 5 62742 2 (c/w ‘Haydn’ Variations; Alto Rhapsody with Christa Ludwig, mezzo-; Academic Festival and Tragic Overtures). The digitally re-mastered sound is quite superb. With impeccable credentials Klemperer is a marvellous and experienced Brahmsian who made a studio recording of the Brahms First Symphony with the Staatskapelle Berlin as early as 1928. I often play the sterling performances of the Symphonies 1-3 conducted by Eugen Jochum with the London Philharmonic Orchestra from the Kingsway Hall, London in 1956 on EMI Classics 5 69515 2. Re-mastered at the Abbey Road studios, for its age, Jochum’s sound is excellent too. For an accompanying single version of the fourth symphony I would add Carlos Kleiber’s commanding 1980 Musikverein, Vienna reading with the Vienna Philharmonic digitally recorded on Deutsche Grammophon 457 706-2. Of the modern digital sets I greatly admire the 2008 accounts from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle on EMI Classics 2672542. They were recorded live in the Philharmonie at single concert performances with some additional patching. In my review I described them as, “urgently spontaneous performances conveying a Romantic power of immense intensity.”
Jansons and his Bavarian Radio colleagues are impressive Brahmsians. Any serious collector should be happy to hold this set of Brahms’ symphonies.
-- Michael Cookson, MusicWeb International
Peyko: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1
Nikolai Peyko (1916–95) is a major Russian composer completely unknown in the west. +He is another composer who wrote nine symphonies, and much other orchestral music besides, but fell foul of the Soviet regime and was sidelined. +His piano music shares Shostakovich’s irony and Prokofiev’s driving march-rhythms and playful good humor. +This first CD of two in this complete recording of his piano music is the first time any of this music has been heard recorded on a western label.
Leonard Pennario: Complete RCA Album Collection
“Nobody plays the piano better than Leonard Pennario,” wrote the eminent critic Andrew Porter in London’s New Statesman in 1952, when the competition would have included none less than Horowitz in his prime. That year, Pennario began recording for Capitol Records in Los Angeles, and a decade later he moved to RCA Victor, for which label he made a series of distinguished albums. To mark the tenth anniversary of Pennario’s death, Sony Classical is now pleased to reissue all of the pianist’s RCA recordings together for the first time in a single box.
Born in 1924 in Buffalo, New York, Pennario gave his first public performance there at the age of seven, later moving with his family to Los Angeles, where his teachers included the legendary Isabella Vengerova. His breakthrough came in 1936, when he made his orchestral debut deputizing for an indisposed soloist with the Dallas Symphony. On that memorable occasion, the twelve-year-old performed the Grieg Piano Concerto, a work he had never heard, let alone played, until a few days earlier.
Dazzling concertos would, of course, feature prominently in Pennario’s discography, and his first RCA Victor releases in 1964 included Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and the Franck Symphonic Variations with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops (High Fidelity: “immense dexterity and bravura”) and the two Liszt concertos with René Leibowitz conducting the London Symphony (Gramophone: “magisterial accounts of both works … it is a constant delight to listen to his effortless brilliance and power … vivid ‘hi-fi’ recording”).
Among the acclaimed solo recital albums in this set are a collection of popular short pieces by Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorák, Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein, Grieg, Falla, Debussy, Gershwin and Rachmaninoff which Pennario plays “with admirable care and impeccable taste” (High Fidelity) as well as both books of Debussy Préludes: “This is a most beautifully played set” (Gramophone).
Although Pennario became best known as a formidable virtuoso, he was also renowned for his performances of chamber music, and RCA documents his participation in the famous series given by Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky. Their performance of the Mendelssohn C minor Piano Trio was praised by High Fidelity for its “conception of restraint and grandeur … consistently maintained throughout all four movements”, and in the coupling of cello sonatas by Mendelssohn and Strauss, wroteGramophone, “Pennario plays admirably, matching Piatigorsky’s forceful musical characterization.”
REVIEW:
A notable characteristic of Pennario’s playing is his extraordinary articulation at extreme speed. As examples of transcendent technique and breathtaking clarity, the two Rachmaninov transcriptions on Disc 2 are hard to beat.
One could hardly complain about the quality of music-making here, yet without exception the piano could have been more forwardly placed. Was he too self-effacing for stardom? Too modest for his own good? Moot points, but Leonard Pennario demands to be heard, reassessed and, on this evidence alone, admitted to the piano Hall of Fame.
– Gramophone
SET CONTENTS:
DISC 1:
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
Franck: The Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra, M. 46
Litolff: Concerto symphonique No. 4, Op. 102: Scherzo
Piano: Leonard Pennario
Conductor: Arthur Fiedler
Orchestra: Boston Pops Orchestra
DISC 2:
Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-Flat Major, S. 124
Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major, S. 125
Piano: Leonard Pennario
Conductor: René Leibowitz
Orchestra: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
DISC 3:
J. Strauss Jr.- Pennario: Kaiser-Walzer, Op. 437
Mendelssohn-Rachmaninoff: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 61: No 1 Scherzo
Saint-Saëns-Liszt: Danse macabre, Op. 40
Shostakovich: The Age Of Gold Ballet, Op. 22b: Polka
Prokofiev: The Love for Three Oranges, Op. 33: March
Ravel: La Valse, M. 72
Kreisler-Rachmaninoff: Liebesleid
Gounod-Liszt: Faust: Waltz
DISC 4:
Dvořák: 8 Humoresques, Op. 101, No. 7 in G-Flat
Tchaikovsky: 2 Pieces, Op. 10, No. 2: Humoresque
Rachmaninoff: 7 Morceaux de salon, Op. 10, No. 5: Humoresque in G
Rachmaninoff: Morceaux de fantaisie, Op. 3, No. 4: Polichinelle in F-Sharp Minor
Debussy: Children' Corner, L. 113, No. 6: Golliwog's Cake-walk
Gershwin: 3 Preludes, IGG 25
Schubert: Moments musicaux, D. 780, No. 3 in F Minor
Beethoven: Für Elise, WoO 59
Tchaikovsky: The Seasons, Op. 37a, No. 11: On the Troika in E
Grieg: Lyric Pieces, Op. 43, No. 6 "To Spring"
Grieg: Lyric Pieces, Op. 43, No. 1 "Butterfly"
Falla: Piezas Españolas, IMF 10, No. 4: Andaluza
Rubinstein: 6 Soirées à Saint-Petersbourg, Op. 44, No. 1: Romance in E-Flat
Tchaikovsky: 6 Pieces, Op. 19, No. 2: Scherzo humoristique in D
DISC 5:
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 1
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 40
Piano: Leonard Pennario
Conductor: André Previn
Orchestra: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
DISC 6:
Debussy: Préludes, Livre 1, L. 117
DISC 7:
Debussy: Préludes, Livre 2, L. 123
DISC 8:
Schumann: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
R. Strauss: Burleske in D Minor
Piano: Leonard Pennario
Conductor: Seiji Ozawa
Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra
DISC 9:
Mendelssohn: Cello Sonata No. 2, Op. 58
R. Strauss: Cello Sonata, Op. 6
Cello: Gregor Piatigorsky
Piano: Leonard Pennario
DISC 10:
Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 66
Arensky: Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 32
Turina: Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 35
Cello: Gregor Piatigorsky
Violin: Jascha Heifetz
Piano: Leonard Pennario
DISC 11:
Beethoven: Piano Trio No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 70
Brahms: Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major, Op. 87
Cello: Gregor Piatigorsky
Violin: Jascha Heifetz
Piano: Leonard Pennario
DISC 12:
Dvořák: Piano Trio No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 65
Franck: Piano Quintet in F Minor, M. 7, FWV 7
Cello: Gregor Piatigorsky
Violin: Jascha Heifetz
Piano: Leonard Pennario
