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Geraldine Mucha: Chamber Music / Stamic Quartet, Prague Wind Quintet
Brilliant Classics · Jan 2021CD$13.99 -
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SaleMozart: Violin Concertos, Vol. 1 / Dego, Leonardi, Norrington, Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Chandos · Sep 2021CD$21.99$16.99 -
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SaleMozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 25 & 26 / Piemontesi, Manze, Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Linn Records · Aug 2017CD$20.99$15.99 -
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Franck: Le Chasseur Maudit, Psyche, Les Eolides / Tingaud, Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Naxos · May 2020CD$19.99 -
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Bruch: Concerto for 2 Pianos; Suite on Russian Themes / Bard, Matiakh, Staatskapelle Halle
Capriccio · Oct 2020CD$21.99 -
![Great Comedy Overtures / Friedel, Scottish National Orchestra [blu-ray Audio]](//arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/2862909.jpg?v=1790108831&width=800)
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![Great Comedy Overtures / Friedel, Scottish National Orchestra [blu-ray Audio]](//arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/51vUAo37cHL.jpg?v=1790108831&width=800)
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![Great Comedy Overtures / Friedel, Scottish National Orchestra [blu-ray Audio]](//arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/2862909.jpg?v=1790108831&width=400)
SaleGreat Comedy Overtures / Friedel, Scottish National Orchestra [blu-ray Audio]
Naxos AudioVisual · Apr 2015Blu-Ray$16.99$8.49 -
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Galuppi: Complete Piano Sonatas, Vol. 4 / Seivewright, Scottish Baroque Soloists
Divine Art · Jan 2019CD$19.99 -
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Naxos Musical Journey - Scotland - Edinburgh Highlands
The Places
Our tour of Scotland takes us from Edinburgh, with its castle, Scott monument and Palace of Holyrood, to the highland and then to The Hebrides, recalling the journey undertaken by the young Mendelssohn.
The Music
In 1829 Mendelssohn visited England and, after the summer season, travelled north to Scotland, accompanied by his friend Karl Klingemann. In Edinburgh he visited the Palace of Holyrood, recalling the tragic story of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the murder there of her secretary David Rizzio. Further north he took the steamer to the island of Staffa, where he saw Fingal's Cave and in spite of sea-sickness immediately sketched the opening theme of his Hebrides Overture. It was not until 1842 that his Scottish Symphony was completed, a work inspired by memories of his visit to Scotland.
Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Dolby Digital / DTS Surround
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 52 mins
No. of DVDs: 1
Barber: Piano Concerto, Die Natali / Alsop, Prutsman
Prutsman puts steel into the music where required (the opening cadenza and much of the finale), but he offers a slow movement of great delicacy and tenderness too. He knows when to back off and let the orchestra have the spotlight, and together with Alsop manages a genuine dialog in such passages as the finale's second calm episode (music that's pure Prokofiev in its ironic wit). It's interesting how closely this finale resembles that of Ginastera's First Piano Concerto, composed at the same time, and both seem to be taking the finale of Bartók's Second Piano Concerto as a model. In any case, aside from Szell/Browning, there is no finer performance of this work available, and it's very well recorded to boot.
As for the couplings, the catchy Commando March plays itself, and Die Natali, a marvelously inventive fantasia on Christmas carols, receives a lovely performance. Why this charming piece isn't hauled out every December and played to death, as it surely deserves to be, is a genuine mystery. Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance features an excellent "meditation", brooding but not too slow, that yields to a vividly detailed but somewhat underpowered "dance of vengeance", just fractionally under tempo and lacking the ultimate hysterical frenzy (as in Munch/Boston) at the climaxes. However, given the overall excellence of the other items on offer, this isn't a major liability, and for the Piano Concerto alone this disc will be an essential acquisition for anyone who cares about Barber's music.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
Bruch: Violin Concerto No 1, Scottish Fantasy / Lin, Slatkin
Elgar: Cello Concerto; Vaughan Williams: Dark Pastoral / Miyata, Williams, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Bantock & Wilson: British Music for Strings, Vol. 2 / Bostock, Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim
Our second album with music for strings by British composers features most highly creative compositions by Sir Granville Bantock and Christopher Wilson. When Bantock reached the pinnacle of his fame, the Three Choirs Festival held in Hereford in 1912 ordered a work for string orchestra from him. The result was the four-movement Serenade for Strings, to which he assigned the subtitle “In the Far West.” Bantock’s string movements are distinguished by an impressive tonal richness. After the performance Douglas Bostock remarked: “I am truly amazed – this is anything but a ‘Serenade,’ as the innocuous title suggests. The succinct, symphonically developed music is nothing other than a string symphony with a demanding writing style representing a genuine tour de force.” Moreover, extensive recorded material documents the Scottish melodies used by Bantock in his Scenes from the Scottish Highlands. For them he chose the finely managed format of three fast dances separated by two euphonious slow movements. The six short movements in traditional or dance style forming Christopher Wilson’s Suite for String Orchestra made it something new and fresh when it was premiered in 1901, and it came over very well. It is thought that one of the composer’s goals was to connect with the tradition of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Geraldine Mucha: Chamber Music / Stamic Quartet, Prague Wind Quintet
Geraldine Mucha learned to read music before words; her Scottish father, Marcus Thomson, taught at the Royal Academy of Music. Having turned 18 she became a student there herself, and at a party in 1941 she met her future husband, Jan Mucha, an exiled Czech war correspondent and son of the artist Alphonse Mucha. They settled in his home city of Prague at the end of the war, but Geraldine fled the Communist regime for Scotland after the invasion of Prague in 1968, and returned only after the fall of Communism in 1989. Jirí died in 1991 but Geraldine lived on until 2012, leaving a fair-sized body of instrumental music which had been performed throughout her lifetime but is only now being rediscovered. Only one other album of Mucha’s work is available, dedicated to her orchestral music. This newly available album, made in Prague in 2015, begins with the First String Quartet which she wrote in 1944 as a recent RAM graduate: a tight, well-argued work, inflected by the fiercely rhythmic folk idiom of Janácek and Bartók. There follows a collection of seven piano works including her most extensive piece for the instrument, a set of variations on an ‘Old Scottish Song’ which also shows a thorough command of a central-European idiom. The single-movement Second String Quartet dates from 1970 opens with a keening, Scottish-accented lament: taut and concise, both concealing and saying much in a short span. The Wind Quintet is a late work, from 1998, still elegiac in mood but now balanced by the kind of dance-like flow and momentum placing it in the tradition of wind-ensemble works from Mozart to Poulenc. This carefully programmed album ends with the Epitaph for oboe and string quintet which she composed in 1991 in memory of her late husband.
ORCHESTRAL WORKS
Mozart: Violin Concertos, Vol. 1 / Dego, Leonardi, Norrington, Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Virtuoso violinist Francesca Dego joins forces with legendary conductor and period performance pioneer Sir Roger Norrington for this recording of Mozart’s 3rd and 4th violin concertos – the first time either soloist or conductor have recorded the works. The outstanding musicians of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra provide the accompaniment, with reduced numbers of strings and antiphonal violin seating to replicate the size and seating of the Salzburg court orchestra who gave the premier performances of these works. Norrington’s attention to detail and style is enthusiastically embraced by soloist and orchestra resulting in a beautifully fresh and captivating interpretation of these well-known works. Dego completes the album with the violin sonata Op.1 No.4 with her regular recital partner Francesca Leonardi.
Holst: The Perfect Fool / Groves, BBC Northern Symphony
The opera opens with a Wizard working his mystical ways and summoning the spirits of air, fire and water in the form of a brilliant ballet. His plan is to wed the Princess who is destined to select a husband that very day. An older Mother enters with a drowsy sleep-prone son in tow. The Mother is obsessed with a prophecy her son will woo and win the Princess. There is an elixir of course and once drained the man who does so will be loved by the Princess. The Wizard tries some of this on the Princess. The Mother has already switched it for pure water while administering the elixir to her yawning son. The Wizard flies into a fury promising to bring death and destruction on everyone. He departs. A troubadour and a wanderer have appeared and pay songful court to the Princess which she is having none of. When the Princess sees the Fool she falls in love with him and asks him to marry her. He answers with the word ‘No’ but the whole scenario leaves you wondering about their future. The Wizard returns with his horrors but after some stern and encouraging words from the Mother all the Wizard’s fell crew are burnt to a crisp.
A BBC studio recording, broadcast on 7 May 1967.
REVIEW:
The opening dances, the best music in the work, invariably overbalance things given they all appear at the start. Charles Groves directs, and his Holst studio recordings – The Hymn of Jesus, Short Festival Te Deum, Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda Group 2 and the Ode to Death – were always an index of his excellence in this repertoire, as indeed in all his recordings of British music. He finds the core of Holst’s rhythmic vivacity in the dances, those piquant cross-rhythms and jaunty use of his own instrument, the trombone, and he is just as good in the limpidity of the Spirits of the Water dance as he is in the vivid pounding, Planets-like, of the Dance of Fire, with its eventful touches of Spanishry and convulsive, well-balanced percussion.
The role of the Wizard is taken by the bass Richard Golding and you can imagine him in the The Dream of Gerontius though I see that he was active in opera and sang in a Scottish performance of George Lloyd’s John Socman and in a TV performance of Arthur Bliss’ Tobias and the Angel. Given the strange temperature of the opera, it comes as a surprise that Holst can turn in a seemingly straightforwardly fine scene – try track nine – where the words are well set and the choral role is sensible. There’s more than a whiff of G & S though in the subsequent passage, and when the Troubadour appears (John Mitchinson), Holst pokes fun at Verdian posturing allowing the Princess, the fine Margaret Neville, to pastiche the Troubadour’s own pastiche. In the twelfth track one finds another G & S chorus, Wagnerian vengeance and a stock peasant character. There’s a brief sonic cataclysm in the thirteenth track, trumpets and percussion to the fore, that shows that Holst couldn’t quite suppress his instincts for drama and in fact the orchestration throughout is always apt and colourful.
Contralto Pamela Bowden has a strong role as The Mother and all the characters, singing or speaking, acquit themselves well. In the service of what, precisely, I’m not quite sure. There are lots of operas that really aren’t operas so maybe if you think of The Perfect Fool as a pantomime-ballet-pastiche operetta rather as one thinks of Lord Berners’s The Triumph of Neptune as a ballet-pantomime-harlequinade, you won’t be far wrong and you won’t be disappointed. Full credit to Lyrita for this retrieval however, though you’ll notice a few deviations from the libretto in the actual performance. Talking of this, the notes are contained in one booklet, the libretto in another. The box artwork has been well selected. This work has never appeared in full on disc before and the archive sound quality is excellent.
– MusicWeb International
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 25 & 26 / Piemontesi, Manze, Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Described as a ''stellar Mozartian'' Francesco Piemontesi finds a perfect partner in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra whose impeccable credentials are widely acknowledge. Piemontesi has performed Mozart exclusively recently, including a critically acclaimed 2015 BBC Prom, a Mozart cycle at London's Wigmore Hall which commenced in January, 2016 and continues in 2017 and Mozart concertos with the SCO. The Swiss pianist enjoys a particular insight into Mozart gaining a useful ''love of detail'' from his teacher Alfred Brendel, who was himself renowned for his masterly interpretations of Mozart. This recording couples consecutive yet contrasting works from Mozart's Vienna period: K.503 represents the longest and most substantial of his concert masterpieces and K.537 provides the soloist with an audience-pleasing cadenza. Conductor Andrew Manze, well-known as a HIP pioneer, shares Piemontesi's approach to creating an authentic performance, making this somewhat of a Mozart dream team.
Feeney: Victoria / Northern Ballet
A brand new, narrative ballet about true love and grief, created to mark 200 years since Queen Victoria’s birth. As her death approaches, Queen Victoria writes her last diary entry before entrusting their many volumes into her daughter Beatrice’s care. Her surviving children arrive to say their last farewell. Beatrice begins reading the diaries, recalling the mother she knew from her childhood. As Beatrice remembers, the past unfolds. Passion, tragedy, fierce devotion. Queen Victoria’s diaries revealed a life so fascinating that Beatrice tried to rewrite history. Her irrepressible love for Albert sparked a royal dynasty. But his untimely death brought the world's most powerful woman to her knees with grief. Northern Ballet's new biopic brings the sensational story of Victoria to life in dance as celebration of the bicentenary of her birth with choreography by Cathy Marston, creator of Northern Ballet’s acclaimed Jane Eyre.
Humperdinck: Music for the Stage / Salvi, Malmo Opera Orchestra
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REVIEWS:
These incidental scores are a real find. They show that Humperdinck was far more than a one work wonder and is surely overlooked among the large number of turn-of-the-century composers who were able to turn out such highly melodic scores. The one real rarity here is the suite arranged from Das Wunder – the first full-colour silent film, made in 1912.
– Lark Reviews
Think of Humperdinck and Hänsel und Gretel immediately springs to mind, and if you dig a little bit deeper, Königskinder. Of course, he was far more prolific than that, and clearly had a rare talent for melody, vocal setting and orchestration. He is regarded as being a disciple of Wagner rather than a composer who forged a unique path, although I was interested to discover that he was the first composer to use Sprechgesang - a vocal technique halfway between singing and speaking, in Königskinder.
This most welcome, well-filled CD gives us a broad cross-section of his music for the stage. It starts with the prelude to Act II of the unknown opera Die Heirat wider Willen (The Forced Marriage), which opens with huge Wagnerian chords leading to more complex passages which quieten to harp chords then return to the opening. It is highly effective, and is probably the most instantly impactive music on the disc.
It is followed by his incidental music to the play Der Kaufman von Venedig (The Merchant of Venice). There are seven sections, the longest being the accompaniment to Act V Scene 1, “The moon shines bright: in such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees”.
At over ten minutes, it is as long as the previous six episodes put together, and, perhaps unsurprisingly given the word painting to inspire him, Humperdinck produces some magical orchestral effects, employing the harp lavishly to illustrate the moon (with a gentle horn accompanying the harp); the same combination is used at the outset, as the lovers begin their conversation. It is the sort of luscious orchestral sound which lulls one into floating along with it. There are vocal parts in the earlier sections, nicely sung by the tenor, soprano and contralto. The next longest scene at just under four minutes is the masked procession. Once again, the composer uses the harp quite prominently when the music quietens. As with all such incidental music, very short sections (three of the seven are each under one minute) can lead to a rather bitty impression, but Humperdinck manages to keep one’s interest - for example, the Casket Song (soprano, chorus, orchestra and harp again) is a 2:45 highlight.
Das Wunder (The Wonder), is music he composed for a British silent film from 1912 made in colour(!). It was presented at the Royal Opera House in 1912, the film being projected on to a screen with the full orchestra and chorus accompanying. The suite here begins with a prelude for solo organ, leading into a Procession and Children’s Dance, which begins with grand pageantry then quietens down for a rustic dance. The longest sections are the last two, the March of the Army and the Death Motif and the Christmas Scene and Finale. The first is quite memorable with flutes, piccolos, fifes and drums, leading to portentous brass chords for the Death Motif. The Christmas music and finale form a much more serene, ten-minute affair, with the orchestra producing a chiming effect for Christmas bells without orchestral bells being employed. I don’t think that the whole piece shows Humperdinck at his most memorable, but it is enjoyable, nonetheless.
Die Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar – Ballade (The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar) is a setting of three poems by Heinrich Heine, and Humperdinck uses soprano, tenor and chorus with orchestra. The songs tell of a journey made by a mother and her sick son to the shrine of The Virgin Mary at Kevelaer. The first song – At the Window stands the Mother - is a 3’30” narrative between soprano and tenor with the chorus commenting leading to an impressive, very Wagnerian crescendo, followed by the soloists combining with the chorus in a long, sustained note at the end. The second song, at just over seven minutes, depicts the visit to the shrine with a processional quality which slowly gathers strength. The tenor sings some very passionate music, somewhat reminiscent of Tanhauser’s Rome Narration, in which the boy and his mother are described. The last section at 4’33” – The Sick Son and the Mother – describes the death of the child, and, as one might expect, is duly solemn. The horn accompanies the soprano in dramatic declamation as the boy dies, and the chorus provide a swelling epilogue, with the soprano and harp softening things in a brief threnody at the very end. The work is set in a most sympathetic manner by Humperdinck.
The CD ends with his incidental music to Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. The composer tries to capture the antique nature of the play through his instrumentation, but even so we can hear Tristan during an extended cor-anglais solo. It is an attractive short suite.
As I mentioned at the outset, I have found this CD to be a welcome issue, and the last three items are all world premiere recordings. The booklet is informative about the composer and the music, and although texts to the sung parts are not provided, they are available from the Naxos website.
The performances are excellent in every respect, as we have come to expect from Malmö, and the recording is well balanced and natural.
– MusicWeb International (Jim Westhead)
The 18th Century American Overture - Hewitt, Carr, Reinagle / Gallois
HEWITT Medley Overture. New Medley Overture. New Federal Overture. CARR Federal Overture. REINAGLE Miscellaneous Overture. Occasional Overture . Overture in G • Patrick Gallois, cond; Jyväskylä Snf Finlandia • NAXOS 8.559654 (68: 25)
Most readers will never have heard of these composers. In fact, I rather suspect that most collectors attracted to this release, The 18th-Century American Overture , will be so more out of historical curiosity than out of any prior knowledge of the music itself. Benjamin Carr (1768–1831) and James Hewitt (1770–1827) were both English-born and educated. Carr, who studied organ with Charles Wesley and composition with Samuel Arnold, the first great cataloger and editor of Handel’s music, was a prolific publisher, a driving force in the development of a music establishment in Philadelphia, and one of the founders of the Musical Fund Society. Hewitt, who made the questionable claim that he had played violin in London under the direction of Haydn, was similarly engaged in New York, where he bought an earlier publishing concern from Carr, and later in Boston, where he was a conductor, arranger, publisher, and of course composer. Scots-born Alexander Reinagle was a contemporary of Carr in Philadelphia, where he established a concert series and was involved in the theatrical life of the city. He was a favorite composer of George Washington, who not only attended many of Reinagle’s concerts, but arranged for Reinagle to give piano lessons to his adopted daughter, Nelly Custis.
I mention the credentials of the three composers, as one would otherwise never attribute these works to musicians of any serious standing. Of course, when listening to the initial track, the Hewitt Medley Overture , one may well assume that a disc of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 had been substituted. But wait a bit, for soon after follow quotes of reels, marches, and patriotic songs like Yankee Doodle . In many of these, transitions are minimal, and there is little or no attempt to create a coherent flow. Tunes are occasionally cut off in mid-phrase to make way for the next, and the sublime and the trivial reside incongruously together. These then are pops concert entertainments of their day, compendiums of common tunes that would be recognized by the audience, packaged occasionally with the latest works from Europe. (The Mozart piano concerto premiered but 13 years before its appropriation here.) Some, like Carr’s Federal Overture , have a political purpose, with La Marseillaise running roughshod over some English tunes, followed by Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be? and Philip Phile’s Presidential March , now better known as The Itsy-Bitsy Spider . The intent would not have been lost on his audience in 1794. Others by Reinagle, the pragmatic man of the theater, lack pretensions musical or political, and are full of lively dance tunes.
Each of them, whatever the musical merit, gives insight into the culture of the new republic. These seven overtures are all that remain of many such works produced in America in the last two decades of the 18th century, and these have only survived in published piano reductions, or string parts without wind parts or score. The reconstructions were done by musicologist Bertil van Boer, professor of music history and theory at Western Washington University in Bellingham. He explains the historical background, and the detective work done in preparing the reconstruction, in his amusing and informative insert notes. Van Boer’s specialty is Scandinavian music of the 18th century, which explains, perhaps, the provenance of the recording. The Jyväskylä Sinfonia Finlandia is not an ensemble whose work often finds its way to these shores. Fanfare critics have reviewed only two releases: a disc of works by Rautavaara and another of Finnish tangos. That is about as broad a range as any ensemble I know. Now add obscure American popular potpourris to the mix. Who does their programming?
Whatever the story behind the recordings, kudos to van Boer, conductor Patrick Gallois, and the adaptable musicians of the orchestra for rescuing these curiosities and bringing them to our attention. The execution is polished and enthusiastic. The engineering is top-drawer. No one will mistake anything other than the Mozart quotes for great music, but the overtures are amusing, and this release adds an important tile to the mosaic of American music.
FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames
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This is another issue in the Naxos “American Classics” series. Even if you are doubtful about the relevance of the word “Classics” these Overtures most certainly are, and go out of their way to be, American. Each is in the form of a “Medley Overture”, a collection of popular tunes linked together with greater or lesser skill. Although this device originated in London the examples here are all intended to further particular political views at a time of intense debate in America between Federalists and Republicans. All of this is explained in the fascinating leaflet notes by Bertil van Boer who has also reconstructed these works, in some cases from limited evidence.
The tunes included in these Overtures almost invariably include “Yankee Doodle” and a large helping of Scottish and Irish tunes, presumably appealing especially to those coming from those countries. Other tunes used include the “Marseillaise”, William Shield’s “The Ploughboy”, “Oh dear, what can the matter be”, and, most surprising of all, the opening tutti from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 20 in D minor. The results are clearly of considerable historical interest even if musically to describe them even as second rate might seem an exaggeration of their qualities. However unless you insist on nothing but the best, as did a relation of mine whose entire reading of fiction consisted of “Ulysses” and “War and Peace”, there is much to enjoy here. This is due more than a little to the sprightly performances and clear recording but I think is primarily due to the very appealing self-confidence and ingenuous swagger of the music itself. Despite the political messages that their music is apparently intended to send, the three composers represented here were all British in origin – Reinagle from Scotland and Carr and Hewitt from England. These Overtures have much in common with the music of such composers as Michael Kelly, Charles Dibdin and Steven Storace. Hewitt is best known for a wonderfully naïve Sonata describing the Battle of Trenton, and the works by him on this disc are little more advanced musically. However like all the rest they have charm and curiosity value in abundance. Maybe it is overstating the case to describe them as “American Classics” but this is certainly a disc that I find almost always generates a contented smile in this listener at least.
-- John Sheppard, MusicWeb International
Franck: Le Chasseur Maudit, Psyche, Les Eolides / Tingaud, Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Bruch: Concerto for 2 Pianos; Suite on Russian Themes / Bard, Matiakh, Staatskapelle Halle
100 years ago the composer Max Bruch died. His remarkably long life of 82 years covered a period in contemporary history that was determined by scientific progress and comprehensive industrialization, developments that also found expression in art. Shortly after the turn of the century the scandals concerning the compositions by Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg were already rocking the musical world, however, Bruch met the tide of events as stoically as a rock: conservative, patriotic and above all unconditionally beholden to Romanticism in music. The present program was recorded during a Max Bruch Jubilee Concert in Halle and focused besides the famous Suite on Russian Themes also on the rarely performed Concerto for 2 pianos and orchestra.
REVIEWS:
This fine disc presents two Bruch rarities, composed towards the end of his life, both of which started out in other guises. The five-movement Suite on Russian Themes is an adaptation (with new material added) of his Songs and Dances Op. 79, originally for violin and piano. It is remarkable (even for a composer in his mid-60s) that music of such Mendelssohnian deftness and sparkle could have emerged during the first decade of the last century. But putting aside issues of chronology, those who delight in the charming rusticity of, say, the Scottish Fantasy, should find these well-crafted miniatures enchanting.
-- BBC Music Magazine
![Great Comedy Overtures / Friedel, Scottish National Orchestra [blu-ray Audio]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/2862909.jpg?v=1790108831&width=800)
![Great Comedy Overtures / Friedel, Scottish National Orchestra [blu-ray Audio]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/51vUAo37cHL.jpg?v=1790108831&width=800)
Great Comedy Overtures / Friedel, Scottish National Orchestra [blu-ray Audio]
It is also available on standard CD.
The flourishing genre of the comic opera had its roots in eighteenth-century Italian opera buffa, whose irrepressible brio was soon taken up outside the country’s borders. In France it produced opéra comique and operetta, and in German-speaking countries Spieloper and Viennese operetta. Some of the world’s most popular comic opera overtures, filled with gorgeous tunes, brilliant orchestration and race-to-the-finish endings, are presented here. They include staples of the concert repertoire such as Hérold’s dramatic Zampa, the textual delicacy of Wolf-Ferrari’s Il segreto di Susanna and the vivid colour of Lortzing’s Zar und Zimmermann.
![Great Comedy Overtures / Friedel, Scottish National Orchestra [blu-ray Audio]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/2862909.jpg?v=1790108831&width=400)
Piano Works by the Mighty Handful / Fisher
- The Guardian, London
On his first solo recital disc for Chandos, Philip Edward Fisher performs piano works by members of the so-called ‘Mighty Handful’, a group of five Russian composers – César Cui, Alexander Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov – who in the 1860s banded together in an attempt to create a truly national school of Russian music, free of the perceived stifling influences of Italian opera, German lieder, and other western European forms.
The Mighty Handful were all self-trained amateurs. Borodin combined composing with a career in chemistry; Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer; and Mussorgsky had been in the Guards, then in the civil service, before taking up music. They tried to incorporate in their music what they heard in village songs, in Cossack dances, in church chants, and the tolling of church bells; in short, the music of the Mighty Handful was brimming with sounds that echoed Russian life. From the more traditional, Chopin-esque Nocturne by Cui through to the technical innovations and strong Caucasus folk elements of Balakirev’s Islamey, the works here all show the composers’ strong connections with the past and the compositional innovations that would come to influence the likes of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, and help change the course of Russian music for years to come.
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music and The Juilliard School, the pianist Philip Edward Fisher is widely recognised as a unique performer of refined style and exceptional versatility. He has performed across Europe, Africa, and North America where he made his New York debut at Alice Tully Hall in 2002, performing Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, and has also appeared at the Merkin Concert Hall and the Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.
At home he has given performances at the Purcell Room, Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre, and Royal Festival Hall in London, Usher Hall in Edinburgh, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, and Symphony Hall in Birmingham. He has appeared as a soloist with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra, Toledo Symphony Orchestra, and Juilliard Symphony Orchestra, and worked with performers such as exclusive Chandos artist bassoonist Karen Geoghegan, the tenor Robert White, pianist Sara Buechner, and violinists Elmar Oliveira, Philippe Graffin, and Augustin Hadelich. In 2001, Philip Edward Fisher received the Julius Isserlis Award from The Royal Philharmonic Society in London. - Chandos
Ge Gan-ru - Chinese Rhapsody
Sino-American composer Ge Gan-ru writes in an immediately identifiable, intriguingly personal style. On the one hand, you find passages based on texture and timbre using various avant-garde playing techniques and sonority in the manner of say, George Crumb. This means of course that they aren't really that "avant" at all, having been around for the past four or five decades, but what matters is Ge's confident use of them. In contrast to these, he offers lovely, lyrical episodes based on simple, consonant harmonies in gently pulsating strings, often with beautiful solos for oboe or horn and punctuated by isolated interjections from the percussion section. Lastly, there is a vigorous rhythmic element, led by virtuoso fusillades from the generously endowed percussion battery (which may include Chinese and well as Western instruments).
This, then, is the basic mix, but it doesn't describe just how alternately exciting and ravishing this music is, nor does it suggest Ge's ability to organize his materials in such a way as to suggest a clear formal balance and evolving musical argument, qualities often missing from much contemporary music. It's also worth noting that the purely textural passages, also unlike much contemporary music, have an evocative beauty all their own, partly the result of imaginative use of harp and string sonorities, and that Ge's language is capable of a wide range of expression. The moods in Chinese Rhapsody, for example, run the gamut from nostalgic to ferocious, and even find room for touches of witty woodwind writing toward the work's center. The next piece on the disc, Wu (never mind what it means; it doesn't matter), takes this same idiom and reinterprets it in terms of a piano concerto, as a dialogue between soloist and orchestra, with the piano played both conventionally and with various timbre-altering devices in and on the strings.
Six Pentatonic Tunes reveals the composer's ability to relax and write excellent light music, full of warmth and humor, very much in the vein of Tveitt's Hardanger folk song settings or Skalkottas' Greek Dances. In other words, Ge treats his melodies with respect but also manages to create highly sophisticated and harmonically piquant settings that enhance their character without smothering it. This, by the way, is not an easy task, and it says something about his artistry that Ge manages the job so deftly. I am sure that he must also be quite satisfied with these very exciting performances. Absent a score, I wouldn't bet money on whether those snap pizzicatos roughly 8 minutes into Wu are quite together or not, but under José Serebrier's leadership the Royal Scottish National Orchestra responds with great brilliance and enthusiasm, and it goes without saying that contemporary music specialist Margaret Leng Tan, for whom the solo part of Wu was written, plays it as well as anyone possibly can.
State-of-the-art sonics, whether in stereo or SACD multichannel format, complete a compelling portrait of a vital, vibrant creative voice. I have to say that, speaking personally, I'm a bit fed up with composers (whether Oriental or Occidental) exploiting the East/West nationalist angle with such tiresome regularity. I suppose if the quality of the results were higher, it would be a different matter, but as it stands this trend bores me. More often than not it simply provides a smokescreen behind which we find idioms that are expressively limited, superficial, and predictable. I'm not naming names, but you should have no problem creating your own list. Ge Gan-ru, on the other hand, deserves your consideration. What certainly does not bore me is imaginative, well-written music of any stripe, and that is exactly what we have here. This guy's for real. [5/13/2005]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
SPARTACUS
Molvaer: Ibsen's Ghosts / Norwegian National Ballet
Are we ever honest enough to be unaffected by lies? This is the question asked by Henrik Ibsen’s drama Ghosts (Gengangere). Oswald Alving returns from a bohemian existence in Paris to small-town Norway. Encountering people who do not communicate, Oswald responds by becoming ironic and distant. He gradually learns more of the secrets that weigh on his family, as well as those inside himself. His mother, Mrs Alving, welcomes her much-missed son home – and slowly understands what, or whom, he has brought home with him. «Ghosts is a psychological thriller in which the characters learn more and more about their own stories,» says director Marit Moum Aune. «It’s about how the unsaid can grow to become insuperable. Immense courage is required to make peace with one’s illusions.» Together with the young, critically acclaimed choreographer Cina Espejord, she retells Ibsen’s play as a ballet. The pair feel the story is suited to dance because both its inner and outer brutality can be pitted against the power of dance. Ibsen’s Ghosts is an evocative production in a modern dance style. Nils Petter Molvær has composed new music, which he performs on-stage together with Jan Bang.
Galuppi: Complete Piano Sonatas, Vol. 4 / Seivewright, Scottish Baroque Soloists
Peter Seivewright was amongst the first musicians to seriously research (in 1994) the 100+ keyboard sonatas by Venetian composer Galuppi, also famed as a pioneer of opera buffa. While others have since come to appreciate and record the fine variety and novelty of these works, for many personal and career reasons, Seivewright’s series was held up after volume 3 was released in 2004 but is now back on track with this intermediate album which includes also the G major Piano Concerto. Many of the sonatas have had to be reconstructed from single movement manuscripts. They show amazing diversity, from single-movement works to two- and three-movement pieces, and from basic baroque style to a Romanticism prescient of Schumann. Seivewright strongly believes that the works were specifically written for the pianoforte rather than harpsichord due to their frequent need for sostenuto and other factors. Peter Seivewright studied at Oxford then at the Royal Northern College of Music. He has performed extensively as recitalist and concerto soloist and has taught in colleges around the world, from Scotland to Trinidad to Afghanistan and most recently in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Enescu, Ravel & Scott: Correspondances
Antarctica label launches a new series named Spring and focused on debut recordings by a selection of compelling musicians whose talents and creativity are characterised by noteworthy essence and individuality. The first release is by Romanian pianist Cristian Sandrin who chose an original and engaging programme of music by Enescu, Ravel and Scott, highlighting the mutual influences of three composers of three different countries, all working in Paris. The recording took place in highly reputed Potton Hall under the technical responsability of Ben Connellan. Produced by Rachel Smith.
Arnold: Scottish, Cornish, English, Irish Dances / London PO
Lyrita is back, thank God, courtesy of Nimbus, and this now-legendary recording of Malcolm Arnold conducting his own delightful English, Scottish, Irish, and Cornish Dances (plus the Sarabande and Polka from the ballet Solitaire) never has been surpassed. True, the playing isn't quite perfect. There are a couple of brass flubs here and there, but you have to strain to hear them and probably won't notice. More to the point, the sheer gusto of the interpretations (witness English Dance No. 4) and the impact of the superb engineering remain in a class of their own. Colorful, tuneful, and a delight from first note to last, this disc is a treasure whose appeal hasn't dimmed a bit since the day it was released. No self-respecting collector of English music can afford to be without it. [9/19/2006]--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
