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Beethoven: Violin Concerto, Op. 61 & String Trio, Op. 3 / Gaede, Rajski, Polish Chamber Philharmonic
TACET Musikproduktion · Feb 2020SACD$26.99 -
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Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 3 & Corelli Variations / Giltburg, Prieto, RSNO
Naxos · May 2018CD$19.99 -
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SaleRavel, Berkeley & Pounds: Orchestral Works / Wilson, Sinfonia of London
Chandos · Feb 2024SACD$21.99$10.99 -
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Szymanowski: Concert Overture, Sinfonia Concertante, etc. / Steffens, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie
Capriccio · Nov 2016CD$21.99 -
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Brahms / Leenaars, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Sony Masterworks · May 2019CD$11.98 -
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Music from Diaghilev's Ballet Russes / Fischer, BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Signum Classics · Jan 2011CD$41.99 -
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Mahler: Symphony No. 3; Debussy: La Mer / Mitropoulos, Cologne Rso
ICA Classics · May 2011CD$26.99 -
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Brahms III: Sinfonische Klassik / Brogli-Sacher, Lubeck Philharmonic
Musicaphon · Jul 2020SACD$16.99 -
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Debussy: Orchestral Works Vol 7 / Thibaudet, Meyer, Markl, Lyon NO
"We've reached Volume 7 in Naxos's superb Lyonnaise exploration of Debussy's orchestral works with the thrilling Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra, superbly played here by Jean-Yves Thibaudet. It's a grand showpiece, reminiscent of César Franck's Symphonic Variations but painted in Debussy's inimitable palette."
-- Stephen Pritchard, The Observer [11/19/2011]
Brahms: Piano Trio Nos. 1-3 - Concerto for Violin & Cello
Beethoven: Violin Concerto, Op. 61 & String Trio, Op. 3 / Gaede, Rajski, Polish Chamber Philharmonic
Andreas Speer writes of this new album: “A soft knock at the door. Who is it? Could it be? - Hopefully it is! - Hidden feelings, longings arise, a sense of who and what it could be, and then the door opens, and it's him – rather than crashing in he enters cautiously, and the reality is even sweeter and more beautiful than imagined - Please excuse me giving rein to such unrestrained romanticism, but these are pretty much the associations running through my mind as I listen to this recording. The tapping motif in the timpani and the singing lover are as one: Beethoven's Violin Concerto is chamber music. Daniel Gaede plays unaffectedly without any soloistic pretensions and on the same wavelength as the Polish Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra under Wojciech Rajski. As a prelude rather than an encore, the three brothers in spirit, Daniel, Thomas and Sebastian Gaede play the Serenade op. 3.”
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 3 & Corelli Variations / Giltburg, Prieto, RSNO
Rachmaninov’s ‘Piano Concerto No. 3’ is a complex, epic narrative that moves from a simple opening melody to the triumphant apotheosis at its conclusion. The composer ingeniously links motifs, melodies and at times whole sections between the movements, unifying the concerto into a single overarching storyline. In the ‘Variations on a Theme of Correlli,’ Rachmaninov reworks the original theme using his unique harmonic language until there is no trace left of its Baroque or Renaissance origins. Pianist Boris Giltburg was born in 1984 in Moscow and has lived in Tel Aviv since early childhood. He began lessons with his mother at the age of five and went on to study with Arie Vardi. In 2013 he took first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, catapulting his career to a new level. His previous solo Rachmaninov recording was named Gramophone album of the month in June 2016, and more recently his first concerto album won a Diapason d’or for his account of the Shostakovich concertos.
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REVIEWS:
Boris Giltburg’s new Naxos recording of the D minor Concerto with Carlos Miguel Prieto and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra shatters the encrustation of reputational habit, offering instead a vividly imaginative re creation of a score that lives and breathes with irresistible vitality. Giltburg’s approach is fundamentally lyrical, rhetorically apt and, aided and abetted by Prieto and the Scots, sensitive to every marking in the score.
– Gramophone The opening bars of this Third Concerto performance set the scene for a very personal approach to the ones we have already on disc; the whole performance gives us a totally new approach where the choice of tempos is very personal, at times unusually relaxed, at other times are charging headlong. The first movement cadenza is almost improvisatory in every respect, and sets out his credentials as one of today’s most outgoing virtuosos. His finale is full of white-heat moments. The conductor, Carlos Miguel Prieto, is at one with his soloist, while the Royal Scottish National are on fine form. A very attractive account of the Variations on a Theme of Corelli closes the disc. The recorded quality of the concerto is excellent..
– David's Review Corner (David Denton)
Ravel, Berkeley & Pounds: Orchestral Works / Wilson, Sinfonia of London
The three composers whose works appear on this album are interconnected: Ravel was a mentor to Lennox Berkeley, and Berkeley to Pounds. Le Tombeau de Couperin marks Ravel’s movement towards neoclassicism, its forms and style a re-invention of ones from the French baroque.
Originally written for solo piano, the movements of the suite were dedicated to friends whom Ravel had lost in the First World War. In 1919, he orchestrated four of the six movements (the version performed here). Berkeley met Ravel a number of times in the 1920s, working as an interpreter and tour-guide whilst Ravel was in London. Ravel advised him to study with Nadia Boulanger, which he did, between 1926 and 1932.
Commissioned by Sir Arthur Bliss for the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1942, the Divertimento initially received a mixed reception, but has since found many supporters (including Pounds). The critic Peter Dickinson felt it showed an ‘instinctive and unimpassioned creativeness associated with the French aesthetic, but by no means restricted to it’.
Adam Pounds studied privately with Berkeley in London during the late 1970s, and in his own music has perpetuated the firm commitment of the two earlier composers to clarity and accessibility in everything they wrote. His Third Symphony was written in 2021 and is a response to the national lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Pounds states that the piece captures the ‘sadness, humor, determination, and defiance’ which everyone faced at this time – not least musicians. Scored for relatively modest orchestral forces, the work is dedicated to Sinfonia of London and John Wilson who here give the work its world première recording.
Telemann: Sonatas, Trios & Concerti
Szymanowski: Concert Overture, Sinfonia Concertante, etc. / Steffens, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie
The trouble with describing the music of an unfamiliar composer is that one reverts to comparisons with better-known ones – as if originality of voice is given only to those whose music has crossed the fickle threshold of popular taste.
With the Concert Overture which opens the disc, one can possibly be excused this, for if any music ever sounded like a Richard Strauss tone poem, this does. From its boisterous opening to its triumphal conclusion, it is a feast of Straussian gestures and ideas, a wonderful orchestral romp and a stirring musical journey. And this is what Szymanowski intended, for in 1904 when he wrote it, Richard Strauss was the dominant figure. If the booklet notes are to be believed, Szymanowski deliberately aped the style of Strauss “as a provocation to the, in his view, completely fossilized structures of Polish music”.
At this point we must break off to mention those booklet notes, tightly compressed into a distinctly unappealing booklet which seems designed to put off potential buyers. Christian Heindl’s German text is dense enough, striving to place Szymanowksi in some sort of context with Polish music at the start of the last century. But the English translation (claiming to be the work of one Ian Mansfield) is a disgrace. Seeming to have done little more than run the original German through a free online translator, and not even having made the effort to check the spelling afterwards, Mansfield comes up with such incoherent nonsense as; “he ranks as one of the many tone wolves and practically outsiders in music”, “the composer instrumented the cycle for chamber orchestra”, and “meaningful for the concert hall and fathoming it to the depths”.
Soprano Marisol Montalvo is, thankfully, infinitely more eloquent in the cycle of five songs, Slopiewnie, which bears the same opus number as Szymanowski’s great opera, King Roger but is otherwise unconnected. Exotic, sometimes harmonically brittle, sparsely orchestrated but highly effective, these are a world away from the lush world of Strauss’s orchestral songs and present a musical voice which is both distinctive and accomplished. There is nothing identifiably Polish about these settings of Polish texts by Julian Tuwim, but the booklet note suggests the musical idiom is derived from Gorals, an ethnic group which “has its area of distribution in the Polish Tatra and the Beskids, but also in parts of Slovakia”. It also observes some stylistic parallels with Stravinsky and Les Noces. Montalvo has a pure, shining vocal quality with an innately focused sense of pitch.
The major work on the disc is the Fourth Symphony, subtitled Sinfonia Concertante, but which is, to all intents and purposes, a fully-fledged piano concerto. Szymanowski wrote the work for himself to play (although he dedicated it to Artur Rubinstein) and called it a Symphony to disguise his shortcomings as a concerto soloist. Ewa Kupiec is the fleet-fingered soloist, delivering the almost Ravelian delicacy of the first movement with a refreshingly light touch supported by the kind of clear-textured orchestration which seems such a feature of Szymanowski. Even as the movement builds up to its great climax, the feeling of delicacy and suppleness Kupiec brings to the performance is never lost, and Karl-Heinz Steffens seems to have an instinctive feel for the balance which comes across even when the recording engineers have done little to assist. A gentle, fluttering second movement introduces all manner of magical orchestral effects, much in the manner of a Bartók night-music movement but built around Polish rather than Hungarian folk songs. And in the final movement it is the spirit of Polish dances which seems to dominate in music that sounds like Ravel and Bartók holding hands but is, in reality, uniquely the voice of Szymanowski – stunning orchestral writing, impeccably crafted moments of climax and repose and an exotic musical language which is utterly enthralling. Steffens maintains a wonderfully incisive rhythmic momentum which his German players throw themselves into with great gusto.
The Nocturne and Tarantella is an orchestration, made two years after Szymanowski’s death by Grzegorz Fitelberg, of a work originally written for violin and piano. It draws attention to Szymanowski’s fondness for the exotic, combining Spanish and Italian elements in a scintillating dance-like display, where only the final cadence seems indicative of a composer not quite of the very first rank, but with a voice all his own.
– MusicWeb International (Marc Rochester)
Brahms & Dvorák: Orchestral Works
Brahms / Leenaars, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
There was no point in his life when Johannes Brahms did not take an active interest in choral music. It was an interest that he evinced not only as a choral conductor in Detmold, Hamburg and Vienna but also as a composer who bequeathed to posterity a vast number of secular and sacred choral works. Among his principal compositions for chorus and orchestra were not only his German Requiem but also his Song of Destiny op. 54 (1871) for mixed chorus and orchestra. This was arguably the most significant of all Romantic settings of a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin and has now been selected by the Berlin Radio Choir for a CD that explores the whole vast range of Brahms’s choral writing. Under the direction of Gijs Leenaars, the Choir – heard here in various formations – is joined in some of these works by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester of Berlin. The Drei Gesänge op. 42, for example, are scored for mixed unaccompanied chorus, while Nänie op. 82 was written for chorus and orchestra. “All of the pieces that are featured on this CD show how well Brahms was able to write for the human voice,” says Gijs Leenaars, “and this is true of both their compositional textures and the impact of the sonorities that he uses.” At the same time Leenaars notes that the present programme is an ideal showcase for the Choir’s versatility. The Choir, he goes on, is a “great vehicle for choral works with orchestra, in which the right balance between orchestra and voices is a challenge”, while in the a cappella repertory the singers impress with the delicate textures of their voices.
The texts that Brahms has set in this selection of pieces all raise existential questions about our lives as human beings. The Song of Destiny is taken from Hölderlin’s epistolary novel Hyperion and draws on the world of classical mythology, contrasting the carefree lives of the gods on Mount Olympus with the toilsome existence of mortals on earth. Nänie for chorus and orchestra was written in 1881 in memory of the painter Anselm Feuerbach, who had died the previous year. The motet “Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen?” (Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery?) op. 74 no. 1 revolves around the question of why an almighty God allows to us suffer. “Es tönt ein voller Harfenklang” (The sounds of a full-toned harp ring forth) comes from the Vier Gesänge op. 17, which Brahms wrote in 1860 for the women’s choir that he had founded in Hamburg the previous year. And the Geistliches Lied (Sacred Song) op. 30 for four-part mixed chorus and strings invites its listeners to be steadfast and take comfort in their faith in the face of suffering and death.
Music from Diaghilev's Ballet Russes / Fischer, BBC National Orchestra of Wales
STRAVINSKY; POULENC; LIADOV BBC NATIONAL ORCHESTRA OF WALES; FISCHER (COND.) MUSIC FROM DIAGHILEV'S BALLET RUSSES- STRAVINSKY: THE FIREBIRD, THE RITE OF SPRING, PETRUSHKA, SCHERZO FANTASTIQUE; LIADOV: BABA-YAGA, THE ENCHANTED LAKE. KIKIMORA; POULENC: LES BICHES
Coates: Orchestral Works, Vol. 3 / Wilson, BBC Philharmonic
John Wilson’s third volume of the music of Eric Coates combines some of the composer’s larger-scale works with miniatures and two marches.
The Cinderella Phantasy frames the well-known fairy-tale from Cinderella’s perspective, glossing over the more brutal elements of the original, with some notably descriptive writing for the dream sequences, the ball and of course the happy ending.
The Three Men is to some extent autobiographical, as Coates explores his love of his native Nottinghamshire countryside, his love for London and his love of the sea.
The Three Elizabeths is a suite of portraits of three great figures in English History – Queen Elizabeth I; Elizabeth of Glamis (then the Queen Consort, now remembered as the Queen Mother), and Princess Elizabeth (who of course became Queen Elizabeth II).
Lost Love is a wistful Romance written in 1939, while the much later Sweet Seventeen is a beautiful waltz, inspired by Eric and his wife Phyliss’ love of dancing. In fact, the title refers to his first date with Phyllis, at the Blenheim Restaurant, the day before her seventeenth birthday. Two marches complete the program – the Television March was commissioned by the BBC (just three weeks before the date of broadcast!) for the resumption of television broadcasting in 1946. The Dam Busters March was used as the main title for Michael Anderson’s 1955 film and is arguably the composer’s most widely known work.
REVIEW:
The Dam Busters march became the biggest and final hit of Coates’s career. John Wilson’s way with it – letting that tune glide in almost imperceptibly, relishing the moment when the violins decorate it, like sprinkling icing on a cake – typifies his approach.
-- Gramophone
Beethoven: Piano Trios, Op. 38 & Op. 81b
Mahler: Symphony No. 3; Debussy: La Mer / Mitropoulos, Cologne Rso
This release is an extremely important one for admirers of Dimitri Mitropoulos. It contains, released officially for the first time, his only recording of the complete Mahler Third Symphony. There is another recording, made in New York in 1956 and that has just reappeared in a fascinating boxed set of Mahler performances by this conductor - reviewed by me recently. Unfortunately, that New York reading is compromised by cuts in the first and last movements and by some eccentrically fast speeds. As I said in commenting on that box, the New York performance shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand; however this Cologne performance surely gives us the best representation of Mitropoulos’s view of the symphony.
The Cologne performance is notable in several ways, one of which is the overall distinction of the interpretation. In addition it is the conductor’s very last performance: just two days later, while rehearsing the same symphony in Milan, Mitropoulos collapsed, felled by a massive heart attack, and died. But, it seems, we are even more fortunate to have this recording because, incredible though it seems, according to Michael Schwalb’s booklet note, the conductor actually suffered a heart attack during the performance of the first movement. There was a scheduled interval after that movement and Mitropoulos insisted on returning to the podium and completing the concert. This was news to me: in his authoritative biography, Priest of Music. The life of Dimitri Mitropoulos (1995) William R Trotter merely states that the conductor’s “physical state was so alarming” at the interval that he was begged to curtail the performance. If Mr Schwalb’s account is accurate it is truly amazing that a conductor could direct such a full-on performance of so taxing and lengthy a work under such circumstances.
No allowances need be made for Mitropoulos’s health when you listen to this performance for it carries all the hallmarks of his conducting, not least the intensity and energy that invariably marked his music making. William Trotter asserts that this Cologne performance is “much superior” to the New York reading. I’m not sure I entirely agree. There are flaws in the playing on both recordings – after all, these are both live readings – but it seems to me that the Cologne orchestra, though they give of their considerable best for Mitropoulos, can’t quite match the overall standard of the New Yorkers. That said, no one buying this set is going to feel seriously short changed by the quality of the playing, I think one can forgive fluffs and the inevitable technical shortcomings of a radio recording made over fifty years ago, when confronted by an interpretation of such intensity and one in which the conductor so evidently believes in the score.
One notices the greater sense of space in the Cologne performance right at the start where I calculate the beat in the great horn call at about 102 beats per minute – by contrast, the New York performance is at about 122 beats per minute. This sets the tone for a really gripping reading of the great first movement. One might quibble with the odd interpretative detail here and there but overall the vision that Mitropoulos has of the music is powerfully conveyed. I’d describe quite a lot of the music as sturdy in Mitropoulos’s hands – there’s never quite the hedonistic rush that one gets at times in Bernstein’s 1961 New York recording, still one of my favourites. But I found myself thoroughly convinced.
Though the many dramatic passages in the first movement make the full effect that you’d expect with this conductor he’s good too in the more delicate passages. In the second movement, where delicacy is called for to a much greater extent, I felt there were too many instances where the tempo either surges a little or is slowed momentarily. The effect is fussy and it rather marred my enjoyment. Much of III has a good, earthy feel but I was rather disappointed by the treatment of the nostalgic post horn passages, where I didn’t feel Mitropoulos gave the music sufficient space; these episodes sound rather perfunctory, almost as if the conductor found them embarrassing.
Lucretia West is a rich-toned, expressive soloist in IV. However, the exposed quiet passages for the brass find the players a little bit over-exposed. I felt that V was rather serious in tone, though the music is lively enough. I missed a touch of lightness but this may not be a problem for other listeners. ICA get something of a black mark for the layout of the discs, I’m afraid. The last three movements should follow each other seamlessly but, instead, you have to change discs for the finale. It would have been perfectly possible to have had La Mer and the first movement of the symphony on disc one with the remaining five movements of the symphony comfortably accommodated on disc two. The way the symphony is split by ICA is nothing short of crass.
Actually, the reading of the finale is the big disappointment for me. In the first place it starts off far too loud – mf, I’d guess. The start of the finale in the New York reading is much more subdued. The last time I heard this music was in a live performance at the Three Choirs Festival just a few days before auditioning this disc. There Susanna Mälkki and the Philharmonia achieved just the hushed intensity that this present performance lacks. In addition the tempo is too swift. I calculate that Mitropoulos takes the opening at about 56 beats per minute. Actually, that’s not much swifter than the pace in New York in 1956 – ca 51 bpm – but it feels fast. As the movement unfolds one feels there’s not quite the same gravity and mystery that one experiences in the very best accounts. And, for my money, the Cologne players, though they play well, aren’t in the same league as the New York Philharmonic or several other orchestras that have featured in recordings of this symphony. The booklet notes reveal that around this time Mitropoulos had agreed in principle to become chief conductor of this orchestra and one wonders how much he might have improved them, given time to work with them on an extended basis, if that appointment had ever come about.
So this account of the finale of the Third isn’t as spacious as I’d like. One might call the reading urgent – or, perhaps apply Tony Duggan’s description, elsewhere, of this conductor’s ‘edgy’ style.
This, then, is a flawed reading of Mahler’s Third but it’s still one that commands – nay, demands – attention for throughout the ninety-five minute span of the piece one constantly has the sense of a great conductor at work and nothing about this reading is routine.
The reading of La Mer is somewhat unconventional in that you will look in vain here for washes of impressionist colouring or for Mediterranean warmth. This is a taut, urgent and dramatic reading. Sometimes, as in the short, quicker passage in ‘De l’aube à midi sur la mer’ (from 4:22), the very urgency of Mitropoulos’s interpretation seems to have the orchestra audibly scrambling to keep up. At times, the end of this same movement being one example, the sound is rather fierce. In ‘Dialogue du vent et de la mer’ one feels that the wind blows rather fiercely and it’s something of a chill wind. Often, during the piece as a whole, one senses that the sea which Mitropoulos is depicting is pretty foam flecked. None of the foregoing should be interpreted as an implicit verdict that the interpretation is an unsatisfactory one. I find it bracing but it may startle some listeners used to the approach of other conductors.
At the end of the second disc we hear a few short remarks made by Mitropoulos during a rehearsal with this orchestra sometime in the 1950s. He speaks in German so I can’t tell you what he says but it’s evident from the orchestra’s reaction both before and after he speaks that he was highly regarded by them.
The recorded sound can be a bit boxy at times and the balances aren’t always ideal – the percussion is too prominent on several occasions. However, these are fifty-year-old recordings so one must make allowances. They’ve been transferred pretty well and there’s nothing to mar ones appreciation of the performances.
This is an important set and I’m thrilled in particular that ICA have brought about the first official release of Mitropoulos’s mighty vision of Mahler’s Third. This is an essential appendix to the Music & Arts box of New York performances and all admirers of this great conductor should snap it up as a matter of urgency.
-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International
Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante, Music for French Horn
Brahms III: Sinfonische Klassik / Brogli-Sacher, Lubeck Philharmonic
Again and again, attempts were made to uncover aspects of a hidden topic in Brahms‘ suddenly successful 3rd Symphony. The Brahms biographer Max Kalbeck saw the composer‘s preoccupation with Faust material at work in the middle movements and took the view to see in the symphony a patriotic-romantic heroic birth of the artist, which culminated in a big celebration at the Niederwald monument (last movement). The Germania memorial was completed in 1883 and Brahms even visited it during his summer stay in Wiesbaden, but a programmatic connection to the symphony remains exclusively speculative. We know little of Brahms himself about the genesis, he was generally reluctant to comment on unfinished compositions and he seemed particularly silent about this work. - The “Sinfonia concertante” is an example of Mozart‘s way of dealing with experiences while traveling. There is no direct evidence of it‘s creation. While he was absent on April 5, 1778, Mozart mentioned in his letter to his father that he would “make a symphony concertante,“ but the casting mentioned refers to a different composition. A passage from the French Journal de Musique shows how popular this genre was: One appreciates the „special kind of concert, where all the instruments shine in their time, tease and answer each other, argue and reconcile“. Mozart was unable to have a composition of this kind put on the program of the Concerts spirituels. With great probability Mozart then composed the large “Sinfonia concertant” for violin and viola, which was and later very popular in Salzburg. Here he was able to publicize the new genre and at the same time commit himself to a Salzburg tradition in the choice of the two solo instruments.
Jan Van Gilse: Symphony No. 3 / Porcelijn, Netherlands Symphony Orchestra
GILSE Symphony No. 3, “Elevation” • David Porcelijn, cond; Aile Asszonyi (sop); Netherlands SO • CPO 777518 (63:02 Text and Translation)
This is only my second encounter with the music of Jan van Gilse (1881–1944). His First and Second symphonies, recorded by these same forces and reviewed by James H. North in Fanfare 32:2, didn’t leave me with a lasting impression of the composer’s musical profile, so in requesting this release of his Third Symphony, I thought I’d give Gilse another shot.
Though he was Dutch by birth, Gilse was the product of German training, one of his teachers having been Humperdinck. Upon completing his studies, he secured conducting appointments in Bremen and Munich, but after the outbreak of World War I, he returned to the Netherlands, where he led the Utrecht Municipal Orchestra from 1917 to 1922. Apparently, his tenure was a stormy one in which a vitriolic dispute between Gilse and composer and critic Willem Pijper eventually led to Gilse’s resignation and the penning of a 350,000-word autobiography in which he heaped scorn on the heads of all those who had made his life in Utrecht miserable.
But Gilse was not all bitterness and payback. During the Second World War, he and his two sons joined the resistance movement against the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. His life, however, ended in tragedy, as he saw both sons killed by German troops and then succumbed himself, probably to pneumonia, soon after, not living long enough to see the war’s end.
Gilse completed his Third Symphony in 1907 while still in Bremen, including in its third and fifth movements a part for soprano soloist. Unfortunately, the English translation of John Smit’s album note by Susan Marie Praeder gives no explanation for the work’s title, “Elevation” ( Erhebung in its German publication), or its connection, if any, to the score’s verses.
The third-movement text appears to be a free verse poem by Gilse himself, dedicated in gratitude to Dina Mollinger-Hooijer, wife of the director of the Netherlands National Insurance Company. The love poem, which makes no attempt to hide its erotically charged imagery, leads one to read between the lines as to the reason for Gilse’s gratitude.
The fifth-movement text draws three stanzas from the equally suggestive erotic poetry of Solomon’s Song of Songs , though the particular verses Gilse selects don’t contain some of the text’s more explicit references.
If Gilse’s Second Symphony hints at Strauss, Elgar, and perhaps a touch of Mahler, as North noted in his review of that earlier work, the opening slow movement to his Third Symphony is almost pure Wagner in Tristan und Isolde mode; one waits for the face of the famous Liebestod to emerge at any moment from the granite slab Gilse is chiseling.
The second movement tosses us right into the middle of Strauss’s Don Juan . There are moments of resemblance so close they border on plagiarism.
For the third movement, we’re back to Wagner. Without benefit of a score, I can’t be sure, but on one of the soprano’s climactic notes at 3:43, Gilse’s underlying harmony sounds darn close to Wagner’s augmented ninth “Tristan” chord.
Improbable as it may seem, the fourth movement opens with what sounds like a pre-echo of Ravel’s La Valse , and then we’re back to part Richard Strauss and part parody of the waltzing Strausses.
The fifth and final movement, at almost 22 minutes in length, dwarfs all the others. Here’s the Elgar North mentioned that’s been missing up to this point. What a gorgeous ceremonial opening. Though it lacks the same striding gait, the music recalls to no small degree the magnificent processional that leads off Elgar’s First Symphony. Patience is advised, for the soprano doesn’t make her first entrance until the movement is more than half over. When she finally does, it’s Isolde’s soliloquy leading up to the final Liebestod.
Clearly, Gilse’s score is largely derivative and, as North put it, “pure high Romanticism.” But that’s exactly what should appeal about it to those who love to laze in luxuriant orchestral scores. Gilse may not have had an original idea in his head for this symphony—I can’t speak to any of his later works or to his opera, Thijl , reputedly his crowning achievement—but he demonstrates a sure hand when it comes to the craft of orchestration and of weaving a colorful, vibrant musical tapestry. Gilse’s Third Symphony displays the talent of a composer who could write wonderfully effective music, even if it was someone else’s.
As usual, CPO’s recording is up to the highest industry standards, and David Porcelijn, who has been delivering the goods for the label’s Röntgen project, here leads the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra in what seems to be a perfectly paced performance. Estonian soprano Aile Asszonyi, who has a high-lying, lighter-than-usual, but exceptionally focused voice, beams right in on the notes with laser-like precision. Gilse’s writing, which exploits the voice’s upper range, seems ideally suited to Asszonyi, and she repays the composer with beautifully sung performances in the two vocal movements.
If you love the music of Wagner and Strauss with a serving of Elgar on the side, you are guaranteed to enjoy this CD.
FANFARE: Jerry Dubins
Itzhak Perlman - Concertos, Sonatas & more...
R E V I E W S of some of the recordings that make up this set:
It's always fascinating to go back to the early recordings of artists who are firmly ensconced in the classical music pantheon. Such is the case with this recording of the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius concertos made by Itzhak Perlman in the late 1960s.
The Tchaikovsky concerto was written for virtuoso violinist Leopold Auer who actually thought the work unplayable. The young Perlman brings passion and flash to the concerto; his playing is suitably poetic in its sentimental moments and fiery in its finale. Sibelius's concerto was written about the same time that he wrote his second symphony. Perlman grasps the concerto's romantic soul while standing up to its demanding modernist technical challenges. As an added bonus the recording includes Dvorák's Romance, a gentle idyll that displays Perlman's lovely legato playing. -- MUZE [review of RCA 63591]
This album continues the tribute to classic film music from John Williams and Itzhak Perlman's CINEMA SERENADE disc. It is an undeniably old-fashioned and romantic album, befitting the era the music is drawn from. On "As Time Goes By" from CASABLANCA, Perlman proves that he's still one of the world's premier concert violinists, playing the theme with palpable ache. Most of these compositions are by the classic film composers--Alfred Newman, Miklós Rózsa, Max Steiner--with one notable exception. William Walton's theme for HENRY V gets a suitably regal, yet restrained, treatment. Perlman sounds as if he's having a good time with the sprightly Irish motifs of "The Quiet Man." The orchestrations are rich and dramatic, and the recording quality is superb. This album is highly recommended to anyone who remembers when a soundtrack was more than just a bunch of flavor-of-the-month pop tunes. -- MUZE [review of SONY 60773]
Prokofiev's F minor Sonata—surely his greatest chamber work—opens bleakly, then flowers to harmonic richness before switching to a sharp-edged Allegro brusco, a deeply introspective Andante and a closing Allegrissimo that recalls (or anticipates, depending on its precise chronology in Prokofiev's thinking) the finale of the great Eighth Piano Sonata... Perlman's is an immensely assured, sweet-centred reading, delicate where needs be (the ''wind in a graveyard'' passages of the first movement, for example) and yet with a Heifetzian resilience that both sonatas willingly respond to... When it comes to the delightful Second Sonata—of rather less import, and a second-hand utterance (the original was for flute and piano)—Perlman and Ashkenazy play with astonishing virtuosity and here their visceral virtues win hands down, especially in the Scherzo... the playing has real class, the recording is clean and there's a substantial bonus in Perlman's accomplished 1966 version of the Second Violin Concerto, where Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony trace and characterize the score's every subtle detail—especially among the woodwind. That, for me, is the disc's most indelible interpretative feature. -- Gramophone [review of RCA 61454]
Schumann: Complete Symphonic Works, Vol. 3
Brahms: Symphony No. 3 - Debussy: La Mer - Chausson: La mort
Ornstein: Piano Music, Vol. 3 / Valkov
Leo Ornstein is as well known for his extraordinary longevity as for his music: he was born in Ukraine in 1893 and died in Wisconsin in 2002, aged at least 108. His generous output of music, much of it for the piano, his own instrument, remains poorly known, although it can stand shoulder to shoulder with that of many better-known names. Many of the pieces here – which cover a span of over 60 years – have their roots in Debussy, Skryabin and Szymanowski, but Ornstein welds those influences into an edgy, energetic language very much his own. The Three Moods of c. 1914 are anger, grief and joy, but there is strength of feeling in all the music to be heard here. Indeed, the Nine Vignettes bear a misleading title: they are substantial and powerful virtuoso essays which can flare up into moments of startling power and violence; hitherto unknown, they constitute a major contribution to the piano literature.
