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DEMON'S DANCE (BLUE NOTE TONE POET SERIES)

BLUE NOTE RECORDS

Vinyl

$42.49 Oct 06, 2023

Vinyl LP pressing. Blue Note Tone Poet Series. Jackie McLean's music weaved in and out of the avant-garde throughout the 1960s with the brilliant 1963 inside-out dates One Step Beyond and Destination... Out! Eventually leading to full-throated free jazz of the 1967 dates New and Old Gospel (featuring Ornette Coleman on trumpet) and 'Bout Soul. Demon's Dance, which was recorded in December 1967, found the alto saxophonist maintaining a decidedly post-bop edge with a spirited quintet comprised of trumpeter Woody Shaw, pianist LaMont Johnson, bassist Scott Holt, and drummer Jack DeJohnette. The six-song set presented a pair of tunes each by McLean, Shaw, and composer Cal Massey with highlights including McLean's churning title track, Shaw's tuneful bossa "Sweet Love of Mine," and Massey's brightly swinging "Message from Trane" in tribute to the great John Coltrane who had passed away early that year. But the album's most striking feature may be the unforgettable cover artwork by Mati Klarwein whose work also graced the cover of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew.

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DEMON'S DANCE (BLUE NOTE TONE POET SERIES)
BLUE NOTE RECORDS Oct 2023
Vinyl
$42.49

Brett Dean: Water Music; Pastoral Symphony, etc. / Bezaly, HK Gruber, Swedish CO

BIS

$21.99 Jul 01, 2009

Excellent performances and superb recording of some of Dean’s most endearing works.

Several recent records released by ABC Classics and BIS have given Brett Dean’s music the wider exposure that it undoubtedly deserves. The works on this brand new disc tend to confirm Dean’s status as a highly personal composer. He emerges as a composer whose music tackles contemporary issues in purely musical terms rather than in the bluntly polemical ones that one might have expected. For example, Pastoral Symphony and Water Music deal with contemporary concerns such as deforestation and man’s repeated damage to Nature in Pastoral Symphony and the global problem of water supply and lack of it in Water Music. Other works such as Carlo and Testament draw on extra-musical preoccupations such as madness and despair. Other still such as Game Over and Vexations and Devotions reflect on certain debilitating effects of our present-day “civilisation” such as the banality of modern TV and its game and reality shows or of the use of often abstruse jargon alienating the power of speech.

Pastoral Symphony for ensemble and tape was composed after the composer’s return to Australia. “This piece is about glorious birdsong, the threat that it faces, the loss, and the soulless noise that we’re left with when they’re all gone” (Brett Dean). The work opens with a dawn chorus on tape to which the oboe adds its harmonic overtones to create an intense, atmospheric but by no means idyllic landscape. This uneasy, foreboding feeling prevails for a while. The music then seems to open-up but becomes more agitated and restless till it reaches a climax when the insistent sounds of a logger’s axe are heard. After the trees fall birds scatter and the music launches into an aggressive, mechanical section leading into the barren and desolate coda.

The Siduri Dances for flute and strings - the most recent work here and the only one that does not use sampler or pre-recorded material - draws on a piece for flute: Demons composed for Sharon Bezaly. The composer points that Siduri is a wise female divinity from the Epic of Gilgamesh, who dwells by the sea at the ends of the earth and offers sage advice to those travelling to other realms. After a short, mysterious introduction the music becomes livelier and dance-like while pausing for some calmer episodes. It progressively calms down and slowly makes its way back towards its mysterious close. This is a lovely work that should find a permanent place in any flautist’s repertoire. Sharon Bezaly’s playing and musicality is a real joy from first to last.

Water Music for saxophone quartet and chamber orchestra is a more serious affair. It is in three movements with titles that clearly trace the music’s narration: Bubbling (the sound of water), Coursing (the image of rushing water) and Parched Earth (the absence of water). Dean displays his full compositional array. He does this in a most imaginative way to suggest his various visions while avoiding any all-too-crude pictorial effects. The sonic register of the saxophone quartet - that the composer considers as a “super-instrument” - is remarkably imaginative throughout. The composer also uses more advanced techniques such as multiphonics, key clicks and the like, but never extravagantly. Sampled material is also used in the outer movements but is conspicuously absent from the central Scherzo. The first movement is appropriately capricious whereas the second is an energetic Scherzo in which the propulsive character of the music rarely flags. Room is left for a slow chorale after which the music resumes its course and rushes towards an animated conclusion capped by a brief, dark coda. The final movement paints a bleak and desolate landscape.

Carlo is the earliest and the most complex work in this ear-opening selection. It draws on Gesualdo’s life and work as well as on Dean’s admiration of his music. It is scored for strings, sampler and tape. Meurig Bowen’s excellent notes go into considerable detail about the complex fabric of the music. It would be idle for me to try of sum them up or (worse!) to repeat them, the more so in that I am not particularly well-versed in Gesualdo’s music. Carlo opens with music by Gesualdo heard on tape/CD. This is soon confronted with Dean’s own reaction to the music. This then proceeds wave-like through a series of contrasted episodes until it reaches its horror-stricken climax - Gesualdo stabbing his wife and her lover? There follows a lengthy coda based on Gesualdo’s second Responsory for Maundy Thursday ending with an unresolved crescendo. To be quite frank I admit being somewhat prejudiced about this piece before listening to it. However, repeated hearings have convinced me that this is by far the most impressive work in this generous selection of Dean’s honest and thought-provoking music.

Performances and recording are first rate from start to end, and Bowen’s detailed and well-informed notes considerably add to one’s appreciation of these often gripping works.

-- Hubert Culot, MusicWeb International

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Brett Dean: Water Music; Pastoral Symphony, etc. / Bezaly, HK Gruber, Swedish CO
BIS Jul 2009
CD
$21.99

EXCELSIOR MILL

MODERN HARMONIC

$17.99 May 24, 2024

The outsized sounds emerging from the Excelsior Mill organ captured here constitute a unique chapter in the Sun Ra story, a dizzying phantasmagoria that offers a whole new view on what Ra could do. It might thrill you; it might unnerve you; it might strum your heartstrings; it might spook the living daylights out of you. Most likely you'll experience all of the above before the jolting musical jeremiad is done. The CD includes the full uncut show with music not featured on the LP version! When you're Sun Ra, you don't need synthesizers to evoke apocalyptic visions and interstellar excursions. You don't even need a band. Ra is most widely known for working with various iterations of his Arkestra, but he was no stranger to unaccompanied keyboard expeditions. His discography contains solo piano albums, solo Fender Rhodes records, and solo recordings on conventional organ, the latter going as far back as his home recordings from the 1940s. But none of those instruments ever offered Sun Ra the kind of sonic artillery that waited beneath his fingers and feet when he sat before the keyboards, pedals, and multicolored constellation of tabs controlling the Wurlitzer pipe organ. Mystic and magisterial, Ra comes off here like a cross between a demonically riffing '50s horror movie villain and a futuristic congregation leader delivering the interplanetary gospel. Brassy stabs provide the kind of punctuation that could be graphically rendered as an endless string of exclamation marks in 500-point font. String-like swoops and swirls dance across the top of the carnage, cooling the flames just enough to keep the whole thing from combusting (for a while at least) but never dousing the fiery fury that Ra draws forth from the instrument.

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EXCELSIOR MILL
MODERN HARMONIC May 2024
CD
$17.99

DEMONI: 40TH ANNIVERSARY - O.S.T.

IMPORTS

Vinyl

$63.49 Sep 19, 2025

Limited splatter colored vinyl. Claudio Simonetti composed the soundtrack for the 1985 horror film "Demons," directed by Lamberto Bava and produced by Dario Argento. The soundtrack, in addition to original songs composed by Simonetti, also includes songs by other rock and metal artists of the time. In particular, the song "Demon" features vocals by Rick Springfield.

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DEMONI: 40TH ANNIVERSARY - O.S.T.
IMPORTS Sep 2025
Vinyl
$63.49

Simeon Ten Holt: Solo Piano Music Vol 1-5 / Jeroen Van Veen

Brilliant Classics

$28.99 Mar 26, 2013

TEN HOLT Canto Ostinato. Natalon in E . Aforisme II. Solo Devil’s Dances I–IV. Eadem Sed Aliter • Jeroen van Veen (pn) • BRILLIANT 9434 (5 CDs: 320:09)

This set is designated as Simeon ten Holt: Solo Piano Music Volumes I-V , so one assumes that another release will follow it in due course. This is good news to those of us who have been bitten by the ten Holt bug, and who are snapping up every release that becomes available. In the United States, the situation is now much better than it was just a few years ago, and it is better, in large part, due to the efforts of pianist Jeroen van Veen (and Brilliant Classics), who, with colleague pianists, and by himself, has been busily recording ten Holt’s often mammoth works for one or multiple pianos. He is not the only world-class pianist to be interested in ten Holt’s music, however, but we will get to that point later.

In Fanfare 35:6, I had a lot to say about Canto Ostinato , albeit in a performance by two pianists, namely van Veen and his wife, Sandra. This was included in van Veen’s Minimal Piano Collection, Volumes X-XX set (Brilliant Classics 9171). I’m going to beg the editor’s indulgence by repeating all of it here:

Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato , [is] an even more large-scale classic that occupied the composer between 1976 and 1979, and a work that has attained a fair measure of popularity, at least in Europe. (I think its time will come in the United States; all it needs is the right set of circumstances.) Like several of ten Holt’s works, Canto Ostinato gives its performers plenty of flexibility. The score states the composer’s preference for performances with four pianos, but he has enthusiastically endorsed Jeroen and Sandra van Veen’s two-piano realization presented here, and it also has been performed with twelve pianists on five pianos! (Other keyboard instruments are possible too.) The score has 106 sections. Performers can use their own discretion concerning dynamics, articulation, the number of repetitions, and the use and combination of alternative parts. It can last for a half hour or longer than two. The composer writes, “A performance of Canto is more like a ritual than a concert. The piece is not in a hurry.” For me, three factors lend the work its peculiar magic. The first is related to rhythm. Each bar is in 10/16 time, overlaid with 2/4 to create two groups of 5/16. Each “quintuplet” is subdivided into 2+3 or 3+2. What this creates, in the listener, is the curiously dance-like sensation of even unevenness, if you will. The second factor is melodic. At first, there is no melody, in the usual sense of the word. However, over time, an angelic “canto” starts to coalesce, like a picture puzzle slowly coming together. When this “canto,” after many teasing minutes of development, reaches its maturity, the cumulative effect, if you have been paying attention, is literally awesome. (I never fail to weep when I get to section 74 of Canto Ostinato , and I have had a similar experience with Meandres , a ten Holt composition from 20 years later.) Having attained seeming Nirvana, ten Holt (or the performers), then evolves away from it almost immediately, and so Canto Ostinato , on this level, becomes a piece about expectation, and not just achievement but also frustration. It’s a very Zen experience. The third factor is related to community. A successful performance of Canto Ostinato depends upon communication and coordination among the performers. One senses (in the present performance, and in others I have heard) that a sort of hive mentality is at work, or that one is listening, not just to a ritual, but to a biological process. Much as I love music, I would rarely describe it as organic. For me, there are two prominent exceptions, though: some of Sibelius, and all of Simeon ten Holt.

Of course, the present recording, which dates from the fall of 2012 (like everything else in this collection), removes the third factor enumerated above because all of these are solo performances. I think I understand ten Holt’s preference for performances, at least of Canto Ostinato , involving multiple pianos. Played solo, the music remains highly effective, but the ineffable and moving sense of community is absent here. Otherwise, it is striking how similar this new solo recording of Canto is to the one by van Veen and his wife in the Minimal Piano Collection set. The total timing (78:15) is just a minute shorter than its predecessor, and isn’t it convenient that it all fits on one CD? (A four-piano version recorded in the ’80s and released by Composer’s Voice/Donemus lasts over 150 minutes and requires three discs, and let me tell you, those disc-changes are a real letdown!) There’s no sense that the music’s development is being rushed, but I think, generally speaking, the more performers one has, the longer it takes to perform it effectively. In a review of piano music by Philip Glass (also in this issue), I commented that van Veen was a more subjective performer than the composer himself. In ten Holt’s music, however, I find that van Veen is less personal—which I suppose is another way of saying less romantic—than other pianists who have recorded it, namely Ivo Janssen (on Void), and on the aforementioned three-CD extravaganza, Gerard Bouwhuis, Gene Carl, Cees van Zeeland, and Arielle Vernède. Still, I have every reason to believe that van Veen’s playing realizes the composer’s intentions completely.

So, where this new release really comes into its own is in the remaining four discs, because this is great music too, and there is less competition. (In some cases, I think, there is none at all, at least on disc.) Solo Devil’s Dance I was composed in 1959 and lasts only 4:10. The remaining three works in this series are much later (1986, 1990, and 1998, respectively) and much longer too: 67:43, 45:55, and 38:41. The first is an etude whose basis is an essentially unrelenting triple rhythm passed from one hand to the other, with a—well, impish counterpoint. No surprise: It sounds utterly unlike anything else on these discs, but one can sense the presence of ten Holt’s mind, even if one can’t exactly hear ten Holt’s voice. With the second, we are back in familiar, i.e., minimalist, territory. An odd, nervous rhythm and a melodic pattern are quickly established, and over the course of 67 minutes it is developed. With Philip Glass, one senses that his favorite geometric shape is a square. Ten Holt, on the other hand, probably was enamored of pentagons and heptagons. Solo Devil’s Dance II is jazzy, without ever turning into jazz, and eternally unsettled. As in Canto , tension rises, is dissipated, and rises again; Glass is rarely this dramatic. It sounds like a terrible finger-buster for any pianist, but I imagine stamina and concentration are even bigger issues. Fortunately, listeners don’t have to fear for the fingers. If they are receptive, their concentration should be stimulated by the ever changing but always the same landscape of shifting accents, phrase lengths, and by each new section of the score (there are 111!) in which a new puzzle piece, or a new clue (if you will) is added. Kees Wieringa’s version of this work can be downloaded as an mp3 from Amazon. I haven’t heard more than an excerpt—I have yet to feel that downloaded mp3s are worth my time and money, so any comparisons I make with mp3s in this review are based solely on brief excerpts—but for what it’s worth, Wieringa’s version is only 28 seconds longer. Ivo Janssen’s mp3 is only half as long, and is a little slower.

Solo Devil’s Dance III is built on similar plans, but it strikes me as a more genial piece. If its predecessor is obsessive, it is cheerfully industrious, as if one were overlooking a sort of musical factory in which the workers are notes and their products are phrases and successively larger musical structures. The music burbles along happily, and it really does seem to dance. One wonders if the melodic material’s resemblance, at times, to Till’s theme from Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche was accidental. Otherwise, there is nothing demonic here! In fact, extended sections in the piano’s stratosphere suggest fairies, perhaps from A Midsummer Night’s Dream , more than anything horned. Wieringa’s mp3 is almost 20 minutes shorter, as he moves through the work’s 77 (!) sections!

What makes the Solo Devil’s Dances demonic, perhaps, is the demands that they place on the performer. (Van Veen is certainly up to their various challenges.) An additional demonic element that appears in Solo Devil’s Dance IV is a fixation with the interval of a tritone, the “diabolus in musica.” This piece is a particularly cruel task for the pianist, as it is fast, lengthy, and more intricate in its patterning than its predecessors. If Solo Devil’s Dance II is obsessive, this last member of the family carries obsession to its most driven extremes. It’s an etude from hell. At 18: 14, Ivo Janssen’s mp3 of this work is only half the length of van Veen’s performance, and he adopts a somewhat slower tempo, so clearly he takes fewer repeats than van Veen. (As I mentioned above, in my description of Canto , ten Holt’s scores generally give performers a lot of latitude.) This work contains 89 “separate musical objects,” which I suppose is just another way of indicating “sections.” This was ten Holt’s final work, although he did not die until 2012.

Earlier, I used the phrase, “ever changing but always the same.” That is a rough English translation of the Latin phrase Eadem Sed Aliter , the title of a work in 113 sections from 1995 also included in this collection. To quote from the booklet note (van Veen’s?), “the left hand is shifted two sixteenths from the right hand—this creates a big challenge for the thumbs of both hands, like in the music of Franz Liszt where the thumbs were first used to play melodies. The ping-pong-style playing with accents, together with building layers (getting louder and softer), turn this into an interesting piece.” The music has a plaintive quality, as if it were begging to be released from its unceasing activity and lack of resolution (harmonic and otherwise). As with the other works in this collection, I can’t even begin to imagine the endurance and concentration required to perform it, and van Veen has both my admiration and my sympathy! An mp3 by Janssen is a few minutes shorter (33: 49), and in this work, his tempo is even faster than van Veen’s. Madness!

The two remaining works date from the 1970s. Aforisme II (1974) is receiving its first recording here. It is, in a sense, the seed that produced Canto Ostinato , as it is a 6/8 version of the Canto melody, with an accompaniment of broken chords (imagine a barcarolle.) The Chopinesque bit of sweetness is just four minutes long, and, if a score were to be published, I predict it would quickly appear on every third teenage piano student’s recital. Natalon in E also is atypical. There are five movements in contrasting tempos and moods, and ranging from four to 11 minutes in length. The material in each movement is characteristic of ten Holt, but its development is far more concise. Like Aforisme II , this is ten Holt “lite,” although I don’t mean to denigrate it with that adjective, only to imply that it is more accessible to performers and listeners who might not generally be interested in Minimalism or “contemporary music,” whatever that is.

The booklet contains, in addition to unsigned notes about some (not all, unfortunately) of the works, a short essay about the composer himself, and about van Veen as an interpreter of his music. This originally appeared in Fanfare 33:5 and is written by Alan Swanson, who took advantage of the opportunity to bang the drum for ten Holt before I did. I’m glad he did. Since I discovered it a few years ago, Simeon ten Holt’s music has become important to me; it has given me great intellectual and emotional satisfaction. I am very happy that Jeroen van Veen’s advocacy, not least through these recordings, has made it easier for new audiences to become exposed to it. Please, however you do it, introduce yourself to Simeon ten Holt.

FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

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Simeon Ten Holt: Solo Piano Music Vol 1-5 / Jeroen Van Veen
Brilliant Classics Mar 2013
CD
$28.99

Lully: Armide / Brown, Houtzeel, Getchell, Loup

Naxos

$14.99 ~~$29.99~~ Save 50% Oct 28, 2008

This recording is the third of Lully's Armide; the other two, from 1983 (Erato) and 1992 (Harmonia Mundi), were led by Philippe Herreweghe. The first, which I've not heard, eliminated the opera's fourth act, in which minor characters are tempted by Armide and the plot is otherwise not advanced. The second recording, starring Guillaumette Laurens and Howard Crook as Armide and Renaud, is complete and is an elegant reading, with some fire from Laurens.

The Washington, DC-based Opera Lafayette's recording under consideration here is trimmed. Gone is the Prologue, which is the usual love poem to Louis XIV that these operas called for, this one with the allegorical figures of Wisdom and Glory praising him to the skies. It contains some lovely music, but is superfluous to the plot; it was cut as early as 1761 (probably a political rather than musical decision; in any event Louis never saw the work). Conductor Ryan Brown also chops a few repeats in the dances, one of the Shepherd's arias, and a few minutes of the fourth act. I didn't miss any of it, dramatically, but it's nice to know it can be heard on Herreweghe's second recording. Brown gives us two hours of cohesive music-drama.

The plot is well-known, and in fact the same libretto (by Phillippe Quinault) was set by Gluck in 1776 (the Lully dates from 1686). Opera lovers also will be familiar with the Rossini and Handel operas that treat the story of the sorceress Armida's infatuation with the knight, Rinaldo; there are variations, but the outlines are the same.

Lully's opera, his last, was a great and lasting success, what with demons destroying enchanted palaces and all, and with music that never ceases to please. Both leads are well drawn, with Armide's wickedness on a grand scale (her love for Renaud almost enough for us to feel for her) and Renaud's valor and sweetness displayed in equal proportion. The dance intervals are colorfully scored and utterly delightful.

The stars of this set, the mezzo Stephanie Houtzeel and tenor Robert Getchell, are excellent. She has plenty of character to her tone, sings with nice ferocity in her second-act "Enfin il est en ma puissance", charm in the fifth-act love duet, and both resignation and fury in her final number. The voice is substantial, and while she never resorts to chest voice, a good snarl occasionally slips out. Laurens has only a slight edge over Houtzeel; the former is more comfortable with ornamentation and dramatic stresses.

No apologies need be made for Robert Getchell, a "French" tenor of the best kind, heroically "bright" enough and gently loving enough, singing with fine French diction. And his tone is beautiful. (A note: He studied with Howard Crook.) The cast's other standout, tenor Tony Boutté, sings a Danish Knight (some of his music is omitted in Act 4) and a Lucky Lover and I'm sure he will soon be graduating to the role of Renaud. His voice sits high and is clear enough for Gluck's Orphée as well.

William Sharp uses his not-very-weighty baritone voice to enliven La Haine, and he means every word. As Armide's confidantes, Ann Monoyios and Miram Dubrow are effective, though the latter strays from pitch early on as Sidonie. François Loup, doing double duty as Hidraot, Armide's wicked uncle, and Ubalde, Renaud's good friend, oversings as the former to compensate for a tone not quite large enough. The others are all excellent.

I wish that Ryan Brown's orchestra were bigger; there are some moments in this work that require more sheer noise than 27 players can make (and they don't always play at once). Herreweghe gets it just right and the drama seems properly dark despite the inherent frills. To sum up, not only is this set the only one currently available, it's a bargain and very good all around. You'll miss about 30 minutes of music, but the two hours you do get are splendid.

--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

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Lully: Armide / Brown, Houtzeel, Getchell, Loup
Naxos Oct 2008
CD
~~$29.99~~ $14.99

FATE IN A PLEASANT MOOD

GREYSCALE

$16.99 Sep 01, 2017

CD reissue. The history of music is full of extraordinary characters. Even some of the best known classical musicians had lives which, even by today's standards, were both shocking and bizarre. But when it came to the 20th Century, things really began to become peculiar. The notorious Sun Ra, who claimed to be an alien from the planet Saturn, or something like that, is responsible for some of the most challenging music that has ever been recorded. The music on this album was recorded in a marathon session of between 30-40 songs either at the RCA Studios or possibly at Hall Recording Company (both in Chicago), around 17 June 1960. Other albums to include tracks from the session include Interstellar Low Ways, Holiday for Soul Dance, Angels and Demons at Play and We Travel The Space Ways. The problem with trying to catalog the output of many artists from this period is that, back then, jazz and other popular musics were not seen as being of any lasting importance. So recording details, and lists of who played what, when and where - although things which we take for granted today - are often missing, and one has to piece together the facts from a myriad of different sources. When you add to this the fact that Sun Ra was notorious for his eccentricities (some have even described him as being barking mad), and attempting to come up with any truly cogent narrative is monumentally difficult. This music is actually from the more conventional end of Sun Ra's output and sounds like a trippier version of what Miles Davis and John Coltrane were doing at a time. Very groovy stuff.

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FATE IN A PLEASANT MOOD
GREYSCALE Sep 2017
CD
$16.99

Rameau: Les Paladins / Tournet, La Chapelle Harmonique

Château de Versailles Spectacles

$40.99 Jan 28, 2022

Rameau’s key forgotten comédie-lyrique is brought back to life: in 1760, at the age of 77, Les Paladins would be his last work performed in public. Inspired by the triumph of his other comedy, Platée, Rameau adds emphasis and excess, makes the orchestra gleam and the singers leap, with sharp turns in the comic tone and magnificent sentimental passages. Set in the fantastical Middle Ages, here is a comedy of characters brilliantly treated as caricatures: the beautiful Argie prisoner of the monstrous Orcan, the Paladin Atis reeing his bride, the Fairy Manto unleashing demons and furies, and transfiguring the castle with a dance of Pagodas and a Chinese entertainment! Valentin Tournet brings his magnificent soloists and the Chapelle Harmonique to life in this latest Rameau jewel!

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Rameau: Les Paladins / Tournet, La Chapelle Harmonique
Château de Versailles Spectacles Jan 2022
CD
$40.99

Tamberg: Joanna Tentata Suite, Symphonic Dances, Concerto Grosso / Jarvi, Hague Residentie

BIS

$21.99 Jun 01, 2010

Estonian composer Eino Tamberg (b. 1930) is the real deal--a composer with a fresh take on traditional tonal music who knows how to write tunes and score them with unfailing color and point. His Concerto Grosso--for flute, trumpet, clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon, piano, harp, strings, and percussion--is a masterpiece of 20th century neo-classicism and it deserves to be a repertory item. It dates from 1956 and at only Op. 5 it announces a major talent. The Symphonic Dances arrived a year later and fall within similar stylistic parameters, from the opening tune that has a Poulenc-like wit, to the three saxophones that give Tamberg's scoring a truly modern feel.

If you had the chance to hear Tamberg's 1976 opera Cyrano de Bergerac (and if you didn't, get it--it's on CPO), then you already know that he has a wonderful feeling for the theater, and for writing dramatic music. The ballet Joanna Tentata is based on the same source that gave us Penderecki's opera The Devils of Loudon. Now let's face it, stories about demonic possession in a convent have lots of juicy potential, as well as a long history on the stage, going back through Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel to Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable. Tamberg's ballet suite instantly establishes the story's haunted setting (church bells leading to a big, dissonant instrumental pileup), but the music at the same time celebrates and positively reeks of the dance. And once again we can only applaud Tamberg's willingness (and ability) to write a good tune.

Believe it or not, some of this music has been recorded previously. The Concerto Grosso appeared on a difficult-to-source Antes CD in a very fine performance by Estonian forces. This new version is wonderful too, even more naturally recorded, and Neeme Järvi is just the conductor for this colorful, exciting, and strongly gestural music. The musicians of the Residentie Orkest also clearly relish Tamberg's ebullient musical personality and the opportunities he gives them to shine. We can only hope that BIS will delve more deeply into Tamberg's output and help to bring him some of the international attention he surely deserves.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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Tamberg: Joanna Tentata Suite, Symphonic Dances, Concerto Grosso / Jarvi, Hague Residentie
BIS Jun 2010
CD
$21.99

Hindemith: Der Damon, Herodiade, Kammermusik Nos. 1 & 2 / Fischer-Dieskau, Ensemble Varianti

Haenssler Classic

$24.99 Jul 08, 2016

Born in Hanau near Frankfurt-am-Main in 1895, where he was something of a musical prodigy, Hindemith entered Hoch’sche Konservatorium where he studied violin, composition and conducting. He supported himself by playing in local dance bands and theatre groups. He soon made his mark as a performer and became deputy leader of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra at the age of nineteen, becoming its leader three years later.

His early compositional style earned him the reputation of something of an enfant térrible. Whilst his music is modernist in outlook, he rejected some of the modern trends in music, including the teachings of Schoenberg, who he admired, in favour of a more individualistic outlook. In 1921 he had his String Quartet Op. 16 and his Kammermusik No. 1 performed at the Donaueschingen festival of contemporary music. This was followed by further performances of his music the following year at the International Society of Contemporary Music festival which served to bring Hindemith and his music to the attention of a wider audience.

The music presented on these two CDs seems to have been performed as part of the centenary celebrations of Hindemith’s birth during the 1995 Schwetzingen Festival. This is a well planned and executed concert which brings together two of his better known pieces with two of his less well known theatrical works.

Der Dämon or "The Demon" is described as "A Dance-Pantomime" and is set in two scenes, revolving around the said Demon's seduction of two sisters. In the first scene he seduces the first sister, leading the second sister into a Dance of Grief and Longing. The second scene deals with the second sister's advances towards the Demon and his rejection of her. I really enjoyed this performance. This is a work known for its more jazzy elements, and the Ensemble Varianti highlight this aspect far more than the Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt under Werner Andreas Albert on CPO (999 220-2) whose performance is more symphonic.

The Kammermusik No. 2 is in reality a mini piano concerto and marks the first in a six-part series of solo concertos which Hindemith completed in 1927. It has a highly virtuosic obbligato piano part and is in itself quite dramatic; it is believed that Hindemith composed his The Four Temperaments in order to stop George Balanchine re-working the Kammermusik No. 2 as a ballet presentation.

Herodiade which is a Ballet – Orchestral Recitation after Mallarmé, is the latest work presented here and displays greater maturity. It is available in two versions, one with recitation, and one purely orchestral. The one presented here has the wonderful Gisela Zach-Westphal whose declamation is far more dramatic than Ann Gicquel for Albert on CPO (999 220-2), although I do prefer his more orchestral sound and he does present both versions.

The final work on the disc is a spirited performance of the Kammermusik No. 1 with its famous finale entitled 1921 and siren-call ending. This was the piece that really announced Hindemith on the world-stage. Both of the Kammermusiks are given performances here that bring out the chamber music aspect more than in the other versions I have, Albert on CPO (999 301-2, 999 138-2) and Chailly on Decca (473 722-2). Even so, each version has a lot to offer.

These four works all have a significant role for the piano and here Florian Henschel is on top form, especially when you take into account that he was a late replacement for Sviatoslav Richter. His playing is strong and impassioned and he seems to make light of some fiendish sounding piano writing. As mentioned above, the Ensemble Varianti are excellent and really bring out the different colours in the music. As for Gisela Zach-Westphal she makes this disc worth buying just for her part in Herodiade. Whilst I knew that Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau also liked to dabble in conducting, especially towards the end of his singing career, this is the first disc I have of him in this role. He manages to keep a tight control on his forces whilst not losing any excitement from the music. First rate performances.

The sound is clearly from a live event; you get the applause and one or two coughs. There is also a slight string twang that I am sure is not in the score. Despites this, these are performances that are full of thrilling and energetic playing. I would have loved to have attended this concert. The booklet essay is exemplary; it is detailed and informative and fills in a couple of blanks in my knowledge of this composer.

– MusicWeb International (Stuart Sillitoe)

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Hindemith: Der Damon, Herodiade, Kammermusik Nos. 1 & 2 / Fischer-Dieskau, Ensemble Varianti
Haenssler Classic Jul 2016
CD
$24.99

Shostakovich & Schubert: String Quartets

Genuin

$20.99 Sep 07, 2018

The Aris Quartett, one of the most exciting ensembles on the international scene, won several ARD awards in 2016. The second GENUIN release confirms the amount of publicity the quartet has received. Two existential chamber music works can be found there, which in their unconditionality and unheard-of expressiveness demand everything from the listener. The Aris Quartett plays Shostakovich's famous 8th string quartet and Schubert's Death and the Maiden with an uncompromising style that pulls you out of your chair: spooky nocturnal pieces, deeply sad lamentation and a demonic dance macabre - world class! "One of the most sensational ensembles of the younger generation." (ARTE) "The future of the classical music scene." (Aspekte) "On the verge of an international career." (NDR Kultur)

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Shostakovich & Schubert: String Quartets
Genuin Sep 2018
CD
$20.99

I'M ALWAYS DANCIN TO THE MUSIC

MUSIC ON VINYL

Vinyl

$37.99 Nov 01, 2024

Limited edition of 750 numbered copies on light green coloured 180-gram audiophile vinyl. Philadelphian jazz legend Benny Golson, an American bebop/hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger, has had a long and storied career. He has played with luminaries such as John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey, to name just a few. His credentials are rock solid and his skills as a tenor sax legend are undisputed. With his 1978 album "I'm Always Dancin' to the Music," Benny Golson takes a unique turn. Known primarily for his hard bop roots and classic compositions like "Whisper Not" and "Killer Joe," Golson steps into the realms of jazz-funk and disco with this release, reflecting the musical trends of the late 1970s. The title song is a stellar dance groove, holding heavyweight status among underground soul, funk, and jazz aficionados-a true 'rare groove' indeed. Produced by George Butler, whose credentials are no less than impressive, it's no wonder the instrumental hook of this title song has been sampled many times by artists such as Naughty by Nature, Logistics, Leona Lewis, and many others. Everything about this album-music, engineering, mastering-is top-notch, making this somewhat of an audiophile release as well. This is a real hidden gem and well worth seeking out!

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I'M ALWAYS DANCIN TO THE MUSIC
MUSIC ON VINYL Nov 2024
Vinyl
$37.99

Deborah Drattell: Sorrow Is Not Melancholy / Schwarz, Seattle Symphony Orchestra

Naxos

$19.99 Apr 24, 2012

The music of Deborah Drattell is saturated in vivid colour and neo-Romantic vitality, and this selection reflects both it's warmth and also it's dynamism. In Sorrow is not Melancholy gentleness co-exists with pervasive melancholy and tenser sonorities, whereas the Clarinet Concerto is a very different work, embracing dance patterns that pulsate with excitement. Both Lilith and the Fire Within share Middle Eastern influences. The first is a sensual, sinuous evocation of 'the female demon' whilst the latter is imbued with drones, drums and tambourine, all exotically spiced. Syzygy brilliantly explores nature in all it's elemental power.

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Deborah Drattell: Sorrow Is Not Melancholy / Schwarz, Seattle Symphony Orchestra
Naxos Apr 2012
CD
$19.99

Schubert: String Quartets Nos. 14 & 9 / Chiaroscuro Quartet

BIS

SACD

$21.99 Nov 02, 2018

One of the truly iconic works in the repertoire for string quartet, Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden is named after the song which has lent its theme to the second movement. At the end of Matthias Claudius’s poem, which Schubert had set as a 20-year-old in 1817, Death cradles the Maiden in his bony embrace. And her fear, in the first verse, of encountering his tomb-cold touch is mirrored by his desire for her in the second. In Schubert’s lifetime, death was a constant presence in everyday life and even a young person like himself would have encountered it at close quarters – in fact, his own mother had passed away when he was only 15. When Schubert returns to the song in 1824 and starts work on the string quartet, death has nevertheless grown even more real: in the meantime he has become acquainted with pain and disease during the bouts of the syphilis that he knows will kill him. He turns the song into a set of variations, preceding it with a ferocious Allegro, and following it with a Scherzo and a Finale that have been described as ‘the dance of the demon fiddler’ and ‘a dance with death’. The acclaimed Chiaroscuro Quartet performs the work on gut strings, which brings out the vulnerability and desperation even further. The players then let us down gently with the youthful String Quartet No.?9 in G minor, a work in which the minor key offers Schubert the opportunity to play with light and shadows, rather than full-scale drama.

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REVIEWS:

With their ‘period’ sound world (gut strings, Classical bows, sharp articulation) allied to hungry tempos and phrasing that vaults across the bar line, Schubert’s darkest quartet seems more than ever a study in the inexorable power of rhythm. Their unvarnished sonorities (vibrato minimal or non-existent) make Schubert’s harmonic clashes all the more excruciating. It is also, properly, a drama of uncomfortable extremes.

– Gramophone

Light and shade abound in performances of brisk, fierce beauty.

– The Strad

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Schubert: String Quartets Nos. 14 & 9 / Chiaroscuro Quartet
BIS Nov 2018
SACD
$21.99

Easy-Listening Piano Classics: Beethoven

Naxos

$14.99 ~~$29.99~~ Save 50% Feb 23, 2010

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was born in the city of Bonn, but moved in 1792 to Vienna, where he spent the rest of his relatively short (he died aged 56) yet highly productive life. While best known, perhaps, for popular large-scale orchestral works such as his concertos and symphonies, he also composed string quartets and other chamber music, songs and, of course, a large amount of music for his 'own' instrument, the piano. In each genre, Beethoven was to some extent a path breaker, transforming the models he inherited from his predecessors or the approach taken by his contemporaries into something radically unique and bequeathing to posterity music that pushed the bounds of politely regulated Classicism towards the highly personal drama of Romanticism. When the young Beethoven arrived in Vienna, he quickly established himself as a virtuoso pianist-contemporaries had quite simply never heard anything like him before-and though deafness ended his career as a pianist, he continued to compose, ultimately publishing 32 piano sonatas (some early sonatas remained unpublished), several sets of piano variations, bagatelles and dances between 1793 and 1822, a representative selection of which are featured on Easy-Listening Piano Classics. Many of Beethoven's piano sonatas have names that describe their character, though not all of these originated with the composer. For instance, 'Pathétique' is an abbreviation of Beethoven's full title 'Grande sonate pathétique' (that is, 'passionate' rather than 'pitiful'); the 'Moonlight' was so named by a music critic who thought of moonlight shimmering upon Lake Lucerne when he heard the first movement (Beethoven simply gave it the sub-title Quasi una fantasia, 'Like a fantasy'); the 'Kurfürstensonaten' are pre-Viennese sonatas dedicated to the Elector (Kurfürst) of Cologne; 'The Tempest' comes from Anton Schindler's claim that the sonata was inspired by Shakespeare's play; 'Pastoral' was provided by one of Beethoven's publishers. In addition, Beethoven composed many shorter piano pieces, which he referred to as 'Kleinigkeiten (Small Things) or Bagatelles', though these should not be underestimated: while some are popular in style and suitable for amateur performers (such as the famous, and probably misnamed 'Für Elise') others are highly characterful miniatures that one writer has described as 'lapidary, fragmentary, yes, even ironic'-true harbingers of Romanticism. Many of his dances (Minuets, Ländler, Ecossaises and so forth) also combine charm and sophistication. Whether composing large-scale serious works for the enjoyment of connoisseurs or smaller popular pieces primarily designed to entertain, Beethoven was very interested in the piano, maintaining close contact with leading piano manufacturers in Vienna and London. The demands he made on both performers and the instrument itself contributed to the development of the modern concert grand. One observer wrote that when Beethoven played the piano 'the music of the man's soul passed over his countenance. He seems to feel the bold, the commanding, and the impetuous, more than what is soothing or gentle. The muscles of the face swell, and it's veins start out; the wild eye rolls doubly wild, the mouth quivers, and Beethoven looks like a wizard, overpowered by the demons whom he himself has called up.' Yet, whether seeking the sublime or appealing to the lighter sentiments, Beethoven's music always communicates 'From the heart... to the heart'.

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Easy-Listening Piano Classics: Beethoven
Naxos Feb 2010
CD
~~$29.99~~ $14.99

Schubert & Haydn: String Quartets / Tetzlaff Quartett

Ondine

$18.99 Mar 10, 2017

In these days of megaboxes and reissues, it’s surprising and delightful to see a new release that couples two beautiful quartets, immaculately played, just because–well, just because. OK, the cover art makes Tetzlaff look like a cult leader hanging out with his three sister-wives, but happily his eponymous quartet doesn’t fall prey to any Svengali-like mind control from its first violin. Their work is that of a true quartet, well-balanced, precise, and with a welcome give-and-take between the parts.

This is particularly true of the Schubert, a work whose strange harmonies and endless tremolo textures foreshadow Bruckner, and which demand a particularly sensitive handling of the relationship between melody and accompaniment. The first movement relishes its quasi orchestral textures, but without ever letting us forget that this really is chamber music. In both of the outer movements tempos are particularly well judged, with the constant seesawing between major and minor in the finale producing a truly disturbing, almost queasy effect.

Haydn’s Quartet in G minor, Op. 20 (No. 3) makes an ideal disc mate, even leaving aside its complementary tonality. Its first movement, particularly, offers plenty of uneasy emotional ambiguity that’s very well captured here. Charles Rosen, in The Classical Style, presented a typically penetrating analysis, calling its handling of rhythm and motivic development positively upsetting; and in this interpretation the evident care with dynamics and sense of timing conveys the darkness just below the surface particularly well.

In short, this is a throwback: a classical music release without a stupid title or ridiculous concept, one that lets the greatness of the music speak for itself and offers interpretations that justify the program through purely musical means. Wonder of wonders. It deserves your support, and will reward your close attention. - ClassicsToday.com
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A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month!

Is there, I wonder, a greater string quartet than Schubert’s D.887, Beethoven’s notwithstanding? Certainly it is one of the most profound, moving and indeed disturbing works in that genre, rivalled only by the same composer’s string quintet and characterised by an eternal paradox in its typically Schubertian endless melodic stream and its equally typical sense of impending death, doom and destruction. The finale must emerge as a Dance of Death, a startlingly brutal musical depiction of dissolution almost two hundred years before Stravinsky utilised that trope in “The Rite of Spring”, a brave and desperate defiance of the inevitable masked by enforced jollity - and the Tetzlaff Quartet really nail the mood.

Their playing is swift and invariably tightly focused, never “prettified”, sometimes raw, with sparing use of vibrato, and technically flawless execution of the frequent tremolos. The recorded sound is very detailed and more intimate than, say, the Alban Berg or Allegri Quartets; their broader acoustics match their grander, more overt manner, but where the Tetztlaff really excels is in its scrupulous and invariably unanimous application of dynamics, which greatly enhances the intensity of its playing. That attention to nuance is reinforced by their observation in the booklet notes regarding how the dynamic markings go “from triple piano with diminuendo to triple forte with crescendo”. Those notes provide little factual information on the music itself, being a transcription of a conversation about its emotional hinterland and impact of this constantly questioning music. Mahler’s wry aphorism comes to mind: “If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother to say it in music” – although perhaps a review should be wary of smugly borrowing his bon mot given that the same principle could apply to reviewing.

The first movement is chilling and gripping, its grotesqueries fully realised. The Andante contains some of the most beautiful and unsettling music ever written, exhibiting wonderful control of pianissimi and concluding in almost serene and consolatory mode. The Scherzo is featherlight and delicate in the Mendelssohnian manner, the waltz-time Trio ideally elegant.

If Schubert’s quartet represents some kind of apex in the form then there is an evident logic in including in the programme here a work which was seminal in its inception and establishment. However, there is also the programmatic rationale of establishing a thematic link between these two quartets. If Goethe’s dictum is correct, that the string quartet is “a conversation between four intelligent people”, then in the case of these two works all the participants are to some degree disordered, yet we undoubtedly hear four equal voices, each claiming conversational ascendancy in turn, such is the virtuosity and equilibrium of the Tetzlaffs’ playing. Haydn’s work is disturbing in a manner similar to that of Schubert’s, in that the music evinces a frequent and shocking undercurrent of dissatisfaction and even anger, although it hardly achieves the same scorched emotiveness as Schubert’s masterwork. This is wild, erratic and fragmented music by early Classical period standards; even the supposedly courtly Menuet is more melancholy and unsettled than “galant” and three of the movements conclude by simply tailing off in a piano muttering in a manner most unconventional and even unsatisfactory by the measure of the age. The Trio of the Scherzo is incongruously cheerful as if it hardly belongs in the quartet at all while the Adagio, exquisitely played here, provides another such interlude of unexpected serenity in an otherwise fitful and capricious work whose restlessness goes a long way towards justifying its kinship with D887. A final irony is that there is no evidence that this or any other string quartets were ever performed in Esterházy; it seems that Haydn wrote them out of an inner compulsion to exorcise his demons while marooned in that civilised but remote gilded cage.

Comparison with the esteemed Buchberger Quartet in the Haydn reveals that the Buchberger is more assertive and plays in a more overtly “con spirito” manner than the Tetzlaff, who are perhaps occasionally almost too refined but thereby bring out the subtleties of this extraordinary music; I would not let that count as a demerit, especially when the pairing here succeeds so triumphantly.

– MusicWeb International (Ralph Moore)

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Schubert & Haydn: String Quartets / Tetzlaff Quartett
Ondine Mar 2017
CD
$18.99

DANCES
DECCA Aug 2014
CD
$18.99

DANCING BY A RAINBOW
IMPORTS Feb 2021
CD
$14.49

Neeme Jarvi Conducts Saint-Saens / Jarvi, Royal Scottish National Orchestra

Chandos

SACD

$21.99 Jun 26, 2012

SAINT-SAËNS Samson et Dalila: Bacchanale. Le Rouet d’Omphale. Phaëton. Danse macabre. La Jeunesse d’Hercule. Suite algérienne: Marche militaire française. La Princesse jaune: Overture. Une nuit à Lisbonne. Spartacus. Marche du couronnement • Neeme Järvi, cond; Royal Scottish Nat’l O • CHANDOS 5104 (SACD: 77:40)

Here in spectacular multichannel surround sound is a brand-new recording of all four Saint-Saëns tone poems plus a stewpot of shorter orchestral works, some of them popular favorites, others, less widely known.

Over the course of five years, between 1872 and 1877, Saint-Saëns composed four tone poems, three of them drawn from Greek mythology: Le Rouet d’Omphale, Phaëton , and La Jeunesse d’Hercule . The fourth, though third in order of composition, and most famous is Danse macabre , a romantic horror that trades Greek gods for gamboling ghouls.

Omphale’s Spinning Wheel is often said to be the very first French tone poem, though note author Roger Nichols points out that Franck beat Saint-Saëns to the punch by almost a quarter of a century with his symphonic poem Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne of 1848. According to Saint-Saëns’s own preface to the score, the subject of the story is feminine seduction and the triumphant struggle of weakness against strength. To atone for a murder Hercules is ordered by the goddess Hera to serve as a slave to the Lydian Queen, Omphale. Nichols spares the reader the more indelicate description of the emasculated and feminized Hercules kneeling and spinning at the Queen’s feet clad in women’s clothing. In light of Saint-Saëns’s fetish for hosting lavish parties dressed in drag, one has to wonder if the legend of Hercules and Omphale didn’t hold some special fascination for him.

Phaëton , Saint-Saëns’s second tone poem, flirts with the subject of father-son relationships and the sometimes tragic consequences that result when the boy grows old enough to challenge the paternal authority figure. Phaëton , son of Helios the sun god, seeks to prove his manhood by piloting the sun chariot across the heavens. So, in effect, he takes the family Ford out for a spin. But he’s not yet the man he thinks he is. Losing control of the chariot’s horses, he draws the sun too close to the earth. To prevent the solar express from crashing and wreaking further catastrophe, Zeus strikes it with a thunderbolt, incinerating the vehicle and killing Phaëton in the process. A sidebar to the story is that the chariot’s near-miss trajectory across the Sahara scorched the land and explains why the Ethiopians are black.

Next we have Saint-Saëns’s answer to Berlioz’s witches, Mussorgsky’s demons, and Liszt’s diableries, the Danse macabre . But leave it to Saint-Saëns to paint his portrait of the dancing dead, to paraphrase Ogden Nash’s verse, as skeletons in the museum hall gathering at midnight for a ball. The scordatura-tuned violin, xylophone, contorted Dies irae , and android-like rhythmic repetitions caused quite a stir, prompting Debussy, one of Saint-Saëns’s most outspoken critics, to declare years later that the piece gave him hope that Saint-Saëns was a very great composer after all.

The three foregoing tone poems are among Saint-Saëns’s more frequently heard and recorded works and, in fact, a number of recordings, some more recent than others, have included two of them in one combination or another on the same disc. Less often does one find all three, and only one other recording I’m familiar with—a composite Saint-Saëns collection assembled from one or more other releases featuring Charles Dutoit leading the Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic orchestras—includes the composer’s fourth and final tone poem as well. Having stripped Hercules of his manhood in Omphale’s Spinning Wheel , Saint-Saëns rehabilitates him in La Jeunesse d’Hercule . Both dramatically and musically, the work is the weakest of the four, which no doubt explains its poor showing in the listings. The story, if it can be called that, involves no action but is rather a depiction of the young hero’s internal philosophical struggle in choosing between a life of pleasure-seeking and a life of virtue. He chooses the latter. It has been noted that the Lisztian tone poem model was a strong influence on Saint-Saëns’s score.

The remaining pieces that fill out the disc are, in some cases quite well known, like the Bacchanal from the composer’s opera Samson et Dalila and the Marche militaire française , which comes from the Suite algérienne . Other pieces are not well known at all but are hardly insubstantial. The Spartacus overture, for example, is a 13-minute score that was written in 1863 but remained unpublished until 1900. It’s a stand-alone grand concert overture that contains some of Saint-Saëns’s most dramatically urgent music.

On a trip to Portugal in 1880, Saint-Saëns dashed off a one-act comic opera with a title that would no doubt offend today’s politically correct sensibilities, La Princesse jaune , about a Japanese princess transplanted through opera magic to the Netherlands. The Lisbon audience apparently loved it, and back in Paris the Opéra-Comique gave four performances of it before the curtain came down on it for good. I note a single recording of the work listed by ArkivMusic, a 1996 live performance from Lugano. Heard here is the six-minute overture to the opera, which provides a taste of what Saint-Saëns must have thought Japanese music sounded like. Don’t expect Puccini.

During the same visit that produced La Princesse jaune , Saint-Saëns scribbled out the three-and-a-half-minute musical watercolor Une nuit à Lisbonne , which he dedicated to Portuguese King Luiz.

The story behind the Marche du couronnement put me in mind of Thomas Beecham’s plaint about British orchestras employing so many third-rate conductors when there were so many second-rate English ones to choose from. Which raises the question, why would the Brits choose a French composer, Saint-Saëns, to write a march for the coronation of Edward VII? Apparently, they didn’t. Saint-Saëns took it entirely upon himself to compose the piece, which, according to the program note, caused a flurry of diplomatic activity at the ambassadorial level between the two countries. For the march, Saint-Saëns borrowed a tune from his opera Henry VIII . If you shouldn’t expect Puccini in Saint-Saëns’s La Princesse jaune , don’t expect Elgar in his Coronation March.

This is mainly a fun disc, but a useful one as well in gathering together all four of Saint-Saëns’s tone poems, plus a generous selection of some of his less familiar orchestral works. It’s also distinguished by outstanding playing from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra brilliantly led by veteran conductor Neeme Järvi, and as an added bonus, it’s recorded in stunning multichannel sound. Enthusiastically recommended.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

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Neeme Jarvi Conducts Saint-Saens / Jarvi, Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Chandos Jun 2012
SACD
$21.99

Raff: Piano Trios No 1 & 4 / Trio Opus 8

CPO

$18.99 Jun 01, 2001

Joachim Raff's (1822-82) First and Fourth trios exhibit many of the same qualities found on the previous CPO disc of Nos. 2 & 3, reviewed earlier. A consummate craftsman, Raff paid particular attention to such things as motivic and rhythmic development and careful part-writing, which, combined with a flair for expressing genuine emotion, give his chamber works a distinctive sound and compelling character. This is especially evident in Trio No. 1 (1861), the most popular of the four and one of two in the minor mode. A grim introduction soon leads to a roiling, passionate allegro. Next, a galloping scherzo seems to be taking the first movement material out for a night-ride, while the following langsam movement is a song-like rhapsody that once again displays Raff's talent for melodies that speak from the heart. The finale closes the work in a demonically Beethovenian vein, with some dance music thrown in for good measure.

Trio No. 4 (1870) launches in a challengingly fast 12/8 meter, creating an effect not unlike Schubert's Trout Quintet. Most interesting however is the Andante quasi larghetto, with its mournful Venetian Gondola Song first heard on the solo cello. From this opening Raff builds an Elegy of considerable expressive power before closing with a reprise of the plaintive melody. After this exquisite movement, the material of the robust finale seems rather prosaic, and it takes all the energy, imagination, and commitment Trio Opus 8 can muster to hold your interest. That they do is testament to the superlative talent of these three fine musicians, who shine in the remaining movements of both trios as well. As before, CPO's recording is close in perspective but manages to capture more bass information this time around. Both discs in this series are excellent, but this one is the top choice.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

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Raff: Piano Trios No 1 & 4 / Trio Opus 8
CPO Jun 2001
CD
$18.99