STRAVINSKY CONDUCTS HIS OWN WORKS     MUSIC & ARTS CD-1184

The Russian-born Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky composed in primitivist, neo-classical and serialist styles, but is best known for two works from his earlier, Russian period: Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) and L’Oiseau de feu (The Firebird) - daring and innovative ballets that reinvented the genre. Stravinsky wrote in a wide range of ensembles and classical forms, from symphonies to piano miniatures. He also achieved fame as a pianist and conductor, often at premieres of his own works. He began conducting during his French years, when he was no longer the celebrated composer of major Diaghilev ballets and needed to make money. But as important as earning a living (or perhaps even more so) was the degree of control over his music that conducting gave him. Other conductors’ interpretations often left him dissatisfied, and the scores available for performances were often full of errors or contained insufficient instructions to the performer. Stravinsky wanted, on the one hand, to correct or even revise the scores during performance, and on the other hand to execute those musical choices and ideas which could not be notated. Beginning in the late 1920s, Stravinsky also started to record his major works. This double CD collection includes six of his Neo-Classical masterpieces in superb West German interpretations, four of them previously unissued in any format. They include Oedipus Rex (with Peter Pears, Martha Mödl and Heinz Rehfuss), Symphonies of Winds Capriccio (with Maria Bergmann), Jeu de Cartes, Symphony in 3 Movements and Apollon Musagète Ballet en deux tableaux pour orchestre à cordes. Performers also include the Cologne Radio Orchestra and the SO des SWF, Baden-Baden. These valuable and intriguing recordings from the 1950s have been expertly restored and make essential listening for anyone interested in twentieth century music.

AITA MADINA - BASQUE MUSIC COLLECTION, VOL. IX       CLAVES 50-2517/18

Rev. Francisco de Madina (Aita means ‘Father’) was born in Oñate, Guipuzcoa in 1907 and died in his home town in 1972. Ordained a Canon Regular of the Lateran in 1929, he studied music and theology at the Order’s seminaries before being assigned to a post in Argentina (his early compositions were often influenced by gaucho music). He was reassigned to Albany (New York) in 1955, where his priestly responsibilities and work as organist left him little time for composition. His works cover a wide range - from operas to masses and psalms; from symphonic suites to small pieces for orchestra, piano, organ, violin, harp and guitar. Madina’s musical style is conservative and is greatly influenced by the folklore of his native country, particularly the Basque region. Many works were commissioned by the Romero brothers and dedicated to the artists by the composer. This double CD set (the ninth in an excellent series of Basque music albums from Claves) features recordings by Los Romero of eleven Madina works, including the dramatic Concierto Vasco para 4 guitarras y orquesta (for four guitars and orchestra), the delightful Basque Rhapsody and the delicate Concertino Vasco para arpa y orquesta de cuerdas (for harp and string orchestra). The second disc features some of Madina’s shorter scores, including his Basque Christmas Suite, the serene Agur Maria, and the irresistible Basque Children’s Overture. Other performers here include Xavier de Maistre (harp), Ana Salaberria and Elena Barbé (sopranos) and the Basque National Orchestra, directed by Cristian Mandeal. This is opulently recorded music by a talented composer who deserves to be much better known.

MOZART - JUBILEE EDITION           DISKY HR 903708

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791) is perhaps the most loved and admired composer across cultures, generations, languages and musical styles. In the year of his 250th Birthday, people from all over the world are celebrating his work by creating new museums, staging opera performances and putting on an extraordinary number of festivals, galas, special exhibitions and concert events (over 5,000 concerts are planned worldwide during 2006). Mozart's name summons up visions of powdered wigs, aristocrats, concert halls and opera houses, but his music  pervades all aspects our society, appearing in cartoons, films, elevators - just about anywhere that music is heard. No one needs an excuse to enjoy the music of this 18th century genius but the occasion of his 250th jubilee is as good a time as any to revisit a master of music in all its forms, inspired by a keen insight into the human heart. This excellent value box set of 10 CDs from Disky features music performed by some of the 20th century’s most famous orchestras (such as the Chicago Symphony and Vienna Philharmonic), conductors and soloists (including Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Erich Kunz). Altogether, there is more than 11 hours of music, from chamber works for piano through to sublime operas, concertos and symphonies. Highly recommended.

BACH/SCHERCHEN - WESTMINSTER ARCHIVES, VOL. 2     TAHRA WEST 3003-3004

The eminent German conductor Hermann Scherchen was born in Berlin in 1891 and played as a violist under Nikisch, Mottl, Strauss, Oskar Fried and Weingartner. In 1914 he became conductor of the Riga Symphony Orchestra and went on to direct many other leading orchestras, becoming one of the most important figures in the world of music in the twentieth century (he was one of the few conductors who did not use a baton). He famously promoted new talents such as Schoenberg and Berg and also conducted wonderful performances of music by more traditional composers, including Mozart, Bach, Händel, Beethoven and Mahler. This new double-CD release continues Tahra’s series of the Westminster recordings Scherchen made for Deutsche Grammophon in the 1960s, featuring a composer who was very important to him, particularly regarding the Art of the Fugue. Of particular interest is the Musical Offering (Offrande Musicale) that Hermann Scherchen orchestrated himself after becoming dissatisfied with the version by Roger Vuataz. The stereo recording has never previously been available on CD, and this release also features lively and eloquent performances of four Bach Suites. Scherchen was always ahead of his time and this splendid album shows why his recordings deserve to be better known today. See also the Berlioz Requiem - TAHRA WEST 3001-3002.

HOWARD HANSON - ORCHESTRAL WORKS     TELARC  CD-80649

The prolific composer Howard Harold Hanson was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, in 1896 to Swedish immigrant parents. He began learning the piano with his mother when he was six, and later studied with composer Percy Goetschius and at Northwestern University (with church music expert Peter Lutkin). Hanson became a teacher of music theory and composition himself and began to compose orchestral and chamber works. He was the first recipient of the Prix de Rome, awarded by the American Academy in Rome, and lived in Italy for three years, during which time he wrote his first symphony and studied orchestration with Ottorino Respighi. After returning to America, Hanson’s conducting career took off and brought him to the attention of George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera and roll film, who chose him to be director of the Eastman School of Music. Hanson held that position for forty years, taking it to a place of world pre-eminence in education and performing excellence. As a composer, he worked conservatively in the style of the late-Romantics, melodic inventiveness being evident in his large catalogue of music, from opera to instrumental works. Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra here give stirring performances of Hanson’s ‘Romantic’ Symphony No. 2 (composed for the Boston Symphony in 1930), his Merry Mount Suite (derived from an opera about the conflict between Puritans and Cavaliers), and the world premiere recording of Bold Island Suite. Written in 1961, this attractive Suite has three movements - ‘Birds of the Sea’, ‘Summer Seascape’ and ‘God in Nature’ - inspired by Hanson’s annual summer retreats to Bold Island, near the fishing village of Stonington, Maine. ‘This recording is essential’ - Time Out New York.

DISCOVER MUSIC OF THE CLASSICAL ERA           NAXOS 8.558180-81

The Classical era in Western music, falling between the Baroque and the Romantic periods, occurred largely in the 18th century and into the early 19th century. Although the term classical music is often used to mean all kinds of music in this tradition, it can also sometimes just mean this particular period. The commonly accepted beginning and ending dates are 1750 and 1820 but some sources regard 1730 as the start. At this time, the art, literature and architecture of Ancient Greece and Rome were being rediscovered and re-evaluated, which in turn strongly influenced the ‘modern’ art of the time. This was also a period of great social change and political unrest, with challenges to the old established order culminating in the French Revolution of 1789. Discover Music of the Classical Era comprises two CDs and a 100-page booklet written by Stephen Johnson, showing how all this was reflected in the music written during those turbulent yet intensely creative years. The music is by Mozart, Haydn, Stamitz, J.C. Bach, Boccherini, Gluck, Gossec, C.P.E. Bach and others. This release is one of Naxos’s admirable ‘Discover’ series, providing a valuable introduction to key areas of classical music and including a Timeline of events in music, history, art and literature. Combining well-chosen music with an authoritative essay, this way of exploring music is highly enjoyable and easily accessible. Others in the series include DISCOVER EARLY MUSIC (Naxos 8.558170-71, with music by Josquin, Dufay, Landini, Taverner, Tallis, Obrecht, Victoria and Palestrina, among others) and DISCOVER MUSIC OF THE 20th CENTURY (Naxos 8.558168-69, with music by Ravel, Schoenberg, Ives, Stravinsky, Bartók, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Britten, Cage, Reich and John Williams).

MUSSORGSKY/STOKOWSKI - PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION     NAXOS  6.110101

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky’s suite of 15 musical pieces, Pictures at an Exhibition, was composed in 1874. Originally written for piano, the work has proved irresistible to other composers and is now probably better known from their orchestrations and arrangements. The first to arrange Pictures at an Exhibition for orchestra was the Russian conductor Michael Touschmaloff, although his version includes only seven of the ten pictures. Other orchestrations have been made by, among others, the British conductor Sir Henry Wood and the Slovenian-born violinist Leo Funtek but the version produced by Maurice Ravel in 1922 has proved the most popular and enduring. Conductor Leopold Stokowski introduced Ravel’s version to his Philadelphia audiences in 1929 then wrote his own orchestration ten years later, considering Ravel’s masterful version insufficiently Russian and too subtle to do justice to Mussorgsky’s coarser idiom. Stokowski’s version omits two pictures, Tuileries and The Market Place at Limoges, perhaps because their subject matter was not Russian enough. This new recording features the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Stokowski’s protégé José Serebrier, and was sponsored by the Leopold Stokowski Society. This SACD also includes Stokowski’s arrangements of other Mussorgsky works, including A Night on Bare Mountain and a concert version of Boris Godunov, as well as two pieces by Tchaikovsky and some traditional Slavic Christmas music. The recording qualityand performances are first-class and should help this forceful version of the Pictures to become more widely appreciated.

BAX - SYMPHONIC POEMS           NAXOS 8.557599

Arnold Bax (1883-1953) was born into a prosperous middle-class family in Streatham, London. He started writing music at the age of twelve and went on to produce seven symphonies, several tone-poems, overtures, ballet and film scores, concertos, chamber music, piano pieces, choral works and more than 130 songs. He also wrote short stories, plays and poetry under an Irish pseudonym. In the 1920s and early 30s he was regarded as a major British composer, alongside Elgar, Delius, Holst and Vaughan Williams,  but after his death he fell out of fashion. Only recently has his highly individual, romantic music been rediscovered by a new generation. This collection gathers together his five outstanding Symphonic Poems: Tinagel, The Garden Of Fand, The Happy Forest, The Tale The Pine Trees Knew, and the reflective November Woods. The most famous of these compositions is Tintagel, his shimmering, almost cinematic portayal of ‘the castle-crowned cliff of Tintagel’. The acclaimed Royal Scottish National Orchestra is conducted by David Lloyd-Jones, and this CD makes an excellent introduction to a composer Sibelius called ‘one of the greatest men of our time’.

DEBUSSY - ORCHESTRAL WORKS                 TELARC CD-80617

The French composer and critic Claude Debussy’s music was much influenced by Wagner, the writer Edgar Allan Poe, and the impressionist movement in painting that flourished at the end of the 19th century. He became one of the most important composers of the 20th century, developing a unique and sensuous style that broke many rules but remained essentially French. His compositions didn’t simply express an idea or tell a story, but created an ‘atmosphere’ through sound sketches and rich instrumentation. Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun, played on this CD by the excellent Cincinatti Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Paavo Jarvi, relies on a series of repetitions and variations of its basic themes rather than any sense of development.  Also featured here are two of Debussy's other best-known works, Nocturnes and La Mer, as well as the little recorded Berceuse Héroïque, a piece written.in 1914, shortly after the fall of Belgium at the beginning of World War I, to honour the Belgian king and people. The spellbinding Prelude here reveals the CSO at its best as the languorous yearning sweeps to a climax before tension fades. La Mer shows the orchestra’s great virtuosity, especially in the closing ‘Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea’. ‘The primary aim of French music is to give pleasure.’ - Claude Debussy, 1904.

COPLAND/HINDEMITH - ATLANTA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA   TELARC SACD60648

Martha Graham asked Aaron Copland to compose a ballet based on her scenario. The resulting work, was originally called ‘Ballet for Martha’ until Graham suggested the title from a phrase in a poem by Hart Crane, although it had nothing to do with the scenario of the ballet. Of all Copland’s important ballet scores Appalachian Spring makes least use of folk tunes, but the Shaker hymn ‘Simple Gifts’ inspires a series of marvelous variations at the end of the ballet. Louis Lane and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s interpretation of Appalachian Spring together with Copland’s Rodeo and Fanfare for the Common Man have long been acclaimed for their stunning clarity and this reissue in remastered DSD captures all the energy and optimism of the original recordings. Paul Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber is based on sketches the composer made for a ballet by the choreographer Léonide Massine, inspired by Brueghel paintings. Hindemith was never paid for his work and the ballet was never performed, although eventually the music was used in a ballet, staged by the New York City Ballet in 1952 with choreography by George Balanchine. This witty and dynamic piece is engagingly played here by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Shaw.

MUSIC OF DARIUS MILHAUD - NICOLE PAIEMENT        KLEOS 5131

The award-winning conductor Nicole Paiement is Artistic Director of San Francisco’s BluePrint Festival and is Director of Ensembles at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she conducts the orchestra, chamber singers and full opera productions. She is also Artistic Director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music New Music Ensemble, which has a growing reputation for performing and commissioning works by living composers. This album includes world premiere recordings of Cantate de la Guerre by Darius Milhaud and API (bees), a work commissioned from the teacher and composer Elinor Armer, who studied composition with Milhaud and Leon Kirchner and piano with Alexander Libermann. The other pieces on this enjoyable and adventurous CD are Milhaud’s Sonata for Harpsichord and Violin; Aspen Serenade and Saudades do Brazil.

STRAVINSKY/NIELSEN - RITE OF SPRING/SYMPHONY NO. 5   TELARC SACD-60615

Few musical work can have had such a powerful influence or evoked as much controversy as Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score, The Rite of Spring. The work’s premiere in 1913 at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris caused a great scandal as the music’s pulsating, jagged chords vied for attention with the extravagant costumes, unfamiliar choreography and a grotesque story of pagan sacrifice. Stravinsky's revolutionary masterpiece has had tremendous impact on music ever since. Carl Nielsen’s underrated Fifth Symphony was premiered some twelve years later and like many of the composer’s works it explores the boundary between Romanticism and Modernism. Estonian-born Paavo Järvi is the acclaimed Music Director of Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and together on this imaginatively-programmed SACD they brilliantly reveal the connections between these apparently unrelated compositions. ‘Paavo Järvi is putting the Cincinnati Symphony on the map’ - Gramophone.

JACQUES THIBAUD IN CONCERT               APR 5644

The virtuoso French violinist Jacques Thibaud was born in 1880 in Bordeaux. His playing is typical of the elegantly suave classical French style and he was a member of a remarkable musical trio that also included cellist Pablo Casals and the pianist Alfred Cortot. Thibaud, who also became a renowned teacher, died in 1953 in a plane crash on his way to Japan. His 1720 Stradivarius instrument perished with him. This most valuable CD includes rare recordings of Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole (performed with the Orchestre Radio-Symphonique/Jean Martinon in 1953) as well as the Saint-Saëns Violin Concerto No.1 and Introduction & Rondo capriccioso (performed with the Hessichen Radio Orchestra/Alceo Galliera, also in 1953). The album also features Chausson’s Poème, recorded with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Ernest Ansermet in 1941, when Thibaud’s playing was at its most enchanting.

HAYDN/MOZART - ORCHESTRAL WORKS         BERLIN CLASSICS  017692BC

The excellent Chamber Orchestra of Berlin give vibrant performances of famous and not so famous works by Joseph Haydn (Double concerto for violin, harpsichord and strings; Symphony No. 45) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Divertimento in D major; Serenade in G major). Haydn’s little known concerto is conventional and light in tone without descending into banality and could in many respects almost be a late Baroque work. The outstanding soloists on this recording are Kevin McCutcheon (harpsichord) and the orchestra’s artistic director Katrin Scholz (violin). Mozart’s Serenade in G major ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’ has long served as a perfect example of Classical composing, representing a smooth transition from the entertaining style of the serenade to the weightier one of the symphony. Haydn’s unique ‘Farewell Symphony’ was written in 1772 as a protest on behalf of his musicians, who were growing dissatisfied at being separated from their families in Eisenstadt during Prince Miklos’s seemingly never-ending summer sojourn at his palace in Eszterhaza. Haydn had the musicians snuff their candles and leave their desks one by one in an Adagio section at the end of the symphony.

FRANK BRIDGE - THE SEA & OTHER WORKS         NAXOS 8.557167

The work of the English composer and viola-player Frank Bridge (1879 - 1941) is at last beginning to find the wider audience he deserves, not least because he was the teacher of Benjamin Britten, one of whose earlier works is based on a composition by him. Bridge’s meticulously crafted music is full of haunting imagination and was much played in the earlier part of his career, during which time he was also a fine chamber music player and conductor. His later music took on a more radical style to which the musical public responded less favourably, and for 30 years after his death his major works were little played. It was around the time of the coronation of George V in 1911 that he composed his beautiful orchestral suite The Sea, which subsequently became a favourite at promenade concerts. This latest bargain-priced album form Naxos features an fine performance by the excellent New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Judd. The other works included are Bridge’s startling rhapsody Enter Spring, the tone poem Summer and Two Poems for Orchestra. Highly recommended.

J.S. BACH - THE COMPLETE ORCHESTRAL SUITES       TELARC SACD-60619

Johann Sebastian Bach composed remarkably few instrumental orchestral works. The most famous of these arehis Brandenburg Concertos, which were written in Baroque Italian Concerto style. His less well-known Orchestral Suites were composed in the French Baroque Style. The excellent Boston Baroque orchestra, directed by the American harpsichordist and conductor Martin Peariman, celebrates its 30th anniversary season by giving superb performances of the four suites on a single disc. There are no autograph scores for these works, so the music is principally known through instrumental parts copied out by Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel, among others. The first and fourth suites are thought ot have been composed during the 1720s, the third dates from 1731 and the second is from the late 1730s. They are presented on this immaculately recorded SACD in what has been determined to be their order of composition rather than their published order.

LAMOND/D’ALBERT - ORCHESTRAL MUSIC     HYPERION CDA67387

Born prematurely as a result of a steamboat collision on the Clyde, Frederic Lamond (1868-1948) lived a short walk from Eugen d’Albert in Glasgow and both of them became pupils of Liszt in Vienna. Lamond gained an international reputation as a concert pianist, especially as an interpreter of Beethoven. His only symphony, published in 1893, is reminiscent of both Brahms and Beethoven but with a distinct Scottish accent. It’s played here in great style by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Martyn Brabbins, together with Lamond’s striking concert overture From the Scottish Highlands, which tells the poignant story of Quentin Durward’s Burgundian adventures. This lively and revealing album also features an exuberant Sword Dance from Lamond’s opera, A Life in the Scottish Highlands, as well as Eugen d’Albert’s intriguing Overture to Esther. The six times married d’Albert was also a fine concert pianist and his operas, especially Tiefland, became well-known throughout Europe.

GRIEG/DVORAK/ELGAR         TELARC  SACD-60623

The Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra, directed by the Dutch/South African conductor Conrad van Alphen, perform three wonderfully Romantic compositions: Grieg’s Holberg Suite, Dvorák’s Serenade for Strings in E major and Elgar’s intimate three-movement Serenade for Strings in E minor. Antonin Dvorak’s work was often influenced by folk music and his Serenade for Strings is an uncomplicated yet sophisticated composition. Grieg’s delightful suite ‘From Holberg’s time’ was written to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Norwegian-Danish metaphysician Ludvig Holberg. The excellent Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra was founded by Conrad van Alphen and the Japanese violinist Makiko Hirayama in the year 2000, and in addition to its own concert performances in Rotterdam, the Orchestra regularly plays in such renowned venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Queen Elizabeth Hall in Antwerp. This outstandingly produced multi-channel surround SACD will play on all SACD and CD players, and the disc is also available in CD format (TELARC CD-80623).

SCHONBERG/STRAUSS - FRIEDER BERNIUS       CARUS 83.198

This Frieder Bernius recording of instrumental music features Arnold Schoenberg’s late Romantic psychogram Transfigured Night (in the version for string orchestra) and Metamorphoses by Richard Strauss. In Transfigured Night, Schoenberg drew directly on the earlier tone poems of Strauss and wrote that musically he wanted to limit himself to ‘represent nature and to express human feelings’. The subject of this programme music is the poem ‘Verklärte Nacht’ by Richard Dehmel, one of Germany’s finest lyric poets before the First World War. The content of Strauss’ Metamorphoses represents an ‘inner programme’ that expresses a deep sadness, reflecting the composer’s own sadness over the destruction in the last years of the Second World War of those places where he had experienced his greatest artistic triumphs. Frieder Bernius, conducting the Accademia d’Archi Bolzano, admirably recreates the original stylistic character of the music.

AFTER WORK HOUR, VOLS. 1, 2 & 3       BERLIN CLASSICS 0182712ART/ 0182722ART/    0182732ART

These three new ART compilations feature music designed to help you switch off after work and recharge your batteries. The titles of each CD have been carefully chosen to complement each other and open up the listener’s senses to appreciate classical music. The wide range of composers here include Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Grieg, Ravel (Pavane pur une Infante defunte), Sibelius, Verdi (la Traviata), Beethoven, Bizet (the Intermazzo from L’Arlesienne Suite), Mussorgsky, Satie (Gymnopedie No. 3), Debussy (Claire de lune), Tchaikovsky (Valse from Symphony No. 5), Franck and Granados (Andaluza). This is an enjoyable and gentle introduction to the pleasures of classical music.

MAX D’OLLONE - SYMPHONIC MUSIC         CLAVES  CD 50-2301

This welcome CD features premiere recordings of the some of the most important works for orchestra by Max d’Ollone (1875 –1959), who is better known as the composer of eleven operas, sacred and secular cantatas, and  a large number of songs. The three-movement structure of Le Ménétrier, with its solo violin part, is reminiscent of a concerto but d’Ollone described it as a ‘symphonic poem in three parts with a solo violin’. Lamento is a meticulously orchestrated work with wonderfully melodic lines and delicate harmonies. The Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra is forceful and majestic, reminiscent of Saint-Saëns in its monumental, grandiloquent finale. This CD also features a short chamber music work, the Andante and Scherzo for Three Cellos. The soloists are Mark Kaplan (violin) and François-Joël Thiollier (piano), with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster. These are powerful performances of richly lyrical music that is both emotionally expressive and technically impeccable.