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ONCE UPON A TIME

RUBICON

$20.17 Jun 18, 2021

Esther Birringer has chosen three great Russian ballets for her recital album. Petrushka and Romeo & Juliet are filled with drama, love and tragedy and The Nutcracker with fantasy. Tchaikovsky's suite from ballet was arranged for piano by Mikhail Pletnev. Prokofiev, a superb pianist, arranged numbers from his ballet Romeo & Juliet for piano, and Stravinsky took three sections from his ballet Petrushka and created the Three Pieces. It is a superb showcase for any pianist and makes great demands upon the performer.

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ONCE UPON A TIME
RUBICON Jun 2021
CD
$20.17

ONCE UPON A TIME: THE LOST 1965 NEW YORK STUDIO
RESONANCE RECORDS Aug 2020
Vinyl
$20.49

Once Upon a Time: The Lost 1965 New York Studio Sessions

RESONANCE RECORDS

$17.49 Sep 04, 2020

Previously unissued release of studio recordings from pianist Bob James at Wollman Auditorium at Columbia University in 1965. Features James in two different trio settings: one from January 20, 1965 with bassist Larry Rockwell and drummer Bob Pozar, and one from October 9, 1965 with bassist Bill Wood and drummer Omar Clay, performing a mix of jazz standards and original compositions. Includes an extensive booklet with essays, new interviews, plus rare archival photographs. Tracks 1 through 4 were recorded on January 20, 1965 with Larry Rockwood on bass and Robert Pozar on drums. Tracks 5, 6, 7, and 8 were recorded October 9, 1965 with Bill Wood on bass and Omar Clay on drums.

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Once Upon a Time: The Lost 1965 New York Studio Sessions
RESONANCE RECORDS Sep 2020
CD
$17.49

MUKASHI-ONCE UPON A TIME
SUNNYSIDE Apr 2014
CD
$16.63

Ennio Morricone conducts Morricone: His Greatest Hits

Sony Masterworks

$11.98 Nov 11, 2016

Sony Classical presents “Ennio Morricone conducts Morricone – His Greatest Hits”, celebrating Morricone’s 60 years of music making in October. The album features his most popular movie themes, selected and conducted by Morricone himself. It contains music from films including "Once Upon a Time in the West", "Cinema Paradiso", "The Good The Bad And The Ugly", "The Mission". In 2016 and 2017 Morricone will present parts of this repertoire internationally on his "The 60 Years of Music Tour".

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Ennio Morricone conducts Morricone: His Greatest Hits
Sony Masterworks Nov 2016
CD
$11.98

PLAYS ENNIO MORRICONE

IMPORTS

Vinyl

$48.99 Apr 08, 2016

Gatefold 180-gram vinyl. Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone is a 2004 album of recordings from Morricone's various film scores by brilliant cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Ennio Morricone. The album was recorded with the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra and Gilda ButtA on piano. Morricone functioned as orchestrator, conductor and producer. The album stayed 105 weeks on the Billboard Top Classical Albums. Not only did the great cellist honor the the iconic screen composer on this 2004 album, but he teamed with him here, too. Morricone orchestrated, conducted and produced this, as Ma and pianist Gilda Butta joined forces with the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra on "Sergio Leone Suite" (music from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "Once upon a Time in America"), "Brian de Palma Suite" (music from "The Untouchables" and "Casualties of War"), "Moses and Marco Polo Suite," "Giuseppe Tornatore Suite" and more. Music on Vinyl.

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PLAYS ENNIO MORRICONE
IMPORTS Apr 2016
Vinyl
$48.99

Lange-Muller: Der Var Engang / Renaissance / Sange Ved Havet
BIS Jun 2005
CD
$21.99

Sheehan: A Christmas Carol / Walker, Skylark Vocal Ensemble

Sono Luminus

Blu-Ray

$9.49 ~~$18.99~~ Save 50% Sep 23, 2022

This is a Blu-ray Audio disc, playable on Blu-ray players only.

“In the Summer of 2019, we recorded our album Once Upon a Time, our first recorded version of a “story concert.” Although we had explored this concept for several years prior with storyteller Sarah Walker, Once Upon a Time was our first collaboration with Benedict Sheehan, who composed incidental music (almost like a choral movie score) to accompany Sarah’s dialogue and to connect the musical dots between existing works by an array of composers. That summer, it became clear that we had stumbled onto something unusual and special. First, the idea of a continuous choral story score – combining elements of classical performance, storytelling, film scoring, and theatricality – seemed to be a rich new idiom for choral performance art. Second, the collaborative team of the project seemed like a dream come true – there was a strong sense of mutual respect for everyone’s unique talents, and a rare ability for creative push and pull…” (Matthew Guard, Artistic Director)

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Sale

Sheehan: A Christmas Carol / Walker, Skylark Vocal Ensemble
Sono Luminus Sep 2022
Blu-Ray
~~$18.99~~ $9.49

Patrick Melrose / Tv O.s.t.

Sony Masterworks

$11.98 Sep 07, 2018

Music by HAUSCHKA“Patrick Melrose Is The Best Show On TV You're Not Watching” ForbesStarring Oscar® nominee and Emmy® winner Benedict CumberbatchNominated for 5 Emmy Awards, this five-part limited series based on the acclaimed novels by Edward St. Aubyn tracks Patrick from a privileged but deeply traumatic childhood in the South of France through severe substance abuse in his twenties in New York and, ultimately, toward recovery back home in Britain. At once harrowing and hilarious, Oscar® nominee and Emmy® winner Benedict Cumberbatch stars as the troubled titular character.ABOUT THE COMPOSERHauschka (Volker Bertelmann) is a composer, songwriter and experimental musician who uses prepared piano as his primary instrument. The prepared piano refers to the technique of resting pieces of paper, marbles, drumsticks and other objects on the strings to produce odd, sometimes randomly generated sounds, that move the instrument in unexpected directions. Hauschka grew up in Germany in the village of Ferndorf, in the district of Siegen-Wittgenstein, North Rhine-Westphalia. The thousand-year-old village was small, with a population of about 1,000 people. He started taking piano lessons when he was nine and in high school, he played in a cover band that won a local Battle of the Bands contest. Being a musician was not an acceptable career path in his family, so Hauschka studied medicine at University in Cologne, although he was still playing in bands. Just before graduation, he examined his career choices and dropped out to do music full time. His first venture was a hip-hop band called God’s Favorite Dog, with his cousin Oliver Lodge-Philips. They had a couple of minor hits and got picked up and dropped by a major label. After experimenting with some avant garde aspect of techno music in a band called Tonetraeger with Torsten “TG” Mauss Hauschka eventually moved to Düsseldorf where he decided to go solo and began to compose contemporary music for piano by combining elements of both classical and pop music traditions.Substantial, Hauschka’s first solo album, blended classical, avant-garde and pop impulses, with an aura of measured melancholy. Then he discovered prepared piano. His experiments with this new instrument changed his approach to music and composing, setting him on a journey of exploration that continues to this day. His albums of prepared piano music include The Prepared Piano, a solo record of spontaneous improvisations; Ferndorf, featuring arrangements for cello, trombone, violin and piano; Salon des Amateurs, with drummers Samuli Kosminen (múm), and Joey Burns and John Convertino (Calexico); Silfra, an improvised collaboration with classical violinist Hilary Hahn. In 2014 Hauschka released Abandoned City which was followed by A NDO C Y, a collection of solo improvisations from the Abandoned City sessions and two extended remixes from the Abandoned City album - “Agdam” by Devandra Banhart and “Stromness” by Eluvium as well as 2.11.2014, a live album that includes two 20-minute improvisations for prepared piano, based on the music from Abandoned City.Hauschka’s latest release, What if (2017) finds him adding player pianos to his armoury, something that he has also been exploring in his live performances following the album’s release. Furthermore, Hauschka also has for the last few years built a prolific career in writing scores for films. Among Hauschka’s earlier film scores are Praia du Futuro, a Brazilian love story centered on two gay men which became controversial in its home country, Farewell, Herr Schwarz which touches on German/Jewish history and holocaust themes in a mystical way and Craig Macneill’s film The Boy, about a child who grows up to become a mass murderer. Hauschka’s big breakthrough in the field came though with his collaboration with Dustin O’Halloran in scoring Lion (2016), directed by Garth Davis and starring Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara. Their score went on to be nominated for numerous awards, including an Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA.Other recent score jobs include James Franco’s In Dubious Battle (2016), based on the 1936 novel by John Steinbeck which describes the movement to unionize fruit workers in California; Deutschland Dein Selbstporträt (2016), a unique portrait of the country and its people by Sönke Wortmann and another documentary, Exodus (2016) by Hank Levine which explores the current refugee crises with individual stories.TRACKLISTING1 David Melrose Theme 2 Running Through the Grapevine 3 First Taxi Trip 4 Morgue 5 Quaaludes Hit 6 Back at the Drake 7 Martinis and Tartar 8 Second Taxi Trip 9 At Loretta's 10 Hotel Tripping 11 Naked Delivery 12 Running to Frank E. MacDonald's 13 Broadway Helicopter 14 Come Talk to Your Dear Old Dad 15 Rivers of Blood 16 David Melrose - Piano Virtuoso 17 Careful with the China 18 Arthritis Flashback 19 Ferris Wheel 20 Squashing Ants 21 Mirror 22 Falling Down Stairs 23 Patrick in the Tunnel 24 Dinner - Lurking - Stairway 25 End Titles 26 Party Preparations 27 Lizard - Bathroom Flashback 28 Catching Sonny 29 Scorpion 30 Don't Go Picking Out the Wallpaper Just Yet 31 Liquor Store Phone Call 32 If You Can't Change 33 It's Amitriptyline 34 Patrick Returns to Onslow Club

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Patrick Melrose / Tv O.s.t.
Sony Masterworks Sep 2018
CD
$11.98

Catalani: La Wally / Rumpf, Kugel, Ferreira, Valentin, Langbein

Capriccio

DVD

$19.99 Aug 12, 2014

"Once upon a time there was a young woman who was more courageous than all the men in her mountain village".
Given the era, what sounds like a fictitious story really happened. Anna Stainer-Knittel's (b. 1841) life was novelized and serialized with filtered in motifs from Tyrolean legend in a Milan paper by Wilhelmine von Hillern, where the Italian composer Alfredo Catalani became aware of it.
It's first staging at La Scala in Milan, 1892 met with great approval.

Alfredo Catalani
LA WALLY

Stromminger – Marc Kugel
Wally – Susanna von der Burg
Giuseppe Hagenbach – Paulo Ferreira
Vincenzo Gellner – Bernd Valentin
Walter – Susanne Langbein
Afra – Kristina Cosumano
Il Pedone – Johannes Wimmer

Tiroler Landestheater Chorus
(chorus master: Michel Roberge)
Innsbruck Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Rumpf, conductor

Johannes Reitmeier, stage director
Thomas Dörfler, set designer
Michael D. Zimmermann, costume designer
Johann Kleinhein, lighting designer

Recorded live from the Tiroler Landestheater, Innsbruck, 2012

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: Stereo 2.0 / Surround 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, German, English
Running time: 119 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

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Catalani: La Wally / Rumpf, Kugel, Ferreira, Valentin, Langbein
Capriccio Aug 2014
DVD
$19.99

EMANON

BLUE NOTE RECORDS

$70.99 Sep 14, 2018

eventy-seven+ minutes of classics in superb sound - includes all the (UK best-seller) original LP plus 30 minutes with favorites of the Royal Marines and Grenadier Guards ! 5055354419669 AOTL1966.2 36612994 7.59 10.98 .20 ALTO COMPACT DISCS CLASSICAL ORCHESTRAL & SYMPHONIC 10/12/2018 https://media.aent-m.com/graphics/items/sdimages/c/500/8/8/4/9/3819488.jpg 6 1 N RICHTER,MAX WHITE BOY RICK / O.S.T. 028948360321 DEGRB002907402.2 36614318 11.09 13.95 .21 DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON COMPACT DISCS POP SOUNDTRACKS & FILM SCORES 09/21/2018 https://media.aent-m.com/graphics/items/sdimages/b/500/4/2/9/9/3819924.jpg 0 1 N TERFEL,BRYN DREAMS & SONGS 2018 release. 'Music is such a special language. There's a connection with music and words, evoking our deepest memories and keenest hopes - our dreams and songs to sing.' - Sir Bryn Terfel. 028948355143 DEGRB002894802.2 36614646 11.09 13.95 .22 DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON COMPACT DISCS CLASSICAL CLASSICAL VOCALS 10/19/2018 https://mediacdn.aent-m.com/prod-img/500/57/3565057-2655028.jpg 0 1 N FOREST OF THE LOST SOULS FOREST OF THE LOST SOULS Two strangers meet in a forest notorious for suicides and decide to learn more about each other. Soon it becomes clear that one of them is there for a much more disturbing reason, and is actually a psychotic killer there to prey upon others and end their sorrow for them. 760137164395 WIEY1643DVD 36614844 10.03 14.95 .17 WILD EYE RELEASING DIGITAL VIDEO DISC MOVIE HORROR / SCI-FI / FANTASY 10/09/2018 https://media.aent-m.com/graphics/items/sdimages/b/500/5/0/0/0/3820005.jpg 0 1 N DUNCAN,CRAIG COLONIAL CHRISTMAS 2018 holiday release. Early American holiday favorites featuring Fiddle, Hammered Dulcimer, Whistles, Guitar, Mandolin, and Accordion. Craig Duncan's talents on violin, fiddle, hammered dulcimer, mandolin, guitar, bass, and viola can be heard on numerous Nashville recordings. A graduate of Appalachian State University and Tennessee State University, Craig is a member of the North American Fiddler's Hall of Fame and Who's Who in Music and Musicians. He's written 30+ music instruction publications for Mel Bay Public. 792755616024 GHIL556160.2 36616190 9.03 13.49 .19 GREEN HILL PROD. COMPACT DISCS POP CHRISTMAS / CHANUKKAH 10/19/2018 https://media.aent-m.com/graphics/items/sdimages/a/500/1/6/2/0/3820261.jpg 363 1 N BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE A series of mysterious catastrophes sweep the globe, causing worlds scientists to conclude that beings from another planet are attacking earth. Two earth space ships damage attackers, giving the world time to prepare for gigantic battle in outer space. 043396544918 SOYM9654491BR 36617357 23.55 26.99 .15 SONY BLU-RAY MOVIE HORROR / SCI-FI / FANTASY 10/02/2018 https://mediacdn.aent-m.com/prod-img/500/91/3565391-3638147.jpg 0 1 N RIDER RIDER After a tragic riding accident, young cowboy Brady (Brady Jandreau), once a rising star of the rodeo circuit, is warned that his competition days are over. Back home, Brady finds himself wondering what he has to live for when he can no longer do what gives him a sense of purpose: to ride and compete. In an attempt to regain control of his fate, Brady undertakes a search for a new identity and tries to redefine his idea of what it means to be a man in the heartland of America. 043396546561 SOYM9654656BR 36617395 23.55 26.99 .15 SONY BLU-RAY MOVIE WESTERNS DRAMA 08/28/2018 https://mediacdn.aent-m.com/prod-img/500/95/3565395-3638167.jpg 4 1 N INSIDE SPORTFISHING: CUSTOM ROD BUILDING WITH DOC INSIDE SPORTFISHING: CUSTOM ROD BUILDING WITH DOC If you've ever wanted to learn how to build your own custom rods, from start to finish, this is the DVD you've been waiting for: over 2 1/2 hours of in-depth instruction on how to build custom rods. Hosted by Doc Ski, recognized as one of the finest custom rod builders in the world, this DVD takes you through every aspect of custom rod building in an easy to follow, step-by-step visual process utilizing micro photography. From finding the spline, wrapping 812073023370 BAVW2337DVD 36618231 11.66 19.99 .23 BAYVIEW FILMS DIGITAL VIDEO DISC MOVIE INSTRUCTIONAL / EDUCATIONAL 10/30/2018 https://media.aent-m.com/graphics/items/sdimages/a/500/1/9/2/0/3820291.jpg 0 1 N INSIDE SPORTFISHING: SAN CLEMENTE ISLAND - GOES INSIDE SPORTFISHING: SAN CLEMENTE ISLAND - GOES For years we've been pitching balls into the boiler rocks and along the kelps at San Clemente Island and have had some pretty good days. But nothing we'd ever seen could have prepared us for what the island had in store for us. Legal calicos are plentiful. But the big ones, those huge home guard fish pushing 10 pounds, are few and far between. Smart, elusive, and territorial, these explosive, hard-hitting fish spend their lives buried dep within the kelp or hunkered down between the boiler rocks. More often than not living along the backside of the islands, where weather and sea conditions often make their habitat virtually inaccessible. But every once in a while the sea opens up her mysteries, giving us just a glimpse into her world few have ever experienced. This is one of those rare moments when everything was perfect and the bass simply went off. Hosted by Dave Pfeiffer and Robby Gant, this was the best calico bite any of us had ever seen. 812073023547 BAVW2354DVD 36618262 11.66 19.99 .15 BAYVIEW FILMS DIGITAL VIDEO DISC MOVIE INSTRUCTIONAL / EDUCATIONAL 10/30/2018 https://media.aent-m.com/graphics/items/sdimages/b/500/4/9/2/0/3820294.jpg 0 1 N MERMAID MOVIES: TOUCH IT FEEL IT MERMAID MOVIES: TOUCH IT FEEL IT There is nothing more alluring than beautiful women willing to share their charms with the camera. Join Lori DeLinda and Stephanie Ross, plus seven more of your favorite Mermaid models, in this collection of wild and erotic fantasies brought to life. You'll love watching the sensuous ladies celebrate their charms while they do a little something especially for you in this revealing and uncensored program. Reminiscent of the classic Playboy Video collections from the 80s and 90s, 'Mermaid Movies' presents a stunning assortment of the world's most beautiful women filmed at some of the most exciting locations around the world. From the sun-splashed shores of Belize to the otherworldly mystery of Palau in Micronesia, these erotic aquatic fantasies are loaded with sea, sand, sun, and fun and filled with breathtaking footage of gorgeous women in every frame. 812073024087 BAVW2408DVD 36618286 8.75 14.99 .18 BAYVIEW FILMS DIGITAL VIDEO DISC MOVIE EROTIC [NON-XXX: STRAIGHT] 10/16/2018 https://media.aent-m.com/graphics/items/sdimages/b/500/6/9/2/0/3820296.jpg 0 1 N HARDENED TARGET SELF-DEFENSE 1: EMERGENCY TOOLS HARDENED TARGET SELF-DEFENSE 1: EMERGENCY TOOLS Volume 1: Emergency Tools - Personal Weapons. Instructor Thomas Sipin explains concepts that are important when facing a serious, motivated attacher. Mr. Sipin, his sone Kelii and Jenny Noval demonstrate drills to make use of body mechanics and develop power for stand-p continuous striking. 812073025268 CYMA2526DVD 36618347 11.66 19.99 .20 CENTURY MARTIAL ARTS DIGITAL VIDEO DISC MOVIE MARTIAL ARTS / KUNG-FU 10/23/2018 https://media.aent-m.com/graphics/items/sdimages/a/500/2/0/3/0/3820302.jpg 0 1 N UNFRIENDED: 2-MOVIE COLLECTION UNFRIENDED: 2-MOVIE COLLECTION 191329080290 MHV61199650DVD 36618798 9.08 14.98 .22 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS DIGITAL VIDEO DISC MOVIE HORROR / SCI-FI / FANTASY 10/16/2018 https://mediacdn.aent-m.com/prod-img/500/18/3565518.jpg 3 2 N DANON,OSKAR GLINKA: IVAN SUSANIN (A LIFE FOR THE TSAR) With this and six companion issues, Eloquence makes available for the first time on CD the seven complete Russian operas recorded in 1955 by Decca with the company of the Belgrade Opera. According to one Russian commentator, A Life for the Tsar 'marked the boundary between the past and the future of Russian music'. After it's premiere in 1836 in St. Petersburg, the importance of Glinka's 'patriotic heroic-tragic opera' was quickly recognized not only by the literary men such as Pushkin and Gogol but across the Russian cultural establishment. It was the first Russian opera to be performed abroad (in Prague, in 1866) and it became the annual fixture to open the Bolshoi Opera's season for many decades. When Stalin and his cultural apparatchiks were searching for a new expression of national pride in the Soviet state, after various commissioned works were found wanting, this emblematic music drama was a natural choice. The crux of the original, however, lies in the willingness of the peasant Ivan Susanin to lay down his life for the tsar. Thus Sergei Gorodetsky was commissioned to revise the libretto in tune with Soviet ideology and, as Ivan Susanin, the opera had a second, no less successful premiere in Moscow in 1939. Until the era of glasnost, this was the version of the opera most widely known, and it became a central repertoire work for the Belgrade Opera. Fresh from a successful tour of Boris Godunov in Switzerland the previous year, the Belgrade Opera in 1955 was keen to make an impression on an international public. At the same time, the Decca company perceived a cost-effective but artistically assured opportunity to expand both it's small but rapidly growing stereo catalogue (launched the previous year with Ansermet and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande) and it's opera discography with classics of the Russian opera repertoire which it had previously not been possible to record in the original language. In the event, the stereo versions were held back for the US market and only released in Europe in the 1960s, by which time the Belgrade Opera had acquired an international reputation for excellence thanks both to the mono issues and to it's extensive touring schedule, which took in all the major European operatic centres. The booklet for this newly remastered release includes both a synopsis and an essay giving full historical context to the Belgrade opera recordings. 028948269242 ELOA8269242.2 36621002 16.24 24.99 .40 ELOQUENCE AUSTRALIA COMPACT DISCS CLASSICAL ORCHESTRAL & SYMPHONIC 08/24/2018 https://media.aent-m.com/graphics/items/sdimages/b/500/6/6/5/0/3820566.jpg 0 3 N BUYBUST BUYBUST Drug enforcement cop Nina Manigan (Anne Curtis) didn't like it when her higher-ups signed off on a sting to catch a cartel leader in the middle of Manila's most dangerous slum. Her instincts proved fatally right... and after the ambush left most of her squad slaughtered, she and fellow survivor Rico (Brandon Vera) faced as much peril from the locals as from the gangsters. Erik Matti's gritty actioner co-stars Victor Neri, Arjo Atayde, Levi Ignacio, Alex Calleja. 127 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack: Tagalog; Subtitles: English. In Tagalog with English subtitles. 810348030238 WGUS3023DVD 36494330 13.98 24.98 .21 WELL GO USA DIGITAL VIDEO DISC MOVIE ACTION / ADVENTURE 10/16/2018 https://mediacdn.aent-m.com/prod-img/500/19/3547619.jpg 0 1 N RICK & MORTY RICK & MORTY - O.S.T. 2018 release. Rick and Morty is the critically acclaimed, half-hour animated hit comedy series on Adult Swim that follows a sociopathic genius scientist who drags his timid grandson on insanely dangerous adventures across the universe. Rick and Morty stars Justin Roiland (Adventure Time), Sarah Chalke (Scrubs), Chris Parnell (Saturday Night Live) and Spencer Grammer (Greek). The series is created by Dan Harmon (Community) and Roiland who also serve as executive producers. This release is the first official collection of music from Rick and Morty. Features 26 songs, 24 of which are from the first three seasons of the show, and 18 of which were composed by Ryan Elder specifically for the show. The album also includes songs by Mazzy Star, Chaos Chaos, Blonde Redhead, and Belly, all of which have been featured in the show, as well as two new tunes from Chad VanGaalen and Clipping inspired by the show. 098787126525 SUB71265.2 36504435 10.83 15.98 .17 SUB POP COMPACT DISCS POP SOUNDTRACKS & FILM SCORES 09/28/2018 https://media.aent-m.com/graphics/items/sdimages/a/500/0/1/4/1/3811410.jpg 47 1 N SHORTER,WAYNE EMANON Wayne Shorter - EMANON" Featuring a double-album and it's companion piece - a self-penned, 84-page graphic novel - Wayne Shorter's Emanon is the definitive look into his artistic multiverse. The standard three-CD set includes four studio tracks performed by Shorter's quartet (pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade) and the expansive, 34-piece Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, in addition to a 6 track live album featuring the quartet itself.

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EMANON
BLUE NOTE RECORDS Sep 2018
CD
$70.99

Bruno Walter Conducts Bruckner's 4th And 9th Symphonies

Music and Arts Programs of America

$32.99 Jul 31, 2012

BRUCKNER Symphonies: No. 4; 1 No. 9. 2 MOZART Symphony No. 35 in D “Haffner” 3 • Bruno Walter, cond; 1 NBC SO. 2 Philadelphia O. 3 New York PO • MUSIC & ARTS CD-1262 (2 CDs: 127:30) Live: 1 02/10/1940, 2 02/28/1948, 3 02/06/1944

Having recently obtained an extensive collection of acetates from the estate of a private music collector, the Music & Arts label is issuing some fruits of that here in the form of live performances by Bruno Walter. Two items—the Bruckner Ninth and the Mozart “Haffner” symphonies—are previously unissued items; the Bruckner Fourth was released on Pearl GEMM CD 9131 but here enjoys slightly but tangibly superior sound. While still constricted, it is tolerably listenable by the standards one would expect for a recording of that vintage. Here the weak bass register is noticeably stronger and clearer, background hiss is slightly reduced, occasional fluctuations in pitch have been evened out, and assorted clicks and pops and similar extraneous noises excised or reduced. However, the Pearl release is still not superfluous, as this issue does not include the filler pieces by Weber and Smetana (the overtures to Oberon and The Bartered Bride ).

While none of these items is, strictly speaking, a novelty in the Walter discography, the performance of the Bruckner Fourth preserved here is of particular interest to both Brucknerians and Walterians. The Walter discography contains only two versions of this score: the live one presented here, and the conductor’s studio recording with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, recorded from February 13-25, 1960. (The discography of the CSO is complex, because Columbia used that moniker for several different studio orchestras in various locales. In Walter’s case, the monaural recordings are with a reduced contingent of the New York Philharmonic and other local musicians, while his stereo recordings are with a core ensemble drawn from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Festival Orchestra, supplemented by members of various Hollywood film studio orchestras.) The Sony SMK 64 481 issue of the studio performance is presently available—as are most of the titles in Sony’s erstwhile “Bruno Walter Edition”—as an ArkivMusic reprint.

What is most remarkable is how radically Walter’s conception of this piece changed over 20 years, with the respective timings providing an initial indication: 16:32, 14:32, 8:27, and 18:32 versus 18:40, 15:37, 10:59, and 20:46. Walter does use different editions of the score—the 1888-89 Löwe/Guttmann version in 1940, and the 1936 Haas edition of the 1878/80 version in 1960. (For the 1960 recording I am taking the word of John F. Berky on his abruckner.com discography site over that of Sony, which states in its CD booklet that Walter used the 1953 Nowak edition.) However, this in no way accounts for the differences, as most of them are matters of instrumental detail (e.g., the radically reduced orchestration in the Scherzo at 8:13-8:16 in the 1940 performance as compared to the same passage at 8:20-8:23 in the 1960 recording) rather than cuts in the score. Instead, Walter’s earlier interpretation is far more volatile, not only in terms of significantly faster tempi but also in more generous use of accelerandi and other tempo modifications. For example, in 1940 there is an adrenaline rush on an ascending scale from 1:41 to 1:52 not employed in 1960, while in the fourth movement the 1940 performance takes only a mild ritardando at 8:13 to 8:16 but in 1960 a very emphatic one in the same passage at 8:20 to 8:23. In 1940 the Scherzo movement is taken at an exceptionally brisk pace, whereas in 1960 it is stately, with the trio section being positively languorous. Similarly, whereas in 1960 Walter squares off phrases in the more emphatic manner common to most Bruckner performances nowadays, demarcating discrete units as aural equivalents of the giant stone blocks used to construct Gothic cathedrals, in 1940 the phrasing is noticeably more fluid and linear, particularly in woodwind runs that ripple like rapidly flowing rivulets (cf. at 15:24 in the first movement). How much these changes owe to the oft-noted differences in Walter’s recordings made before and after his March 1957 heart attack, and how much they may owe to the conductor possibly seeking to elaborate greater distinctions between his approaches to Bruckner and Mahler, can only be a subject of speculation. In any case, in these respects the 1940 performance is akin to the relatively few complete Bruckner symphony performances that survive from before WW II, and suggest an earlier school of performance which is now well-nigh extinct. Both for that reason, and for the intriguing snapshot of how Walter’s interpretation of this piece shifted over the years, this recording is of particular interest for collectors of historical performances.

The companion performance in this set of the Bruckner Ninth lacks the same degree of intrinsic value, in that there are eight surviving recorded performances from Walter’s baton, variously given with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Columbia Symphony. The table below provides details for comparison. In this and the succeeding tables, if a particular performance has appeared more than once on CD, I have cited the best version currently in print; studio recordings are marked with an asterisk. For the timings in this instance, I have used those provided by Mark W. Kluge in his notes to the 2003 Music and Arts release of the 1946 performance, except for the 1948 and 1950 performances not listed by him.

FANFARE: Date Orchestra CD Issue (if any) Timings

03/17/46 NYP Music & Arts CD-1110 21:42 9:37 19: 42

02/28/48 PO Music & Arts CD-1262 21:19 9:43 19:28

02/02/50 NYP none (private collection) 20:12 9:55 19: 15

08/20/53 VPO Andromeda ANDRCD 9092 21:10 10:09 19:17

12/27/53 NYP Tahra TAH 571 20:32 10:09 19:46

02/10/57 NYP Music & Arts CD-1212 19:59 10:01 19: 14

11/13/59 LAP none (private collection) 22:30 10:53 21: 58

11/16-19/59 CSO Sony SMK 64 483* 23:51 11:29 23:16

As Kluge rightly states in the booklet notes to the 2003 disc of Walter’s 1946 performance, “Walter’s live performances of the Ninth Symphony preserved on tape show a certain consistency, varying in individual nuance rather than interpretive outline”. In the booklet notes to the present release he further observes, “All of his live performances of the score display certain common interpretive details,” of which he provides several examples, such as “the very precise (almost clipped) brass interjections in the opening bars.” Unremarked upon by Kluge, except for a passing observation that the studio account “lacks the fire of Walter’s live performances,” is the extraordinary speed and drive of Walter’s conception of the work, which in the pre-1959 performances clocks in at between 49:22 (the fastest recorded performance by any conductor) and 51:01. Among the almost 400 complete performances listed in the abruckner.com discography, only Volkmar Andreae, Jascha Horenstein, Georg-Ludwig Jochum, Roger Norrington, plus (amazingly) John Barbirolli and Hans Knappertsbusch, have timings within three minutes of Walter. This work alone gives the lie to the stereotype of Walter as a cushy, gentle interpreter given solely to Gemütlichkeit rather than Sturm und Drang.

Despite their overall similarity, the pre-1959 performances do not suffer from lack of variety or interest. With the exception of the live 1959 performance, which stems from a relatively poor source, the sound quality improves incrementally with the more recent performance date, though the sonic differences between the three performances from 1953-57 are rather minimal. For me, the key factor in evaluating the first six performances is Walter’s approach to and follow-through from the fortissimo recapitulation of the first theme of the opening movement, beginning at about halfway through the movement. For the approach to the recapitulation, the recap itself, and the section immediately thereafter, Walter demarcates each of the three sections with a marked caesura and tempo adjustment. There are noticeable differences to how he does this in several of the performances; although these may simply be differences of the moment, they suggest instead that he was not entirely satisfied with his handling of these sections and was constantly searching for new and better solutions. I find the 1946 performance to be the least satisfactory; as the timing of the first movement indicates, Walter there inserts greater pauses and slows down each section more than usual, causing the whole to lose coherency and momentum and to bog down. Walter also takes two major ritardandi early on, at 1:55 and 3:00, that he drops after the 1948 Philadelphia performance, which has a similarly hobbling effect. (For a more positive response, see Robert McColley’s review back in 26:6.) By contrast, the unreleased 1950 performance is the most successful, having a fierce energy and the least pronounced breaks and tempo deceleration.

The three performances from 1948 and 1953 occupy a middle ground between these extremes; here the differences are to be found more in the distinctive timbres of the respective orchestras. In his booklet notes to the 1946 performance, Kluge states that “the warmer style of the Vienna Philharmonic added a sense of plasticity and nuance not as evident in the later [1953] New York performance,” given the latter orchestra’s “virile, even aggressive playing style.” I would agree, but I find a certain slackness present in the Vienna performance as well, and its recorded sound is slightly more recessed. Comparing the New York and Philadelphia ensembles in the present booklet notes, Kluge correctly finds “a contrast in style between the two ensembles. The Philharmonic sonority is bold and brassy, making the most of Bruckner’s dramatic climaxes. However the Philadelphia ensemble, even in its first encounter with the score, adds a patina of refinement”—due no doubt to the orchestra’s fabled string section. Finally, in 1957 Walter attempts a hybrid solution that combines pronounced Luftpausen with his briskest tempi, a solution I prefer to all but the 1950 performance (see also the positive review by Jeffrey J. Lipscomb in 32: 3).

The two 1959 performances are, as their timings indicate, of a very different character—ultimately no less dramatic, but more monumental and in line with the mainstream of Bruckner interpretations, while also evincing the more rounded edges of Walter’s trademark lyricism in other repertoire. Given both the relatively poor sound of the preceding live performance, and some ill-fitting junctures in it that suggest Walter’s new interpretation not to be fully settled, the studio recording is easily preferable between those two. Along with the 1957 performance—and that of 1950, for those few who can find it from private sources—the studio recording is also one of the top choices for Brucknerians who want Walter represented in their collections.

Despite Walter’s intense devotion to Bruckner following his recovery from a near-fatal bout of double pneumonia in 1927 (Walter credited his convalescence with giving him the spiritual repose needed to comprehend Bruckner rightly), many commentators have regarded his studio Bruckner recordings, especially that of the Ninth, as relative weak points in his discography. Devoted Walterian that I am, I nevertheless agree with that assessment; Walter never mastered the timing of the numerous pauses in Bruckner’s symphonic movements, and choosing the manifold subtle shifts in tempi needed to make the sprawling movements cohere, to the same degree as did Wilhelm Furtwängler and Eugen Jochum, my own Bruckner reference standards. Part of the fault here, however, lies not with Walter but with Columbia’s miscalculated decision to use an orchestra of only 65 players for the recording sessions—possibly due to a degree of parsimony, but also because the extremely lively acoustics of Legion Hall would have caused a full-sized orchestra to be swamped with reverberation. The fact that Walter almost fully succeeds in disguising the paucity of string players and producing a genuine Brucknerian orchestral sound testifies to near-miraculous conductorial skills.

The 1948 performance of the Bruckner Ninth in Philadelphia was paired in concert with a performance of Mozart’s “Haffner” Symphony. Since only the Bruckner was broadcast for a one-hour time slot, the performance of the Mozart was not preserved. In its stead, Music and Arts has thoughtfully provided a previously unreleased 1944 New York Philharmonic broadcast of the work. Mozart occupies a large and special place in Walter’s discography. In terms of frequency of surviving performances, the “Haffner” has seven recordings—five live and two studio, with the NBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Columbia Symphony. It thus ranks behind No. 40 (eleven performances, eight live and three studio) and No. 39 (eight recordings, five live and three studio), and is tied with the “Prague” (seven recordings, four live and three studio). The following table again provides details for comparison; note that Tahra misdates the 1953 performance to January 5 instead of January 4.

Date Orchestra CD Issue (if any) Timings

02/17/40 NBC SO Andromeda ANDRCD 9012 5:02 4:31 3:10 3: 33

02/06/44 NYP Music and Arts CD-1262 5:15 4:44 3:16 3: 33

01/21/47 BSO Wing WCD 58 (Japan) 5:11 4:29 3:17 3:37

02/05/50 NYP none (private collection) 5:33 5:05 3: 25 3:43

01/04/53 NYP Tahra TAH 571-572 5:29 4:54 3:33 3:55

01/16/53 NYP Sony SMK 64 473* 5:27 4:44 3:21 3:46

01/13-21/59 CSO Sony SM3K 46 511* 5:58 5:13 3:49 4:04

Here one notes that until the final, post-heart attack, stereo recording, Walter’s interpretive approach remains remarkably consistent, broadening very slightly in tempi with the passing years. As before, sound quality generally improves in successive performances, save for the decidedly poor-sounding Boston Symphony issue and the somewhat tubby sound of the unedited source for the 1950 performance. Yet here, too, there are subtle differences, with the 1944 performance under review being the most distinctive. At 1:15 in the first movement, Walter slows the tempo for the lyrical counter-subject to a far greater degree than elsewhere, and likewise beginning at 4:40 accelerates the tempo to a far greater degree to provide a whirlwind close. Not unexpectedly from an ensemble drilled under Toscanini, the NBC performance features particularly strong, crisp accents on chords and fluid runs on strings and winds. The live 1953 performance has a higher voltage than the studio recording that followed it, though it suffers from a rather glassy, shrill treble register (for a different opinion on the last point, see Mortimer H. Frank’s review in 14:4). The stereo recording has of course by far the best sound, but its slower tempi drain it of the vitality characteristic of Walter’s earlier performances. The 1944 performance is in surprisingly good sound for its time, and I would rate it alongside the two 1953 versions as the best of his performances of this work.

The remasterings of the original sources have obviously been done with the meticulous care that marks all Music and Arts issues. Mark Kluge’s booklet notes are exemplary; they include a brief discussion of recent Bruckner scholarship that defends the Löwe/Guttmann edition of the Fourth as one genuinely authorized by Bruckner rather than riding roughshod over his true intentions, and also discuss Walter’s various retouchings of the timpani and brass parts in different performances of the Ninth. (Kluge does not discuss the 1950 performance, but the excision of the trombone parts from certain passages of the Scherzo that occurs in the 1957 and 1959 performances also occurs there, though curiously not in the intervening ones from 1953.) The booklet and tray card have a typographical error that gives the total time of the second disc as 50:30, which is the timing of the Bruckner Ninth alone; the correct total time is 68:20. For Walterians, this release is self-recommending; for Brucknerians and collectors of historic performances, it will be of interest primarily for the Bruckner Fourth, and secondarily for the “Haffner” and the Ninth. To each of these interested parties, this release is warmly recommended.

James A. Altena

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Bruno Walter Conducts Bruckner's 4th And 9th Symphonies
Music and Arts Programs of America Jul 2012
CD
$32.99

Bartók: The Wooden Prince / Alsop, Bournemouth Symphony

Naxos

$19.99 Mar 25, 2008

In the years leading up to World War I, Bartók occupied himself with a series of works for the theater. He completed his first stage work Bluebeard’s Castle in 1911. The Wooden Prince (1914-16) is a fairytale ballet with an original story by Bartók’s literary acquaintance Béla Balázs, who wrote the libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle.

Set “once upon a time” in a forest whose trees rustle to life, the ballet runs continuously as a series of seven dances with connecting music and recurring musical themes. Though outwardly lighthearted in its subject matter, The Wooden Prince contains a mystical element that may explain Bartók’s attraction to the story. He crafted the work as a symmetrical, tripartite symphonic poem, with the final section recalling materials from the first part in reverse order.

Marin Alsop is the first conductor ever to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and was the first musician to win both Gramophone's "Artist of the Year" award and the Royal Philharmonic Society's Conductor's Award in the same season.

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Bartók: The Wooden Prince / Alsop, Bournemouth Symphony
Naxos Mar 2008
CD
$19.99

MORRICONE CONDUCTS MORRICONE

EUROARTS

$22.49 Dec 05, 2025

Spectacular western movies and moments to remember from and with the Maestro himself. Ennio Morricone composed over 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works. This concert from 2004 with the Munchner Rundfunkorchester is one of the very few recordings where he conducts his own music. The album contains a representative collection of his most famous film music including The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, A Fistful of Dynamite, Once Upon a Time in America, Cinema Paradiso, The Untouchables and many more.

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MORRICONE CONDUCTS MORRICONE
EUROARTS Dec 2025
CD
$22.49

Mix & Match

American Classics - Babbitt: Soli E Duettini

Naxos

$19.99 Mar 21, 2006

BABBITT Around the Horn. 1 Whirled Series. 2 None but the lonely flute. 3 Homily. 4 Beaten Paths. 5 Play It Again, Sam. 6 Soli e duettini. 7 Melismata 8 ? William Purvis (hn); 1,2 Marshall Taylor (a sax); 2 Charles Abramovic (pn); 2 Rachel Rudich (fl); 3 Peter Jarvis (snare dr); 4 Thomas Kolor (mmb); 5 Lois Martin (va); 6 Susan Palma (fl); 7 David Starobin (gtr); 7 Curtis Macomber (vn) 8 ? NAXOS 8.559259 (75:17)

Gratitude and plaudits are due to Naxos for reissuing the splendid series of American chamber-music discs originally released in the mid 1990s by Koch International Classics. So far, we have seen the return of Feldman?s String Quartet and mixed trios by Charles Wuorinen. One hopes Wolpe is waiting in the wings. Meanwhile, here is a group of remarkable instrumental works (one trio, one duo, and six solos) by Milton Babbitt, composed between 1982 and 1993. The New York-based Group for Contemporary Music is comprised of musicians whose playing is of such high quality it demands acknowledgement, so I?ve listed the soloists in the headnote.

Babbitt, 90 this year, was one of that group of serial or post-serial American composers who flourished from the late 1950s on. Their work is often dismissed as dense, intractable, and tuneless, especially from the vantage point of today?s nouveau accessibility?but once you broaden your idea of what constitutes a tune, you?ll find such criticisms miss the mark. (You?ll also find you can?t lump Babbitt, Wuorinen, Carter, Perle, and company together: any similarities are superficial.)

As a young man, the Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim was awarded a scholarship to study privately with Babbitt. The supposed incongruity of this pairing is sometimes remarked upon, until you realize that both composers approach the craft of composition in the same way: as a series of intricate puzzles to be solved. This is, I think, the key to Babbitt?s world. His work is high-wire, intellectual game playing and it exudes a bracing air of playfulness as it revels in the process. This music doesn?t relate to anything except itself; it is truly abstract (a term often used pejoratively to describe mid-20th century visual and graphic art). The bouts of twittering in the piano?s extreme upper register during the trio Whirled Series , for instance, have nothing to do with the avian realm, for all that they suggest a day in the life of Messiaen. They are simple (or complex) melodic fragments, sometimes the same ones heard simultaneously in the low saxophone part, only played at mach speed.

In the solo pieces, melodic lines are kept in balance by having the solo instrument make wide leaps from one register to another, thus achieving the effect (or, more accurately, solving the problem) of having simultaneous themes moving in counterpoint. The result may sound disjointed at first, but once you get comfortable with the technique it becomes clear and exciting. A good memory for pitch helps! I should mention to those unfamiliar with Babbitt?s idiom that this working-out of ideas is done nimbly and, above all, quickly: no endless drones or pregnant silences here, the ball is kept in the air at all times. In the duos, to quote the disc?s original review by Art Lange in Fanfare 20:2, ?the parts seldom seem related, until they do.? (Perfectly put! If you?re interested in this bargain reissue, look up Lange?s detailed commentary.) At such moments of synchronicity, the listener is deftly reminded that there is an omniscient intelligence at work organizing all this busy activity.

A notable feature of this disc is the sheer virtuosity Babbitt demands from his performers. William Purvis?s mastery of the horn?such an obstinate instrument in the wrong lips?is a wonder in itself, and that accolade may be applied to every one of these musicians. They shape and color each moment of this technically demanding music, and seem to be having almost as much fun as the composer.

The original Koch issue came on two CDs, one of which featured Babbitt reading his essay On Having Been and Still Being an American Composer . That set also contained Four Cavalier Settings for solo tenor. Those items have been dropped to squeeze the remaining works onto one CD, which in this case strikes me as a sensible way to go, not only for hip-pocket reasons but also because it brings together a succinct program of Babbitt?s instrumental chamber music. The sound is very good, performances are in a class of their own, and?as colleague Lange also pointed out?these pieces are among the composer?s most approachable.

FANFARE: Phillip Scott

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American Classics - Babbitt: Soli E Duettini
Naxos Mar 2006
CD
$19.99

Witt: Symphony, Flute Concerto / Gallois, Sinfonia Finlandia Jyvaskyla

Naxos

$13.99 ~~$19.99~~ Save 30% Aug 31, 2010

WITT Symphony in C, “Jena.” Symphony in A. Flute Concerto in G, op. 8 • Patrick Gallois (fl, cond); Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä • NAXOS 8.572089 (69:37)

Born in the same year as Beethoven, the longer-lived Friedrich Witt (1770–1836) is acknowledged today, if a bit shamefacedly, as the composer of the so-called “Jena” Symphony once attributed to Beethoven. Not a single note of the score changed between the time it was believed to be by the great Ludwig Van and when it was discovered not to be; yet critical opinion of the work plummeted like the stock market on the report of bad news. Funny how that happens—yesterday buy, today sell, though nothing but the name of the note issuer of record has changed.

Recordings of Witt’s works represent but the tip of a sizeable iceberg; fewer than 10 of his works, as far as I can tell, have been recorded. Yet he is believed to have written as many as 23 symphonies, numerous concertos for various instruments, a considerable volume of chamber music, a number of operas, and an oratorio, Der leidende Heiland (The Suffering Savior), which secured him an appointment as Kapellmeister at the court of the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg in 1802.

Prior to this, however—sometime around 1792 or 1793—while Witt was serving as cellist at the court of Oettingen-Wallerstein and taking composition lessons from Antonio Rosetti, he laid eyes upon four of Haydn’s latest “London” Symphonies—Nos. 93, 96, 97, and 98—which Haydn had sent to Wallerstein. This, according to Keith Anderson’s booklet note, and other biographical sources I’ve come across, was Witt’s moment of dawning light, a light that, paradoxically, would eventually dim his own lamp in the pages of music history. Witt’s worst “crime,” it seems, was not simply imitating Haydn to the point of near plagiarism, but doing so at a time when Beethoven was busy “liberating music” from the strictures of classical content and style, if not quite yet classical form. In other words, Witt chose the path of the arch-conservative. History thereby ended up lumping him together with the lesser contemporaries of Haydn and Mozart instead of with the lesser contemporaries of Beethoven and Schubert, whom Witt outlived by the better part of a decade. Which lumping would have been better for Witt’s posthumous reputation I’m not sure; neither changes the music he wrote.

Witt’s G-Major Flute Concerto, newly recorded here, has been recorded before. It was included on an MDG Gold disc that also contained the composer’s Sixth, so-called “Turkish,” and Ninth symphonies. Johannes Moesus led the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, and the concerto was played by flutist Susanne Barner. That release, which I happen to have, was reviewed by Barry Brenesal in Fanfare 29:2.

As for the “Jena” Symphony, don’t believe everything you find, or don’t find, at ArkivMusic. As of this writing, the site lists only the current Naxos recording. But the work has appeared on disc before as far back as the 1950s. An LP on the Concert Hall label with Walter Goehr conducting the Netherlands Philharmonic has been transferred to CD, and there is a downloadable Deutsche Grammophon version with Franz Konwitschny. Versions on Urania with Rolf Kleinert leading the Leipzig Philharmonic and with Wolfgang Hoffmann leading the Rhineland Philharmonia on Musical Heritage Society also exist.

In hindsight, it’s hard to imagine how Witt’s “Jena” Symphony, written sometime before 1796, could ever have been mistaken for a work by Beethoven. Even Beethoven’s earliest orchestral works, namely the first two piano concertos, present an entirely different sound world from Witt’s symphony. Beethoven’s melodic contours are different, as is his way of writing for winds and of extending and developing his thematic material. Witt’s symphony is pure Haydn. Listen to the first movement’s second theme beginning at 2:13. In shape and style, it’s close to a dead ringer for the first movement’s second theme in Haydn’s D-Major Symphony No. 93, which was one of the four “London” Symphonies that Witt had access to at Oettingen-Wallerstein.

The Adagio likewise proceeds in Haydnesque melodic phrases and harmonic gestures, while the Menuetto is big on formal flourishes, curtsies, and that big ballroom-band sound common to so many of Haydn’s minuet movements. It contains none of the sprinting, whiplash elements that, in Beethoven’s hands, would transform the minuet into a scherzo. The last movement, a spirited Allegro, would have brought a London audience to its feet, just as Haydn’s finales did. If you love Haydn (and who doesn’t?), and his 106 symphonies aren’t enough for you, you can listen to Witt’s “Jena” Symphony and pretend it’s Haydn’s 107th, or you can listen to it and appreciate it for what it is, the work of a master copycat.

The A-Major Symphony, written perhaps a year or two before the “Jena,” seems somehow lighter and fleeter of foot. A passage or two in the first movement sounds as if it’s about to lapse into the bubbly, scintillating passagework one hears in Mozart’s “Linz” Symphony. The one surprise Witt has in store for us is that he places his Menuetto in second position, before the Andante. Though not unprecedented—Haydn did it in his C-Major Symphony No. 32—the practice was uncommon before 1830. Beethoven, in fact, didn’t reverse the order of the two inner movements in any of his symphonies until the Ninth, though it’s arguable whether the Eighth even has a slow movement at all.

Though Haydn wrote close to four dozen concertos for various instruments, the medium was not his in the way it was Mozart’s, and Witt seemed instinctively to realize this, turning instead to Mozart’s concertos as the model for his own G-Major Flute Concerto of 1806. With so few of Witt’s works available on record, it would be rash to say that this concerto is his crowning achievement. I think it’s safe to say, however, that it displays a wealth of melodic invention, ample virtuosic challenges for the soloist, a richness of orchestral writing, and an originality of ideas that seemed lacking in the symphonies. With as fine a flute concerto as this, I’m surprised that flutists aren’t lining up to add it to their repertoires.

Until I received this recording, I thought that Susanne Barner on the aforementioned MDG disc was perfectly fine, but compared to renowned flutist Patrick Gallois on this new Naxos CD, she sounds rather laid-back and a bit mechanical in her delivery. Gallois sparkles and tosses off Witt’s arpeggios, runs, and roulades with panache. The Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä, under Gallois’s direction, also sounds more spirited and alert, not to mention better recorded than the Hamburgers under Moesus.

Taking that into account, along with the fact that this, to my knowledge, is the only modern recording currently available of Witt’s “Jena” Symphony, Gallois becomes the entry of choice. A selling point of the MDG is that it contains two of Witt’s other symphonies not duplicated on the current disc. So, I shall be keeping both; but for those wanting to sample Witt’s work that has netted the most ink—the “Jena”—and what may be one of his most masterly works—the flute concerto—Naxos’s CD is a no-brainer and a bargain to boot.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Hands up who has heard of Friedrich Witt. Not many probably, for Witt seldom even makes it to the footnotes of musical history books. His main claim to fame is that his Symphony in C major - which is the first work on this recording - was once mistakenly attributed to Beethoven. In the early 1900s musical researchers uncovered the score and found the master’s name written next to two parts of the manuscript. Remembering that Beethoven himself had intimated that he had once attempted a symphony in C, the researchers put two and two together and got it wrong. It was left to H.C. Robbins Landon to prove that the work was really by Witt, a cellist and composer from Wallerstein.

Nevertheless, the Naxos tradition of bringing the obscure to light has paid off in this recording. The three works presented give a fascinating insight into the kind of music that was being written in the tin-pot courts of Germany while the likes of Beethoven were developing revolutionary new means of expression in Vienna. This does not mean that the music is poor. Quite the opposite. It is bold and attractive stuff.

The C major symphony (nicknamed ‘Jena’ after the city’s university, where the manuscript was discovered in 1909) was composed in 1796 and is clearly influenced by Haydn. This is no coincidence. It is known that in 1792 or 1793 Haydn sent four of his London symphonies - Nos. 93, 96, 97 and 98 - to Wallerstein, where Witt must have seen them. The opening allegro is upbeat and playful, with a touch of Haydn wit. The ensuing ‘Adagio cantabile’ contains an attractive melody, while the finale is a fast-paced race to the finish that makes good use of the comparatively large orchestra at Witt’s disposal - including timpani and trumpets, as well as flute, oboes, bassoons, horns and strings.

The Symphony in A major is less riveting. Written about six years earlier, it lacks Haydn’s positive influence and is hemmed in by simple and rather restrictive sonata-form structures. The Flute Concerto in G is much more satisfying. This work was published in 1806 and benefits from a fuller, heavier, orchestral sound. Nevertheless, it still inhabits the sound-world of Haydn and Mozart rather than ‘Eroica’ Beethoven. Patrick Gallois ably tackles the tricky flute solos while simultaneously conducting the Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä. There is a quasi-Romantic opening to the second movement, followed by a fine flute melody which is developed and decorated. But the final Rondo brings us safely back to the late eighteenth century.

-- John-Pierre Joyce, MusicWeb International

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Witt: Symphony, Flute Concerto / Gallois, Sinfonia Finlandia Jyvaskyla
Naxos Aug 2010
CD
~~$19.99~~ $13.99

Bartok & Kodaly: The Complete String Quartets

Foghorn Classics

$37.99 Jan 01, 2013

BARTÓK String Quartets No. 1–6. KODÁLY String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 • Alexander Str Qrt • FOGHORN 2009 (3 CDs: 205:55)

This fascinating set combines the string quartets of two then-young professors of music in Hungary, Béla Bartók and Zoltan Kodály. It’s an interesting set even though Bartók wrote a half-dozen quartets, which have since become staples of string quartets around the world, whereas Kodály only wrote two which are not as frequently programmed. Nor are the Kodály quartets as frequently recorded: ArkivMusic lists only one other recording of the First Quartet, by the Kontra Quartet (BIS 564), and only seven other recordings of Kodály’s No. 2, of which three are historical performances (the Végh Quartet, 1951, on Orfeo 316931; the Hungarian Quartet, 1952, on Music & Arts; and the Hollywood String Quartet, 1958, on Testament). Bartók beat Kodály to his First Quartet by a matter of months, the premiere occurring on January 27, 1909. Both composers worked on their second quartets during the harsh period of the First World War, and both works also had their premieres in 1918. For whatever reason, Kodály stopped at this point, whereas Bartók wrote four more quartets.

Comparing the Emerson Quartet’s performances of the First and Third Bartók quartets to the Alexander’s (I really didn’t have time to do the entire set, but these two quartets provide a good basis, the First being from Bartók’s earlier period and the Third coming from 1927), I found interesting if subtle points of comparison. But my Fanfare colleague Art Lange, upon reviewing the Emerson set when it was reissued in 2007, went even further back, comparing it to the performances of the Hungarian Quartet, and noted the earlier group’s “looser, albeit dramatic approach” in which the Hungarians “take a few liberties with pauses and tempos” and “have a better feel for the folk elements,” though—and I stress this—the earlier group tended to lessen “the accumulated tension” and “exaggerate more of the mysterious and atmospheric passages.” This trend, then, is simply turned up a notch in intensity and continuity by the Alexander, bringing us a tad further forward from the folk style that Bartók used.

With the Third Quartet, Bartók’s most astringent, compact, and dense work of the six, the style of playing is virtually identical in the case of both the Emerson and the Alexander: sonorities are lean, attacks are sharp, and the musical contours angular. There aren’t many interpretive options in this particular piece. But in the First Quartet (as well as in the first movement of the Second, which I also compared), there are decided differences in approach and style. The Emerson employs particularly broad tempos in the opening movement of the First Quartet, taking a leisurely 9:16 compared to the Alexander’s 8: 30. There is also greater warmth in the Emerson’s sound: whether this is a condition of their actual timbres or simply advantageous microphone placement, I don’t know. Of course, the leaner, brighter quality of the Alexander’s recording is entirely appropriate to modern music, particularly the modern music that emerged after Bartók’s death, and even within the context of these six quartets their performances set a very high standard.

As an example, I felt that the Alexander’s performance of the First Quartet’s opening movement, though less leisurely in feeling, has a tensile quality that immerses the listener in Bartók’s unique sound world and holds your attention. It is almost as if the Alexander’s players had the entire score in their heads, could “see” the music progressing as one continuous flow from first note to last, and thus propelled it into the ether for the benefit of the microphones. They do not, thankfully, play mechanically, the music being produced with almost explosive energy and drama. Yet if one goes by timings, the evidence is not always in the Emerson’s favor. The Alexander nearly always takes the fast movements just as fast if not faster than the Emerson, whereas their slow movements are generally (but not always) more relaxed, an exception being the Lento Finale of the Second Quartet, which the Emerson explores in 9:18 while the Alexander gets it done in 7: 38. As I say, tempos do not always indicate phrasing, but a performance nearly two minutes shorter simply has to be taken faster. What’s interesting, however, is that by and large the Alexander’s performance only sounds a little faster, and once again it ties this movement into the overall fabric—the continuity—of the Quartet as a whole.

The Alexander also finds moments of repose within their forward momentum; it’s just that their moments of repose are subtler, less easily discernible as pauses in the music (comparing it to literature, one might say commas in the musical sentences). To a large extent, Bartók’s six quartets are the 20th-century equivalent of Beethoven’s late quartets, and one can most certainly make a generalization between the way earlier string quartets such as the Rosé played them—with a certain amount of gemütlich, more portamento than we are used to today, and more astringent string tone due to the musicians’ more frequent (but not constant) use of straight tone—and the way we’ve come to hear them since the days of the Budapest Quartet, surely the first “modern” string quartet in terms of tautness and ensemble virtuosity, and the Yale Quartet, whose 1961 recordings of these thorny works set new standards. We simply can’t go back to the Rosé Quartet and hear their performances of Beethoven as being within our conception of the music; yet both as a quartet leader and as concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic, Arnold Rosé’s artistry and integrity as a musician was utterly beyond question.

I mention this in connection to these performances because it is not only an interesting artistic topic, but also valid in evaluating the evolution of musical performances in the 20th century and beyond. Bartók’s Fourth Quartet, composed in 1928, was in fact dedicated to the Pro Arte Quartet. I daresay that only diehard collectors of vintage performances will be familiar with Pro Arte’s style (they recorded an extensive series of Haydn quartets for HMV in the 1930s, a project ended by the onset of war, and also performed frequently both on and off records with pianist Artur Schnabel), but they were somewhere between the Rosé and the Budapest Quartets. There is a more consistent vibrato, fine and rapid but still discernible, in their playing than in the case of the Rosé, but also a slightly more relaxed rhythmic feel, a bit more give-and-take, than we hear in the playing of the Budapest and the many quartets that followed them. (I should point out that I heard the Hungarian Quartet in person playing Beethoven in 1970, but this was a later edition of this famous group and their style, too, had evolved into a more consistent forward momentum by then, not like their style of the 1950s.)

Checking on the artists’ own website (foghornclassics.com), I was startled to read in a review by Lisa Hirsch of the San Francisco Classical Voice that the Alexander’s live performance of one of the Bartók quartets was “introverted,” without “neglecting the work’s varying moods.” Introverted is not a word I’d apply to these explosive performances. They are indeed fantastic, although I would caution that Bartók’s continual intensity, as well as the extraordinarily dense harmonies and counterpoint, make listening to all six quartets in one sitting a tough go. I would suggest hearing two quartets at a time, separated by either periods of silence or less challenging music. Listening to even three of these works in one session is rather like listening to a full 70-minute CD of Art Tatum. The concentrated complexity of the music that unfolds can tire even a seasoned listener like myself out.

Then we turn to the Kodály quartets, less familiar works surely (this was the first time I had ever heard them), but once again we can make certain generalizations regarding the Alexander’s performances of them as based on the details and style one hears in their Bartók. Even the earlier Quartet No. 1 is given a taut, clean reading, bringing it close in style to Bartók’s own work. Of course, Kodály was his own man: although he assisted Bartók in recording and cataloguing Magyar folk melodies, and used some of their features in his own work, he was more consistent in writing longer, less sharply angular melodies. In short, Kodály’s music sings more, a factor that surely attracted more conductors of his time to perform his music during the 1920s and 1930s than was often Bartók’s fate. In this respect, Kodály’s quartets are a bit closer in general conception (but not exact details) to Janá?ek, whose quartets actually “sing” more than his operas. Listen particularly to the slow movements here: Kodály’s music, and the Alexander’s playing of it, are exceptionally lovely and moving in addition to being musically clean. Once again, as in their Bartók, the Alexander has found a way of bringing out the music’s tender side when tenderness is called for—which is more frequently in these Kodály works.

The list price of this set is $29.96, which breaks down to $9.93 per CD, a very reasonable price in this modern era, but the Alexander’s website indicates that Allegro Music is selling the set for $23.97 (which you can order directly from them), which breaks down to $7.99 per disc, bringing it into line with a budget label such as Naxos. I still like the Emerson’s recordings of the Bartók, but as a total package this one is irresistible. If you’ve put off buying a set of the Bartók quartets until now, and/or don’t have any recordings of the Kodály, you can’t go wrong with this collection. It is, quite simply, terrific.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

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Bartok & Kodaly: The Complete String Quartets
Foghorn Classics Jan 2013
CD
$37.99

Cinema / Mireille Mathieu

Sony Masterworks

$15.98 Oct 04, 2019

Mireille Mathieu, the French singer who sold 200 Million records worldwide in 54 years of career, reveals "Cinema" on October 4th, 2019.

In this 40-track double album, Mireille sings the greatest films movie composed by Ennio Morricone, Francis Lai, Michel Legrand, George Gershwin, Charlie Chaplin, Maurice Jarre, Cole Porter, Burt Bacharach, Vangelis...

This is a collection of the most famous movie themes from the greatest French and English speaking films of modern era. Among these 40 standards, there are no less than 17 unreleased and rare tracks, including a duet with famous French composer Francis Lai on "Un homme et une femme" from Claude Lelouch's eponymous movie, also "New York, New York", "Un regard d'amour" on the powerful theme of Chariots of Fire, or "C'est mieux comme ça" on The Godfather’s theme.

‘Cinema’ includes also some of the most popular movie themes of all time sung by Mireille: "Over the Rainbow" from the movie The Wizard of Oz, " Les yeux de l’amour (The Look of Love)" from the movie James Bond/ Casino Royale, "Paris en colère" from the movie Is Paris Burning ?, "Une histoire d'amour" from the movie Love Story, "L'amour viendra" from the movie "Gone with the Wind", and « Un jour tu reviendras » from the movie Once Upon a Time in the West…

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Cinema / Mireille Mathieu
Sony Masterworks Oct 2019
CD
$15.98

Meyerbeer: Robert le Diable / Hymel, Ciofi, Oren

Opus Arte

DVD

$39.99 Jul 30, 2013

MEYERBEER Robert le Diable • Daniel Oren, cond; Marina Poplavskaya (Alice); Patrizia Ciofi (Isabelle); Bryan Hymel (Robert); John Relyea (Bertram); Jean-François Borras (Raimbaut); Nicolas Courjal (Alberti); Royal Opera Ch & O • OPUS ARTE 1106 (2 DVDs: 211:00) Live: Covent Garden 12/15/2012

Robert le Diable marked two important firsts for Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864): it was his first opera composed to a French rather than an Italian libretto, and his first collaboration with librettist and exact contemporary Eugène Scribe (1791–1861). It was a smash success upon its premiere on November 21, 1831, defining the genre of grand opera, and by some accounts was the most performed opera of the 19th century. (The act 3 ballet, in which a group of debauched nuns rise from their graves to reindulge their carnal appetites, created a sensation, though it doubtless later provided ammunition for the influential antisemitic element in the conservative wing of the Roman Catholic Church in France for attacks upon the composer at the end of the century, contemporaneous with the Dreyfus scandal and the rise of the fascist Action Française.) However, once the fashion for grand opera waned after Meyerbeer’s death, the composer and his works sank into desuetude, from which he and they have fitfully but increasingly emerged in the last 30–40 years, as former shibboleths and prejudices against him have waned and his contributions have been re-evaluated.

The booklet that accompanies this DVD release features an uncommonly intelligent essay by Robert Letellier, which argues that, contrary to the standard portrait of Meyerbeer as someone who merely catered to the bourgeois tastes of his time and sought and achieved success through spectacular but superficial musical and dramatic effects, the composer in fact had far loftier and more substantive concerns: “Much of Meyerbeer’s work as a dramatic artist focuses on the theme of faith and what this means in terms of the great choices of life....His most famous French operas [Robert le Diable, Les Huguenots, Le Prophète, L’Africaine] constitute a tetralogy in which the issues of faith, history, society and personal choice interact with the demands of intransigent religion and politics.” In the particular case of Robert le Diable, a “theological dimension” of “a spiritual drama about sin and salvation” is intertwined with such issues as “the attainment of the balanced personality, the issues of heredity and the demands of life fully lived in the present. It is also about making social and political choices between opposing and equally absorbing options: on the one hand party affiliation, the pursuit of corporal pleasure, financial acquisitiveness and sexual license; on the other, the quest for higher, spiritual and more altruistic ideals.” Moreover, Meyerbeer’s contemporaries understood the seriousness of his objectives as well, with for example the noted and highly influential author and critic Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) writing a penetrating critique of Le Prophète in 1858–59 which discussed that opera and its two predecessors as forming “an immense symbolic trilogy, filled with profound and mysterious meaning: the three principal phases of the human soul are represented there: faith, examination, and illumination.”

Since Christopher Williams provided a superb plot summary in his review in 27:1 of a 2003 CD set of the opera on Dynamic conducted by Renato Palumbo, I will omit that here and refer readers to his synopsis instead. The staging of this production is what I would term “postmodernist pastiche,” freely mixing updated elements of the setting of the plot (11th-century Italy) with those of its composition (19th-century France) and the present day. Act 1 is set in a French café that features the stereotypical red-and-white checkered tablecloths of many such establishments, but on the café roof are life-size plastic horses in neon day-glo colors (blue, green, red, orange, and yellow). The knights wear medieval suits of plate armor, but Robert wears a sport coat with portions cut away to expose the armor (apparently to signify his divided moral character, with deep longings for both good and evil), while the diabolical Bertram is clad in a dark full-body suit, plus a 19th-century full-length overcoat and enormous stovepipe hat. In act 2, the castle is a set of miniature cut-out frames of stone walls, turrets, etc., about five to six feet tall, set against a black and blue diamond checkerboard background, almost creating the effect of the characters moving through a child’s play set. Isabelle wears a kitschy headpiece consisting of a halo of little stars sticking out on wires, while Robert is now garbed in a full sport coat and open-necked dress shirt. Both Alice and Isabelle are arrayed in very simple dresses, the former in red and the latter in white. The plastic horses are now on ground level; the armor-clad knights float in, suspended in mid-air on wires, and are then lowered onto their faux steeds. In act 3, scene 1, the setting of mountainous clefts and caves is created with painted backdrops of thin black-and-white and red-and-white stripes. The ballet that follows in scene 2 has a red lattice framework backdrop and rectangular cage-like tombs from which the nuns emerge to cavort amidst gravestones. Act 4 utilizes the same set as act 2, with the addition of a throne in the foreground and the bathing of the proceedings in lime-green light. Act 5 uses an abstract stencil frame to suggest a church building, on either side of which Alice and Bertram respectively stand before cartoonish backdrops of a heavenly cloud bank and a giant dragon’s head. Somehow, this kitschy, tongue-in-cheek farrago of unmatched elements works better than the description of it sounds (it reportedly was roundly criticized in the British press); it strikes me as a little silly and at times perhaps slightly amusing, but it doesn’t disturb me or create any occasion for offense, unlike so much of current Regietheater.

The music itself strikes me as being of highly uneven character; in particular that of the first two acts seems quite ephemeral before Meyerbeer hits his dramatic stride with the opening of act 3. Even then, the best parts of the score are nowhere near a match for that of Les Huguenots, which followed a mere five years later; Meyerbeer greatly advanced in his craft during that short interval. However, this performance is musically excellent and presents the score to its best advantage. A CD recording of a live performance from Salerno, with a partially overlapping cast (Ciofi, Hymel, and Oren) was just issued by Brilliant Classics and reviewed by Lynn René Bayley in 37:1. Ciofi and Hymel are as excellent here as there: Ciofi, who has made a specialty of the role of Isabelle over the years, has in her top notes a bit of acidity and oscillation in the vibrato, but she is a committed and affecting interpreter. After taking a very brief time to warm up, Marina Poplavskaya is a superbly touching Alice, demonstrating why she is justly in demand for lyric soprano roles in opera houses all over the world. As Robert, Bryan Hymel lives up to his recent spectacular press coverage as the tenor Bryn Terfel (whom he resembles physically to no small degree); he is the real deal, with a ringing, securely produced voice possessing both heft and sheen, and is able to bang out the stratospheric high notes (even if a couple of roulades around high C and D sound a bit strained). For his part, John Relyea boldly steps into the shoes of Samuel Ramey in the role of Bertram and fills them most ably, with his firm, sonorous, sepulchral bass filling the theater and limning out the diabolical dimension of his satanic character. The supporting cast is generally fine, with the excellent Raimbaut of Jean-François Borras deserving special mention. In comparing this to the Brilliant Classics version, there is no question that this is the superior performance, with Poplavskaya, Relyea, and Borres all being notably superior to their counterparts on CD and Hymel in even better voice here. Conductor Daniel Oren has in the past struck me as being merely competent, but here he seems to have found some special inspiration and provides fine leadership from the podium that is both energetic and lyrical, while the chorus and orchestra of Covent Garden are up to their usual high standards. The recorded sound and film quality are both excellent as well. A cast gallery and a brief documentary, “The Legacy of Robert le Diable,” are provided as extras.

Like all of its predecessors on LP and CD (see the list in Bayley’s review), this version is not unabridged, though the cuts are relatively minor and far fewer than in most other versions. Likewise, by every other measure, this performance far outstrips all of those previous versions for superior singing, instrumental playing, and sound quality. It’s been far too long a wait, but at last all four of Meyerbeer’s grand operas finally have recorded performances in one medium or another (CD or DVD) that do them justice; highly recommended.

FANFARE: James A. Altena

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Meyerbeer: Robert le Diable / Hymel, Ciofi, Oren
Opus Arte Jul 2013
DVD
$39.99

Lorraine at Emmanuel / Lieberson

Avie Records

$9.99 ~~$19.99~~ Save 50% Apr 01, 2008

"When the Wigmore Hall Live label released an archival recording of a 1998 recital by the great mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson last year, it raised the hope of more such posthumous finds. And just as that hope had begun to fade, here comes another treasure, this one unearthed from the archives of Emmanuel Music in Boston.

As it happens, this release serves as tribute not only to Hunt Lieberson, who died in 2006, but also to her frequent close collaborator Craig Smith, the founder of Emmanuel Music, who died in November. And the material is choice: spacious arias from two Bach cantatas and extended excerpts from Handel’s oratorio “Hercules.”

The disc begins with a 1992 recording of the aria “Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder” from Bach’s Cantata No. 30: Something of a tease as the opening instrumental passage heightens the anticipation of Hunt Lieberson’s entrance, more than two minutes into the disc. But that glorious Voice, when it appears, meets every expectation.

The “Hercules” excerpts, from 1999, trace the travails of the hero’s wife, Dejanira, culminating in a harrowing mad scene.... Although Hunt Lieberson’s compelling stage presence added mightily to any performance, the voice alone amply conveys her characteristic intensity here....

Dare we hope for more?"

– James R. Oestreich, New York Times [8/10/2008]

The early death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson deprived the world of an exceptional artist and one, moreover, who left all too few commercial recordings. However, some archive recordings are now beginning to emerge and this new release, featuring previously unissued live recordings is one such. The CD also forms a tribute to one of her mentors, Craig Smith, Music Director at Emmanuel Church, Boston from 1970 until his death in November 2007 at the age of sixty.

Smith founded Emmanuel Music, which, besides fulfilling a liturgical function at the church, evolved also into a concert ensemble of no little distinction. Perhaps Smith’s greatest achievement was to inaugurate the practice whereby each Sunday between October and April, the main Sunday morning church service includes a cantata by Bach appropriate to the day. That tradition continues to this day and later this year the thirty-ninth consecutive season of liturgical cantatas will commence.

It was through Emmanuel Music that the then Lorraine Hunt took some of the first steps on her solo singing career and she maintained the connection, I believe, for the rest of her life, including appearances in the Sunday cantata series. This disc, therefore, takes us back to her singing roots.

The disc begins and ends with arias taken, I presume, from complete Sunday service performances of Bach cantatas. The aria "Kommt ihr angefochtnen Sünder" comes from the cantata Freue dich, erlöste schar, written for the feast of St. John the Baptist. Alfred Dürr writes thus of the cantata: "The underlying mood is joyful, relaxed and unproblematical, not only in the opening chorus but in the four arias, where a dance-like style is often clearly evident." Unfortunately, to judge by this aria at least, Craig Smith seems to have a different conception. Presumably with the agreement of his soloist, he sets and extremely slow tempo and the aria lasts 8:46.

This sent me scurrying to my shelves for comparisons. John Eliot Gardiner, in his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage performance takes a mere 5:27 but he is surely too fleet – at his pace the aria sounds like a gambol through the Elysian meadows. So that might seem to suggest that Smith is "simply" old fashioned in his conception. But turn to Fritz Werner’s 1971 performance and you find a tempo that seems to me to be just right – he takes 6:03. Beside Werner I’m afraid Smith sounds laboured. What saves the performance is the sheer beauty and inwardness of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s singing. On its own terms the performance is quite lovely and no admirer of the singer will be disappointed but I just think the basic conception is wrong.

Things are much more satisfactory in the other Bach aria, which is placed at the opposite end of the programme. This aria is from the cantata Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, which is for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. Again, Miss Hunt Lieberson’s singing is beautiful and communicative and this time the pace is much more sensible, I think. The conductor here is the composer, John Harbison, who has also had a long association with Emmanuel Music and who, in fact, is currently the Acting Artistic Director. He adopts a slow pace, but this aria can take it. Again comparisons were instructive. Eliot Gardiner’s tempo is almost identical and he takes exactly as long as does Harbison. Werner didn’t record this cantata but another celebrated Bach traditionalist, Karl Richter, did. In his 1976/7 recording he takes 9:34 but his soloist, Julia Hamari, sounds cool besides either of her rivals and she and Richter, whose direction is smooth and relaxed, convey no real sense of trepidation. Nathalie Stutzmann, for Eliot Gardiner, is perhaps a touch more inward than Hunt Lieberson but she’s equally involving and it’s only by the merest whisker that I come down in favour of this present, excellent performance.

The remainder of the disc is devoted to excerpts from Handel’s oratorio, Hercules and these excerpts contain all the music for Dejanira, the wife of the eponymous hero. I presume, though it’s not clear from the documentation, that these extracts are taken from a live account of the complete work.

The role of Dejanira is an exceptionally demanding one, both vocally and emotionally. She is, in Craig Smith’s words, a "monumental character." I can well imagine that Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was a pretty formidable presence in the performance of the oratorio for these extracts show us a vivid character portrayal.

In her first aria, "The world when day’s career is run," she is fully the grief-stricken wife, yet she still retains dignity. Much of Dejanira’s music is in moderate or slow tempo but when swifter music arrives, in "Begone, my fears, fly, hence, away," Miss Hunt Lieberson excels in the passagework.

As her jealousy of the captive princess, Iole, begins to take hold and her certainty that Hercules has been unfaithful increases there’s great sadness in the aria ‘When beauty sorrow’s liv’ry wears’ and that is splendidly conveyed here. Particularly outstanding is the account of "Cease, ruler of the day, to rise," where the singing is particularly expressive. Writing of this disc elsewhere, but of another aria in the programme, the critic Michael Kennedy spoke of Miss Hunt Lieberson’s "power to humanise every note and bring the music to new life." How I agree and I’d say that this comment applies even more strongly to this deep aria.

The final excerpt is the Mad Scene. Here Miss Hunt Lieberson is intensely dramatic without ever going overboard. This is extremely demanding music and she performs it vividly and, once again, when the divisions arise she displays fine vocal agility. Hers is a tremendous performance of this recitative and aria and, unsurprisingly, it sparks an ovation from the audience who, otherwise, are commendably silent throughout.

These extracts contain some superb Handel singing. Frequently I was reminded of Dame Janet Baker’s assumption of Handelian roles and I can pay no higher compliment than that.

Despite my reservation over the one Bach item – a reservation that does not concern the singing per se – this is a superb disc that all admirers of this much-missed singer will want to have. And if you’ve not heard Lorraine Hunt Lieberson before, buy this disc and discover for yourself what all the fuss is about.

– John Quinn, MusicWeb International

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Lorraine at Emmanuel / Lieberson
Avie Records Apr 2008
CD
~~$19.99~~ $9.99

Jones: Missa Spes Nostra - Ludford: Ave Cujus Conceptio - Hunt: Stabat Mater

Blue Heron Renaissance Choir

$21.99 Aug 14, 2015

At their most fanatical, the radicalized Reformists of England’s Church sought to purify the Church of everything worldly—and for our purposes, that included music set to Latin texts or requiring professional performance. It didn’t need a mass uprising to achieve this cleansing, this destruction. Merely a few small gangs of determined individuals in a time and place when the rule of law was in abeyance was probably sufficient, though the appointment of several influential Puritans to high office certainly didn’t help matters. Much music is known to have been lost, though a justified level of fear encouraged forethought in a few instances. It wasn’t until 1926 that a servant at Peterhouse revealed a hidden cupboard behind the Perne library’s paneling, for instance, where three Caroline partbooks were hidden.

Still, some of the partbooks have gone missing over time; and given that a set, one voice to a part, is required for performance, any loss has proven sufficient to silence so much fine Tudor polyphony. The Henrician Peterhouse group—Peterhouse MSS 40, 41, 31 and 32, a total of 72 works, 39 of which are unica—furnish a sad example of this. Of its five partbooks, the tenor is missing, as well as several leaves removed at some point from the treble. Various scholars long asserted that the kind of florid style frequently found in these books was no longer being composed in the later years of Henry’s rule, and paid no attention to the partbooks because they were little known and their contents unperformable. It is thanks to musicologist Nick Sandon, who has supplied the tenor part (and when necessary, the treble), that we have a working edition of those compositions that can’t be found elsewhere.

This fourth volume of the series once again features a work by Nicholas Ludford (c. 1490–1557). He is easily the best-known composer on the disc, which, given that he was almost entirely unknown until the last half century, says much about England’s musical discontinuity. (As well as the importance of Peterhouse’s Henrician partbooks; for a fair amount of what they include isn’t unica by well-known composers, but by those who lived, worked, died, and were completely forgotten.) Though his Ave cujus conceptio is not the centerpiece of the album as the Missa Regnum mundi (Blue Heron 1003) and Missa Inclina cor meum (Blue Heron 1004) were of theirs, it is a brightly buoyant work without shadows, launching lengthy melismatic phrases like so many streamers.

The central work on the program is the Missa Spes nostra of Robert Jones (fl. 1520–1535). His is a cantus firmus Mass, and as was the custom in England at the time, there is no pre-composed, polyphonic Kyrie. (Blue Heron supplies a plainchant one from the Sarum use sung, as was this Mass, on Trinity Sunday.) Metcalfe points out in his excellent liner notes that Jones “plays with the idea of alternation between major and minor harmonizations of the third scale degree” throughout the Mass. This, along with some simpler homophonic statements among the wealth of imitation, gives it at times an almost folk-like quality, though upon other occasions Jones relishes the passing dissonances his juxtapositions invite. Sandon notes in his doctoral dissertation that Jones can be unpredictable, and that he “sometimes writes very neat motivically generated counterpoint, but at other times he can be quirky and wayward.” This Mass is a highly individualized work, and amply repays repeated listening.

The final composer on the program, Robert Hunt, is so obscure that he hasn’t even been further identified yet. Only two pieces of his survive, both in the Peterhouse partbooks: an Ave Maria mater dei, and the Stabat mater dolorosa heard here. It is the only work on the disc missing both its tenor and treble parts, which Sandon has supplied. In a manner that recalls the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, it invites the listener to partake in the successive emotions experienced at the foot of the Cross by Mary, and manages this brilliantly in a very free, intensely emotive fashion. It should be required listening of anyone who feels that imitative counterpoint can’t be expressive.

It is also a superb example of what Scott Metcalfe has achieved with Blue Heron: an ensemble that yields to none for intonation, blend, and clarity, yet also utilizes both overall and part-related dynamics as an expressive device in a way most other professional choirs of its quality do not. Metcalfe is alive to the lyricism that was a remarked-upon feature of 15th-century English music, and the beauty of Blue Heron’s phrasing displays this everywhere on this disc. That the choir isn’t better known is no doubt a result in part of its rarified repertoire, but also Metcalfe’s desire to retain control over all aspects of his recordings. So you won’t find Blue Heron on such labels as Hyperion or Harmonia Mundi, but you will find that the excellent engineering on this album provides a close, rich sound with just enough reverberation to give body to the voices.

Complete texts and translations are included. Really, the entire series to date is worth the purchase. And if you want to sample some of Blue Heron’s recordings, as well as buy them, the place to go is blueheronchoir.org. Strongly recommended.

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Jones: Missa Spes Nostra - Ludford: Ave Cujus Conceptio - Hunt: Stabat Mater
Blue Heron Renaissance Choir Aug 2015
CD
$21.99

Seven Come Eleven - A Gaming Gambol

Sony Masterworks

$8.99 ~~$17.99~~ Save 50% Jul 01, 2013

"The merriest ninety minutes in the town's night life." -- The New Yorker

"There isn't a gayer, wittier or subtler cabaret show in town than 'Seven Come Eleven'... The enterprising Julius Monk has again assembled a group of six versatile performers, furnished them with material from about a dozen bright song-and-sketch writers and mounted the whole thing with fluency and verve." -- Arthur Gelb, The New York Times [10/9/1961]

Seven Come Eleven - A Gaming Gambol

With Philip Bruns, Ceil Cabot, Rex Robbins, Steve Roland, Donna Sanders, Mary Louise Wilson.

William Roy and Carl Norman at the plural pianos.

Musical and vocal arrangements by William Roy.

It all began (way back in 1956) in a dark, dank cellar, located beneath an ancient brownstone on New York City’s Sixth Avenue. It was here that Julius Monk, with a few yards of velvet and a handful of performers, presented his first subterranean sensation, Four Below. Notwithstanding some mild competition from a musical called My Fair Lady and an occasional attack of bends, Four Below romped happily through a six-month run. It was followed, quite naturally, by The Son of Four Below (1956) and, in time, Take Five (1957), the latter fondly recalled as a classic nightclub entertainment.

By 1958, The Downstairs Room was firmly established as a favorite late-night spot for New Yorkers on the town. But the tranquility at 51st Street and Sixth Avenue was disturbed by the ominous approach of demolition squads, which looked jealously at a street corner that they hadn’t yet battered down. It was not long before Julius and his companions were homeless, as The Downstairs Room was politely removed in the name of architectural progress. Vagrants for but a trice, they moved to West 56th Street, where they took up permanent residence in a congenial mansion formerly owned by John Wanamaker. There, Take Five took its second wind and was later followed by Demi-Dozen (1958), Pieces of Eight (1959), Dressed to the Nines (1960) and now Seven Come Eleven, which opened to rave notices on October 5, 1961. Dorothy Kilgallen expressed the attitude of the critics by referring to Seven Come Eleven as “the wittiest cafe show in town.”

Aware that there still may be one or two people who have not yet seen a Julius Monk opus, we offer the following description. It is New York at night. Taxicabs wind perilously in and out of traffic, along glittering, noisy avenues. Soon they drive up an attractive, quiet side street, lined with shops in remodeled town houses and stop in front of a canopied entrance that announces “Upstairs at the Downstairs.” A uniformed doorman greets the couples arriving from Broadway shows or late dinners and ushers them inside to join a crowd waiting to ascend the circular marble staircase leading to the Upstairs Room, where the show is about to go on.

The Upstairs Room, formerly the sitting room of the mansion, is lined with rich, red fabric and softly lighted by glowing globes from the last century. Visitors are seated at little tables, and soon the lights dim. Suddenly, a half dozen bright, young Thespians leap onto the tiny stage at one end of the room. Accompanied by twin pianos, they spend the next hour and a half singing songs and performing sketches which touch upon just about every event in the newspapers, every phobia in the textbooks, and every celebrity in the history of the world. Seven Come Eleven, for example, contains hilarious spoofs on the John Birch Society, the Peace Corps, sick comedians, Cuban highjacking of airplanes and other topics close to the hearts of New Yorkers: school scandals and the construction of a new hotel designed in typical Miami Beach fashion. If all this sounds terribly, terribly sophisticated, it should be pointed out at once that the performers in this show come from such remote spots as Pipestone, Minnesota; Pierre, South Dakota; Eldred, Pennsylvania, and Greenville, Texas.

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Wagner: Parsifal / Haenchen, Richards, Larsson, Rootering, Mayer, Tomasso

BelAir Classiques

DVD

$31.99 Jan 28, 2014

A mythical performance from la Monnaie - Bruxelles.
Parsifal is a strange and enigmatic work. At the end of his life, did Wagner wish to celebrate asceticism, which he himself had never practised? Did he fall upon his knees before the Cross, as claimed by Nietzsche? And what does the secret society of knights based on pure blood signify, desperately waiting for the saviour to regenerate it? What is the true nature of the opposition between the worlds of Klingsor and the Grail? What can Parsifal tell us today? In his artistic will and testament, Wagner condenses his moral idea of the world and returns to the roots of love and religion - to the very heart of art according to him.
With the participation of conductor Hartmut Haenchen who is passionated by the score, Italian stage director Romeo Castellucci proposes an original reading of this brilliant work and explores the essence of Wagnerian ‘Kunstreligion’ in a different light.

“Thanks to the telling contributions of Mr. Castellucci and Mr. Haenchen, the Monnaie’s ‘Parsifal’ casts new light on a difficult opera.” NY TIMES

Parsifal: Andrew Richards
Kundry: Anna Larsson
Gurnemanz: Jan-Hendrik Rootering
Amfortas: Thomas Johannes Mayer
Klingsor: Tómas Tómasson
Titurel: Victor von Halem

Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie
Hartmut Haenchen

Stage direction: Romeo Castellucci
Choreography: Cindy Van Acker
Set & costume designs, lighting: Romeo Castellucci
Dramaturgy: Piersandra di Matteo
Recording: La Monnaie / De Munt, Bruxelles - 20/02/2011

R E V I E W: 3763560.az_WAGNER_Parsifal_Hartmut_Haenchen.html
WAGNER Parsifal • Hartmut Haenchen, cond; Andrew Richards (Parsifal); Anna Larsson (Kundry); Jan-Hendrick Rootering (Gurnemanz); Thomas Johannes Mayer (Amfortas); Tómas Tómasson (Klingsor); Victor von Halem (Titurel); O symphonique de la Monnaie; Ch de la Monnaie; Ch de jeunes de la Monnaie • BELAIR (DVD: 239:00) Live: Brussels 2/20/2011

The Parisian daily Le Monde called this 2011 Le Monnaie production “un Parsifal hallucinaire.” That’s putting it mildly. Wagner’s operas have long inspired “extreme” treatments and this is one of the most extreme I’ve encountered. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t. It’s not for the faint of heart. And I wouldn’t want to be without it.

Parsifal is the first operatic undertaking for the Italian playwright and stage director Romeo Castellucci, well known for his avant-garde tendencies. In the hyperbolic language sometimes employed by men and women devoted to dramaturgy, Castelluci explains his method in the liner notes. “As I approached Parsifal, I tried to forget everything I knew. I put myself in the shoes of someone who knew nothing. I closed my eyes, and I listened once, twenty times, and then a hundred times to the music, this thing. Then I slept. I reworked the whole of Parsifal in a state of amnesia, from the beginning to the end. A work like this needs a vision coming from one’s deepest places … not just an illustrative approach.” OK, that’s a little over the top. But there truly is a dreamlike quality to what you witness here. One remembers images rather than scenes when it’s all over. Act I’s setting is a dense and dark forest in which one can, at first, barely make out the principal singers. (Gurnemanz’s costume covers him from head to toe in leaves, so he fits right in.) Act II is borderline pornographic, as Castelluci dispenses with singing Flowermaidens on stage and, with the vocalists out of sight, has Parsifal tempted by platinum-wigged nude dancers (and, as the credits acknowledge, “Shibari bondage performers” and “contortionists.”) One dancer lies down on a pedestal and aims her external genitalia at the audience for a good 20 minutes. Kundry’s and Amfortas’s act of sexual congress, barely alluded to as a historical event in run-of-the-mill Parsifals, is graphically projected as a hologram. Act III is a complete change of gears, with the chorus joined by a large crowd of non-singing supernumeraries in modern-day dress that, from the Transformation Scene onward, are seen to be slowly striding forward, presumably to a better future world. There are clichés, to be sure—the face paint, Kundry’s application of a few words, graffiti-style, to a blank wall, etc.—and some familiar visual theatrical features are missing: there’s no spear, no non-healing wound, no sign of the Cross when Klingsor’s realm is vanquished. But for contemplative Wagnerians, this will be a very rich experience indeed.

It helps enormously that the musical values are first-rate. Hartmut Haenchen is an experienced and insightful Wagner conductor and, as with his excellent Ring cycle for Etcetera (Fanfare 31:3), he consults the notes of Wagner’s assistants and other artists involved in the first Bayreuth performances. Haenchen definitely eschews the draggy tempos that have become common, but this Parsifal is not the least bit rushed. (For the record, the timing is a half-hour longer than Pierre Boulez’s famously brisk 1970 Bayreuth recording.) Castellucci is not alone in finding Kundry to be the central character in Parsifal—she’s alive and well when the curtain comes down at the close of act III—and Anne Larsson does a terrific job with the wide-ranging dramatic requirements of her role. Jan-Hendrick Rootering is a magisterial Gurnemanz and the American tenor Andrew Richards has a pleasing, well-supported voice well suited to Parsifal. This is Richards’s first Wagner role and, from the sounds of it, Siegmund and Walther, at least, should be on his radar. Thomas Johannes Mayer appears and sounds agonized without scenery chewing. (Remember, he’s got no wound to show off.) Tómas Tómasson is an excellent singer, though perhaps his Klingsor should be a bit less robust to contrast better with the other male characters that still have their “equipment” intact.

Most opera videos released nowadays are carefully planned, with a film director assigned to the project; this video, we are told, is “purely an archive.” No apologies are necessary. The camera work is skillful and editor didn’t feel obliged to always show us who was singing at the moment. (How long can you watch Gurnemanz explaining the back-story, anyway?) The medium was clearly analog film. The sound is good and even though the resolution of Dolby Digital is lower than the stereo PCM option on a DVD, the surround sound program here is sonically very satisfactory. Subtitle choices are English, French, Dutch, and German.

Clearly, this shouldn’t be anyone’s introduction to Parsifal. But for those who want to explore new levels of meaning and emotional power in Wagner’s final work, BelAir’s release deserves the strongest consideration.

FANFARE: Andrew Quint

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Wagner: Parsifal / Haenchen, Richards, Larsson, Rootering, Mayer, Tomasso
BelAir Classiques Jan 2014
DVD
$31.99

Paganini: Works For Violin And Orchestra - First Complete Edition

Dynamic

$53.99 Mar 31, 2009

PAGANINI Violin and Orchestra Works • Massimo Quarta (vn, cond); 1 Salvatore Accardo (vn); 2 Yehudi Menuhin (vn); 5 Franco Mazzena (vn); 6,7 Ruggiero Ricci (vn); 8 Luigi Alberto Bianchi (va); 9 Franco Traverso (hn); 10 Rino Vernizzi (bn); 10 Genova Teatro del Carlo Felice O; 1 Charles Dutoit, cond; 3 London SO; 3 Franco Tamponi, cond; 4 Europe CO; 4 Pierre Monteux, cond; 5 Paris SO; 5 Luigi Porro, cond; 7 Coro Januensis; 7 Piero Mordini, cond; 8 I Virtuosi di Assisi; 8 Jacques Delacôte, cond; 9 RIAS O Berlin; 9 Antonio Plotino, cond; 6,7,10 Genova CO 6, 7,10 • DYNAMIC 622 (8 CDs: 516:01)

Violin Concertos: No. 1 in E?; 1 No. 1 in D; 5 No. 2 in b; 1 No. 3 in E; 1 No. 4 in d; 1 No. 4 in d; 8 No. 5 in a. 1 Grand Concerto in e. 1 Adagio in E. 1 La primavera. 2,3 Maestosa sonata sentimentale. 2,3 Sonata con variazioni. 2,3 Introduction and Variations on “Non più mesta.” 2,3 Le streghe. 2,3 Sonata Varsavia. 2 Sonata Maria Luisa. 2 Pollaca con variazioni. 2 Balletto campestre. 2 Il carnevale de Venezia. 2 Sonata movimento perpetuo. 2,3 Sonata a preghiera. 2 Sonata Napoléon. 2,3 I palpiti. 2,3 Tarantella. 6 Le couvent du Mont St. Bernard. 7 Sonata per Grand Viola. 9 Niccolò Paganini a Mr. Henry 10

Dynamic has collected its recordings of Paganini’s works for violin and orchestra into an eight-CD set. Since everything has been previously released (and most of it reviewed in the pages of Fanfare ), the principal advantage to potential collectors should lie in the convenience of having everything in one place, in generally idiomatic performances and excellently detailed recorded sound.

I reviewed Massimo Quarta’s performances on Paganini’s Cannon of the First and Second Concertos (the First, played in the original key of E? Major, with the violin part scordatura) in 24:3 (these two concertos appear on the first disc of the current set), noting the historical importance of the appearance in recordings of the First Concerto in its original key (involving tuning the violin a half-step higher and thereby increasing the tension of the strings, brightening the instrument’s timbre). My original impression of Quarta’s brilliance in these works (listen to his crackling version of his own edited version of Sauret’s cadenza to the First Concerto or his own dazzling, though somewhat long, cadenza for the Second) has never faded; I’ve carried this recording around with me in my van since regular listening and familiarity haven’t yet bred contempt. Quarta made the original recordings in July 1999 in Genoa’s Teatro Carlo Felice, utilizing transcriptions by Matiaresa Dellaborra and scores revised by Quarta himself and Giulio Odero.

The second disc brings the Third and Fifth Concertos, which have been previously available in Dynamic’s set of Paganini’s concertos played by Quarta on the Cannon (Dynamic 450, which included a multimedia CD featuring the Cannon and a performance of the Adagio in E Major). He recorded these concertos in September 2001 and 2002, again in Genoa’s Teatro Carlo Felice, making use of a new orchestration by Francesco Fiore for the Fifth Concerto (collectors will remember the somewhat anachronistic earlier orchestration by Federico Mompellio that made its recording debut in Franco Gulli’s premiere recording of the work on LP—Decca (7)10081. Once again, Quarta revised the scores of the works for the performances. The Third Concerto has come a long way since Henryk Szeryng’s technically brilliant though rhetorically less convincing first recorded performance. Quarta imparts to the score the kind of brilliance with which Paganini’s name has become associated—if not the sense of macabre fantasy that his name conjured for his contemporaries. Fiore’s orchestration for the Fifth Concerto creates an impression of greater stylistic appropriateness that doesn’t distract from the Concerto’s overall effect as Mompellio’s score must have for many listeners. Besides, it enhances the effect of the exceptionally expressive slow movement. Salvatore Accardo, like Quarta, another winner of the Paganini competition, recorded all the Paganini concertos (the ones he recorded in the 1970s with Dutoit and the London Symphony Orchestra now appear in a six-CD set issued by Deutsche Grammophon—also available through the Musical Heritage Society on 5661921—there’s another set with Accardo and the Italian Chamber Orchestra on EMI); but Accardo never quite projected, at least to me, the almost startling command that nowadays substitutes for Paganini’s eldritch violinistic imagination (I’ve mentioned before that Alexander Markov manages to capture some of that fantasy in his recordings of Paganini, such as those of the first two concertos and the caprices, reissued on Apex 699872, 32:1, which I included in last year’s Want List). And Accardo made use of Szeryng’s versions of the Third and Fourth Concertos and of Mompellio’s accompaniment to the Fifth.

The set’s third disc brings performances by Quarta on Paganini’s Cannon of the “Grand Concerto” in E Minor, which has elsewhere been billed as the Sixth Concerto and which first surfaced in a version for violin and guitar. Again, the scores have been revised by Quarta, who also wrote cadenzas for them; and Francesco Fiore provided accompaniments for the “Grand Concerto” and for the Adagio in E Major that tops off the disc. The performances, again, took place in Genoa’s Teatro Carlo Felice. The “Grand Concerto,” which Danilo Prefumo’s notes suggest comes from Paganini’s early years, seems more akin in its passagework to Viotti’s models (Viotti-like figuration, for example, rubs shoulders in the last movement with motives that could have come directly from Paganini’s own Second Concerto). Again, the work first appeared with an orchestration by Mompellio. Fiore’s seems to make more frequent use of obbligato woodwinds than Paganini’s own arrangements seemingly do. Although Paganini’s characteristic double-stopping appears to have been thrust into the background (had it yet developed as a stroke in his signature?), Quarta makes this Concerto sound nearly as striking in its effect as do the others. The Fourth Concerto received an early recording by Arthur Grumiaux (on LP—Epic LC-3143) and Ruggiero Ricci also became an early champion. But it’s bracing to hear this work played in a fully digital format by Quarta. The Adagio, which Prefumo’s note suggests took form about the same time as did the Second Concerto (with the pages of which it seems to have been entangled), shares a great deal with the slow movements of the other concertos, including the typical quasi-recitative outburst of drama. Fiore realized its very sketchy accompaniment.

The fourth disc comprises five shorter works played by Salvatore Accardo, who recorded the Primavera, Non più mesta , and Le streghe in April 1975 and the Maestosa sonata sentimentale and the Sonata con variazioni in January 1976, all for Deutsche Grammophon, and they’ve been issued in various formats. (The Maestosa sonata sentimentale and the Sonata con variazioni appeared on LP as Deutsche Grammophon 2536 376 PSI—reviewed by John Bauman in 7:3—along with the Napoléon Sonata , the Palpiti , and the Perpetuela , which appear elsewhere in Dynamic’s collection.) Accardo plays these pieces stylishly, with perhaps a less aggressive articulation than Quarta’s in the concertos, but with a thorough command of their technical fireworks and a highly ingratiating manner. La primavera sports an accompaniment that hardly seems to fit the violin part’s period, but Danilo Prefumo notes that only the violin part had been available (he conjectures that the work might have been one mentioned in 1838). Its effects include a series of arpeggios like those that bring the cadenza to Mendelssohn’s Concerto to a close, in this case under the thematic material that enters before the finale. Prefumo assigns the Maestosa sonata sentimentale to 1828, as a tribute to the Emperor Franz I in gratitude for his bestowing upon him the title of “Chamber Virtuoso”—the work consists, after an introduction, of variations for the G string on the Austrian national anthem, which Wieniawski would later take for a set of variations of his own. The difficulties of intonation and tone production on the G string must have been staggering (I’ve read that Paganini’s pupil, Camillo Sivori, played the “Moses” variations only by cutting all the other strings and placing the G string in the middle of a small violin!), so it’s little wonder if Accardo occasionally misses a note. Once again, the orchestral accompaniment hardly seems entirely idiomatic. The Sonata con variazioni , often billed as Variations on a Theme of Joseph Weigl , also poses problems in intonation that Accardo struggles to master (Ruggiero Ricci made a dashing recording of this piece with piano, included in his LP album, “Bravura,” Decca DL 710172, that tames its difficulties, although Accardo’s double harmonics at the end sound especially confident and rotund). The Variations on “Non più mesta” from Rossini’s La cenerentola comes, according to Prefumo, from about 1819. If they sound somewhat scrappy in this performance, it should be remembered that the best recordings of Paganini (even perhaps Rabin’s of the caprices) contain imperfectly polished moments. The Witches’ Dance may be one of the most familiar of Paganini’s compositions—even budding violinists play the theme in one of many arrangements. Accardo plays the introductory passages with a suavity that characterizes most of the performances on the disc. Once again, the technical passages cause him some trouble, but he maintains his composure. The violin sounds sweeter in the performances of this fourth disc than the Cannon does in the three that open the set.

The fifth disc includes four works that Salvatore Accardo recorded for EMI in 1983: the Sonata Varsavia, Sonata Maria Luisa, Polacca con variazioni , and Balletto campestre . John Bauman reviewed the re-release of this recording on LP (Angel DS 38128) in 8:3. The lighthearted Sonata Varsavia showcases Accardo in a jovial mood, with a spotlight on his bag of tricks (staccatos of various kinds, harmonics, and some brilliant pizzicatos). Danilo Prefumo points out that Paganini transferred the opening to the Fifth Concerto. Bauman mentions that Edward Neill’s original notes explain that Accardo had played, in the Sonata Maria Luisa , a five-string controviola that he had constructed for the purpose in 1982. Prefumo identifies the Polacca con variazioni , a showpiece of easy elegance with an ingratiating double-stopped variation at its center, with a work mentioned in 1810. The concerto-length Balletto campestre , its tema comico reminiscent of the “Solfeggio” familiar from performances by the “Nairobi Trio” on Ernie Kovacs’s television show, fills almost half the program. According to Bauman’s notes, Paganini scholar Edward Neill composed the orchestral accompaniment to the violin part, to which Accardo imparts an almost jazzy twang at times. In this work and in the Sonata Varsavia , Accardo displays some of the dash and verve required to spice Paganini’s sometimes somewhat skeletal parts. In fact, the entire fifth disc seems like a joy ride through the violin’s upper regions, both on the fingerboard and technically in general.

The sixth disc includes the famous Carnival of Venice variations, the Sonata movimento perpetuo, Sonata a preghiera, Sonata Napoléon , and I palpiti . Some of these works (but not entirely) appeared on another LP, Angel DS 38127 (again, reviewed by John Bauman in 8:3) and others on the Deutsche Grammophon LP mentioned above, 7:3. Salvatore Accardo recorded the Carnival of Venice and the first two movements of the Sonata movimento perpetuo (according to Dynamic’s booklet) and the Sonata a preghiera digitally with Tamponi and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in December 1983, but the final movement of the Sonata movimento perpetuo, Sonata Napoléon , and I palpiti in January 1976 with Dutoit and the London Philharmonic. Bauman’s headnote lists a moto perpetuo from the Angel collection, but checking the disc reveals it’s the familiar one in C Major, not the movement on this sixth disc. The set of variations, which Prefumo attributes to 1829 on the familiar tune “The Carnival of Venice,” sounds like a barn burner in this orchestral setting (Francescatti made it harder edged and flintier—but hardly more brilliant or more fun—in his evening of Paganini at the Library of Congress in 1954, Bridge 9125, 26:4). The Sonata movimento perpetuo ought to be a welcome addition to recital programs, with its winning Andante amoroso and its sparkling final perpetual motion (this one in A Major). (Prefumo relates that Paganini must have been unhappy with the first version of the work and provided the Andante amoroso as a substitute for the introductory Larghetto con passione, which appears just before it in this collection and almost composes a sort of three-movement suite or concertino.) Accardo plays with rock-like security in the Sonata a preghiera , which strains a performer’s left hand, partly because of the extreme tension of the string (Prefumo doesn’t mention that the violinist must tune the G string up a minor third to B?). Prefumo suggests that the Sonata Napoléon , like the Sonata Maria Luisa , hails from 1810, perhaps both wedding presents for Napoleon and his bride. This work contains a similar mix of harmonics and acrobatics on the G string as does its more popular cousin, and Accardo displays the reliability of his technique in a similar way. Only I palpiti sounds less than rollicking, but Accardo’s always in command.

The seventh disc brings perhaps the least familiar repertoire: the Tarantella, Le couvent du Mont St. Bernard, Niccolò Paganini a Mr. Henry , and the Sonata per Grand Viola . Dynamic recorded the first three of these pieces with Franco Mazzena and the Orchestra da Camera di Genova (the Coro Januensis appears in the first and fourth movements of the five-movement Couvent ) in September 1983; and Luigi Alberto Bianchi recorded the viola work in 1973. John Bauman reviewed the first three works when they appeared on CD (CDS 27) in 13:3, and I reviewed a later reissue of Bianchi’s performance of the Viola Sonata in 23:4. Franco Mazzena plays with a leaner and perhaps a bit more pliable tone than those of either Quarta or Accardo, but he spits the double-stops with equal impudence, though perhaps without a similar security of intonation in the Tarantella. Couvent strikes Prefumo as a hint of what Paganini might have achieved had he devoted himself to composition. It’s a five-movement fantasy, two of which include chant-like parts for male chorus. No ordinary showpiece, the work nevertheless shows off Paganini’s penchant for the unusual and perhaps the histrionic, though Prefumo’s mention of Berlioz seems appropriate, because, as in much of that composer’s Requiem, Paganini makes use of his forces mostly (except near the end of the maestosa at the end of the fourth movement, which sounds uncannily like Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky”) to achieve timbral nuance rather than to create the big bow-wow. The work ends with the “Rondo del campanello,” familiar from its inclusion in the Second Concerto, which brings the work back to the sound of bells with which it opened. Mazzena sounds particularly crisp and engaging in this virtuoso romp. Just as the three duets for violin and bassoon, discovered in Camillo Sivori’s archives (and recorded by Salvatore Accardo and Claudio Gonella on Dynamic CDS 194, 21:3), demonstrate Paganini’s ear for instrumental sonorities, the two movements of Niccolò Paganini a Mr. Henry show how ably Paganini could adapt his highly individual style to the necessities of the occasion. Paganini may not have found Berlioz’s Harold in Italy an ample enough stage for his talents, but the Sonata he wrote for viola, while featuring some of his signature effects, hardly eschews his typically Rossinian operatic lyricism. As I noted in my earlier review, Bianchi doesn’t approach the viola as an oversized violin, but exploits its darker side.

The eighth disc brings historic versions of two of the concertos: the First Concerto in a historic recording of the entire work (the first, I believe) by Yehudi Menuhin in 1934 and one by Ruggiero Ricci from the 1970s of the Fourth Concerto. Writing of this performance by Menuhin, Henry Roth remarked that while Francescatti played like a lyric soprano in this work, Menuhin played like a dramatic one. However that may be, Menuhin’s performance stands alongside those of Rabin, Kogan, and Francescatti. If Ricci’s reading of the Fourth Concerto doesn’t have similarly documentary value, his life of service to Paganini certainly merits mention anywhere the composer is represented, and this live recording testifies to his stupendous if occasionally erratic virtuosity.

The question remains: would/did Paganini himself sound like any of these violinists? Listen to Alexander Markov, then imagine Markov’s eccentricities magnified a thousandfold. That’s how many of us would like to imagine Paganini himself. But since we can’t hear him, we’ll have to settle for collections like this one. Urgently recommended as the next thing, nowadays, to a time machine.

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

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Paganini: Works For Violin And Orchestra - First Complete Edition
Dynamic Mar 2009
CD
$53.99