10/22/2010

Elgar.  The very name strikes fear into my heart.  I will freely admit I have a bit of an anti-British sentiment when it comes to classical music.  I ’d argue that this bias exists only because so much of the verbiage that spills from Great Britain is so unabashedly pro-British when it is pretty clear that most of the rest of the world feels they are overstating their case.

Anyway, back to Elgar.  It’s not that there aren’t works I enjoy.  But the idea of slogging through EMI’s 30-disc “Edward Elgar: The Collector’s Edition” with all that organ and choral music makes me cringe.  This stuff has its aficionados, but it ain’t me.  Then there’s the orchestral music which is pretty good stuff on the whole.  And there’s the cello concerto.
With or without the nearly inescapable Jacqueline du Pré association, this piece does have a life of its own.

Then there’s the violin concerto.  I never thought too much of this work.
Lots of violinists have tackled the work (from Albert Sammons through Itzhak Perlamn), but there are really three recordings that kept the work alive.
The first is, of course, Yehudi Menuhin’s recording with Elgar conducting.
The other two are both from Nigel Kennedy.  All three are on EMI.  Despite their reputations, none of these disc made me a fan of the work.

All of a sudden, there have been a slew of recordings that have made a believer out of me.  And if you believe the reviewers, each one has been better than the last.  The first recording that convinced me is by Jame Ehnes on Onyx.  Since then we’ve had recordings from Benjamin Zander on RCA and a Gramophone Award winning disc from Thomas Zehetmair, Mark Elder and Hallé.  If you are yet to be convinced, pick one and enjoy.

10/1/2010

Shostakovich’s Opus 87 24 Preludes & Fugues for piano are a staple of the 20th-century repertoire.  Like Bach, Shostakovich explores the 24 major and minor keys.  (Incidentally, I recently learned that Shostakovich was working on the 24 keys in his string quartets as well.  The 15 he got to are all in different keys.)  And there are a couple new recordings you might want to know about. 

Russian pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva is more-or-less sui generis with this work.  I seem to remember that Shostakovich gave her the only copy of the score at one point.  The new release is the fourth complete recording by Nikolayeva and the earliest dating from 1962.  Critic Jed Distler says it is her best effort.  Also newly available is a cycle from Alexander Melnikov on Harmonia Mundi.

09/17/2010

Anonymous 4 has a new Christmas album.  This marks their fifth foray into holiday music by my count.  If you are familiar with their earlier releases you will know that an Anonymous 4 Christmas disc is not one you sing along with as you have probably never heard the repertoire before.  That’s for the best as these ladies sing better than you or I do.

From the all female to the all male:  Chanticleer also has a new Christmas album comprised of live Public Radio broadcasts.  Re-live your favorite holiday driveway moments with the men of Chanticleer!  (I’m copyrighting the previous sentence.)

There’s a disc of new Steve Reich music.  That’s something I always look forward to and I was particularly jazzed about this release as the two works are performed by my two favorite new music ensembles, eighth blackbird and Bang on a Can.  The Double Sextet, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music, is performed by eighth blackbird but sounds like early Bang on a Can.  I’m thinking Industry period Bang on a Can which is impressively virtuosic but not my favorite stuff to listen to.  The other piece, 2x5, with its two electric guitars (and piano, bass and drums) sounds unavoidably like Electric Counterpoint.  All in all, a bit of a disappointment.

Hyperion has boxed up their Schumann song series into a space-saving box set.  I predicted that would happen in 2009 for the Schumann year, but I was ahead of the curve.

08/27/2010

Naxos is distributing Warner Classics in the U.S.  “Who cares?” I can hear you asking.  Well, hardly anyone I suppose.  Warner Classics barely releases anything and records even less.  But you probably didn’t have any trouble getting their stuff if you wanted it.  And I have certainly previously mentioned that Naxos is distributing more and more labels.  So what’s the big deal?

Warner is one of the four or five major labels (depending on how you count them).  Fifteen years ago the major labels scoffed at the mere mention of Naxos branding them a worthless, upstart, budget label recording with second tier soloists and third tier orchestras.  Oh how the mighty have fallen.

So sure, one way to look at this is to say Naxos is distributing another label.  Another is to see it as a sea change.  Naxos is tidal wave and the remaining major labels, each of whom offered to buy Naxos at some point, had better watch out.  Warner’s approach may be the smartest.  If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

08/12/2010

The pianist Paul Lewis is back in a big way this month.  After having recorded one of the finest modern Beethoven piano sonata cycles, he has turned his attention to the five concertos.  Lewis is backed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek.  This conductor is pretty high on my list.  There is a recording of Mozart Symphonies Nos. 35 & 36 from a few years back that still regularly makes into my player.  In any case, a Beethoven concerto recording from Lewis is something to be excited about.

But that’s not all.  Lewis has also been in collaboration with tenor Mark Padmore in Schubert lieder.  They previously released a Winterreise that made it to the top of many critics’ lists of great modern performances and have now released Die schöne Mullerin.  These are two artists at the top of their games.  Luckily, they should be around a good long while for our enjoyment.

07/30/2010

I have been reading Joseph Horowitz’s tome Classical Music in America.  The book spends a great deal of time in fin de siecle New England.  I was once again reminded what a fantastic collection of the music of this period is available on CD from Naxos.  Amy Beach, George Whitefield Chadwick, Arthur Foote, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Charles Tomlinson Griffes and George Templeton Strong have all received multiple recordings from Naxos.  Other labels, notably Chandos, have also dabbled in American music, but no one else has made as large or as enduring a commitment.

Of course, Naxos’ American Classics series stretches through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.  Deserving composers such as George Antheil, William Bolcom, Henry Cowell, George Crumb, David Diamond, John Harbison, Victor Herbert, Paul Moravec, Walter Piston, and William Schumann have all been recorded on Naxos while being generally overlooked.

This month’s installment of American works includes a disc of choral music, a disc of clarinet concertos and discs devoted to James Lentini and George Walker.  Nobody does American music better than Naxos.

07/22/2010

“But this is just a parlor game that can be endlessly played.”  I wrote that a few weeks ago about selecting the perfect Mahler symphony cycle.  The good folks at Deutsche Grammophon agree with me and have actually created that game.  Except this time the game will have tangible results.  In November, DG will release a box set entitled “Mahler-The People’s Edition.”  Ah…the spread of democracy.

DG has set up a website with audio from all their in and out-of-print Mahler recordings.  Interested parties may sample and vote for their favorites.  There is a running total of the current winning cycle.  You may even be able to get production credit!  Come on, you’ve always thought you could do it better than those idiotic, stuffed shirts in the corner office.  There are no excuses now.

On the home front, our MN Orchestra has ended its streak of glorious press coverage.  The recently released recording of Bruckner Symphony No. 4 (1888 version) has not been overwhelmingly received.  I was going to write that it has been given much consideration, but this would be untrue.  The problem is the 1888 version aspect.  There are multiple editions of the Bruckner symphonies, but the critics can’t line up behind this particular one.  David Hurwitz referred to it as “a bastard edition” and an “artistic […] nullity.”  After publishing his short review, Hurwitz then produced a six page indictment of the edition.  Blair Sanderson wrote “the character of this version comes off as un-Brucknerian.”  A small saving grace is that both critics give the orchestra credit for playing well.  But if this project was conceived with the idea that it would have broad appeal (and, really, who knows if it was), it appears to have failed.

07/9/2010

An artist who has recently been given the super-deluxe reissue treatment is Pierre Boulez.  Whatever you think of Boulez’s ideological proclamations, the guy was and remains a serious conductor.  And for being vehemently anti-establishment he has produced some fine recordings of works by composers firmly ensconsed in the classical pantheon.  To his credit, Boulez felt he needed to understand everything in order to reject it. 

Sony classical has released eleven volumes of Boulez.  The composers represented are as follows:

Bartók and Scriabin (4 CDs)
Berg (5 CDs)
Berlioz (3 CDs)
Boulez (3 CDs)
Debussy (5 CDs)
Mahler & Wagner (3 CDs)
Ravel & Roussel (4 CDs)
Schoenberg I (5 CDs)
Schoenberg II (6 CDs)
Stravinsky, Messiaen, Dukas and Falla (4 CDs)
Webern, Carter, Varèse and Berio (6 CDs)

There are some gems to be had.  In particular, the last collection contains the complete Opp. 1-31 of Webern.  That’s been out-of-print for awhile.  These reissues are from the German arm of Sony Classical so I’m pretty sure they are bare-bones in terms of presentation.  Still, it’s great to be able to get these recordings again.  And the prices are cheap.

Deutsche Grammophon has also put together two boxes of Boulez.  There is an eight CD collection of Bartók and a six CD collection of Stravinsky.  That’s Boulez bread and butter.  Yum!

06/18/2010

If ever a company were to put together a complete Mahler edition you would probably want it to be Deutsche Grammophon.  The yellow label has complete symphonic cycles from Abbado, Bernstein, Kubelik and Sinopoli from which to draw.  And corporate structures being what they are, DG can also use performances from Decca cycles by Chailly and Solti.  And don’t forget the Philips cycles by Haitink and Ozawa.  Without even considering performances outside of complete symphonic cycles you have the makings of a very impressive survey.

Well, no surprise in this the 150th anniversary year of Mahler’s birth, DG has put that box together.  And from our list of complete cycles we have already accounted for seven of the nine, no ten, err… eleven symphonies.

Symphony No. 1-Kubelik
Symphony No. 2-Mehta
Symphony No. 3-Haitink
Symphony No. 4-Boulez
Symphony No. 5-Bernstein
Symphony No. 6-Abbado
Symphony No. 7-Sinopoli
Symphony No. 8-Solti
Symphony No. 9-Karajan
Symphony No. 10 (Cooke)-Chailly
Das Lied von der Erde-Giulini

As you can see, DG felt compelled to use different conductors for every symphony and to draw from all of the complete cycles save Ozawa.  Yet most of the choices are hard to find serious dissatisfaction with.  Everyone will have their preferences but Nos. 1, 2, 8 and 9 are fairly unassailable.
(Mehta and Karajan are excellent non-cycle additions.)  I might be tempted to move Chailly to No. 5 and Bernstein to No. 3 thereby setting of a chain reaction in which Haitink moves to No. 4, Boulez to No. 6 and Abbado to No.
7.

The problem, as ever, is No. 10.  Chailly’s is the only viable version of the Cooke completion.  I say forget the completed No. 10 and stick with just the Adagio.  If we assign Sinopoli the 10th then I can have my cycle.  But this is just a parlor game that can be endlessly played.

The DG box also includes all the vocal works and, well, everything else.  It is available June 21.

06/04/2010

The Schumann boxes have arrived.  Record labels tripped over themselves releasing Chopin boxes and new recordings at the start of the year.  Schumann took a bit longer, but now Sony and Deutsche Grammophon have released big ol’ box sets.

The Sony collection includes 25 discs for $83 while the DG collection runs $100 for 35 discs.  You may ask yourself, “Self, is there really 35 discs worth of quality Schumann?”  I was a bit skeptical myself, but the box breaks down to 5 discs of orchestral music, 5 of choral, 9 of lieder, 7 of chamber, and 9 of piano.  When examined in that light the answer is probably yes.  And the DG set contains some fine performances.  John Eliot Gardiner, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the Hagen Quartett, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Maurizio Pollini all figure prominently.

I heard Christian Tetzlaff perform the Bartók second violin concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra the other day.  Holy crapstick!  Really first rate.  I have admired some of his recordings including his Beethoven concerto with David Zinman.  That one is at super-budget price.  Why not check it out?

05/14/2010

“Mozart’s third movements evoke the court; Haydn’s, the peasants; Beethoven’s, the gods at play.”  -Harold C. Schonberg

I love that quote.  It’s so true.  And I think the composers named might feel that they achieved their goal.  Speaking of Haydn’s third movements, did you know that he wrote a set of 24 stand alone Minuets? (The Minuet is the standard Haydn third movement.)  There is a recording of all 24 with Antal Dorati and the Philharmonia Hungarica from Australian Eloquence.

Australian Eloquence is one of the best reissue programs around.  They are intelligently mining the Decca vaults for buried treasure, but until recently one pretty much had to order them from down under.  I have sent off for the aforementioned Dorati, Schiff/et al. in Haydn piano trios, Weller and Solti in Shostakovich and Alicia de Larrocha in Spanish piano concertos.

Hark, glad tiding!  Many of these gems are now readily available.  I have recently special ordered Ansermet’s Beethoven cycle, Horst Stein conducting Bruckner and Lipatti performing Schumann for customers.  What have you been looking for?
Congrats on the cd boys! (you can buy it at all three Cheapos.)

05/7/2010

Dateline May 11, 2010:

Harmonia Mundi is releasing a couple of tantalizing discs of J. S. Bach.  Harpsichordist Richard Egarr serves up the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2 as a digestif to his Book 1 traversal.  Violinst Isabelle Faust gives us the third sonata and second and third partitas for solo violin.  Her last recording project was the complete Beethoven violin sonatas.  Those recordings have made it into my player for repeated listenings.  I find it curious that Beethoven was offered up all at once on 4 discs while the Bach solo violin repertoire is bisected.

Also of interest is Valery Gergiev (in his race to record everything-again!) conducting the LSO in the Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2.  We will eventually get a complete cycle of the three symphonies plus the Symphonic Dances.  So that means Valery is putting to disc complete symphonic cycles of Mahler, Rachmaninov and Shostakovich at the moment.  Of course, he’s also releasing scads of other music.  He’s like a second term president trying to get it all in.  Pardon announcements to follow.

04/23/2010

It has been a surprising long time since DG has released a solo Anna Netrebko disc.  Even in these times, 18 months is quite awhile to go without a disc from one of the yellow label’s most recognizable stars.  Now a new disc has arrived featuring songs of Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky accompanied by Daniel Barenboim.  Even so, DG didn’t bother with giving the Russian diva and her estimable accompanist any studio time.  These recordings are taken from the 2009 Salzburg Festival.

Also arriving is Roger Norrington’s controversial recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9.  David Hurwitz takes nine pages on classicstoday.com to call the recording/the philosophy behind the recording “stupid” while James Inverne gave it an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone.  One thing seems certain, should you listen to the recording you’re bound to have an opinion.

04/16/2010

Rhapsody in Blue hardly needs rehabilitation.  I would certainly think it among the most recognizable “classical” compositions.  Yet at least a couple pianists thought we could use new recordings of the somewhat lesser known original Paul Whiteman jazz band orchestration.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s recording with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony (Decca) arrives on April 27 and has gotten the most attention, but Lincoln Mayorga’s recording with Steven Richman and Harmonie Ensemble / New York (Harmonia Mundi) has beaten it to the shelf by two weeks.

Thibaudet’s recording comes predictably paired with the Piano Concerto in F and the I Got Rhythm Variations.  The Harmonia Mundi recording wins the interesting pairing prize with a smattering of Gershwin songs in instrumental arrangements.  But if you are not familiar with the jazz band arrangement, either recording will probably shed some new light on an old chestnut.

04/09/2010

April 13 is the release date for the Minnesota Orchestra’s new recording of the Tchaikovsky piano concertos with Stephen Hough.  And if you’re in a Hough mood you can also pick of Stephen’s new recording of late Chopin piano works to celebrate this Chopin year.

Now let’s get caught up on some other classical releases.  Some of the vocal discs we have been waiting for have finally arrived.  Bryn Terfel’s Bad Boys (released in Europe last November) is out.  There are two new discs from Jonas Kaufman.  One is Die Schöne Müllerin.  The other is a German buffet of Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Wagner backed by Claudio Abbado and his Mahler Chamber Orchestra. 

If you regularly read my posts you’ll know that EMI has been slowly deleting their Great Recordings of the Century series.  I previously mentioned that some of the operas have been re-released in a new series dubbed “EMI Classics: The Home of Opera.”  Some non-opera titles are now being reissued in the somewhat more succinctly titled series “EMI Masters.”

As with the opera series, the “EMI Masters” series does allow for the inclusion of newer titles.  As we are discussing EMI, you will not be surprised to learn that Simon Rattle figures prominently in the mix, but more recent artists also include Gheorghiu, Kovacevich and Pahud.  To their credit EMI has wisely filled out some of the shorter discs with extra pieces and remastered the new offerings.  The first twenty titles are now available.

3/19/2010

The Minnesota Orchestra has a problem.  Luckily, it’s too much good publicity.

On the heals of their recent Carnegie Hall appearance, critics have gone out of their way to come up with superlatives to describe the orchestra’s performance of Kullervo.  David Hurwitz at classicstoday.com wrote that the orchestra “brought the house down.”  But it is Alex Ross writing for the New Yorker “the Minnesota Orchestra sounded, to my ears, like the greatest orchestra in the world” that I’m sure we will all be reading on every piece of promotional material the Orchestra publishes for some time.

On the recording front, the Minnesota Orchestra’s live performances of the Tchaikovsky works for piano and orchestra with Stephen Hough comes out on April 13.  For those of you are familiar with Hyperion’s “The Romantic Piano Concerto” series, this recording is Volume 50.  As such, the two disc collection is replete with a paper slip case and a catalogue of all fifty releases in the series.  Gramophone has a two page spread on the recordings in the April 2010 issue. 

3/12/2010

The British are Coming!

Normally, I write about classical music, but I’m switching gears this week to mention some quality 1960’s nostalgia.  I’m referring to four new DVDs of Gerry & the Pacemakers, Herman’s Hermits, Small Faces and Dusty Springfield from Reelin’ in the Years Productions.  Each disc features interviews and loads of never-before-available complete performances.  All performances are from between 1963-1969.

I’ve had a chance to watch all four and can recommend the Gerry & the Pacemakers, Herman’s Hermits and Dusty Springfield discs without reservation.  The quality of the video is excellent and if some of the songs are lip-synced, who cares?  The quality of the footage used in the Small Faces disc was a bit less impressive.  But, heck, if you’re a fan you’ve been waiting for these discs.
 
The invasion begins March 30.

2/26/2010

Continuing with last week’s theme, another work that has received multiple recordings lately is Paganini’s 24 Caprices for Solo Violin.  In the last year recordings by Tanja Becker-Bender (Hyperion), Thomas Zehetmair (ECM New Series), James Ehnes (Onyx) and Mayuko Kamio (RCA Red Seal) have been released.  Becker-Bender’s disc was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice, Ehnes earned a Gramophone “CD of the month” nod and Zehetmair took home the Midem Classical Award in the “Solo Instrument” category.  What to buy, what to buy!?!

Speaking of the Midem Classical Awards, the “Record of the Year” sure came from off the beaten path.  A disc of Bernd Alois Zimmerman’s Requiem für einen jungen Dichter from the label Cybele took the prize.  Zimmerman is only vaguely “on my radar,” and I would be willing to guess that even many classical enthusiasts are not familiar with the composer, the work or even the record label.   This quote from allmusic.com perhaps explains why: “The Requiem für einen jungen Dichter is a very serious, dark, bleak, and pessimistic piece. It is sort of like the Beethoven ‘Choral’ Symphony for a postmodern world, with the ‘joy’ of Beethoven's creation transformed into despair.”  Right…

You know what, I’m fine with that.  It is much better than the Grammy Awards giving the “Classical Record of the Year” award to a musical theater piece.  And heck, maybe we’ll all learn to appreciate post-WWII German music.  Or maybe not

2/19/2010

It's a Fauré for All!

Great minds think alike, or so the saying goes.  And the same seems to be true of classical record labels.  Similar recording projects seem to pop up from different sources all at the same time.  One recent example is Suk’s Symphony “Asrael.”  We’ve gotten new recordings from Ashkenazy, Flor, and Weller in the last year. 

The idée fixe of the moment is Fauré’s chamber music and the 2 piano quartets in particular.  Trio Wanderer (with the addition of Antoine Tamestit) just released their Harmonia Mundi recording and The Hermitage String Trio and pianist Kathryn Stott (an old hand at Fauré-pun definitely intended) are about to release their recording on Chandos.  In March, the eponymous Fauré Quartett is releasing the second quartet.

Chandos also just released the Piano Quintets performed by the Schubert Ensemble.  Add the brand new Naxos recording of the Cello Sonatas and that’s Fauré à go-go.

Fauré!  You sunk my battleship!  (That’s my favorite Fauré joke.) .

Consider yourself au courant.

2/12/2010

Stile Antico is out with their fourth recording.  These young Brits are all the rage in early music choral circles.  And it’s easy to hear why.  They produce a gorgeous, sumptuous sound.

You may remember Stile Antico from such popular discs as Music for Compline, Heavenly Harmonies, and their most recent and well-publicized disc Song of Songs.  The new disc features the music of John Sheppard.  (I admit I’m more fascinated with Jack Shephard at the moment, but this is good, too.)  For those of you lacking an encyclopedic knowledge of the English choral tradition, Sheppard was a sixteenth-century contemporary of Thomas Tallis.  Sheppard’s works have seen a fair number of recordings through the years, though nothing approaching Tallis.  Should you need an entry point into the works of this Tudor master, you could do worse than for it to be this disc.

Sticking with the early music theme, Florilegium has released Bolivian Baroque Vol. 3.  The New World actually had a vibrant music scene in colonial days.  (We’re not talking Nashville here, but, you know.)  Research in this area has and is producing numerous hitherto unknown gems.  Florilegium has been presenting them for our enjoyment.

2/5/2010

EMI Classics is out to prove me wrong.  I predicted a lack of enthusiasm for the anniversary of Hugo Wolf’s birth, but EMI is releasing an 8 disc box just in time to celebrate Wolf’s 150th birthday on March 13.  Plan your parties now!

The Chopin anniversary year is still going strong.  DG is offering the two piano concertos played by Rafał Blechacz who previously recorded a smattering of Beethoven, Chopin, Haydn and Mozart for the yellow label.  DG is also offering a disc of previously unreleased Chopin performances from Martha Argerich.  That’ll be nice to have, but also pretty annoying for all of us who not-so-very-long-ago purchased the “complete” solo piano recordings of Argerich.

And for those of you who have been asking for the final installment in Paavo Järvi’s Beethoven symphony cycle with The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Symphony No. 9 becomes available on March 2.  Waiting for that cycle to get completed was like watching molasses drip in January.  By all accounts, the finished products have been worth the wait.