Cataloguing the Collection - May 2010 Additions

Here are some recordings that I catalogued into my recording collection during the last few weeks of May.  I don't catalogue a recording until I've listened to it, and sometimes a new acquisition can sit on the shelf for quite a while until it gets a spin, so these are not necessarily all very recent releases.

Eight Visions: A New Anthology for Flute and Piano, by Marya Martin & Colette Valentine.  This collection includes music by Kenji Bunch, Paul Moravec, Chen Yi, Tania Leon, Eve Beglarian, David Sanford, Melissa Hui, and Ned Rorem.  It is a delightful, relaxing release on the Naxos label, recorded in December 2007.

Athenaeum Quartet of Mannheim plays String Quartet No. 4 by Mordecai Seter and String Quartet by Paul Ben-Haim.  I have a continuing fascination with concert music by Israeli composers, and ordered this from CDBaby.com.  This is a live concert recording from December 1998 in Heidelberg, Germany, and the sound quality is rather raw.  The pieces are interesting, however.  For the specialist, not the general collector.  The name of the label is Ars Sonandi.

Morimur - a speculative program on music by J.S. Bach performed by Christoph Poppen and The Hilliard Ensemble.  The idea behind this program is that Bach's famous Partita in D Minor, BWV 1004, for unaccompanied violin, incorporates thematic references to several chorales.  Poppen, a baroque violin specialists, plays the movements from the Partita interspersed with performances of the chorales by The Hilliard Ensemble, an ensemble of four voices on this occasion: Monika Mauch (soprano), David James (countertenor), John Potter (tenor), and Gordon Jones (baritone).  The idea is interesting, the program provocative, and the execution as part of the ECM New Series label is typically flawless.  The recording was made in 2000.

Palestrina Masses: O rex gloriae & Viri Galalei.  Hyperion has been reissuing some of its finest early digital recordings on the Helios mid-price label.  These performances from 1988 by James O'Donnell and the Choir of Westminster Cathedral make a fine program.  Before each mass, they perform the motet that provides some of the thematic material and gives the mass its name.   It was a common practice during the 16th century to construct mass settings using thematic material from motets, and sometimes a composer would pay tribute to another composer by using his motet as the basis for a mass, but in this case Giovanni Pierlugi da Palestrina used his own motets as resource material.

Luis de Freitas Branco: Symphony No. 2, After a reading of Guerra Junqueiro, Artificial Paradises - Alvaro Cassuto conducting the RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland.  It may seem strange that the music of a 20th century Portuguese composer would be recorded by an Irish orchestra, but such as the ways of the modern recording industry.  This is part of a series by Naxos to document all the major orchestral works of Freitas Branco, an excellent composer who was active during the first half of the 20th century.  His music is tonal, dramatic, beautifully orchestrated, and worth getting to know.  According to the Naxos notes, the tone poem Artificial Paradises was inspired by De Quincy's Confessions of an Opium Eater, and is "regarded as Freitas Branco's masterpiece."  For the adventurous....

Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Cello Sonatas, performed by Dmitry Yablonsky, with Hsin-Ni Liu playing the piano in the duo sonatas.  This Naxos release includes the Sonatas for Cello and Piano No. 1, Op. 21, and No. 2, Op. 63, and the unaccompanied Cello Sonatas No. 1, Op. 72, and No. 3, Op. 106.  Weinberg was a friend and colleague of Dmitri Shostakovich, who considered him one of his outstanding contemporaries.  He was Polish-born, but fled to the Soviet Union when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, and spent the remainder of his career there.  He became part of the musical circle around Shostakovich, and endured some of the same oppression from the regime, his problems being multiplied by being both Polish-born and Jewish.  His music is gorgeous, and is undergoing a substantial revival of interest in the west.  Chandos is busy recording his symphonies, and Naxos has taken up the chamber music.  Yablonsky, who emigrated to the United States in 1977 to study at the Juilliard School, is perhaps better known to Naxos fans as a conductor.  His cello playing here is passionate.

A Felix Slatkin Compendium, from Pristine Audio.  Pristine Audio is a French-based label founded and directed by British audio expert Andrew Rose, that specializes in digitizing and releasing on CD and for digital download historical classical recordings that are otherwise unavailable to collectors, usually because they date from the Lp era and have not been reissued by the labels that originally produced them.  Due to the way copyright laws work in Europe, these are out of copyright and can be produced there without paying royalties to the original owners of the sound recording, but can't be marketed directly in the U.S. because of common law copyright issues here, that were highlighted in a lawsuit brought by EMI against Naxos for its historical releases of old recordings by Yehudi Menuhin and Arthur Schnabel.  (Naxos continues to issue those in Europe, but if you want them in the U.S., you'll have to order them from a European website.)  Pristine releases are available from the company's French-based website.  If you want actual discs, they will burn them to your order and ship them out promptly.  I've found the service excellent.  This is a 2-cd release of recordings conducted by Felix Slatkin, father of conductor Leonard Slatkin, who was a popular recording artist during the 1950s, making many recordings with the "Concert Arts Symphony Orchestra," a studio orchestra assembled for recording purposes by Capital Records.  This is a wonderfully varied program.  Dohnanyi's Variations on a Nursery Theme (soloist Victor Aller, Slatkin's brother-in-law), Khachaturian's Piano Concerto (Leonard Pennario), Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (without narration), Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras Nos. 1 & 5 and the same composer's orchestration of J.S. Bach's Prelude & Fugure No. 8 in Eb minor, with the "Concert Arts Cello Ensemble" and the great soprano Marni Nixon singing in BB #5, the Toccata for Percussion by Chavez, and the Percussion Concerto by Darius Milhaud.  Felix Slatkin was an exciting conductor, and top-rank movie studio musicians were recruited to make these recordings in state-of-the-art sound for the time.  Some of these are early stereo.  This is a real prize among Pristine's many terrific releases.

Sviatoslav Richter performs first piano concerti by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and J.S. Bach.   Back in the 1960s when I first began collecting classical LPs, there were two Supraphon (Czech) releases that I especially treasured: Sviatoslav Richter's recordings of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 (Karel Ancerl conducting the Czech Philharmonic), and a coupling of the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1 (Ancerl and the Prague Symphony Orchestra) and J.S. Bach's Keyboard Concerto No. 1, BWV 1052, in D Minor (Vaclav Talich and the strings of the Czech Philharmonic).  The recordings were from early in Richter's career - 1954 - before he became known in the West, and can't be surpassed for sheer excitement.  The Prokofiev, in particular, is full of humor and virtuosic display.   The recordings have been reissued in inferior sound off and on over the years, but a new Supraphon Archiv release bringing all three together on one 70 minute CD provides the best sound I've heard for these performances.  This is a mandatory acquisition for Richter fans, of course.  Forget about musicological niceties in the Bach Concerto - Just sit back and luxuriate in the big string orchestra accompaniment and Richter's extraordinary ability to project the nobility of Bach's music and especially the calm pathos of the adagio.

The Beethoven Project Trio - Cedille Records.  I've already blogged about this so will mention it only briefly.  This is the first in a contemplated series of all Beethoven's music for piano trio (piano, violin and cello).  This first release is made up of pieces originally written for other combinations of instruments and later rearranged for piano trio by the composer, as well as unfinished early works.  I found the performance extraordinary and the insights into the young Beethoven very enlightening.  The performers are George Lepauw (piano), Sang Mee Lee (violin), and Wendy Warner (cello).

York Bowen piano music, volume 4, by Joop Celis (Chandos).  Celis, an excellent Dutch pianist, has been working his way through the piano music of York Bowen (1884-1961), a British composer who produced sonatas, partitas, suites, and short character pieces in profusion.  The music is delightfully refreshing, romantic, tuneful, and worth getting to know.  A recent release by Hyperion of the complete Bowen sonatas played by Danny Driver is also worth getting to know, but the Chandos series has the virtue of mixing different genres to provide a balanced and varied program on each disc, and the sound quality is excellent.

Offroad - Music for Trombone performed by NY Philharmonic bass trombonist James Markey with pianist Virginia Perry Lamb.  Markey, formerly principal trombone in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, joined the New York Philharmonic in 1997 as associate principal trombone and now holds down the fort at bass trombone.  He also teaches at the Juilliard School and N.Y.U., and has taught at various other schools.  He's put together an interesting recital program here including -- as one might expect, given the limited repertory written directly for his instrument -- quite a few transcriptions.  This 2003 recital includes music by Shostakovich, Malcolm Arnold, Percy Grainger, Robert Schumann (yes, oboe music can transfer well to the trombone), Neal Harnly and Folke Rabe, and Markey's own set of variations on Camptown Races for a rousing closer.  This is a self-published recording by Mr. Markey, available through CDBaby.com, and worth seeking out for trombone fanciers, or anyone who enjoys the sound of brass!

Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 - Till Fellner, Kent Nagano, Montreal Symphony.  I rarely buy new recordings of standard repertory, but the reviews I'd read of this very new release excited my curiosity.  Till Fellner plays these pieces with elegance, restraint, awe-inspiring technical precision, and deep affection.  He really animates the music, and Nagano and the Montreal Symphony provide a fine collaboration.  This is not a case of piano vs. orchestra, but rather an almost chamber-music-like collaborative approach, and it works very well in the 4th Concerto.  Some may feel the more monumental 5th Concerto a bit lacking in heroics, but I found the unusual approach very satisfying.  ECM provides a warm frame from a live concert recording made in Montreal in May and November 2008.  I hope they are planning to follow up with the first three concerti and the choral fantasy.  I would especially anticipating what Fellner and Nagano would do with the finales of the first two concerti, both of which would work very well with the kind of interpretive approach they are using here.

Comments

[Alan Masters]

A fascinating list. The Fellner is very tempting. Here's my own list for the last little while:
Dohnanyi - Nursery Variations, Symphonic Minutes, Suite op 19 - Buffalo Phil/ Nebolsin /Faletta Naxos - An hour of delight vividly played and recorded. Concert audiences would lap this up if they ever got the chance.
Dvorak - Symphonies 7 & 8 Baltimore / Alsop Naxos - an unnecessary purchase perhaps but hard to resist at the Naxos price. The 7th is somewhat dull but the 8th really hits the right spot. I loved it.

David Briggs Mass for Notre Dame Choir of Trinity College Cambridge / Layton Hyperion - this is a blast- literally with the thrilling organ sounds and you can almost smell the
incense.

Czech Piano Trios (Smetana, Martinu, Eban) Florestan Trio Hyperion. A new release form the Florestans is an automatic purchase for me. Here they are at their very best. The Smetana has become a firm favourite.

Golijov: St Mark Passion DG
I found this disappointing - the relentless and pounding drum rhythms drove me mad to start with. It brought to mind something Ned Rorem said about the immorality of percussion. I don't think an innocent auditor would imagine that this almost relentlessly upbeat score concerns Christ's Passion. I also thought that Golijov's decision not to assign specific singers to each character undermines the drama.

I also enjoy buying 2nd hand CDs. Pride of place goes to Decca's recording of Nielsen's Maskarade. A joy from start to finish - full of invention and melody. A reminder that there are still masterpieces out there to discover.

Dahl: Concerto for alto saxophone, Music for Brass etc New World Symphony /Tilson Thomas - a fantastic disc - like Hindemith but with an American accent ( and I see from Wikipedia that Dahl was gay)
Haydn String Quartets op 76 Tokyo String Quartet Sony Essential Classics - close to perfect I'd say

[Art Leonard]

Alan, thanks for your comments.

Lately I've tried to discipline myself on new CD purchases by focusing primarily on new repertory, although I make exceptions from time to time (such as the Fellner Beethoven recording). As for the new Dohnanyi and Dvorak releases on Naxos, I'm pretty well fixed for satisfying recordings of all those pieces. In particular, the Julius Katchen classic recordings of the Dohnanyi, and the Monteux Dvorak 7th (LSO) stand out for me.

Your recommendations may push me over the edge for those new Hyperion releases, however. I already have the first recording of Golijov's Passion, so haven't felt the need to acquire the new one. As to the second-hand CD's, I have all those you mentioned in my collection and esteem them highly. As to the Nielsen opera, if you ever have a chance, try to hear the classic recording conducted by John Frandsen with a terrific Danish cast.

Happy listening!