April 2008 releases feature 12 new recordings, including Mozart’s Così fan tutte
on the Grammy Award-winning Opera in English series, the launch of a new series devoted to the music of Vincent d’Indy, and Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln.
On April 1, 2008, Naxos of America begins physical distribution of the award-winning U.K.-based Chandos catalogue. The month kicks off with 12 new releases (street date of April 29), including Mozart’s Così fan tutte (CHAN 3152) on the celebrated Opera in English series. Sir Charles Mackerras, recent winner of a “Best Opera” GRAMMY® Award for his Chandos recording of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a cast of British luminaries who include Janice Watson, Leslie Garrett, Diana Montague, and Sir Thomas Allen.
Chandos also releases Schubert’s Mass in E-flat, D950 (CHAN 0750), conducted by GRAMMY® Award-winner Richard Hickox. This recording is the latest addition to Hickox’s extensive discography and follows a successful performance of the Mass at the 2007 BBC Proms. The same superb artists appear on this recording, including Susan Gritton, James Gilchrist, Mark Padmore, and Collegium Musicum 90. Composed in 1828, Schubert’s Mass in E-flat D950 was premiered posthumously the following year under the direction of his brother Ferdinand. This mass, more than any of Schubert’s others, emphasizes the chorus, relegating the soloists to three brief episodes. It is an emotive and haunting masterpiece, blending liturgical opulence with the composer’s trademark Romantic sentiment, influenced by Haydn, Beethoven, and Bach.
Chandos begins a new series of recordings exploring the music of French composer Vincent d’Indy (1851-1931) this month with Orchestral Works, Volume 1 (CHAN 10464). This debut features rarely-performed music, including Jour d’été à la montagne, Op. 61 (1905), a work of d’Indy’s full maturity. A three-part cycle, Jour evokes a day in the Ardèche mountains in southern France. While the influence of Debussy is apparent in the impressionistic details and tone painting, the piece is essentially Classical in its tonal structure. The recording also features La forêt enchantée, Op. 8, and fundamentally contemporary Souvenirs, Op. 62, which d’Indy composed in memory of his wife. Rumon Gamba, whose previous recordings for Chandos include the music of Malcolm Williamson, conducts the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.
Also slated for release in April is Austrian composer Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (Book of the Seven Seals; CHSA 5051), recorded in hybrid surround sound. Dutch bass Robert Holl, whose name has become almost synonymous with this oratorio, performs with the Tonkünstler Orchestra under its principal conductor Kristjan Järvi. Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln, often deemed Schmidt’s greatest work, is an ambitious setting of the Book of Revelation. In the program notes for its premiere, Schmidt comments on the immense challenge of setting the End Times to music and says his priority “was to bring the text into a form which retained everything important, wherever possible in the original wording, and yet [to] reduce the immense dimensions of the work to a point where they could be grasped by ordinary human brains.”
Percy Grainger was an unconventional Australian composer and pianist recognized for his arrangements of folk tunes and original works. Grainger: Transcriptions for Wind Orchestra (CHAN 10455) is the label’s latest foray into his oeuvre, featuring the acclaimed Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra. This release includes arrangements of music for wind band by composers Grainger particularly admired, mostly from the series Chosen Gems for Winds. Grainger’s chosen arrangements span the development of Western music, from Renaissance (Ferrabosco and Josquin des Prez) to Baroque (J.S. Bach) to Romantic (Liszt, Franck, Fauré, and Goossens).
Other releases for this month include Great Operatic Arias, Volume 19, featuring beloved British baritone Sir Thomas Allen (CHAN 3155) performing works by Mozart, Verdi, Meyerbeer, and Weill; and a new disc of works by composer Edgar Bainton (CHAN 10460) who emigrated to Australia in 1934 and disappeared from the British music scene. The release includes four premiere recordings: Concerto Fantasia for piano and orchestra; Suite ‘The Golden River’; Pavane, Idyll and Bacchanal; and Three Pieces for Orchestra. Paul Daniel conducts the BBC Orchestra; Margaret Fingerhut is the piano soloist.
Additionally, Chandos continues its ongoing series of music by British composer Arnold Bax with two releases: Arnold Bax: Tone Poems, Volume 2 (CHAN 10446) features the BBC Philharmonic, led by Vernon Handley, and includes Three Northern Ballads, Into the Twilight, The Happy Forest, Nympholept, and Red Autumn. Bax: Orchestral Works, Volume 9 (CHAN 10457) includes The Truth About Russian Dancers and From Dusk Till Dawn with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bryden Thomson.
Chandos marks the 50th anniversary of the death of British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams with a recording of his 1909 song cycle On Wenlock Edge, based on A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (CHAN 10465). The recording features tenor Mark Padmore, joined by the acclaimed Schubert Ensemble in their Chandos recording debut. It also includes the rarely-performed Piano Quintet in C Minor, recently released by the composer’s widow and published in 2002, and his Romance and Pastorale, two brief, lyric pieces for violin and piano, published in 1923.
Tempesta di Mare, a Philadelphia-based Baroque orchestra and chamber ensemble, takes its name from Antonio Vivaldi’s concerto. Italian for “storm at sea,” the title reflects composers’ belief in the power of their music to evoke drama. Artistic directors Gwen Roberts and Richard Stone founded Tempesta in 1996 to pursue their ideal of Baroque music as a rhetorical, dramatic art form. Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688 – 1758) Orchestral Music (Chaconne/CHAN 0751) is Tempesta di Mare’s third recording for Chandos, featuring the music of one of Bach’s most significant contemporaries. Fasch’s orchestral works are characteristic of the late Baroque-early Classical era.
Finally, Welsh organist, choral director, and composer Iain Quinn provides a survey of unusual organ repertoire in Czech Music from the Norwich Cathedral (CHAN 10463), which includes works by Vítĕzslav Novák, Leoš Janáček, Jiří Ropek, Bohuslav Martinů, Antonín Dvořák, and Bedřich Smetana. Based in the U.S., he serves as Director of Cathedral Music and Organist at the Cathedral Church of St. John in Albuquerque. Quinn has performed throughout the world and previously released a disc of Russian organ music, Tsar of Instruments, on Chandos.
Chandos, which celebrates its 28th anniversary this year, is one of the finest independent classical labels in the world, celebrated for its world-class artists, unusual repertoire, and superb sound and engineering. It has pioneered the idea of the ’series’; its catalog features an impressive roster of British composers and artists, as well as a masterful film music series and the critically-acclaimed “Opera in English” series. Chandos is also dedicated to the SACD format, in which it has released over 40 discs. Since its founding in 1979, Chandos has championed rare and neglected repertoire, filling in many gaps in record catalogues and exposing audiences to the music of British composers, including Alwyn, Bax, Dyson, Moeran, and Rubbra. Today, Chandos’ richly diverse catalogue contains over 1500 titles and includes recordings of music, ancient and modern, by composers from around the globe. Chandos issues at least five new recordings a month—together with re-issues of back catalogue material—rivalling major classical companies.
Chandos has received numerous awards from Gramophone: 2001 Record of the Year for Richard Hickox’s recording of the original version of Vaughan Williams’ A London Symphony; Best Choral Recording of 2003 for a rediscovered Mass by Hummel; Best Orchestral Recording of 2004 for a set of Bax’s Symphonies; and Editor’s Choice of 2006 for Stanford: Songs of the Sea/Songs of the Fleet. This year, Chandos artists took home two GRAMMY® Awards, one for Best Opera Recording for its Opera in English CD of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (Sir Charles MacKerras, conductor), and an award for Best Engineered Classical Album (John Newton, engineer) for its multi-nominated recording of Grechaninov’s Passion Week. The Chandos recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes, conducted by Richard Hickox, received a GRAMMY® Award in 1997.
Ensemble Will Release Their Second Ernst Toch CD on Naxos April 29.
In April, Naxos artist Spectrum Concerts Berlin will perform a series of concerts in New York and Los Angeles in celebration of their 20th season. The programs will prominently feature music by composer Ernst Toch (1887–1964), an Austrian-born Jew who fled Berlin in 1933. The Ensemble, who has championed the music of Ernst Toch since 1997, also releases their second Naxos CD of his music on April 29 (Naxos 8559324). The recording includes many of the works which they will be performing on their concerts including his powerful and vividly defiant Piano Quintet (1938), Three Impromptus, Violin Sonata No. 2 (1928) and Burlesken. Spectrum Concerts Berlin has four other Naxos recordings to date including another CD of music by Ernst Toch (8559282), which was released in 2006, and recordings of music by Robert Helps, Ernst von Dohnanyi and John Harbison. Their sixth Naxos CD, which will be released in late summer, features pianists Robert Levin and Ya-Fei Chaung and will include chamber and solo music of Stanley Walden.
New York concerts include appearances at The Times Center on Wednesday, April 9 at 8 PM and at the College of Staten Island, Center for the Arts, on Thursday, April 10 at 7:30 PM. Concerts in Los Angeles are scheduled at the Goethe-Institute on April 13, at 4 PM and at the Villa Aurora on April 14 at 8 PM. Lannan Literary Award winner and Artistic Director of the Chicago Humanities Festival (Ernst Toch’s grandson) Lawrence Weschler will lead a pre-concert discussion at all venues except the College of Staten Island.
SPECTRUM CONCERTS BERLIN:
Annette von Hehn, Linus Roth Violin
Lars Wouters van den Oudenweijer Clarinet
Hartmut Rohde Viola
Frank Dodge ‘Cello
Daniel Blumenthal Piano
PROGRAM:
ROBERT SCHUMANN: Marchenerzahlungen for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, Op. 132
PAUL HINDEMITH: Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano
ERNST TOCH: Burlesken for Piano, Op. 31 • Impromptus for Cello, Op. 90 c
Sonata for Violin and Piano, No. 1 • Piano Quintet, Op. 64
Led by founder and Artistic Director Frank Dodge Spectrum Concerts Berlin (www.spectrumconcerts.com) has, over the past two decades, been acclaimed for producing eclectic concerts of European and American chamber music for a team of expatriate Americans and such European stars as violinist Janine Jansen and Julian Rachlin. The group is known in its native city for its adventurous programming, private support in the midst of a formidable system based on state support, and the outstanding quality of performances. Information: www.spectrumconcerts.com
Ernst Toch was a self-taught modernist, who learned music’s fundamentals from Mozart’s string quartets. Having fought for Austria in WWI, he was able to ground his musical expression on both theory and human experience. Toch was hugely successful in Germany until 1933, when he left and settled in Southern California, where he had to get used to the radically different music world of the U.S. and Hollywood. He was successful, but largely unfulfilled composing for the movies. In his last years, Toch composed seven symphonies, the third of which won him a Pulitzer Prize.
*This disc has been generously supported by the Ernst Toch Society, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc. and was coproduced with Deutschlandradio
On March 25, Naxos releases its first-ever opera DVDs. This ongoing series kicks off with performances of Verdi’s 1849 melodrama Luisa Miller and Rossini’s La cambiale di matrimonio, written when the composer was 18. In addition to beloved favorites, future releases in this series will feature rare repertoire including
Baldassare Galuppi’s L’Olimpiade, Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella and Wolf-Ferrari’s La vedova scaltra.
Gioachino ROSSINI: La cambiale di matrimonio
Paolo Bordogna; Désirée Rancatore; Saimir Pirgu; Fabio Maria Capitanucci;
Enrico Maria Marabelli; Maria Gortsevskaya; Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento;
Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, conductor;
Director: Luigi Squarzina;
Filmed at Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, 2006
Naxos 2110228
La cambiale di matrimonio received its premiere at the San Mosé theatre in Venice on 3rd November 1810 to fill in a void left by another composer’s desertion. The opera’s earned the then 18-year-old Rossini the commission of an opera buffa for Bologna’s Teatro del Corso.
La cambiale di matrimonio follows the farcical efforts of Tobias Mill, a rich English merchant, who seeks to combine business with pleasure by forcing his daughter, the lovely Fanny (“the merchandise”) to marry Slook, his rich colonial American correspondent, by means of a bill of exchange. Eventually it is the gallant Slook himself who persuades Mill to allow Fanny to marry her true love, Edward Milfort. This Rossini Opera Festival production in Pesaro features Désirée Rancatore and Saimir Pirgu, supported by Fabio Maria Capitanucci, Enrico Maria Marabelli, and Maria Gortsevskaya. Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli conducts the Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento.
Giuseppe VERDI: Luisa Miller
Darina Takova; Giuseppe Sabbatini; Alexander Vinogradov; Damiano Salerno;
Ursula Ferri; Arutjun Kotchinian; Elisabetta Martorana; Luca Favaron;
Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro La Fenice, Venice; Maurizio Benini;
Chorus Master: Emanuela Di Pietro;
Director: Arnaud Bernard
Filmed at the Teatro la Fenice, Venice, Italy, May 2006
Naxos 2110225-26
Based on Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love), Verdi’s tragedy Luisa Miller revolves around the love affair between the titular heroine and Rodolfo, son of Count Walter, and the machinations of the jealous Count’s steward, Wurm, which result in the death of all three. Directed by Arnaud Bernard, who took as his inspiration Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1976 film 1900, this La Fenice production features the outstanding Bulgarian soprano Darina Takova, whose intense characterization of Luisa emphasizes the heroine’s inner torture. Giuseppe Sabbatini brings thrilling drama to the role of Rodolfo, especially in the opera’s most famous aria, Quando le sere al placido.
UPCOMING NAXOS OPERA TITLES:
Donizetti: Roberto Devereux
Wolf-Ferrari: La vedova scaltra
Galuppi: L’Olimpiade
Verdi: Macbeth
Donizetti: Maria Stuarda
Puccini: La rondine
Rossini: Il turco in Italia
Giordano: Marcella
Donizetti: Lucrezia Borgia
Schubert: Alfonso und Estrella
On March 25, Naxos releases Bela Bartok’s fairytale ballet The Wooden Prince (Naxos 8570534), featuring Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Marin Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
In the years leading up to World War I, Bartok 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 Bela Balazs, who wrote the libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle (Naxos 8660928).
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 began her tenure as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony in September. She 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.
DVD 1
Franz Schubert “Die Winterreise” Op. 89, D.911
Vienna Masterclass Part I
DVD 2
Lieder Recital with Songs by Franz Schubert, Hugo Wolf,
Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss und Leonard Bernstein
Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano
Charles Spencer, piano
Vienna Masterclass Part II
Arthaus Musik 102089
Herbert VON KARAJAN
Beethoven: Symphony No.9 “Choral”
Anna Tomowa-Sintow • Agnes Baltsa • René Kollo • José Van Dam •
Chor der Deutschen Oper Berlin
Berliner Philharmoniker
Herbert von Karajan, conductor
Recorded live at the Philharmonie, Berlin, 31 December 1977
EuroArts 2072408
UPC: 880242724083
In 2008 the musical world observes the 100th birthday of one of the most widely respected performers of the past century. Read the rest of this entry »
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Verdi, Meyerbeer, and Weill; and a new disc of works by composer Edgar Bainton (CHAN 10460) who emigrated to Australia in 1934 and disappeared from the British music scene. The release includes four premiere recordings: Concerto Fantasia for piano and orchestra; Suite ‘The Golden River’; Pavane, Idyll and Bacchanal; and Three Pieces for Orchestra. Paul Daniel conducts the BBC Orchestra; Margaret Fingerhut is the piano soloist.
Bax with two releases: Arnold Bax: Tone Poems, Volume 2 (CHAN 10446) features the BBC Philharmonic, led by Vernon Handley, and includes Three Northern Ballads, Into the Twilight, The Happy Forest, Nympholept, and Red Autumn. Bax: Orchestral Works, Volume 9 (CHAN 10457) includes The Truth About Russian Dancers and From Dusk Till Dawn with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bryden Thomson.
The recording features tenor Mark Padmore, joined by the acclaimed Schubert Ensemble in their Chandos recording debut. It also includes the rarely-performed Piano Quintet in C Minor, recently released by the composer’s widow and published in 2002, and his Romance and Pastorale, two brief, lyric pieces for violin and piano, published in 1923.
1996 to pursue their ideal of Baroque music as a rhetorical, dramatic art form. Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688 – 1758) Orchestral Music (Chaconne/CHAN 0751) is Tempesta di Mare’s third recording for Chandos, featuring the music of one of Bach’s most significant contemporaries. Fasch’s orchestral works are characteristic of the late Baroque-early Classical era.
Based in the U.S., he serves as Director of Cathedral Music and Organist at the Cathedral Church of St. John in Albuquerque. Quinn has performed throughout the world and previously released a disc of Russian organ music, Tsar of Instruments, on Chandos.
Herbert VON KARAJAN
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