KNAPPERTSBUSCH CONDUCTS BRUCKNER SYMPHONIES AND WAGNER  MUSIC & ARTS CD-1256(6)

The highly respected German conductor Hans Knappertsbusch was best known for his performances of music by Wagner, Bruckner and Richard Strauss. He succeeded Bruno Walter as music director of the Munich Opera as conductor for life. However, when he refused demands made by the Nazis he was fired from his post in 1936 and maintained a low profile during the Nazi regime, leaving after the Munich debacle to settle in Vienna where he conducted the Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera. After the Second World War, Knappertsbusch returned to Munich but continued to guest conduct in Vienna as well as at the Bayreuth Festival. When he died in 1965 this much loved conductor left behind many superb recordings and this newly restored 6-CD collection features previously released and no longer available Knappertsbusch best sellers from the Music & Arts catalogue. These include majestic and unhurried interpretations of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3 with the Bavarian State Orchestra (1954), Symphonies 4 (1944), 8 (1951) and 9 (1950) with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Symphony No. 5 with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra (1959) and Symphony No. 7 with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (Salzburg Festival, 1949). There are also tantalising excerpts from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung and Die Walküre. This superbly produced box set makes for a fascinating comparison with the Bruckner collection by Volkmar Andrea, also from Music & Arts. Highly recommended.

WILLIAM WALTON - SYMPHONIES 1 & 2, ELEGY  HYPERION CDA67794

Sir William Turner Walton was born in Lancashire, the son of a musician, in 1902. During a sixty-year career this largely self-taught composer wrote music in many genres and styles, including ballets, chamber and choral works, the cantata Belshazzar’s Feast, the entertainment Façade (in collaboration with Edith Sitwell), 13 film scores (most famously for Lawrence Olivier’s Henry V) and opera (Troilus and Cressida). His tense, dramatic First Symphony, reminiscent of Sibelius, is on a large scale and displays an astounding range of colours and emotional volatility, reflecting the turbulence of Walton’s private life. This immensely virtuosic work received an ecstatic critical reception when it was first heard in 1935 and secured the composer’s international fame. According to Grove, the music has ‘orgiastic power, coruscating malice, sensuous desolation and extroverted swagger’. The Second Symphony, written twenty years later, is relatively conservative, concise and refined, and was took a long time to emerge from the shadow of its masterful predecessor. This CD by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Martyn Brabbins, features exciting and authoritative performances of both symphonies together with Walton’s short work Siesta, an intimate piece written for small orchestra in 1926.

CASELLA - SYMPHONY NO. 3 & ELEGIA EROICA  NAXOS 8.572415

Italian composer Alfredo Casella was born in Turin in 1883 into a musical family. His cellist grandfather was a friend of Paganini’s and Alfredo’s father was also a professional cellist, as were two of his brothers. Alfredo’s mother was a pianist and gave him his first music lessons before he went on to study composition under Gabriel Fauré at the Conservatoire de Paris, where his fellow students included Enescu and Ravel. Casella became one of the best-known Italian piano virtuosos of his generation, and was part of the acclaimed Trio Italiano, for which he wrote some of his best known compositions, including the Sonata a Tre and the Triple Concerto. His first two symphonies were modernistic, influenced by Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, but Casella eventually settled on a personal style more like Stravinsky or Ravel, as was evident in his very successful ballet, La Giara. This third disc in the Naxos series completes the world première recording of all three Casella symphonies. Francesco La Vecchia and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma play two powerful works that grew from the tragedy of two World Wars. Searingly dissonant and profoundly human, the Elegia eroica (Heroic Elegy) is Casella’s memorial to Italian soldiers killed in World War I. His Third Symphony assimilates the influences and experiences of a lifetime into an exhilaratingly melodic, emotionally wide-ranging and truly organic whole.

ANDREAE CONDUCTS BRUCKNER.    MUSIC & ARTS CD-1227(9)

The distinguished Swiss musician Volkmar Andreae was born in Bern in 1879 and his musical gifts were clear from early age. He began his serious music studies at the Bern Conservatoire under Karl Munzinger and then was a pupil of Franz Wüllner at the Cologne Conservatoire, where he excelled both as composer and conductor and published his first mature composition, the Piano Trio in F minor. In 1902 Andreae settled in Zürich, where he conducted the Tonhalle Orchestra (1906-49) and became director of the conservatory (1914-41). He was also guest conductor with many top European orchestras and an advocate of both Bruckner and contemporary music. His compositions, in the German Romantic tradition, include operas, orchestral and chamber music and several male chorus works. Although little known today, Volkmar Andreae belonged to the great generation of Bruckner conductors - others included Walter, Furtwängler and Klemperer - born while the composer was still in his prime. Andreae conducted Bruckner for half of the twentieth century, though his recorded legacy is small, so these rare performances of the nine symphonies, originally given in 1953 and archived in excellent sound by Austrian radio, are particularly welcome. Musicologist Kurt Blaukopf wrote of this historic cycle: ‘The performances given by the Vienna Symphony under Andreae’s direction...have the significance of a musical monument.’ Despite the profusion of Bruckner recordings available in modern sound, these remarkable historic recordings amply reward careful listening. Music & Arts has also released another splendid box set featuring the Polish-born American violinist and conductor Szymon Goldberg - GOLDBERG CENTENARY EDITION, VOL 1 (CD-1223(8). Despite an often difficult life, Goldberg had an extraordinary ability to project a balanced view of the music he played. He was the archetypal Classical violinist and was of the opinion that the composer knew best, never trying to impose his own egotistical interpretation. He was a superlative Mozart interpreter and perhaps at his best in chamber music, though he was also an assured soloist. He was given few chances to record concertos in the studio but these eight CDs include live broadcasts of solo sonatas by Bach, concertos by Mendelssohn and Berg, and chamber works by Beethoven, Bartok, Stravinsky and Webern. Among the great artists performing with him are Pablo Casals, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra.

ARVO PART - SYMPHONY NO. 4    ECM 476 3957 

Arvo Pärt was born in Estonia in 1935 and his earliest works were in neo-classical style. In the 1960s he had changed to serial mode of composition, bringing him a certain notoriety. By 1976 he had developed a minimalist tonal technique he called ‘tintinnabuli’, influenced by Russian neo-classicism, Western modernism, Schoenbergian dedecaphony, minimalism, polytonality and Gregorian chant. Pärt’s previous symphonies (the Third was written almost 40 years ago) are scored for full orchestra, but his Fourth is scored for string orchestra, harp and percussion (including timpani, marimba, crotales, chimes, triangle, cymbals, tam-tam and bass drum). Subtitled the Los Angeles, the symphony appropriately received its first performance there last year, and this ECM release features a live recording of that performance to celebrate Pärt’s 75th birthday on 11 September. The symphony is both literally and figuratively a ‘musical setting’, based on an underlying text. Canon of the Guardian Angel forms the work’s point of departure, determining its structure down to the smallest details. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts The Los Angeles Philharmonic in this mystic, ethereally beautiful 37-minute work reminiscent of Sibelius. The symphony is accompanied on this CD by a new montage of ‘fragments’ from Kanon Pokajanen, sung by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste. Pärt feels the piece is closely related to his symphony: ‘To my mind, the two works belong together and form a stylistic unity.’

KLEMPERER PLAYS BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONIES & OVERTURES  MUSIC & ARTS CD-1252(5)

The celebrated German conductor, Otto Klemperer, made his debut in 1906 with a presentation of Orphée aux enfers by Offenbach. A year later, he met Gustav Mahler, who arranged a post as choirmaster of the German Opera in Prague for him. After a brief time there, he was nominated director of music and made his debut with von Weber’s Der Freischütz before going on to become one of the twentieth century’s most revered conductors in the German tradition. Klemperer’s interpretations are remarkable for their dramatic strength and his Beethoven symphony cycle is one of the greatest achievements in the history of classical recording. Each Beethoven symphony is a masterpiece and all are different from each other, representing stages in the evolution of the musical symphonic language. Stately, grand and resolutely unsentimental, Otto Klemperer’s versions of all nine symphonies are available in this fantastic five-CD collection at a budget price, together with number of Beethoven’s great overtures. Indispensable listening.

SALLINEN - COMPLETE SYMPHONIES AND CONCERTOS   CPO 7776402

Acclaimed Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen was born in 1935 and as a teenager learned violin and piano, playing both classical and jazz music. He went on to study at the Sibelius Academy of Music in Helsinki, where his teachers included Aarre Merikanto and Joonas Kokkonen, and can be regarded as the natural successor to Finland’s greatest composer. After early experimentation with serialism, Sallinen adopted a clear, diatonic style that often evokes the cold expanse of Finnish landscapes. With a strong sense of national identity, Finnish traditional melodies often appear in his works, and the subject matter of several of his six operas draws on the history and folklore of that country. His symphonies are sometimes austere but also lyrical in a way that is reminiscent of Sibelius as well as Prokofiev an Shostakovich. Sallinen ranks next Einojuhani Rautavaara as Finland’s most important contemporary classical music composer and his complete symphonic works and concertos series is now available in this special priced 5 CD box. The Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz are conducted by Ari Rasilainen, with soloists Esa Tapani (horn), Jan-Erik Gustafsson (cello) and Jaakko Kuusisto (violin).

MAHLER - SYMPHONY NO. 4   SOMM SOMMCD 245

SOMM continues its collaboration with Orchestra of the Swan under its charismatic conductor, David Curtis, with a live recording made in 2009 during the orchestras first concert season as resident chamber orchestra at Birminghams Town Hall. The CD contains a rarely recorded chamber version of Mahlers Fourth Symphony, originally arranged for Chamber Ensemble by Arnold Schoenbergs pupil Erwin Stein and reconstructed here by conductor Alexander Platt. Stein was a Viennese editor who went on to become Benjamin Brittens publisher. His reduction of Mahlers fourth symphony to a piece for solo voice and 12 players is remarkably effective and performed here brilliantly by the orchestra with acclaimed mezzo soprano Heather Shipp, who received rave reviews for her vibrantly sexy interpretation of Bizets Carmen. This is Mahler all right but probably as you have never heard before. The CD also features a premiere recording of Berliozs Nuits dÉté, attractively arranged for voice and Chamber Ensemble by composer David Matthews. SOMM has also released the latest in THE BEECHAM COLLECTION (SOMM SOMM-BEECHAM 29), following its excellent CD set of Berliozs Trojans. The series is a fitting tribute on the 50th Anniversary of his death to a much-loved conductor. This is the first CD release of live recordings that Sir Thomas Beecham made with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1950s of Wagners Overture Rienzi, a magical performance of Deliuss In a Summer Garden (a particular favourite of Beechams), and Schuberts exhilarating Symphony No. 9.

LOUIS SPOHR - SYMPHONIES 8 & 10    HYPERION CDA67802

The German-born composer, violinist, conductor and teacher Louis Spohr (1784-1859) was once as famous as Beethoven, and his orchestral writings and chamber works were considered on a par with Mozart’s. He established himself as a leading virtuoso whose playing was greatly admired by Queen Victoria. Although his work is little heard by audiences today, Spohr’s musical legacy remains as one of the leading conductors of the first half of the nineteenth century and as a seminal figure in the development of modern violin playing. In addition to having invented both the violin chin-rest and rehearsal numbers/letters for printed music, he was the first major conductor to use a baton. As a composer he was an important figure in the development of German music drama, especially the oratorio. A prolific composer, Spohr produced more than 150 works, including nine symphonies (the tenth was left unfinished), fifteen violin concertos (plus two double-violin concertos), 36 string quartets, and dozens of other chamber works. This album by Howard Shelley and the Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana is the penultimate volume in Hyperion’s invaluable series of Spohr’s symphonies. The mostly upbeat Eighth Symphony is one of the composer’s more conservative experiments with the form. The modest, more serene Tenth is his final symphony, which remained unpublished until 2006 after the composer withheld the score from publication. Both works bring unexpected pleasures and this CD also includes Spohr’s fine overture to Der Zweikampf mit der Geliebten (‘The duel with the beloved’), the first of his operas to be produced. SPOHR - SYMPHONIES 3 & 6 (HYPERION CDA67788) features two of the composer’s earlier symphonies. By the time he came to write his poetic Third Symphony, Spohr was established in the top rank of contemporary composers. It is a rich, romantic work that moves further away from the classical ideal and nearer to a romantic freedom of form. The idiosyncratic Sixth Symphony was written in an entirely new form - each movement in a different historical style filtered through Spohr’s imagination. As well as these two fascinating symphonies, the CD also features Spohr’s Overture to The Fall of Babylon, an English oratorio with words by Edward Taylor, that the composer was commissioned to write for the 1842 Norwich Festival. These are lively performances of rewarding works by an unjustly neglected master of quintessentially Romantic music.

GLAZUNOV - SYMPHONY NO. 6     REGIS RECORDS RRC1359

The Russian composer and influential music teacher Alexander Glazunov was born the son of a publisher and bookseller in St Petersburg in 1865. As a child he showed considerable musical ability and the first of his symphonies premiered in 1882 when he was just 16 years old. He studied music under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, at the recommendation of Mily Balakirev, whom he had met at the age of 14, and went on to write three ballets, nine symphonies (the last of which was unfinished - a single movement later being completed and orchestrated) and many other orchestral works. Glazunov’s music, much admired by Liszt and Borodin, is individualistic and melodious, his style ranging from Russian nationalism to Lisztian romanticism to classicism. Folk melodies and songs give his work its distinctly Russian character. Glazunov’s charming Sixth Symphony, completed in 1896, is an imaginative and affecting work with a delightful oboe solo in the second variation and a thrilling finale. This re-release features an award winning 1987 recording of Glazunov’s appealing symphony, together with three Suites from his ballet Raymonda and the Triumphal March, based on ‘John Brown’s Body’. The London Symphony Orchestra is enthusiastically conducted by Yondani Butt and the sound quality is excellent in sparkling performances of some of the composer’s most popular works. ‘Beautifully recorded sound, with the velvety LSO strings caught absolutely splendidly...enjoy the music!’ - Gramophone. Regis produces many interesting and exciting reissues in the budget price range, including classics by some the greatest choral ensembles, orchestras, conductors and artists the world has ever known. Other recent CDs include Britten Song Cycles with tenor Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten on piano (RRC1365), The Artistry of Dennis Brain, including Beethoven’s Horn Sonata and Mozart’s Second Horn Concerto (RRC1363), Joan Sutherland’s Legendary Debut Recital from 1959, with arias by Donizetti, Verdi & Handel (RRC1364) and two Liszt Piano Concertos played by the incomparable Alfred Brendel (RRC1362). See more Regis Records releases here

SCHUMANN - SYMPHONIES NOS. 2 & 4     GUILD GHCD 2362

German composer, aesthete and influential music critic Robert Schumann was a virtuoso pianist but when a hand injury prevented his ambitions from being realised, he decided to focus on composition. Most of his works were written for solo piano or for piano and orchestra, though he also composed many lieder, an opera, orchestral, choral and chamber works, and four symphonies. He began his Second Symphony in 1845 and completed the orchestration the following year, when it was premiered in Leipzig with Felix Mendelssohn conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. By this time he had a good deal of experience as an orchestral composer but he had begun to show signs of serious mental and physical illness. Clara Schumann wrote of her thirty-four-year-old husband: ‘Robert could not sleep a single night. His imagination painted him the most fearful pictures. Early in the morning I usually found him bathed in tears. He quite gave himself up.’ It’s the longest of his symphonies and has an atmosphere of grandeur, with musical imageery of great originality and beauty. By the time he wrote this C major Symphony, Schumann had already completed his Symphony No. 1 and the first version of his D minor Symphony, which would eventually become his Symphony No. 4 after the composer revised it in 1851, when he at first called it called it a Symphony-Fantasia, with the sub-title Symphony in One Movement. Perhaps his most popular and most attractive symphony, it has an alluring introductory Romanze followed by a vigorous Scherzo and brilliant Finale. In the year commemorating the 200th anniversary of Robert Schumann’s birth, Guild has released this unique coupling of his Second and Fourth Symphonies, recorded between 1940 and 1946 with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Toscanini and Bruno Walter. The disc also includes a stunning performance under Toscanini of the Manfred Overture. The performances shed new light on the approaches to Schumann’s music by two of the greatest conductors of the 20th-century and the NBC mono broadcast sound has been dramatically improved. Other new releases by Guild include FAREWELL (GUILD GMCD 7342) including Haydn’s wonderful ‘Farewell’ Symphony and four works by 20th-century Swiss composers Frank Martin, Wladimir Vogel, Hermann Haller and Hans Schaueble; GUITAR WORKS (GUILD GMCD 7347) by Rodrigo, Turina, Boccherini, Assad and others, played by the brilliant young guitarist Admir Doci; and BAP NOS (GUILD GMCD 7349) In Memoriam to Swiss composer Meinrad Schütter, who would have been celebrating his 100th birthday in 2010. On this CD, Meinrad Schütter’s music is combined in a unique way with Gregorian music, music by Leoš Janácek and Christian Henking. The CD shows how creative musical work gets embedded into time periods, an endless cycle of inspiration, processing and new creation.

SCHUBERT - SYMPHONIES 8 & 9     BIS BIS-SACD-1656

Franz Schubert died in 1828, aged only thirty-one, but in his short life he wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies, liturgical music, operas, some incidental music and a large body of chamber and solo piano music. He was never able to secure adequate permanent employment, and for most of his career he relied on the support of friends and family. Interest in his work increased dramatically after his death when composers such as Liszt, Schumann and Mendelssohn championed his music. Schubert would have been amazed to learn that he has come to be regarded as a great symphonist as these works fared worst during his lifetime. His first two were written for his school orchestra and the next four for an amateur group he was able to assemble, all intended to be heard once and then forgotten. The most popular is his joyous Fifth and the minor-key Fourth (the so-called ‘Tragic’ Symphony). On this outstanding new recording, Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra’s play Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ (Symphony No.8) and ‘Great C Major’ (No.9). These are the most celebrated of all Schubert symphonies, which makes it all the more ironic that the composer never got to hear them performed by the great orchestras of his time. The Eighth, with its distinctive, mysterious opening, was not completed, possibly because Schubert remained unsatisfied with his attempts to match the degree of innovation he achieved in the first two movements. The glorious Ninth, on the other hand, runs its full course, with a Finale of exuberant festiveness. Unfortunately for the composer, the great (or, as Schumann put it: ‘heavenly’) length of the symphony and the technical demands it placed on the orchestra caused the only performance planned in Schubert’s lifetime to be cancelled. In 1839 the score was found among his papers by Robert Schumann, and received its first performance shortly thereafter by Mendelssohn conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra - eleven years after the composer’s death.