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KLUGHARDT: Symphony No. 4 in C Minor; Drei Stücke ‒ Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau / Antony Hermus ‒ CPO; JUROWSKI: Symphony No. 5; Russian Painters ‒ Norrköping Sym. Orch./ Michail Jurowski ‒ CPO

KLUGHARDT: Symphony No. 4 in C Minor; Drei Stücke ‒ Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau / Antony Hermus ‒ CPO; JUROWSKI: Symphony No. 5; Russian Painters ‒ Norrköping Sym. Orch./ Michail Jurowski ‒ CPO

by | Aug 25, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews

AUGUST KLUGHARDT: Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, Op. 57; Drei Stücke, Op. 87 ‒ Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau / Antony Hermus ‒ CPO 777 740-2; 53:48 (8/14/15) (Distr. by Naxos) ***1/2: VLADIMIR MICHAILOVIC JUROWSKI: Symphony No. 5, Op. 79; Russian Painters ‒ Norrköping Sym. Orch./ Michail Jurowski ‒ CPO 777 875-2; 73:46 (3/11/15) (Distr. by Naxos) ***: Two more worthy composers rescued from obscurity, thanks to CPO. On paper and by just about every other standard, these two recordings have little in common except they both represent the crusading efforts of the CPO label to bring obscure but significant music and their composers to light. Klughardt was a German conductor and composer, an enthusiast of Wagner and Liszt who nonetheless pursued the course of the Romantic Classicists, devoting himself to the symphony and showing affinities to Schumann’s symphonic style. Jurowski was a Ukrainian Soviet composer best known for his film scores and for founding a musical dynasty that includes his conductor son Michail and conductor grandson Vladimir. However, I decided to review their works together because while I find their symphonic arguments somewhat compelling, it’s an interesting coincidence that I’m more attracted to the other works on each program and […]

********* MULTICHANNEL DISCS OF THE MONTH *********WAGNER: The Ring Cycle (complete) – Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester/ Marek Janowski – Pentatone (13 SACDs)

********* MULTICHANNEL DISCS OF THE MONTH *********
WAGNER: The Ring Cycle (complete) – Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester/ Marek Janowski – Pentatone (13 SACDs)

by | Jul 23, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews

Celebrating contemporary aesthetics and presenting superior engineering and performance, Pentatone’s Ring Cycle proves to be the ultimate Gesamtkunstwerk of recording releases. * WAGNER: Der Ring des Nibelungen (complete) – Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester/ Marek Janowski – Pentatone Music (13 multi-channel SACDs) B01D5OXYWS (5/13/16) TT: 13:48:08 *****:  If Wagner’s Ring Cycle is an ultimate realization of Gesamtkunstwerk (total art), then Pentatone’s self-described “Epic Ring” set must be called a Gesamtkunstwerk of recording releases. Perhaps this is to be expected, or at least hoped for, if one is to invest in a mammoth multi-hour tetralogy composed during three 19th-Century decades. Pentatone delivers, achieving classical recording’s elusive goal of presenting a contemporary experience. Recording in five-channel surround sound, Pentatone’s goal is “to offer an unrivaled classical music experience through superior audio technology.” Achievement cannot be understated. From the opening of the Das Rheingold Prelude, listeners are pulled into a new Wagnerian experience introducing layered and sustained sound as never heard before. Conducted by Marek Janowski in Berlin, the operas were recorded in performances with the orchestra on the stage instead of in the pit. Pentatone captures this symphonic experience, convincing us that Wagner’s orchestration is the soul of the work. Pentatone’s 13-disc collection contains a massive […]

MENDELSSOHN: Elijah – Soloists/ RIAS Kammerchor / Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin/ Hans‐Christoph Rademann – Accentus

MENDELSSOHN: Elijah – Soloists/ RIAS Kammerchor / Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin/ Hans‐Christoph Rademann – Accentus

by | Jul 10, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews

MENDELSSOHN: Elijah, Op. 70 – Marlis Petersen (sop.) / Lioba Braun (mezzo) / Maximilian Schmitt (tenor) / Thomas Oliemans (bari.)/RIAS Kammerchor / Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin/ Hans‐Christoph Rademann – Accentus ACC30356 (2 CDs); TT 1h, 25m (3/25/16) [Distr. by Naxos] ****1/2: Recorded live, Rademann’s Elijah is long on drama, managing to downplay the sentimental elements of this flawed masterpiece. It’s easy to forget that Felix Mendelssohn wrote operas. Two of them, Der Oncle von Boston and Die Heimkehr aus die Fremde, were written for private performance only and the one opera which Mendelssohn wrote for public performance, Die Hochzeit des Comacho, was treated so dismissively by the critics that he decided to foreswear opera composition altogether. This, at the ripe old age of eighteen. Well, he didn’t turn his back entirely on opera, considering German mythology and even Shakespeare’s The Tempest as possible subjects, but he never committed to any project leaving only sketches. However, following the model of one of his musical heroes, Handel, Mendelssohn created in Elijah an oratorio that is fully operatic in its more dramatic passages. Like Handel’s Saul and Belshazzar, Elijah contains a series of dramatic scena that have managed to win it a […]

Beecham – The ABC Blue Network Concerts, Volume 2: A Tribute Concert in Memory of President Roosevelt = Works of WAGNER, SIBELIUS, SCHUBERT, BERLIOZ, TCAIKOVSKY, MOZART – Blue Network Sym./Beecham – Pristine

Beecham – The ABC Blue Network Concerts, Volume 2: A Tribute Concert in Memory of President Roosevelt = Works of WAGNER, SIBELIUS, SCHUBERT, BERLIOZ, TCAIKOVSKY, MOZART – Blue Network Sym./Beecham – Pristine

by | Jun 17, 2016 | Classical Reissue Reviews

The April 14, 1945 concert by Sir Thomas Beecham pays fine tribute to the nation’s loss. Beecham – The ABC Blue Network Concerts, Volume 2: A Tribute Concert in Memory of President Roosevelt = WAGNER: Siegfried’s Funeral March; SIBELIUS: Pelleas et Melisande, Op. 46: The Death of Melisande; MOZART: Divertimento in D, K. 131: Adagio; SCHUBERT: Symphony No.  8 in b minor, D. 759 “Unfinished:; TCHAIKOVSKY: Serenade in C for Strings, Op. 48: Elegie; BERLIOZ: Les Troyens: Marche Troyenne – Blue Network Sym. Orch./ Sir Thomas Beecham – Pristine Audio PASC 470, 57:50 [avail. in various formats from www.pristineclasical.com] ****:  A national moment of silence precedes the broadcast concert of the Blue Network Orchestra led by Sir Thomas Beecham – the 14 April 1945 concert coincides with the funeral service for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt – and the program Beecham leads reflects the spirit of valediction. The famous Siegfried Funeral March from The Twilight of the Gods receives a potent, albeit direct, realization from Beecham’s responsive players, a linear approach we might ascribe to Toscanini.  Even more pathos-ridden, the English horn solo and strings that constitute the first section of The Death of Melisande (1905) makes a lachrymose impression that […]

Editorial for June 2016

Editorial for June 2016

by | Jun 6, 2016 | Editorial

Our free June drawing is for the 13 SACD Complete Ring Cycle of Wagner in the new recording set issue by PentaTone with leading soloists, the Berlin Radio Sym. Orch. & Chorus, cond. by Mark Janowski and with a 250-p. booklet. Here’s a page on the album, just released last month. All you need to do to enter the drawing is to click on the Register To Win button on the home page and fill out all the fields. The winner of our May drawing will be listed below. It is Cynthia Willingham of Greenwood, MS. She will be sent the 64-CD Limited Edition Leonard Bernstein set from Deutsche Grammophon – our May free drawing. EDITORIAL AUDIOPHILE AUDITION began as a local program in San Francisco and then in 1985 as a weekly national radio series hosted by John Sunier, and aired for 13½ years on up to 200 public radio and commercial stations. In September 1998 its web site for program listings was expanded to this free Internet publication. June 2016 is our 207th issue! All disc reviews are added thru the month as written and received, often daily, amounting to nearly 100 a month.  The Home Page lists the […]

Bruno Walter on The Standard Hour = WAGNER: Prelude from Parsifal; MOZART: Mass in c minor: Et incarnates est; Eine Kleine Nachtmusik; HAYDN: The Seasons: Oh, welcome now; Oh how pleasing to the senses; WEBER: Oberon Ov. – Brunetta Mazzolini, sop./ SF Sym. Orch./ Bruno Walter – Pristine Audio

Bruno Walter on The Standard Hour = WAGNER: Prelude from Parsifal; MOZART: Mass in c minor: Et incarnates est; Eine Kleine Nachtmusik; HAYDN: The Seasons: Oh, welcome now; Oh how pleasing to the senses; WEBER: Oberon Ov. – Brunetta Mazzolini, sop./ SF Sym. Orch./ Bruno Walter – Pristine Audio

by | May 15, 2016 | Classical Reissue Reviews

A rare appearance by Bruno Walter in San Francisco makes a splendid impression in the Pristine incarnation. Bruno Walter on The Standard Hour = WAGNER: Prelude from Parsifal; MOZART: Mass in c minor, K. 427: Et incarnates est; Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525; HAYDN: The Seasons: Oh, welcome now; Oh how pleasing to the senses; WEBER: Oberon Overture – Brunetta Mazzolini, sop./ San Francisco Sym. Orch./ Bruno Walter – Pristine Audio PASC 469, 55:47 [avail. in various versions from www.pristineclassical.com] ****: Pristine’s restoration engineer and producer Andrew Rose grants us the rare opportunity to hear Bruno Walter (1876-1962) live in an Easter concert in San Francisco (18 April 1954) from the War Memorial Opera House, leading music – some new to the conductor’s discography – for the Standard Hour. The award-winning weekly program had been running since 1926, and this was its 1,410th edition on NBC radio. Walter brings with him the soprano, Brunetta Mazzolini to perform a concert of mixed orchestral favorites, with music by Wagner, Mozart, Haydn and Weber. Walter’s appearance here coincided with his scheduled performance of the Brahms A German Requiem in its San Francisco debut. The spaciousness of the Parsifal Prelude befits the solemnity of […]

J. Peter Schwalm – The Beauty of Disaster – RareNoise

J. Peter Schwalm – The Beauty of Disaster – RareNoise

by | Apr 10, 2016 | Jazz CD Reviews

The fascination and allure of catastrophe. J. Peter Schwalm – The Beauty of Disaster [TrackList follows] – RareNoise RNR059, 60:20 [2/26/16] ****: (J. Peter Schwalm – producer, guitar, piano, electronic devices, acoustic and digital sound modules, mixing decks, drums, synths; Neil Catchpole – viola (track 1); Eivind Aarset – guitar (track 2-4); Tim Harries – bass (tracks 2, 7-8); Martin France – drums (tracks 2, 8); Michael Wöllny – pump organ (track 5); Christine Schütze – grand piano (track 9)) Guitarist and keyboardist J. Peter Schwalm is probably best known for his partnership with Brian Eno, such as the 2001 album Drawn From Life. As a solo artist, Schwalm has reinterpreted the work of others: notable exemplifications being the 2013 commission, Kraftwerk Uncovered—A Future Past, for the Icebreaker orchestral ensemble; and the 2014 studio project, Wagner Transformed, which comprised reconfigurations of Richard Wagner’s “Tristan & Isolde,” “Parsifal” and other Wagner material. For the hour-long instrumental CD, The Beauty of Disaster, Schwalm found inspiration from pictures of environmental devastation, specifically the 2010 BP oil spill which affected the southeast US. He clarifies, “I had been deeply impressed by satellite images of the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico while composing […]

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 5 in B-flat (Nowak Edition) – London Sym. Orch./ Lance Friedel – MSR Classics

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 5 in B-flat (Nowak Edition) – London Sym. Orch./ Lance Friedel – MSR Classics

by | Mar 13, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews

Could we be witnessing the birth of a born Brucknerian? Yes, if this recording has anything to say about it. BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 5 in B-flat (Nowak Edition) – London Sym. Orch./ Lance Friedel – MSR Classics multichannel SACD MS 1600, 73:19 [Distr. by Albany] *****: Not since 2010, as far as I can tell, has MSR ventured into Super Audio territory. I made a comment back then on their piano disc, the first they offered, that if subsequent issues were like this, then we were in very good hands. Well, listening to Lance Friedel’s Bruckner offering only confirms that assessment. Friedel, known to me only once previously from a marvelous Nielsen album, has got the measure of this sometimes elusive, yet rather editorially stable Fifth Symphony. Bruckner’s second longest work has been accused of being difficult to hold together, yet if the truth is told it is one of the most successful works of his found on record. Perhaps there are just fewer interpretative decisions to make due to the numerous detailed instructions that the conductor left in the score, maybe partially inspired by a visit to Bayreuth to hear Wagner’s orchestral inklings up close and personal. He seems […]