Eduard was the brother of Hermann (1802-1855) who, as a writer on music, had contact with Wagner, Goethe and Heine. The other brother, Albert, had a bookshop in Paris and kept company with Chopin, Charles Hallé and Stephen Heller. The E minor Violin Concerto was composed in Cologne to which Franck had moved at the request of Ferdinand Hiller. It was premiered by another Hiller invitee, Theodor Pixis. It is a work of streaming intensity deliciously prone to lyrical flights akin to the Mendelssohn concerto (in the same key) but without the ineffable surge of smiling quicksilver. The last movement recalls a village fiddler and rustic dance floors across the continent.

Violin virtuoso and composer Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst was well known to audiences and musicians in the middle of the 19th century. At first he was a slavish follower of Paganini, whom he followed from place to place; often, by listening to the Italian master, he was able to reproduce his new works before they had been published or disseminated. But there is a kind of elegant artistry in some of his music that displays his own personality, and Joseph Joachim, the violinist most closely associated with the Beethoven/Brahms line of musical thinking, called Ernst the greatest violinist he had ever heard.

Bruch’s tribute to Scotland was written before he had set foot in the country. Even so, the Scottish Fantasy suggests someone steeped in the folk songs of the Highlands, with traditional Scottish melodies threaded throughout. Joshua Bell, soloist and conductor, leads his orchestra through the fens with playing of exquisite dramatic sensitivity and a golden tone, resulting in a rich, characterful portrait of the wild landscape. They also put their attention to the Violin Concerto No. 1, a work they first recorded together in 2000. There’s a good deal more sureness to the playing from both parties this time, underlining these musicians’ burgeoning artistic relationship.

In the 1980's, conductor Neeme Jarvi recorded the nine Dvorak symphonies with the Scottish National Symphony for Chandos. Most of the recordings have received favorable reviews, and some critics believe the cycle established Jarvi the interpreter of Dvorak's music. While I do not own all the recordings in the series and for that reason cannot compare it to other Dvorak recordings by Jarvi, I can say it is an excellent recording and one of my favorites in my collection (consisting of nearly 800 recordings). It begins with the tone poem "The Noon Witch." It is a musical telling of a story similar to "Hansel and Gretel" and Dvorak cleverly uses different instruments and themes to tell the story.

Hyperion is delighted to present the world’s best-loved cello concerto performed by one of the world’s best-loved cellists: national treasure Steven Isserlis. Isserlis has waited 40 years to record this pinnacle of the repertoire, and here with his regular collaborators, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Daniel Harding, this long gestation has proved to be overwhelmingly fruitful. Isserlis writes of the concerto that ‘the power of its emotional journey, expressed with Dvorák’s characteristically folk-like simplicity and directness, offers an irresistible mix of the epic and the touchingly confessional’. The combination of emotional power and simplicity is also a feature of Isserlis’s playing, and part of what makes him such a consummate performer of this work.

Of all England's living Knight-Conductors, Richard Armstrong is perhaps least represented on record. For 13 years, director of the Welsh National opera, he is best known for his work in that medium with just a handful of recordings.
In 1986, Marks and Spencer the famous department store decided to make its own in-house recording of the Enigma Variations coupled with the Introduction and Allegro and Serenade for Strings and booked Armstrong into EMI's Abbey Road Studios in July with the London Philharmonic to record this disc. The London Philharmonic had this music in its bones by then thanks to Adrian Boult and others, but Armstrong coaxed versions from them that are uniquely his own. Midway between Boult and Barbirolli, Armstrong's interpretations are scrupulously played but also at moments energetic, thoughtful and above all heartfelt. You get the feeling this conductors connects with the music.

The Scottish National Orchestra with Neeme Jarvi has traversed the entire Dvorak symphonic oeuvre with wonderful success. Jarvi brings a sense of live and vitality to each symphony and the orchestra responds wonderfully. Jarvi's rendition of the 5th is, at least in my opinion, the most convincing in the series. The playing is spectacular; the Scottish National Orchestra brings a beauty of phrasing that complements this symphony well. Of equal power and beauty is the Water Goblin, which Jarvi undoubtedly champions. This is a wonderful CD. S

Widely regarded as Bedrich Smetana's greatest hit, The Moldau is but one part of the orchestral cycle Má Vlast (My Country), which contains six tone poems on different Czech nationalist subjects. Smetana composed these epic works in the manner of Franz Liszt's tone poems, evoking dramatic images through colorful orchestration and painting natural and historical scenes through themes and harmonies of a pronounced Bohemian character. One might suppose that only a Czech orchestra could play this music with the proper intensity, but the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, under Claus Peter Flor, gives a stirring account that can rival any performance anywhere for energy, passion, and atmosphere.

Richter was always a fan of Schubert's Piano music. He recorded over half of the Sonatas, the Wanderer Fantasie, some of the Impromptus and the Trout Piano Quintet to name a few works. Early in his career he would tear through impromptus, and play the Wander Fantasie with force and power. Fast forward much later at this point when these Sonatas were performed, and Richter was still playing some of the most difficult works in piano repertoire, such as Prokofiev Sonatas, Chopin Etudes and Liszt. In the case of these of composers its hard not to be inclined to be enjoy his earlier recordings more, but that is not the case here with Schubert.

…There can be little doubt that it is the orchestra as ever, peerless in Brahms that gives this recording its distinctive character. It provides exactly the right fully-fledged symphonic context for Brendel. It also inspires him to realize the solo part with a weightiness of tone and concentration of line that hasn't always been there to complement the natural clarity of his Brahms. Thus, though individual movement timings are virtually identical with those on Brendel's earlier 1973 Amsterdam version on Philips, the scale and musical reach of the performance is considerably extended, as, indeed, is the shrewdness of page after page of musical detailing.

Nirgendwo könne ein Komponist seinen Stil besser entwickeln als in der Kirche, wo die Übel des Kunstbetriebes, Applaus und Erfolgsdenken, keinen Platz besäßen, bekannte Camille Saint-Saëns einmal, und er wußte, wovon er sprach: Er selbst war zwanzig Jahre lang als Organist an der Pariser Madeleine tätig gewesen. Die Werke dieser CD belegen Saint-Saëns' These. Sowohl das Requiem als auch die Psalmvertonung verblüffen durch einen ganz eigenen Tonfall, der eine eingängige Melodik, raffiniert chromatische Harmonik und klangsinnliche Instrumentation verbindet.

Recorded in 1959-1960 in Boston/New York. SYMPHONIE No.1 «Le Printemps» - "…this recording fascinates with the perfect adequacy of expression with formal tags and stylistics of the work…" SYMPHONIE No.4 (version1851) - "… Bernstein arouses enthusiasm with immediacy and extraversion which express in an irresistible way the vital impulse of this charter of romanticism…"

Chabrier’s extraordinary, if incomplete, opera is surely a precursor to Salome and approaches even that most lurid work in the gloriously opulent sensuality of its music. Performed at the Edinburgh Festival by some of the greatest singers of the day and recorded live by Hyperion, this thrilling performance stunned critics and public alike. A genuinely wonderful discovery.

In Audite's survey of the music of Eduard Franck, this has long been one of my favourite discs. The string sextet can be a tricky genre to master, which perhaps partly accounts for its rarity compared to the string quartet and even the piano quartet during the Romantic era: there are six musical parts that have to retain a degree of independence, as opposed to four in the quartet form, of course; and there is also the problem of balance, with the two violins effectively set against four instruments in lower registers.

Unter der Leitung von Roberto Rizzi Brignoli verlieh eine neue Sängergeneration Cileas berühmtester Oper im Januar 2000 frischen Glanz. Für ihr Scala-Debüt als Adriana wurde Daniela Dessi von der italienischen Presse einhellig bejubelt. Die Oper von Francesco Cilea bezieht sich auf die authentische Figur Adrienne Couvreur, die Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts als erfolgreichste französische Schauspielerin galt und durch eine Liebschaft mit dem Grafen Moritz von Sachsen zur Rivalin der Herzogin von Boullion wurde. Dieser Umstand wird auch mit ihrem plötzlichen Tod im Alter von nur 38 Jahren in Verbindung gebracht, der die Folge einer Vergiftung gewesen sein soll. Die Oper feierte ihre Uraufführung im Jahre 1902 mit Enrico Caruso.