Harry Freedman - Canadian Composers Portraits (2002) {2CD Set, Centrediscs CMCCD 8402}
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© 2002 Centrediscs | CMCCD 8402
Classical / Contemporary Classical / 20th Century

This recording is part of the Centrediscs’ Canadian Composers Portraits series which documents the emergence of a generation of pioneering professional composers who firmly established Canada’s place on the world’s musical map. Each release in this retrospective of the last fifty years is dedicated to a single composer and uniquely combines full-length documentaries on the composers’ lives and music, as well as a selection of their most important works. “Each of the performances is exceptionally well done, with precision and strong emotional presence.”

Arnold Schoenberg - Chamber Music - Arditti String Quartet (1995) {2CD Set, Auvidis–Montaigne MO782025}
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© 1995 Auvidis / Montaigne | MO 782025
Classical / Modern Classical / Avant-Garde / Chamber Music

Arnold Schoenberg exercised very considerable influence over the course of music in the 20th century. This was particularly through his development and promulgation of compositional theories in which unity in a work is provided by the use of a determined series, usually consisting of the 12 possible different semitones, their order also inverted or taken in retrograde form and in transposed versions.

“Indisputably the most consummate artist in the history of the classical trumpet,” was how Gramophone described Maurice André, a musician characterised by both brilliance and refinement. These six CDs, which give pride of place to music from the 18th and 20th centuries, complement some of the most popular concertos ever written for trumpet with an enticing and fascinating selection of rarely-heard works.

A selection of works which shows the courage to try the unusual: Ligeti’s Lux aeterna and Boyd’s As I crossed a bridge of dreams share a flowing of harmonic fields into one another as if in slow motion. On the other hand, Ligeti’s use of the technique of dividing an apparently endless flow of sound, with its related intervallic structures, into comprehensible periods, shows similarities to Scarlattis method of employing motives whose intervallic structure are interrelated. For Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen Gottwald transferred Ligeti’s technique of vocal writing to his arrangement of the Mahler Lied.

Once a towering inspirational figure in the musical life of Berlin, later a crucial influence on musicians as diverse as Sibelius, Varèse, Schoenberg and Weill, Ferruccio Busoni is now being rediscovered by a new generation of performers and listeners.

Antal Dorati was a veteran ballet conductor and a personal friend of Stravinsky. His recording of The Firebird was a legend in its own time, and its reappearance on CD, sounding better than ever, immediately reestablished its supremacy. All of Stravinsky's complete ballets–as opposed to the suites– have "dead spots," moments when the music sort of stops and lurches about, illustrating something happening onstage. That's why the composer made the suites in the first place. However, many of his most fascinating orchestral ideas occur precisely in these "dead spots," which is why many conductors and audiences prefer the works complete. Trust Dorati: he's the most reliable guide to this music, and his orchestra gives him a virtuoso response.

Riccardo Chailly had been anointed by Decca as their resident modernist before he rose to be director of the Royal Concertgebouw, and in some ways these early recordings are still his freshest. This Stravinsky compilation, part of a wide-ranging cycle of the composer's works, all in wonderful sound and played far better than on any version led by the composer, dates from 1984.

Rattle’s performance gives us a fascinating view of a masterpiece – we feel that he has approached the music afresh on its own terms, without being influenced by tradition. He has the advantage, as Britten did not, of a choir and orchestra with the music in their blood, so there need be no concerns on grounds of musical accuracy. His pacing of the work overall is masterly in his projection of the overall structure; the drama of earlier parts of the score such as the Dies Irae is not allowed to overshadow the final cataclysmic climax in the Libera Me, which is devastating in its power. In the Owen setting, “Strange Meeting” which follows is sung with great concentration by both Tear and Allen, emphasising as Britten intended the personal cost of conflict and its futility.

Revealing an affinity for Weill, Teresa Stratas fulfills her promise to Lotte Lenya on her deathbed to "carry on the torch for Kurt Weill's music." Stratas's glorious soprano has never sounded better as she applies her operatic expertise to deliciously caress this music without losing any of the underlying subtext. Lacking the grittiness of other interpreters, she captures the emotional angles by letting her beautiful voice express the tortured heart beneath it; where others shout at you, Stratas sings at you. She casually bounces off the cheerier selections from One Touch of Venus and Happy End, letting Gerard Schwarz's brilliantly conducted orchestra display their wit. Program notes include a fascinating interview with Stratas.

Shostakovich's Cello Sonata belied the young composer's reputation as the 'enfant terrible' of early Soviet music. Steven Isserlis's praises it as ''the most popular cello sonata of the twentieth century.'' It features on this program alongside two other Russian masterpieces from pre-Revolutionary Prokofiev and Khrushchev era Kabalevsky.

Yuri Temirkanov's Royal Philharmonic recording has been around for a long time; it was recorded in 1986 and has been in the catalog ever since – for good reason. Temirkanov is always sensitive to the exotic nature of these scores, particularly Spartacus, and he brings excitement to the varied colorful dances of both ballets. His recording is more full-bodied than the Bolshoi CD; no under-staffed orchestra here, and their rich sounds have been superbly captured by EMI's engineers.

he players take an appropriately spacious view of the Sunrise Quartet's serene opening bars, and provide a deeply felt account of the wonderful F sharp major slow movement from Op. 76/5. They offer, too, an intensely dramatic performance of the first movement of the D minor Fifths Quartet, and manage to find a striking change of colour for the minor sections of Op. 76/5's opening movement.

This 2 CD set of Shostakovich's Ballet Suites and film music is a treasure. If you have yet to hear the Ballet Suites, do give this a listen. This is Shostakovich at his most genial and witty. Much credit must be given to the man who compiled and arranged these suites: Levon Atovmyan. Atovmyan is the man responsible for not only arranging these ballet Suites. He also arranged most of Shostakovich's film scores into concert suites. As much as I love Shostakovich's original work, these Atovmyan arrangements are even better. Much of the material used in the Ballet Suites was salvaged from one of Shostakovich's most unipsired works, the ballet The Limpid Stream.

The 1st and 9th complement each other perfectly, and this original pairing of the 9th with an equally fine performance of the 1st is a delight. The playing and acoustic of the Philharmonic is not as glorious as that of the Concertgebouw in some of Haitink's other Shostakovich recordings, but they acquit themselves quite well, capturing equally the light and the gloom, playfulness and tragedy, lyricism and satire that run through these both works.

By today's standards, there's nothing particularly jarring or seemingly progressive about the mature works of Gabriel Fauré. In his own time, however, he was often criticized for his curious, almost experimental use of harmony in his chamber music, and for what some saw as his neglect of the individual qualities of the instruments for which he was composing. Some of these sentiments have endured and resulted in the infrequent performance of many of his chamber works, in this case the two sonatas for cello and piano. While the cello "miniatures," such as the Op. 24 Elegie and the Op. 7 Apre un Reve (transcribed by Casals), have enjoyed popularity particularly in high school and early college studios, they are not representative of Fauré's developed harmonic language.