Brainwave Symphony CD 4

This disc offers something quite hard to get these days - Beethoven and Schubert played for their own sake under a conductor who can and does wield from the rostrum every bit of the immense authority of the best years of his cello-playing when even the intervals between the notes seemed to have been imaginatively recreated, and the phrasing presented with nothing less than perfect sensitivity and dignity, and without any desire to make points or impress by virtuoso polish. Of course his approach is of his time. But the Marlboro audience was very lucky, and so is anyone who now listens to this with an open mind. This is a great musician conducting folk who in the act of performance he treats as equals.

Andrew Manze's interpretations of Vaughan Williams's Symphonies have met with acclaim from audiences and critics alike. This second volume in his complete symphony cycle with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra features Symphonies Nos.3 and 4. These two works were heavily influenced by the Great War and its aftermath. Full of repressed rage and sorrow at the futility of the war, Symphony No.3 is often seen as a war requiem. Symphony No.4 is a violent and turbulent work, reflecting the post Great War world and the political turmoil of the 1930s. Both works are illuminated by Manze's distinguished leadership.

Music Director Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, with Reference Recordings, are pleased to announce the release of a new recording in superb audiophile, pairing Tchaikovsky’s iconic Symphony No. 4 with the world premiere of leading American composer Jonathan Leshnoff’s Double Concerto for Clarinet and Bassoon, featuring the orchestra’s own Michael Rusinek, Principal Clarinet, and Nancy Goeres, Principal Bassoon. This HIGHRESAUDIO release was recorded in Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts, the acoustically outstanding and historic home of the orchestra.

Fellow composers such as Ambroise Thomas and Charles Gounod attended the Symphony No. 4 premiere in Paris, 1856, and were moved to amazed admiration. French critics approvingly wrote how ‘finely thought out, expansively developed, and clearly and brilliantly written’ the score was.

Soli Deo Gloria is proud to release the last instalment of its successful Brahms Symphony series which sees John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique explore the music of Johannes Brahms. This album is a celebration of the Fourth Symphony and the various pieces that contributed to its making.

Alba's album Brahms IV Segerstam concludes the series of symphonies by Johannes Brahms and Leif Segerstam. The last album of the four-part series includes Brahms' fourth symphony and the symphony number 295 composed by Segerstam in memory of conductor Ulf Söderblom. In his symphony "ulFSöDErBlom in Memoriam …" Segerstam plays with the name of the conductor, which includes the notes F, S, D, E and B. Brahms' fourth symphony was his last, and according to Segerstam, "the beginning of the symphony can be used to explain how music is born."

The Mahler 4 has a special connection to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. It was recorded by 4 of its music directors in succession: Mengelberg, Van Beinum, Haitink, and Chailly. They also recorded it with Bernstein and Solti. At the time Haitink made this recording in the 1960's, the strings of the orchestra still possessed the gruff, woodsy sound that was one of the ensemble's notable characteristics. It is highly suitable to Mahler's folk like themes. The performance here is moderate in tempo; the playing never seems rushed. Haitink makes even the dramatic pauses in the work seem intrinsic to the overall structure. Overall, there is a soft ambience to the orchestral sound. Nevertheless, the climax to the slow movement is highly dramatic, and it flows very naturally into the tempo for the finale.

Hugo Alfvén (1872-1960) tends to be thought of as a ‘one-work wonder’, known only for his Swedish Rhapsody No.1, ‘Midsummer Vigil’. This disc, the fourth in Naxos’s series of Alfvén recordings, ought to change that. The Festival Overture is an exuberant curtain-raiser but the Fourth Symphony, composed in 1919, is a truly wonderful work. Its programme, hinted at in the subtitle ‘From the Outermost Skerries’, was described by the composer as ‘the tale of two young souls. The action takes place in the skerries, where sea rages among the rocks on gloomy, stormy nights, by moonlight and sunshine…the moods of nature are no less symbols for the human heart.’

The Fourth is probably the best of Rubinstein’s Symphonies. Written in 1874 it’s a deeply uneven and ultimately unconvincing work but contains enough perplexing turbulence to elevate it far beyond the merely decorative, beyond the post Mendelssohnian symphonic statement. If it never reaches the heights of a genuine Romantic crisis symphony it contains intriguing material sufficient to warrant more than a second hearing and this Naxos issue, first issued on Marco Polo 8.223319 in 1991, provides just such an opportunity.

If you take it for granted that Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was the greatest pianist of the twentieth century and that his performances of Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto were the greatest of the twentieth century, then you'll probably want to pick up this disc containing Michelangeli's fabled May 29, 1957, performance in Prague with Vaclav Smetacek and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Although Smetacek is not the deepest, the greatest, or the most sympathetic accompanist Michelangeli ever had, and although the Prague players are not always quite on their best behavior, Michelangeli is as he always is in this work: absolutely definite.