Catalog Score Spring 2011

Guitarist, composer, and bandleader Pat Metheny is one of the most successful jazz musicians in the world. He is the only artist to win 20 Grammy Awards in 10 different categories. A consummate stylist and risk-taker, his musical signature melds a singular, euphoric sense of harmony with Afro-Latin and Brazilian sounds, rock, funk, global folk musics, and jazz. His 1976 debut, Bright Size Life, and the self-titled Pat Metheny Group two years later resonated with audiences and critics for its euphoric lyricism, dynamics, and rhythmic ideas.

Ashkenazy and Gavrilov give a full-blooded performance, rhythmically incisive and with every minute gear change and every nuance finely judged. Without doubt, this has to be one of the most satisfying, nay galvanizing, two-piano recitals I have had the pleasure of sampling for a long time. Ashkenazy and Gavrilov commence proceedings with a rhythmically taut, crisply articulated account of the rarely heard two-piano arrangement of the Scherzo a la russe. Originally intended as music for an abortive project for a war film, the Scherzo is more frequently heard in either its orchestral or jazz ensemble versions, but as Ashkenazy and Gavrilov so persuasively prove there is much to be said for more than an occasional airing in Stravinsky's own arrangement for two pianos.

Between 1994 and 2011, Pierre Boulez recorded the symphonies and songs of Gustav Mahler for Deutsche Grammophon, and for many listeners these recordings are high points in his catalog, while others regard them as idiosyncratic recordings for specialists. The basis of both views stems from Boulez's meticulous conducting and exacting performance standards, which produce music of extreme lucidity and precision, yet which can also seem overly cerebral and dispassionate. Boulez's approach to Mahler may seem clinical, and this is a reasonable assessment of the way he treats details, textures, timbres, dynamics, and rhythms as indicated in the score, clearly and cleanly, without adding personal touches or interpreting the music through Mahler's biography or his own mythology.

This may well be the most fantastic recording I’ve ever heard of Mozart’s two piano quartets, and coming from someone who prefers his Mozart on modern instruments and has railed regularly against period instruments in music of this vintage, this is beyond high praise; it borders on glorification. Both the Quatuor Festetics, which began as a Read more Sturm und Drang of the G-Minor Quartet’s resolute and deeply tragic first movement. The instrument, of course, postdates though not by much the year in which the piece was written.

The Didjeridu (or didgeridoo) is an indigenous Australian instrument otherwise known as “drone pipe” or “yidaki”. It is a long (1 to 3 metres) cylindrical piece of wood - usually eucalyptus branches - from which termites ate out the core. The instrument is played with continuously vibrating lips, and requires a constant flow of air. This involves special techniques to inhale air through the nose and at the same time exhale through the mouth, with optional simultaneous vocalization. Good players can play continuously for over 40 minutes!

Giulinis Mahler recordings are few but notable. The earliest is of the First Symphony, made in 1971 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra a performance that seems to radiate from within, full of delicate colours and telling details as well as a strong sense of architecture. Giulini conducted the Ninth Symphony for the first time at Florence in November 1971 before performing it on a number of occasions in Chicago, where he made his famous Deutsche Grammophon recording of the work in 1976.

Gary Bertini’s Mahler is one of amazing transparency: so many details register for the first time that it makes you reconsider music you may have thought you knew. In the case of Das Lied von der Erde, arguably Mahler’s greatest work, Bertini continually draws us into the happenings behind the voices, beguiling us with the exquisite beauties of this miraculous score. You can almost see the blue mists floating over the lotus blossoms in Der Einsame im Herbst, so perfectly does he balance the gossamer strings and wind shadings, while the arrogant bass trombone and squealing clarinets tellingly evoke the acrid irony of Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde, which Ben Heppner sings with boastful abandon.

Antonio Vivaldi - Viktoria Mullova & Giuliano Carmignola - Double Concertos
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 313 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Archiv Produktion # 477 7466 | Country/Year: Europe 2008
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…Mullova and Carmignola provide one of the most consummate displays of period instrument playing that I have heard. True masters of their instruments.

Dvorak was only 30 when writing his first A major Piano Quintet, given its premiere in Prague in 1872. Dissatisfied, even with his attempted revision some 15 years later, he chose not to publish it but to take up the challenge anew in the now universally loved A major Quintet (Op. 81), completed in the early autumn of 1887. How good, all the same, that the earlier work eventually (in 1922) found rescuers, and that both quintets can now be compared and enjoyed on CD. The latest version comes from Rudolf Firkusny (long recognized as ''the world's foremost exponent of Czech music'') and America's youthful Ridge Quartet, and what warm and characterful playing it is too.

Conductor Sir Charles Mackerras has always been a champion of the music of Arthur Sullivan. In the early '90's, he began to record the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas with Telarc. Like the Sargent recordings of the '50's, Mackerras uses mostly opera singers–veterans of Covent Garden and of the English and Welsh National Operas but he secured the services of two veteran Savoyards, Richard Suart and the late Donald Adams. Mackerras planned to record at least seven of the Savoy operas, perhaps more, but was forced to suspend the series due to lack of funding as I understand. This fine recording of The Mikado, fortunately, was one of the four he was able to complete.