Gramophone Magazine June 2012

Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, one of his greatest works, was written in the United States after the composer was forced to flee Hungary during World War II. It is not only a brilliant display vehicle for each instrumental section but a work of considerable structural ingenuity that unites classical forms and sonorities with the pungency of folk rhythms and harmonies. Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta explores darker moods through a score of marvelously poised symmetry. This release follows Marin Alsop's 'riveting' (Gramophone) Baltimore Symphony recordings of Dvorak's symphonies.

The Dunedin Consort has established a reputation as the finest single-part period performance choir currently performing. In 2011 Gramophone named the Dunedin Consort the 11th Greatest Choir in recognition of its triple focus upon artistic revitalisation of over-familiar great works, meticulous musicological enquiry and the audiophile integrity of Linn Records' production values. The multi-award-winning Dunedin Consort has won praise for the natural style of its soloists (an authoritative bass and a superb contralto-The Guardian) and renown for the virtuosity of its singers. The Dunedin Consort has performed at music festivals in Scotland - including the Edinburgh International Festival and broadcasts frequently on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Scotland.

This album includes a world premiere recording by Hafliði Hallgrímsson entitled Joseph and the Angel, which was written specially for this album. Also included are several world premiere recordings by leading composers including Peter Maxwell Davies, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Richard Allain, Matthew Martin, Gabriel Jackson, Judith Bingham, Cecilia McDowall and Thomas Hyde.

A fourth volume of Haydn String Quartets nds period band The London Haydn Quartet on sparkling form. Their previous recordings have been praised for the glowing sound of gut strings played perfectly in tune the ensembles delicacy of nuance and sensitivity to harmonic colour, treating the listener as a privileged eavesdropper (Gramophone). This competitively priced set contains the six Op 33 quartets, which Haydn wrote in Esterhazy after neglecting the genre for a decade, and which immediately became popular around Europe on publication.

Hyperion’s Record of the Month is the third double-volume release in Marc-André Hamelin’s much-praised series of Haydn’s keyboard sonatas. Haydn wrote around sixty keyboard sonatas and this selection of eleven focuses on those from the 1770s, including the great C minor sonata from the composer’s ‘Sturm und Drang’ period, with its dynamic contrasts and virtuoso demands. These are bookended by three from Haydn’s earliest output from the 1750s, most likely penned for his young female pupils to play, and the D major sonata written during the second of the mature composer’s triumphant London visits in 1794.

Our series of works by Richard Wagner, performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Neeme Järvi, continues with a disc of early symphonies, later marches, an overture, and a prelude. Early on in his career, Wagner composed two symphonies, both of which are included on this disc. The Symphony in C, which he wrote when he was just nineteen years old, is heavily influenced by Beethoven in its character, mood, and instrumentation. Written two years later, in 1834, the Symphony in E was left unfinished, Wagner completing only the first movement and thirty bars of the second.

The Britten Sinfonia s Associate Leader, Thomas Gould directs the ensemble in Dmitry Sitkovetsky s beautifully realised and heartfelt arrangement for strings of Bach s great keyboard work, 'The Goldberg Variations'. Sitkovetsky s arrangement (first conceived for string trio and later expanded for string orchestra), made in 1985 on the 300th anniversary of Bach s birth, is lovingly and painstakingly done. He dedicates the string trio arrangement to Glenn Gould, and it is clear from much of the written-out ornamentation that Gould s recordings of the Goldbergs were Sitkovetsky s passport into the music.