Gramophone From April 2014

Richard Strauss - Selected Lieder Recordings 1901-1946 (2014) {3CD Set Marston Sesquicentennial Edition 53017-2}
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© 1901-46, 2014 Marston | 53017-2
Classical / Vocal / Early 20th Century / Historical

Richard Strauss’s (1864–1949) acceptance into the pantheon of great Lieder composers began in the early 1950s, perhaps marked by the enthusiastic reception of his Four Last Songs, premiered by Kirsten Flagstad eight months after Strauss’s death. It wasn’t long before these songs became widely performed, and by extension, his Lieder as a whole, began to gain greater acceptance as high art along with Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf. This compilation concentrates on Strauss Lieder recordings from an earlier era that display the sort of vocal charm and straightforward approach to the music not usually heard in today’s style of Lieder singing. Many of these recordings are extremely important historic documents retaining their position as the definitive versions of Strauss Lieder. Some of the singers included here not only knew Strauss, but worked with him, and their recordings could have been heard and judged by him. This three CD-set contains forty songs in eighty-two performances by fifty-seven singers.

George Enescu - Complete Works for Violin & Piano - Remus Azoitei & Eduard Stan (2014) {2CD Set Hänssler Classic 98.035}
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© 2014 Hänssler Classic | 98.035
Classical / 20th Century / Chamber Music

The complete Works for Violin and Piano of George Enescu - The Romanian musicians Remus Azoitei and Eduard Stan interpret the Works of Enescu with intuitional understanding for his multifaceted music - Including the famous 3rd sonata op.25 dans le caractère populaire roumain - No need to look any further: this is a first-rate collection."" Gramophone Of all of Enescu's works for violin and piano, the 3rd Sonata Op. 25 ""dans le caractère roumain populaire"" (""in Romanian folk character"" ) composed in 1926 is the most famous and stands roughly in the center of his work for these instruments. In addition to the two other sonatas, a dramatic sonata torso in A Minor, the ""Impressions d' enfance"" and some smaller works have survived.

This is a glorious disc. Simply glorious. Anderszewski and Bach have long been congenial bedfellows and the Pole’s playing here is compelling on many different levels. To start with, there’s the sense of sharing the sheer physical thrill of Bach’s keyboard-writing. This is particularly evident in faster movements such as the fierce and brilliant fugal Gigue that concludes the Third Suite, or, in the E minor Fifth Suite, the extended fugal Prelude and the outer sections of its Passepied I. Common to all is a sense of being fleet but never breathless, with time enough for textures to tell.

The release of this four-CD set of works for solo string instruments and orchestra pays tribute, as does the recently issued box-set of ‘British Piano Concertos’, to the imagination and vision of the late Richard Itter and his pioneering Lyrita label. For many, Lyrita was the British music label and was loyally supported by various ‘in house’ conductors, among them Adrian Boult, Nicholas Braithwaite, Norman Del Mar and Vernon Handley. Many of the recordings offered here are from the old Lyrita analogue and early digital catalogue but there are a few recordings made during the label’s short revival between 1993 and 1996 which were not issued until more than a decade after they were made. The set makes for fantastic value for money, each CD containing well over 70 minutes of music, and the performances are generally of tremendous vibrancy and quality.

Glazunov, a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, received encouragement also from Belyayev, an influential patron and publisher whose activities succeeded and largely replaced the earlier efforts of Balakirev to inspire the creation of national Russian music. Glazunov joined the teaching staff of the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1899 and after the student protests and turmoil of 1905 was elected director, a position he retained until 1930 (although from 1928 he remained abroad, chiefly in Paris, where he died in 1936). His music represents a synthesis between the Russian and the so-called German—the technical assurance introduced by the Rubinstein brothers in the Conservatories of St Petersburg and of Moscow in the middle of the century.