String Concertos

All praise to Hungaroton for their series of Pleyel string concertos. This first volume gives us the five extant cello concertos. A concerto in D (Ben 102) advertised by Breitkopf in 1782-4 is lost. A second volume with the violin concerto (both versions) is promised. Three works here are completely new. The other two have been recorded before: Ben 106 (1797) as a cello concerto or in Pleyel’s alternative versions for flute or clarinet; Ben 104 (c1788) as a clarinet concerto—possibly Gebauer’s adaptation. Ben 105 (1790) was also issued as a viola concerto.

This is the third volume in Capriccio’s 18-disc Pancho Vladigerov Edition. After multi-disc sets that introduced his piano concertos and symphonies this one turns to his concertos for stringed instruments. These powerfully unreticent recordings were conducted by Alexander Vladigerov and by the composer (Bulgarian Dances) with the Bulgarian Chamber Orchestra and Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra. As with the previous two sets, the recordings were produced in the 1970s in Bulgaria. The violin soloists are Georgi Badev, Dina Schneidermann and Emil Karmilarov and two cello works are led by Ventseslav Nikolov.

This is a highly distinctive album in the mountain of Vivaldi CDs. The works come from a manuscript in the library of the Paris Conservatory that is thought to have been originally presented to a French nobleman. It is thought that only two of the concertos were new, while the other 10 were chosen from those Vivaldi had on hand. Whatever the truth of this, this set of concertos represents a highly winning, perhaps more subtle aspect of Vivaldi's style than one usually comes in contact with.

Volume Two of the Complete String Concertos of Ignace Pleyel (1757-1831) includes some charming, if undistinguished. music that sounds like Haydn with bits of Mozart mixed in. At one time among the most celebrated of Europe’s composers, Pleyel’s work has fallen into obscurity; so, we can be grateful that some talented instrumentalists are taking up his mantle again. A competent kapellmeister and more than competent master of diverse forms, Pleyel seems to employs the three-movement format for his Viotti-like concertos; the recording gives us the alternative ending, a 4/4 Rondo, to his violin concerto.

This is a very good recording of a selection of Vivaldi's "concerti a quattro" - concertos for string orchestra without a solo instrument. Here we have a selection from the vast Vivaldi archive in Turin, selected, as Standage tells us, "on musical and pragmatic grounds with the aim of presenting an attractive cross-section".

With this album, Simon Standage continues his survey of the 40 odd concertos for strings by Vivaldi. As with period practice, winds are added to a few of the works. The continuo consists of harpsichord and guitar, the latter a very appealing sounding period instrument. There is less unity of mood on this album than on Volume 1 of this series. Instead, one is prone to gasp at Vivaldi's prodigious invention.

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.

If you're one of those who feel Telemann has gotten a bad rap, your day has come. Here's a disc that will make even diehard skeptics take another listen to this Baroque master. Reinhard Goebel and the Musica Antiqua Köln perform a program of Telemann's chamber music for strings, including a pair of symphonies (which didn't mean nearly the same thing to Telemann as it did to Mozart or Beethoven), a suite, and a series of concertos (which also meant something else to him).

Georg Philipp Telemann's string concertos position themselves somewhere between the polyphonic complexity of the Bach orchestral sinfonias, the urbanity of Handel's concerti grossi, and Vivaldi's innumerable and endlessly delightful works of this type. But his approach always remained the most international as well as the most local. Two of these concertos, for example, exemplify the "Polish" style appropriate for the Electors of Saxony (Telemann's employers, who were also kings of Poland), with their folky rhythms and groaning bass parts.

Mozart did, it's true, "authorize" the performance of some of his piano concertos by piano and string quartet, as the notes to this Analekta release point out. But, as a Vienna freelancer in uncharted territory, he could hardly have done otherwise, and to suggest, from the perspective of 21st century Canada and its social safety net, that this indicates anything about the desirability of such a performance is questionable. Truth to tell, these two concertos from 1782, although their wind parts are not as prominent as those in some of the later ones, still sound a bit bare in their contrasts between solo and tutti here.