Anton Bagatov

Following his CPO recording with the Tapiola Sinfonietta of Anton Bruckner's Symphony in D minor, "Die Nullte," and the Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Mario Venzago presents the Symphony No. 2 in C minor, this time with the Northern Sinfonia. Unlike some contemporary conductors who favor the original 1872 version of this symphony, Venzago performs the more familiar 1877 version, edited by William Carragan. This is the first of Bruckner's symphonies where he expanded the form to an hour duration, and the fertile ideas it contains are appropriate to the greater time frame. Yet this work has never been accepted by audiences in the way most of the later symphonies have, such as the Fourth, Seventh, and Ninth, and the music falters over too many starts and stops, indecisive development, and repetitions. Even so, there is much attractive material here, and Venzago brings it off with a light touch, having the orchestra play delicately and sweetly, almost as if this were a Mendelssohn symphony.

Anthony Paul Beke (born 20 July 1966), known professionally as Anton Du Beke, is a British ballroom and Latin dancer and television presenter, best known as a professional dancer and judge on the BBC One celebrity dancing show, Strictly Come Dancing, since the show began in 2004. His professional dance partner since 1997 has been Erin Boag. In 2009, he presented the UK version of Hole in the Wall, for the BBC, replacing Dale Winton after being a team captain in 2008. In November 2017, Du Beke released his debut studio album, From the Top, on Polydor Records. It reached number 21 on the UK Albums Chart.

Karajan reportedly felt so strongly about his recordings of the Second Viennese School that he agreed to finance them himself when DG balked at picking up the tab. These are great performances, to be sure. Indeed, there may be some others that are comparable, but none are superior. The Berg pieces never have sounded so decadently beautiful, nor the Webern so passionately intense, or the Schoenberg so, well, just plain listenable. The Berlin Philharmonic strings make their usual luscious sounds, but here the winds, brass, and even percussion rise to the occasion as well. And sonically these were always some of Karajan's best efforts. Essential, then, and a perfect way to get to know these three composers on a single disc.

For his project of recording the complete symphonies of Anton Bruckner on CPO, Mario Venzago has chosen to record each symphony with a different orchestra to re-create the sounds that Bruckner would have heard. Considering that Bruckner's experiences with orchestras spanned three decades, he would have witnessed growth of the orchestra's size and the introduction of new instruments, which clearly influenced his decisions when he composed and revised each work. Venzago performs the Symphony No. 8 in C minor with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, following the 1890 version and employing the same instrumentation and ensemble scale, as well as traditional practices that are documented in performances from that period. The result is an Eighth that sounds strikingly different from the other symphonies, quite far removed from the early Romantic orchestra he used in the First, and considerably expanded from the ensembles he would have expected for the Fourth or even the Seventh symphonies.

In his Éventail de musique française, Swiss oboist and composer Heinz Holliger traverses a broad selection of French works for oboe and piano in a multichromatic programme of early 20th century music. As Holliger states in his liner note, “the closeness of the oboe to the human voice inspired my idea of opening up the richly coloured fan of French music through the still far too little known collection of Vocalises-Études.” Contained in this wide-ranging recital are compositions by Ravel, Debussy, Milhaud, Saint-Saëns, Casadesus as well as Koechlin, Jolivet and Messiaen – Holliger cultivated a personal relationship with several of the composers. On piano returns Anton Kernjak, who appeared on Holliger’s 2014 recording Aschenmusik, while French harpist Alice Belugou comes in to play on André Jovilet’s Controversia pour hautbois et harpe. The richness of the 20th century oboe-repertoire is on full display throughout and finds Holliger in engaging dialogues with piano and harp. Éventail follows the release of Heinz Holliger’s multiple awards-winning large-scale opera Lunea from 2022.

In his final performances with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in August 2013, Claudio Abbado conducted Anton Bruckner's unfinished Symphony No. 9 in D minor, and this recording is drawn from the best takes from those concerts. Considering that this rendition came near the end of Abbado's life and stands as a worthy testament to his achievements, it's easy to read too much into the interpretation, and to view it as a mystical or transcendent reading because of the circumstances. On the one hand, Abbado's understanding of this symphony was as thorough as any conductor's, and the Lucerne musicians played with seriousness and dedication, offering a version that has impressive power and expressive depth. On the other hand, there are many competitive recordings that either match Abbado's for strength and feeling, or surpass it in purely technical terms of sound quality and reproduction. Certainly the sound is exceptional, according to Deutsche Grammophon's high standards, and this stereo recording is exceptionally clean and noise-free.

The G major Anton Rubinstein violin concerto is a fine and powerful work, quite as good as many a lesser-known Russian example in the same genre, and easily as deserving of wider currency as, say, the Taneyev Suite de Concert, which is just as rarely heard these days. Nishizaki gives a committed and polished reading, though you often feel that this is music written by a pianist who had marginally less facility when writing for the violin. Still, here’s a well-schooled performance, full of agreeable touches of imagination (the Andante shows Nishizaki’s fine-spun tone to particularly good effect) delivered with crisply economical urgency that makes good musical sense even of the work’s plainer and less idiomatic passages.