Dee j Brahms

Yury Markovich Kramarov (1929-1982), one of the best representatives of St. Petersburg viola school, the outstanding Russian musician and teacher, has contributed a great deal to the development of the national viola art. In 1952 Kramarov, still a student at the Conservatoire then, was invited to fill the post of the viola group concertmaster of the Leningrad Philharmonic Society orchestra. Simultaneously he started teaching at the Conservatoire. From that time on performing and pedagogical arts were constantly present in his creative life and complemented each other. From 1956 through 1963 he was the viola group concertmaster in the famous Mravinsky Orchestra. In 1957 the young musician won two important and convincing prizes at the All-Union and International competitions in Moscow. Being a brilliant soloist, having performed with best national orchestras and conductors (Ye. Mravinsky, N. Rakhlin, A. Yansons, K. Eliasberg), Kramarov nonetheless was always drawn towards chamber music. Such leading figures of the Russian performing arts as I. Braudo, M. Vaiman, B. Gutnikov, V. Liberman, M.Rostropovich played together with Kramarov. The musician performed with great enthusiasm in the quartets named after Taneev, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Glazunov.

Between the two great responsibilities of an artist, renewal and continuity, this recording certainly offers well-known pages, but under a lighting probably unprecedented: to our knowledge, these chorales of C. Franck and J. Brahms had indeed never found themselves side by side interlaced on the same album. Yet, even if many aspects oppose them, the common points between these two works are not lacking. Although it refers to very different realities, the similar title of "chorale" is the most obvious link.

Brahms often produced four-handed piano arrangements of his orchestral, vocal and chamber music, which made his works more easily available to the general public. The final volume of this highly acclaimed series features the monumental Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major which Brahms played through with the composer Ignaz Brüll in a two-piano arrangement prior to its première in Pest, 1881. Brahms also arranged works by his great friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, among them the dramatic Overture to Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Op. 7.

Superior historical music making by three masters of the genre. The sound is clear but typical of its period. The transfers (from 78RPM recordings) are really amazing.

Leopold Stokowski had a particular love for Falla's El Amor Brujo. In Oliver Daniel's biography of Stokowski (A Counterpoint of View), soprano Rose Bampton spoke of Stokowski working with her in preparation for a Philadelphia Orchestra concert, telling her the plot in such a "hair-raising" manner that she was left "white and shocked." Stokowski also selected El Amor Brujo for his return to the Philadelphia Orchestra after a 19 year hiatus in January 1959.

Kalinnikov - Symphony No.1 | Brahms - Symphonie Nr.1 (Czech Philharmonic Orchestra | Vienna State Opera Orchestra - Scherchen)
Classical | EAC | FLAC, IMG+CUE, LOG | Covers | 1CD, 387 MB
Label: Archipel | Catalog Number: ARPCD 0211 | TT: 79'50''

EMI brought out the Brahms Symphony in its Great Conductors of the Twentieth Century series where it joined some other famous Scherchen discs – notably Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, Haydn’s No. 100 in G and Stravinsky’s Firebird review. Scherchen’s live recording of the Kalinnikov with the Czech Philharmonic has formed part of Tahra’s Scherchen sets. So neither of these performances constitutes terra incognita for admirers of this conductor, who will know, only too well, that when Archipel claim that these 24 bit 96 kHz (whatever that is) restorations derive "from the original sources" the truth is nothing of the kind.

Steven John Isserlis is one of the leading internationally ranked cellists. He plays a wide range of repertory and is noted for using gut strings and a great deal of vibrato. He is the grandson of Russian composer and pianist Julius Isserlis and can trace his family tree back to connections with both Karl Marx and Felix Mendelssohn. He spent most of his teenage years (1969-1976) at the International Cello Centre as a pupil of Jane Cowan,who required her students to read Goethe's Faust in order to understand Beethoven better and memorize Racine to know the sound of the language when playing French music.