Jurowski Stravinsky v3

This delightful disc of Viennese fluff contains some marvelous tunes, plenty of enticing waltz music, and heaps of what Gerard Hoffnung referred to in one memorable sketch as “flagellated cream”. The outstanding items are: Zigeunerfest, a ballet scene that doesn’t sound especially Gypsy-like (but who cares?); the extensive and really cute ballet music from the children’s play Peter and Paul in Schlaraffenland; A Tale from 1001 Nights that’s about as far from Rimsky-Korsakov as you can be while remaining on the same planet; the echt-Viennese Suite de Danse; and finally, an imaginatively scored if only marginally oriental-sounding Chinese Ballet Suite.

Franz Lehár was known as “the last waltz king”, so it’s not surprising that his works in the medium bear similarities to those of the Strausses, qualities most readily heard in the suave, luxuriously appointed Wild Roses (or “Valse Boston”). However, Lehár also was a strongly original voice whose harmonic and textural experiments resulted in the striking Debussyian whole-tone scales toward the end of Altwiener Liebeswalzer (“Old Vienna Love Waltz”), or the Wagnerian snarling horns at the start of the Grützner Waltz.

This is an operetta more in the vein of Offenbach's than in the later waltz-wallowing ones of Lehár. It has a wide variety of rhythms, all well paraded by Michail Jurowski. The Overture and the ensemble which Suppé called 'Orgy' have liveliness, verve and zest, and if that is tautological, they deserve the nouns…All is well recorded and very enjoyable.

No worldly commotion is heard in Heaven! All live in gentlest peace'. Such is the child-like innocence which permeates Mahler's Fourth Symphony, and yet beneath the surface there is more than meets the eye: an undercurrent of mysticism; a momentary glimpse behind the curtain at something timeless and unsettling. Star Russian soprano Sofia Fomina joins the London Philharmonic Orchestra and its Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski in this performance of Mahler's beguiling Symphony, recorded live at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall.

Georgian composer Giya Kancheli wrote seven symphonies between 1967 and 1986, all sharing an organic one-movement form. If his work has been in danger of losing its identity amid the tide of spiritually motivated music to come out of the ex-Soviet Union in recent years, these persuasive performances will set the record straight. Both are distinctly Russian in character: grave, ritualistic, shot through with religious symbols – pealing of bells and fragments of Georgian ‘church songs’ – long paragraphs punctuated by crude blasts, in the manner of Schnittke or Ustvolskaya, and brief flashes of caustic vulgarity – sudden jazz ‘wowing’ in the brass or a sinister quoting of a Bach invention. The Second rises gradually from an ascending four-note scale, richly suspended across the brass. Kancheli’s control of its sustained, circular development is extraordinary, moving from a gargantuan anticipation of the melody with its wistful, downturned coda to bright, dancing Stravinskian ostinatos in the wind and back again. The longer Seventh Symphony is conceived on a more conventional and grandiose scale. Suffused with Georgian folksong, its powerful rhetoric and hefty orchestration hark back to the world of Shostakovich, though veiled in a prayerful introspection peculiar to Kancheli.

Composed in 1783, Thrice Betrothed, Never Wed was the young Cherubini’s fifth opera and his first opera buffa. While it echoes its era—Paisiello, Cimarosa, Haydn, and early Mozart—it displays an almost Rossinian rhythmic bite and a few harmonic touches that look forward to the dramatic masterpieces of Cherubini’s Paris years (Lodoiska, Medée, Les deux journées, Anacréon, the C-Minor Requiem). Despite decades-long exploration of Cherubini, I have never encountered the opera before; this claims to be its first recording. The plot is filled with the expected inanities: disguises, mistaken identities, and Commedia dell’arte shenanigans.

The notes to this recording suggest that Ture Rangstrom's 2nd symphony, subtitled "My Land", is his least-played symphony because it speaks in a nationalistic language that is an anathema to Swedes. If true, it's too bad because this is a wonderful piece, full of northern, though not distinctly Swedish, atmosphere. Unlike the 1st symphony, which is written in a tense style full of Wagnerian chromaticism, the 2nd symphony limits itself to more diatonic harmony which makes it easier listening. Like his previous effort, Rangstrom builds his movements out of short themes (& chordal sequences), but his melodic inspiration is on a higher level here. That combined with his distinct ability to create atmosphere results in a memorable piece that really ought to occasionally replace Sibelius' first two symphonies in concert.