Raff Bamert

Dohnányi's penchant for quality musical entertainment bore popular fruit with his perennially fresh Variations on a Nursery Theme. Howard Shelley's performance is a model of wit and style, blending in with the orchestra whenever the moment seems right and employing an ideal brand of rubato. Bamert's conducting is properly portentous in the Introduction and charming elsewhere, whether in the musicbox delights of the fifth variation, the animated bustle of the sixth or the seventh's novel scoring (plenty for the bassoons and bass drum).

Another superb addition to Matthias Bamert's splendid series of recordings with the BBC Philharmonic of the orchestral music of Ernst von Dohnányi, this 2004 disc brings together three concerted works from the composer's early years in Tallahassee, FL. But although they were composed between 1946 and 1952, the Piano Concerto No. 2, the Violin Concerton No. 2, and the Concertino for harp and chamber orchestra all sound as if they could have been written between 1896 and 1914 in Budapest, Hungary: although war and fascism had driven Dohnányi from his place and time, it did not drive from him his place and time. Indeed, the works on this disc are just as tuneful and romantic as Dohnányi's earlier works and anyone who enjoyed them will enjoy these.

This is the best version I have come across. John Field is a forgotten composer who deserves to be listened to. He was the first to exploit the full tonal qualities of the pianoforte and introduced European "classical" music to Russia. He taught Glinka and is regarded by some as the father of Russian music.

At a time when Schoenberg and Stravinsky were thought of as opposite poles, Roberto Gerhard was combining the density of the one with the dynamism of the other in a wholly personal synthesis. You can hear this in the Piano Concerto's mood swings from the dark and brooding to, in the finale, a Spanish take-off that Chabrier would have thought off the wall. Gerhard's 1960s music is in-your-face modernism that holds you in its grasp, embracing sound with an enthusiasm that remains inspirational today. Listen to the tape part of the Third Symphony–a cut-and-paste job that trounces most of the computer-music generation in its imagination and feeling for what's possible. Epithalamion features material originally intended for, of all things, Lindsay Anderson's film This Sporting Life. Not that its impact is any less than coherent; the percussion writing alone has a fantasy that will keep you entranced. Well prepared performances, superbly recorded. This is still music of the future.

This is a reissue of the 1993 Chandos recording which was welcomed by Michael Oliver, who heard Prokofiev in the background of the solo piano concertos. The first version of No 1 (1939) was for strings and percussion but three years later Rawsthorne rescored it for full orchestra and in that form the work became popular. The whirligig semiquavers in the fast movements create a scherzo atmosphere and the last movement is a tarantella. In between comes a grave chaconne full of Rawsthorne’s fingerprints.

Franz Krommer (1759-1831) was a prolific and very good composer, whose music is now being resuscitated with great and deserved success. It was difficult to be a composer in Vienna at the same time as Beethoven and Schubert, and most of their contemporaries have not survived the pressure. But Krommer managed to retain his personality and originality, becoming the last official director of chamber music and court composer to the Habsburg court under the conservative Emperor Francis I. The first of the two symphonies was published in 1803. Among its many interesting features is a haunting litde trio in the form of a waltz. The second work is much later, with four horns and three trombones, and is in C minor, but ending in the major. In both works, Krommer's knowledge of, and predilection for, the wind instruments is notable. The two works were well worth recording, especially with such felicitous performances and bright, pleasing recorded sound.

Matthias Bamert’s Contemporaries of Mozart project is one of Chandos’ longest-running and most successful recording series. Mozart’s unquestionable genius has tended to eclipse the work of many otherwise excellent composers who were writing at the same time as he. Often successful in their day, many of these composers fell into neglect over subsequent decades and were in some cases almost forgotten. Matthias Bamert has shown just how rich this area of the repertoire is, and each of his CDs received superb critical acclaim.

Chandos’ first disc of orchestral music by Cornelis Dopper was very enjoyable, but this is better still. The Third Symphony, subtitled “Rembrandt” (apparently for no particular reason), enjoys the virtue of brevity. Composed in 1904/05, its opening may remind listeners of Elgar, and it’s every bit as good: stately, a bit foursquare, rich strings backed by harp. However, once the allegro gets going there’s no looking back as Bamert and his orchestra attack the music with unbridled gusto. The Andante features some gorgeous writing for solo winds backed by harp; the scherzo is an earthy sort of country dance; and the finale, though it ends triumphantly, spends most of its time exploring surprisingly delicate, nocturnal moods, with particularly Romantic soft brass fanfares echoing through the texture. It’s all over in 29 very pleasant minutes.

The Dutch are way too hard on themselves. So far, Chandos has released three discs (including this one) in its ongoing Dutch composers series featuring the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, and all three have been excellent. And yet, the writer of the booklet notes treats this music as if listening to it were some kind of penance. He should take a lesson from his English colleagues, who indiscriminately promote any piece of native trash as God’s gift to the world of music. Well, maybe he needn’t go quite that far.

Richard Hol (1824-1904) was a leading figure in Dutch music during the 19th century. The son of an Amsterdam milkman, he graduated from the Royal Music School in 1844 and went on to become a nationally famous composer, conductor, organist, pianist, and teacher. Hol composed a large body of choral and vocal music, an opera, and a comparatively small number of orchestral works, including four symphonies. Both symphonies on this disc bear the influence of mid-19th-century German composers (particularly Schumann and Mendelssohn), but Hol’s own voice is readily discernible.