Shostakovich Edition

Decca’s first FFRR concerto recording available for the first time: Eileen Joyce / Tchaikovsky 2nd Piano Concerto – never released on 78rpm and long thought lost, the test pressings were recently found at the International Piano Archives in Maryland.

Gabor Szabo, who always had an original sound on the guitar (displaying his Hungarian heritage), is backed by a string section, horns and a rhythm section (including bassist Ron Carter and either Billy Cobham or Jack DeJohnette on drums) on this Bob James production. For this program Szabo performs two originals, a pair of pop tunes and an adaptation of a Shostakovich classical concerto.

Sergiu Celibidache was one of the podium's great individualists whose idiosyncratic interpretations drive listeners either to scorn or to reverence. This compilation of broadcasts made during his Swedish years provides material for both views, though most listeners should come away awed by "Celi" at his best. The Sibelius Fifth, for example, is a great performance, incredibly intense within a spacious framework of epic grandeur. The Sibelius Second, while on a less exalted level, is painted on a similarly broad canvas with playing of remarkable concentration and power. The Hindemith, too, is outstanding, Celibidache probing depths few other conductors find in the work… –Dan Davis

The conciliatory message of Weinberg’s Sixth Symphony recurs in his Requiem op. 96. It was composed between 1965 and 1967, surely as a response to Benjamin Britten’s famous War Requiem of 1962, which had been warmly recommended to him by his friend Shostakovich. Both works are fraught with deep emotion and unrestrained outrage at the horrors of war. Requiems of this sort did not, of course, have a liturgical function in the Soviet Union, where the Orthodox faith had been supplanted by faith in the State. Instead, such laments were …….

La Bruchollerie was born in Paris. She came from a family of musicians, both François-Adrien Boieldieu and André Messager being among her ancestors. At the age of 7 she entered the class of Isidor Philipp (a friend of her parents) at the Paris Conservatoire, which she left in 1928 with a first prize. After that she was a pupil of Alfred Cortot in Paris, of Emil von Sauer in Vienna and of Raoul von Koczalski in Berlin. A concert she gave in 1932 under the baton of Charles Münch brought her breakthrough as a pianist. Between 1936 und 1938 she went on to take part in more piano competitions, above all in the Chopin Competition of 1938 in Warsaw and the 1939 Brussels Competition.

On the eve of his centenary in 2018, Sony Classical releases the most important collection, Leonard Bernstein’s classic American Columbia recordings, remastered from their original 2- and multi-track analogue tapes. This has allowed for the creation of a natural balance (for example, between the orchestra and solo instruments) that brings the quality of these half-century-old recordings, excellent for their time, up to the standards of today’s audiophiles. In addition, there has been a meticulous restoration of some earlier masterings in which LP surface noise was too rigorously eliminated at the expense of the original brilliance.

On the eve of his centenary in 2018, Sony Classical releases the most important collection, Leonard Bernstein’s classic American Columbia recordings, remastered from their original 2- and multi-track analogue tapes. This has allowed for the creation of a natural balance (for example, between the orchestra and solo instruments) that brings the quality of these half-century-old recordings, excellent for their time, up to the standards of today’s audiophiles. In addition, there has been a meticulous restoration of some earlier masterings in which LP surface noise was too rigorously eliminated at the expense of the original brilliance.