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See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite
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| |  | Bernstein conducts Gershwin & Ives
Introduction: Bernstein on Ives' Symphony No. 2 Recording Place & Date: Royal Albert Hall, London, June 1976 (American in Paris, Rhapsody in Blue, Unanswered Question) Congress Hall of the Deutsche Museum, Munich, June 1987 (Symphony no. 2) “An indispensable DVD. To watch Bernstein conduct these supreme masterpieces of American music is a joy and a privilege in itself...there is an authentically spontaneous command of idiom here; Bernstein is both a superb soloist and conductor in the Rhapsody and the New Yorkers respond in a proprietorial way.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Tchaikovsky - Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5
Recording Place & Date: Avery Fisher Hall, New York, April 1975 (Symphony no. 4, Violin Concerto, Andante Cantabile) Tanglewood, July 1974 ( Symphony no. 5) | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Leighton - Orchestral Works Volume 2
Richard Hickox conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the second volume of Leighton’s orchestral works. BBC Music Magazine wrote of volume 1, “Hickox directs superbly paced and eloquent performances of this fine music.” Volume 2 presents two large-scale orchestral works, Symphony No.2 ‘Sinfonia Mistica’, which receives its first recording; coupled with Te Deum Laudamus in its orchestrated version. One of the most successful British composers of the latter half of the twentieth century, Kenneth Leighton’s lifelong musical relationship with the human voice, exemplified in the two works of this recording, began as a chorister in the choir of Wakefield Cathedral as a young boy. It was to impact greatly on his writing. Over the course of his life he wrote almost continually for the voice, absorbing vocal lines in all settings. It provided an excellent vehicle for some of his most lyrical and expressive writing. Leighton wrote three numbered symphonies. Symphony No.2 was composed in 1974 as a direct response to the death of his mother, and Leighton referred to the work as a ‘meditation on the subject of death.’ Composed over six movements and approaching an hour in length Sinfonia Mistica contains some of Leighton’s most personal and reactionary music, being at various times angry and emotional, yet serene and thoughtful. While he describes the symphony as a ‘requiem’ the conventional texts for this service are not employed, instead he used texts by John Donne, George Herbert and Henry King, poets who have been a constant source of inspiration to British composers. The original setting of Te Deum was written for choir and organ, but two years after its completion, Leighton received a request from the Oxford Bach Choir for an orchestral version of the work, which was completed in 1966. Scored for chorus and full orchestra it is an imaginative setting of what is a liturgical text of praise, and written in honour of St Cecilia. This climatic work contains some of Leighton’s most enduring and significant music. Chandos has received widespread appreciation for embarking on this revelatory new orchestral series. Volume 3 will be released in spring 2009. “Sarah Fox sings with refulgent tone, commendable accuracy and shining intelligence; and Richard Hickox rallies the BBC Welsh forces to the same dizzy heights that marked out the previous volume in this series… as one of the best discs of 2008.” Gramophone Magazine, January 2009 “Despite its monumental aspect the Sinfonia mistica is essentially a personal, intimate work, and it gets a moving performance here, Richard Hickox judging to a nicety the various movements' complex succession of tempos, and their ebb and flow of intensity. Sarah Fox is a pure-voiced, poignant soloist, and the BBC National Chorus of Wales sound very confident, as if this was a repertoire standard for them.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2009 ***** “Composed during 1973-74 in direct response to the death of his mother, Leighton's Sinfoniamistica is scored for soprano, chorus and orchestra.
Described by its creator as 'a requiem or a meditation on the subject of death which usually becomes so more real to us in the second half of life', the symphony has six movements and sets texts by such great metaphysical poets as John Donne, Thomas Traherne and George Herbert, while also making telling use of the 1865 American hymn tune The Shining River. The linked 'Meditation' and 'Elegy' at the work's heart manifest an especially potent beauty, serenity and compassion, but, truth to tell, inspiration soars consistently high in this cogently wrought and (above all) profoundly humane utterance. This is music which will amply repay repeated listening. The orchestral version of the glorious 1964 Te Deum laudamus makes a rewarding postscript.
Both performances are beyond reproach.
Sarah Fox sings with refulgent tone, commendable accuracy and shining intelligence; and Richard Hickox rallies the BBC Welsh forces to same dizzy heights. Outstandingly vivid sound, too, with a perfectly judged balance throughout.
Miss at your peril.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 “This is a hauntingly compelling recording of some of Kenneth Leighton's most inspired music...The orchestra and chorus were inspired to great heights in this recording, and the sound itself is of demonstration quality.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition | | | (also available to download from $10.75) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Beethoven - Symphony No. 4
The concert which Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic gave in London’s Royal Festival Hall on the evening of Saturday 27 April 1985 was their first in England for four years. In May 1981 they had played Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony in the Royal Festival Hall and given an unforgettable concert of music by Bach, Mozart and Richard Strauss in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre. London had not been included in the orchestra’s itinerary in its centenary year in 1982 and for much of 1983-84 Karajan and the orchestra had barely been on speaking terms. Since the centenary year had been something of a high water mark in this hitherto sensationally successful 27-year partnership, the breakdown in relations came as something of a shock to the musical world. There were times in 1984 when it looked as if the two parties would go their separate ways; finally, a reconciliation was effected in the late summer of that year ahead of a scheduled tour of Japan and South Korea. The Krach was ostensibly over the appointment of a new clarinettist but there were other factors too, not least Karajan’s advancing years and stirrings among a contingent of mainly younger players keen to assert their independence and exploit the financial strength which the orchestra’s sky-high reputation now conferred on them. Throughout his life, Karajan had been noted for his extraordinary mental and physical prowess. Now in his mid-70s, he was troubled by a painful and ultimately irreversible spinal condition that had nearly cost him his life in the winter of 1975-76. He had soldiered on but even his energies were finite. In April 1985, he had invited Klaus Tennstedt to share the conducting burden at the Salzburg Easter Festival. ‘It was good to have Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, happily reunited after a prolonged disagreement, pay their first visit to the Festival Hall – an event said to have caused prices of black market tickets to reach astronomical heights,’ wrote Peter Stadlen in the Daily Telegraph. The audience was clearly shocked to see how frail Karajan had become as he edged towards the rostrum. (He himself likened his experience of walking unaided in his later years to stepping on sheet ice.) The Times reported a slight stumble in the advance, at which point ‘the applause hiccupped in a breathless unison’. Yet once settled on the podium, Karajan was, as ever, fully in control, master of all he surveyed. Extract from the booklet note © Richard Osborne, 2008 “For anyone lucky enough to have secured a ticket few orchestral concerts have remained so vividly in the memory as the one given by Karajan's incomparable Berlin Philharmonic in London's Royal Festival Hall on April 27, 1985.
The surprises began with the conductor's own physical frailty. Edging unsteadily towards the rostrum and propping himself up against the railing, he adopted the peculiar posture that enabled him to remain upright and in command notwithstanding a debilitating spinal condition.
In truth the Beethoven was and is a gift to his many detractors. With the maestro unwilling or unable to lift his arms, the band turns in its patented imitation of a gramophone record. Surfaces are immaculate but it's like being trapped in a pudding without air in the texture. Phrases, even whole sections glide by with no intake of breath and the first two movements in particular may induce feelings of claustrophobia in younger listeners. They should persevere.
No superlatives can convey the inevitability, conviction and sweep of Karajan's Heldenleben which makes even this notoriously shrill-sounding venue resound in glory. The original BBC sound team of producer Misha Donat and balance engineer John McCulloch capture a paradoxical sonority, rich yet transparent, 'lambent in its beauty, never cloying or opaque' as described by Richard Osborne in his characteristically generous booklet-notes. The battle scene may be slow but was it ever more incisively chronicled? The Strauss at least is indispensable.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 “Karajan's Beethoven Fourth was recorded when the Berlin Philharmonic came to London in 1985. Its excellent speaks for itself and the coupling is equally memorable.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Joshua Bell plays Vivaldi's Four Seasons
As an exclusive Sony Classical artist, Joshua Bell has released a series of albums to critical and popular acclaim. Known both for his riveting artistry and his daring choice of repertoire and collaborators, Bell is no less innovative in the way he reinvigorates Vivaldi’s perennial favourite. Bell explains his take on Vivaldi’s classic: “You will never hear two versions of The Four Seasons that are alike, which is why I think there is always room for another view of the piece. My version is very personal.”Widely considered one of the premiere violinists of his generation, Bell is joined on this studio release by the celebrated musicians of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, who toured the work with him prior to the recording sessions. This recording of The Four Seasons is coupled with another masterpiece of Baroque virtuosity, Giuseppe Tartini’s The Devil’s Trill Sonata. “…Bell has the lightness and quickness of Mercury in passagework, and a smooth and sweet lyricism no less divine in the slower sections. …he is well matched by the ASMF, their sound ample and softly comfortable yet clean and clear.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2008 “If you like your Baroque music with a Romantic gloss, this will be for you.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2008 *** “A big-name violinist, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, John Constable tinkling away on a ten-ton Goble – this Seasons is a bit like returning to old times. Any Vivaldi-lover will have these iconic concertos in their collection already, probably several times over, but the merest glance at the packaging of this one will tell you that it is not aimed at them anyway. So what will the 'I want a Four Seasons but by somebody I've heard of' clientele get for their money? Well, mighty fine playing for certain: Bell has the lightness and quickness of Mercury in passagework, and a smooth and sweet lyricism no less divine in the slower sections. Not a single ugly noise emanates from his instrument, and he is well matched by the ASMF, their sound ample and softly comfortable yet clean and clear. It is doubtful if you will ever hear a more purely beautifully rapt ensemble rendition of the slow movement from Spring, for instance.
What is missing amid all this high-class musicianship is the inventive spark of excitement these pieces can provoke in so many players, especially through its descriptive elements. All right, not everyone has to give themselves over entirely to being dying stags, drunken peasants or barking dogs, but these performances would surely benefit from the greater rhythmic and dynamic flexibility a bit more pictorial imagining could bring.
The fill-up is a thoughtful choice, however; Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata, adroitly played with extra-romantic, stratospheric cadenza, as if to Bell the Devil were ne'er a foe.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Tchaikovsky: Souvenir Russe
Latvian violinist Baiba Skride proffers a collection of works for violin and orchestra by Tchaikovsky, the composer for which she feels the greatest affinity. Featuring the Violin Concerto, the album also includes Skride's interpretation of Tchaikovsky's triptych Souvenir d'un lieu cher, Op.42 in this rarely-heard version for violin and orchestra. She completes her musical souvenir album of the great Russian composer with two pieces from Swan Lake “To subdue the inevitable scepticism as to whether yet another version of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto is really necessary, Nelsons responds with an orchestral canvas that is full of drama, lively with nuance and injected with bravura and also with sensitivity. His fellow Latvian, Baiba Skride, similarly rejects any ideas about just digging over old ground, and her interpretation, at once maturely considered and spontaneous, has a freshness and vivacity.” The Telegraph, 17th May 2008 (on Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto) “A natural musicaon to the ends of her fingertips.” Classic FM Magazine “Baiba Skride is arguable the most exciting violin talent to have emerged since Elisabeth Batiashvilli a few years back… she weaves her way through the Tchaikovsky as though she is unfolding a poetic narrative.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2008 **** “…the Tchaikovsky Concerto has rarely sounded more lyrical, more "feminine". The wintry colours of the slow movement are lovely, with Skride's many shades of pale elegantly dovetailed into flute and clarinet adornments.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2008 | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Bizet - L' Arlésienne Orchestral Suites(CD/Book)
Marc Minkowski, one of the most outstanding conductors of our time, has joined naïve for a long-term collaboration during which he will be surveying the music of Bach, Handel, Haydn and Mozart, among others. The first in this series of recordings features the works of Georges Bizet performed on instruments of the period. It brings an original approach to the music from two of his masterpieces, L’Arlésienne and Carmen. In 1872, Bizet composed the incidental music for Daudet’s theatre play L’Arlésienne. Following the huge success of this music, he composed a suite for orchestra based on the best pieces included in the original incidental music. In 1879, four years after Bizet’s death, his friend Guiraud arranged a new orchestral suite, mainly based on Bizet’s music, but also adding new quotes from the incidental music. In 2007 Marc Minkowski selected the best pieces from the original incidental music and conceived his own fascinating suite. The program is completed with the Prelude” and three “Entr’actes” form Carmen. “To hear Bizet played on period instruments, and in the hands of musicians steeped in the French repertoire, gives special pleasure...Iit is rare to hear the purely orchestral movements of Bizet’s operatic masterpiece delivered with such flair, colour and authentic flavour: Minkowski’s Musiciens give us a truly Mozartian approach, as the composer would have wished, to music all too often overlaid with anachronistic verismo dynamism. In the Girl from Arles music...the delicacy and brilliance of the playing evoke the unique Provençal atmosphere of Daudet’s play as vividly as the Carmen music depicts Spain. Minkowski catches to perfection the swagger and exhilaration of the famous Farandole [in both its settings]” Sunday Times, 25th May 2008 ***** “Minkowski has a ball with these suites, relishing their rich sonorities and glorious melodies, while at the same time investing them with a serious-minded sensitivity. The L’Arlésienne suites have rarely sounded so genuinely moving...The choral singing is splendid and the playing of Les Musiciens du Louvre alternates sparkle with delicacy of colour and feeling, while the recording and sumptuous packaging are first-class. This is now a clear first choice on virtually all counts for those wanting a disc combining music from Carmen and L'Arlésienne.” Gramophone Magazine “I find it hard to know what to praise most, the vivid, taut rhythms of the various marches and dances… the sensuous orchestral colours of the quieter moments, of the passion that suddenly erupts… in the L'Arlésienne overture.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2008 ***** “Couplings of the Carmen and L'Arlésienne suites have long been a favourite, and Minkowski's new disc has the best of all worlds in demonstrating a Beechamesque flair (the opening cymbal crash of the Carmen Suite is immediately arresting) and in including three suites from L'Arlésienne, their content well thought out and lovingly prepared. They consist of the familiar First Suite (as Bizet designed it), the Second, arranged after the composer's death by Ernest Guiraud, including the borrowed Menuet from La jolie fille de Perth, and a third suite of excerpts from the original score. The collection is a delight, not least because of the beautifully elegant orchestral playing.
Minkowski's choice of tempi and crisp pointing of the woodwind are admirable – in the first Entr'acte from Carmen, for instance, and the Minuet which follows. The Farandole too, is given a splendid lift by Minkowski's virtual double-dotting, while the flute solos in both Carmen and L'Arlésienne all have a delicious delicacy. There is much pleasure too, from the sensitive phrasing and the light and shade of the playing. L'Arlésienne's famous Adagietto is very affecting at the slower pacing, and it touchingly returns before the final reprise of the exuberant Farandole, heard first with men's voices and then full choir in imitation.
” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 “The orchestral playing is first-rate in every way, with an especially delicate contribution from the flutes...The Carmen Suite is vivaciously colourful and, throughout, the recording is of demonstration quality.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition  BBC Music Magazine
Orchestral Choice - June 2008 |
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| |  | Ives - The Three Orchestral Sets
The works on this recording focus on a singular genre created by a singular composer. The kind of piece Charles Ives called a ‘set’ is usually a larger work made by putting together independently-written smaller pieces. The First Orchestral Set, variously titled Three Places in New England and A New England Symphony, is one of Ives’s great tributes to his roots. Put together around 1913-14 from material going back years, it is typically Ivesian in that each movement has an underlying program. Like the other sets, the Second has a slow-fast-slow pattern and a visionary hymn-based finale. The unfinished Third Orchestral Set was the only set Ives planned as a whole from the beginning. It may stand as the most profound discovery of the many and ongoing efforts to reconstruct Ives’s incomplete works. This is its first complete performance and recording “Well recorded, idiomatic performances all round - a real Ives discovery.” Gramophone Magazine, October 2008 “James Sinclair leads excellent performances. The Malmo Symphony sounds comfortable in the American idiom, and the recording is spacious, sweet sounding in the strings…You should have the Naxos regardless of what other Ives recordings you have.” American Record Guide “This is a fascinating release that offers Ives's three Orchestral Sets for the first time. The curtain is raised with the first of them, ThreePlaces in New England, in its original version – this stands somewhere between the CountryBand March and the later, more familiar ThreePlaces. At this stage there's no piano part and the conflicting march rhythm in 'Putnam's Camp' is missing as well as its dissonant opening. Both the First and Second Sets are vintage Ives, with his unforgettable reaction to the sinking of the Lusitania that brought the US into the First World War at the end of the Second Set.
But the novelty here is the Third Set. The first two movements come from sketches edited by David Gray Porter. The opening Andante has a structure similar to Central Parkin the Dark with typical Ives chords and a texture building to a crisis with something left hanging softly at the end. The second movement is called 'During Camp Meetin' Week: One Secular Afternoon'. This again is Ives's idiosyncratic territory with lots of quotations including 'Columbia the Gem of the Ocean' twice and a four-part hymn about the Day of Judgement – not so secular after all? Completing works by Ives has become an industry that the composer would have welcomed.
The perhaps over-extended last movement of this Third Set, realised by Nors Josephson, at times sounds like Varèse, although it begins and ends softly. Well recorded, idiomatic performances all round – a real Ives discovery.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 | | | (also available to download from $6.00) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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| |  | Herbert von Karajan - 100th Anniversary Collection
Herbert von Karajan’s first cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies with the Philharmonia Orchestra on EMI has always been something of an ugly duckling when compared to the various Berlin Philharmonic incarnations on Deutsche Grammophon. Now reissued in a bargain 5 CD box, this is part of the truckload of Karajan 100th anniversary releases, which will no doubt raise controversy in some quarters and be welcomed in others. For me, if it’s nicely produced and cheaper than a box of quasi half-decent cigars then ‘bring it on’ as they say, and this box is certainly no slouch when it comes to presentation. | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
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