Brahms: Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80

Christopher Herrick’s enduring Organ Fireworks series on Hyperion is one of the most comprehensive and popular collections of repertoire in existence. For this twelfth volume he turns to the great organ of Haderslev Cathedral in Denmark, and performs a fascinating range of works with his usual triumphal panache.

A number of these pieces have a Danish connection, including two spirited works by Buxtehude who probably grew up in Denmark, and Tre Tonestykker by Niels Wilhelm Gade, a native of Copenhagen who was admired by Mendelssohn.

The third of Dupré’s Trois Préludes et Fugues is among the best-known and most popular of his works, notwithstanding its fearful technical difficulties. The final page, in which the notes hurtle towards the magnificent final cadence, places this among the most memorable of all fugues for organ.

The Czech composer Petr Eben (1929–2007) is represented by his Hommage à Buxtehude.

Considered by many to be Grumiaux's best recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto, this performance, by turn tender and muscular, receives its first international release on CD. The Concertgebouw is in glorious form under Van Beinum and Aafje Heynis is an amber-toned soloist in the inspiring Alto Rhapsody.

These American Columbia recordings have been mastered from the original metals and lacquers and offer some amazing sound quality for recordings from 1940-1942. The contrast between Toscanini and Barbirolli was symbolic of the contrast between two generations of conductors and the altering role of conductors. Toscanini was the supreme autocrat of the old school, ruling by terror, insult, tantrums and his own daemonic drive. Barbirolli, over thirty years younger, was the benevolent autocrat, more democratic, ruling through comradeship with his players, inviting them and the audience to share his own delight in music. The contrast in their philosophy was reflected in their interpretations: Toscanini inspired awe for the music he conducted; Barbirolli inspired love and affection. Their different approaches are crystallized in their respective recordings of Verdi’s Otello and Requiem: the older man relentless, electric, dramatic in the extreme, incomparably exciting; the younger broader, with more humanity, many felicitous touches of detail, and caressing the phrases like a lover.

Both are valid interpretations, both are true to the spirit of the music, both reveal different aspects of Verdi’s and of their own genius. It is overlooked that Barbirolli not only succeeded Toscanini in New York: that would have soon been accomplished, a nineday wonder. For seven years he conducted almost alongside him, the one in Carnegie hall, the other in the NBC studio. Of course, Barbirolli was not then the great conductor he was to become, for most conductors improve with age, but recordings (commercial and off-air) show that he was very good and that the orchestra had a rich and sensitive sound. (He himself confessed in his last years that he ‘sometimes smiled’ at the recollection of his younger interpretations; he constantly re-studied even the most familiar symphonies.)

Massimo Nosetti once again proves why he is regarded as one of the foremost musicians in his field. This sonic spectacular is played with all the technical brilliance and assured musicianship we have come to expect of him. He performs on the Great Organ of Messina Cathedral, the third largest in Europe.