Though the booklet-note writer declares that between Stravinsky and Shostakovich there is a “disparity in the conception of musical art which could not be greater”, they actually share qualities that make this a fascinating record. One is the love of dance rhythms.

It is obvious in the use of some of Tchaikovsky's songs and piano pieces for Stravinsky's Divertimento based on his ballet The Fairy's Kiss, and it is again strongly present in the klezmer-like Allegretto of Shostakovich's powerful Sonata; all seized upon with great brio here, as they need to be. There is also the invocation of earlier composers, with Stravinsky's exuberant Tchaikovsky transformations and with Shostakovich's profound homages to Bach.

Ingolfsson and Stoupel draw the Bach inspiration out in the deceptively straightforward opening Andante and in the long Largo finale to Shostakovich's Sonata, a marvelous, haunting piece of extended musical thought which is handled with superb control. There is also a less readily identifiable but very Russian sense of energy in the more vigorous dance music, which can seem to be on the verge of breaking out of control, especially in the Shostakovich's central movement. Both composers also respond to the inspiration of bell sounds, something again very Russian and vividly invoked here.

These are both strong, perceptive performances, recorded closely and lucidly, in which the complicated ambiguities in the music of both composers take hold powerfully below the sometimes jaunty surface.

Our next recital, Shostakovich and Stravinsky with Judith Ingolfsson and Vladimir Stoupel, is an unusual combination. It is a brave thing to put the two works together, but it is really illuminating. I think the ambiguity of both works comes through by putting them next to each other. What I love about Judith Ingolfsson is that she has this really sensual penetrating tone, and it brings out the Tchaikovsky behind the Stravinsky in the Divertimento, which is based on the ballet “Le baiser de la fée”. She brings Tchaikovsky back to life with this very sensual approach and it works fantastically. So many people treat Stravinsky performances rather cool and dry, but she goes the opposite way and it really pays dividends…

[Stravinsky Divertimento, Sinfonia excerpt]

They found the right combination – it is light and witty, but there is still that darkness and weight to it as well. There is a very strong sense of powerful personalities coming through. They play the very witty and sparkly “pas de deux” with aplomb, but there is a real edge to their playing. That edge comes out in the Shostakovich – I really feel that they have these reserves to draw on which you need with Shostakovich. The dark undertones in this piece are not hidden at all. It is brooding, and it has got anguish. It is a great big structure as well. They go down into the depths of this piece and they get that great spiral structure very beautifully worked out in the last movement. We are going to hear from that slow final movement an excerpt where the violin starts with that very veiled vulnerable sound and then moves up a gear into something very intense.

[Shostakovich Sonata, excerpt from the 3rd movement]

This really is a “take no prisoners” approach – the way they build to that climax. They have a very real, dark, Russian feel to this piece and there is a compelling sense of an unfolding narrative. I was very convinced by this – the unity of the structure they really achieved – that, they realized that beautifully. It is incredibly impressive and it is a great combination with the Stravinsky.

Neun CDs umfasst die Box "The RIAS Bach Cantatas Project". Sie ist nicht nur ein musikalisches Ereignis, sondern veranschaulicht zugleich den kulturellen Wiederaufbau in Deutschland nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg.

Der Dirigent Karl Ristenpart leitete ab 1946 den RIAS Kammerchor und das RIAS Kammerorchester. Gemeinsam mit vielen Solisten, darunter die Sopranistin Agnes Giebel und der junge Baritonsänger Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, wurden 29 Kantaten aufgenommen. Für die Erstveröffentlichung der RIAS-Bach-Kantaten-Edition wurden die Originalbänder aus dem RIAS-Archiv verwendet, die in der Zeit zwischen 1949 und 1952 entstanden.

Die Einschätzungen unserer Musikkritikerin:

Die Einspielung aller erhaltenen und rekonstruierten Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs als Gesamtedition der Öffentlichkeit vorzulegen wäre nicht nur ein spektakuläres Unternehmen, sondern wahrscheinlich auch eine Lebensaufgabe.

Es handelt sich dabei um mehr als 200 Vokalwerke, die Bach's Biographie, seine kompositorische Entwicklung und Auseinandersetzung mit theologischen wie weltlichen Themen von Beginn an widerspiegeln. Karl Ristenpart hat sich als Leiter des RIAS-Kammerorchesters- und Chores an dieses Großprojekt gewagt und 1947 mit den ersten Aufnahmen begonnen.

"Nur" 29 Kantaten wurden letztlich realisiert; dokumentieren aber auf ganz eindrucksvoller Weise, wie nahe sie mit ihrer Interpretation bereits der heute gängigen Bach'schen Aufführungspraxis kamen.

The Ice Maiden by Hans Christian Andersen served as the storyline fodder for...

Wer in den sechziger und siebziger Jahren in Deutschland Lieder von Schubert und Schumann sang, kam an Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau nicht vorbei. Alle Sänger hatten es schwer, neben ihm zu bestehen, vor allem aber natürlich die mit derselben Stimmlage. Und doch warf ausgerechnet ein amerikanischer Bariton dem großen Fischer-Dieskau den Fehdehandschuh hin – Barry McDaniel. Jetzt dokumentiert ein Doppelalbum von audite die Liedkunst von McDaniel umfassend – in Zusammenarbeit übrigens mit dem rbb, der Aufnahmen aus seinem Archiv zur Verfügung stellte.

As far as romantic composers named Franck are concerned, France may have...

Ce concert donné en juin 1950 au Titania-Palast de Berlin-Steglitz nous ramène à une époque peuplée de fantômes. Très actif à Berlin avant, pendant et après la République de Weimar, Leo Blech etait l'un des chefs les plus admirés de son temps, y compris par ses pairs. Contraint à l'émigration en 1937 (il avait été jusque-Ià«protégé» par Goering au Staats-Theater Unter den Linden), ce musicien juif fut un des rares proscrits à désirer revenir officiellement dans un Berlin ravagé et démembré – le théâtre Unter den Linden se trouvait désormais en zone communiste. Pourtant, ce qui s'impose ici porte un nom: la liberté. Liberté grisante du chant, du phrasé, des respirations, chez Blech comme chez Julian von Karolyi (1914-1993), dans Chopin comme dans Schubert.

Les variations souvent considérables de tempo sont frappantes – curieusement, Wolfgang Rathert n'en souffle mot dans son superbe texte de présentation. Cela ne surprend pas, génération oblige, chez ce chopinien patenté qu'était Karolyi : doigts agiles, timbre et couleurs très vifs, articulation et ornementation subtiles, narration riche de multiples nuances (une gravure de studio du meme Opus 21) existe chez Emi-Electrola, avec le Philharmonique de Berlin dirigé par Schüchter, mais cherchez aussi ses témoignages DG, Emi, Melodram, Arkadia...).

Certains s'étonneront de cette liberté. Qu'ils écoutent alors la 9e de Schubert, où Blech enchaîne les changements de tempo – qu'il ralentisse ou qu'il accélère! – en lien avec la dramatisation des contrastes, parfois jusqu'à l'emphase... Compositeur d'opéras à succès (Das war Ich, Aschenbrödel, Versiegelt...), il s'approprie le texte sans lui ôter sa clarté. Le résultat? Une lecture espressivo surprenante mais lumineuse, qui échappe et séduit tout à la fois. Ce que Karolyi réalisait si bien dans le Concerto en fa mineur, Blech le prolonge dans ce Schubert qui nous dit certainement encore quelque chose des modes d'interprétations du XIXe•siècle – quasi trentenaire en 1900, il était un musicien d'avant la Sachlichkeit (Objectivité), fût-elle ou non Neue. Peu importe alors les faiblesses contingentes, les pailles instrumentals çà ou là. Dans ce moment d'Histoire, tout vit, chante, progresse avec une spontanéité contagieuse. Les deux témoignages avaient existé séparément en CD (Melodram, Hunt, Archipel...), mais le remastering d'Audite est une nouvelle fois hors concours, bien sûr.

Die Erstveröffentlichungen von Liedaufnahmen mit Barry McDaniel belegen eindrucksvoll, dass der amerikanische Bariton entgegen der medialen Wahrnehmung, die ihn zu Unrecht meist im Schatten des fünf Jahre älteren Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sah, zu den herausragenden Sängern der Nachkriegszeit gehörte. Seine Interpretationen zeichnen sich durch die Verschränkung von Wissen und Naivität, von Gefühl und Gestaltung, von Ausdruck und Gesangskultur aus. „Was immer ich singe, ich muss daran glauben.“ Genauso klingen die Aufnahmen.

The album title given in the above headnote is a bit confusing. Volume 2 suggests this is a second release of Baroque organ works by composers of a South German school, while the only companion disc I find listed is titled “Bach and the North German Tradition,” which, by the way, does not appear to have been reviewed here. So, this then would appear to be not a second volume of organ works by South German composers, but a second volume of organ works by German composers, the first of which features, along with Bach, North Germans Buxtehude and Böhm.

This is primarily a disc of organ music, but according to Martin Neu’s informative booklet note, Pachelbel’s fugues to the Magnificat were composed as organ versets for a Vespers service in which the Magnificat’s verses were performed alternately by the cantor and the organ. The present recording offers a more or less—in reality, less than more—realization of such a performance, calling upon tenor Wilfried Rombach to chant or intone the alternating verses. I say “less than more” because a 1651 description of the procedure by Sigismund Theophil Staden, organist at the Nuremberg Church of St. Lorenz, gives an account in which a choir of boys was also involved in alternating with the organ and cantor.

On the disc, Bach’s Fugue on the Magnificat comes at the end of Pachelbel’s work, taking the position of the “Gloria Patri,” so it too features a bit of chanting by Rombach. Why Pachelbel didn’t provide for this last verse himself is not explained by Neu, but I gather that he decided Bach’s fugue made a fitting conclusion and simply tacked it onto the end. There’s no indication of any actual connection between Pachelbel’s Magnificat and Bach’s fugue.

The rest of the program is pretty standard Baroque organ fare. Muffat’s Toccata sexta is the sixth number in a set of 12 toccatas composed and collected under the title of Apparatus musico-organisticus. Johann Caspar Kerll (1627–1693) is represented by one of his surviving keyboard works, the Toccata I. Today, Kerll is recognized mainly as a composer of organ music and an important forerunner of Bach, but much of his music, including 11 operas and many of his vocal works, are lost.

Johann Jakob Froberger (1616–1667) was regarded in his day as Germany’s leading keyboard virtuoso, organist, and a composer whose influence extended far and wide. Generally credited with being the father of the keyboard suite, he is represented on the current disc by his Capriccio XII.

The Bach works are familiar, the Trio Sonata in C Major, being No. 5 from his set of six trio sonatas for organ, BWV 525–530. The Toccata and Fugue in F Major, BWV 540, may not have reached the staggering number of recordings—some 300!—of the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565, but with over 50 of its own it hasn’t gone begging. Neu splits the toccata and the fugue apart, presenting the toccata on the first track of the disc and the fugue on the last.

Two different organs are used for the recording, and they’re both beauties. The Froberger and Kerll pieces are performed on the historic choir organ by Blasius Bernauer (1776) in Laufenburg, Switzerland, while the remaining works are played on the new Metzler organ (2005) in Stuttgart-Obertürkheim. Specifications for each instrument are given in the booklet.

The recording is nothing short of magnificent, and Martin Neu demonstrates more than ample technique and musical intelligence in the application of his organs’ stops and registrations. I must make note, however, of just one issue regarding the accompanying booklet, and it’s something I’ve mentioned once or twice in the past, though I don’t recall if it was in connection with this particular label. The booklet’s paper has been treated with some chemical that stinks to high heaven. It’s probably not toxic to inhale, but if you’ve ever experienced the odor emanating from a mill that processes wood pulp for paper products, you’ll know the sickening smell I’m describing. Setting the booklet business aside—and I mean as far aside as possible—Neu’s Audite SACD is strongly recommended for excellent playing and superior recording.

Ab 1946 baute Karl Ristenpart die Chor- und Orchesterabteilung des RIAS in...