My first encounter with Cuban-born pianist Bolet was in lower Manhattan when I wandered into a recital. He quickly captured my admiration as he made light of passages I had struggled with for some time.

This handsomely produced recording takes us from Liszt’s two piano concertos (1971 & 1982) superbly caught in concert, to 1973 studio recordings of the three Petrarch Sonnets and Tannhauser Overture Paraphrase. All are in good quality stereo, and well worth owning.
The piano concertos, particularly the first, are emotionally indulgent (but never distorted) and quickly convince us as to Bolet’s manner and approach. Although he achieved some fame by providing the soundtrack for the 1960 Hollywood biography of Franz Liszt, “Song Without End” starring Dirk Bogarde, his own style—virtuosic, yet sophisticated—emerged in his recordings and performances. 11 years separate the two concerto recordings, and Concerto 2 is about as fine as you can get. The piano is slightly closer, with more detail emerging. I have no problems with the orchestra, now known as German Symphony Berlin.

The Petrarch pieces are brilliant in sound and execution, and the Tannhauser, designed to impress, does just that. True Liszt interpreters have that special ability to rise from the rhetoric while others fall prey to it. Bolet has the rare ability to leave us with our jaws open while caressing the phrases with gentle poetry.

A handsome photograph of the young Bolet looking much like the actor Zachary Scott adorns the cover. Several additional photographs accompany Wolfgang Rathert ’s always interesting notes.

[…] Another first release featuring a fêted maestro arrives via Audite as part of its Lucerne Festival series: Wilhelm Furtwängler conducts the Swiss Festival Orchestra in Schumann’s Manfred Overture—a dark, malleable performance that rages or relaxes according to the dictates of the moment. Schumann’s Symphony No 4 was also on this August 26, 1953, concert programme, and it’s fascinating to compare it with Furtwängler’s famous Berlin Philharmonic recording (DG) from a few weeks earlier. The overall timing is more or less identical, as is the interpretative approach, but the contrast between ‘studio’ and ‘live’ is at its most marked in the transition to the finale, where the Swiss performance—though comparatively raw in tone—generates more tension. The third work is Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, and here there are many Furtwängler-led alternatives, some darker-hued than this one, though few (if any) achieve such an overwhelming sense of release at the close of the first movement (from 14’13”). The transfers are superb.

The repertoire is all Liszt. Bolet was one of the finest of all Liszt players. Liszt was the composer who, as we have noted before, made his name internationally famous when he played for Dirk Bogarde in Song Without End (chosen, the booklet reminds us, in preference to the younger Van Cliburn). One’s spirits lift even before the ‘play’ button is pressed.
There are studio recordings of Bolet in the two concertos, both with David Zinman and an earlier one of No 1 with Robert Irving, but these Deutschlandradio recordings are live performances—and Bolet was always at his best in front of an audience. There may be flashier and speedier accounts of the E flat Concerto (recorded 1971) but few that are more powerful, magisterial and, ultimately, thrilling (Bolet whips up a storm in the final pages), even if the workaday Lawrence Foster is sometimes just behind the beat.
The A major Concerto elicits a similar response of noble magnificence, closer in tempos and character to von Sauer than de Greef (the only two Liszt pupils to have recorded both concertos), recorded in the same venue as the First Concerto but 11 years later and under the alert Edo de Waart.
The three Petrarch Sonnets provide an introspective interlude not markedly different from Bolet’s later account for Decca (6/84) in his recording of the second book of Années de pèlerinage. The Wagner/Liszt Tannhäuser Overture was one of Bolet’s specialities. This astonishing studio recording (RIAS Funkhaus, Berlin) was made in October 1973, three months after his RCA recording (not released until 2001) and four months before the unforgettable performance of February 1974 in the legendary Carnegie Hall recital that established him as one of the all-time greats. The command of structure, the judicious pacing and unleashing of those final torrential octaves under the main theme send shivers up the spine.

In two earlier reviews of recordings of Prokofiev’s Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, Daniel Morrison (Fanfare 40:1) and Peter Rabinowitz (16:4) make eloquent cases for the quality of this 1937 score. Both reviewers help us get past the off-putting text, most of it pure communist propaganda, including settings of speeches by Stalin. Both of my colleagues see the music as being similar in style to Alexander Nevsky. Try as I might, I simply cannot find similar value in this music. The brash martial character of the score, featuring enough percussion to crush an enemy squadron, lacks, to my ears, the variety and beauty that is found in Nevsky.

However, if you are persuaded by their advocacy, or if you wish to expand your collection of Prokofiev, this new release under Kirill Karabits, which has no other coupling, would not be the recording to get. Morrison reviewed a Cugate CD (006-2) that also contained two other politically inspired works by Prokofiev—A Toast (composed in 1939 for Stalin’s 60th birthday) and Cantata for the 30th Anniversary of the October Revolution from 1947. While Morrison was positive, and noted the logic of the couplings, as a performance he preferred Neeme Järvi’s Chandos (9095) recording, which includes excerpts from Prokofiev’s ballet The Stone Flower. I too admire the Järvi recording for its intensity and thrust.

A 41-minute disc (some 32 seconds represents applause) would be justified if there were something extraordinary about Karabits’s performance, but there isn’t. His approach is certainly dramatic and energetic, but it lacks the specificity of coloring found in Järvi’s performance, and Chandos’s recorded sound is superior as well. The sound here is overly resonant and a bit muddy. There are very helpful program notes, and full text and translation.

Our tradition has it that Shostakovich and Prokofiev wrote a lot of potboilers to appease Stalin at the time of the terrors. This is a rare opportunity to hear one of their “patriotic” works. Fascinating! It is indeed dreadful stuff, with a blasting brass band as well as full symphony orchestra and huge chorus; yet there is never a moment of doubt as to its composer. There are many suggestions of Alexander Nevsky, Lieutenant Kijé, and Romeo and Juliet; at one moment the percussion looks forward to the final measures of the Fifth Symphony. There is some superb choral writing—if one can disregard its bombastic accompaniment. But there are also words shouted as if over the radio, screaming choruses, and silly little military marches. What a hodgepodge! The texts (printed in transliterated Russian, English, and German) are taken from speeches and articles by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. It is just as well that we can understand little of it in this performance. One of the 10 movements, “Symphony,” is wordless; unfortunately it is of less interest than the music for much of the patriotic drivel.

How does one judge a performance of such stuff? The chorus shouts a lot, but that seems appropriate. The orchestra is rough, even when the brass band is silent. Overall, the performance does justice to the score. It’s also hard to evaluate the recorded sound of such music. I haven’t heard any of the several other recordings (Järvi, Kondrashin, Titov) and don’t want to. Recommended, I guess, to Prokofiev completists.

As a celebration of noise, Prokofiev’s Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution can be enjoyed; it’s a kind of über film score to a movie that doesn’t exist. There are harmless examples of glorified patriotism like Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory (a huge success and money-earner for him) and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, written decades after the war. But propagandistic rum-tum from the Soviet era is darker. Like Shostakovich’s Song of the Forests, a grand cantata celebrating Stalin’s heroic accomplishments in dam-building, a fervent performance of Prokofiev’s 1937 commemoration of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution—an event so glorious that the composer immediately ran westward as fast he could to get away—can raise the score above hackwork. It’s baffling to me why conductors on the order of Valery Gergiev (on YouTube) and Yuri Temirkanov (Hour Classics and YouTube) are inspired to pay tribute to nationalistic bombast paid for in blood. By 1937 the ideals of the Revolution rang hollow, and the specter of totalitarian repression under Stalin had muted any cause for rejoicing.

Obedience is forced upon composers who have the misfortune to be trapped in authoritarian regimes, but Prokofiev wasn’t one—he returned from exile voluntarily. Shostakovich had the heart and courage to stand up against anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and to offer protection to the beleaguered Mieczysław Weinberg. Prokofiev, so far as I know, didn’t confront repression, even though he personally knew people who had been vanished by the NKVD in the middle of the night. As a politically compliant composer he has a trove of boilerplate to his credit, including a cantata for the next 10-year celebration in 1947, which I haven’t heard. (Shostakovich had written To October to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1927.)

Many will feel that this rousing live performance under the skilled Kirill Karabits is disqualified by its stingy total timing and lack of fillers. In a blow to toadying, Prokofiev’s 10-part cantata met with official disapproval and wasn’t premiered until 1966. There’s a large percussion battering ram—I mean, battery—and the tunes are pitched to the tractor-driving classes. Among the eight-part chorus, which in this performance is very professional and not too large, the men are stout-hearted patriots and the women, too. For official occasions Prokofiev enjoyed being grandiose in his instrumentation, which on this occasion includes quadruple woodwinds and brass, the horns increased to eight. There’s a military band with saxophones and extra brass, some accordions for folk flavor, alarm bells, cannons, sirens, and Lenin’s voice orating through a megaphone (here undertaken by Karabits). Suddenly Wellington’s Victory sounds like a minuet for recorders and lute.

Reviewing an earlier recording conducted by Aleksandr Titov in 2016, Daniel Morrison considered the texts taken from Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. “I am not convinced by the suggestion in the notes for this recording that Prokofiev’s setting of these texts contains hidden meanings, that his treatment of them is ironic rather than fully committed. What does appear to me is that rather than praising the present, the work mostly looks back to the early history of the revolution, to a time when its promise to free mankind from bondage, to end exploitation, poverty, and imperialism, could still be taken seriously” (Fanfare 40:1). It’s a nonjudgmental judgment, but I doubt that Prokofiev had any illusions about the murderous extinction of those early ideals.

On musical grounds, which aren’t a major consideration, really, Karabits leads an effective charge, and I can recommend the performance to anyone who has a specific curiosity about this score on its own. The recorded sound is very good; final applause is included.

These three works all bring out Reger’s Mozartian sensibilities. The textures are clear and the movements are well structured and well proportioned. Yet there is little sense of Neoclassical restraint here: The music is passionate and often intense. The op. 77b String Trio dates from 1904, during Reger’s Munich years, his most progressive and experimental phase. But writing for just three instruments brought a clarity and focus to his music that was often lacking in his larger projects of the time. The op. 141b String Trio and the op. 133 Piano Quartet date from 1915 and 1914 respectively, towards the end of Reger’s short life, when he had retreated to Jena and resolved to write music to his own taste, rather than compete with the fashions of the day. So there is directness and simplicity here too, along with a good helping of the sophisticated harmony and intricate counterpoint that we find in almost all his music.

The German ensemble Trio Lirico do an outstanding job, giving performances that are light and buoyant, with beautiful clarity of texture and finely gauged balance between the instruments. Focused articulation helps to propel the lines, and the viola and cello in particular often display a woody, tactile attack, while the overall tone is suitably balanced between transparency and richness. Pianist Detlev Eisinger fits perfectly into the ensemble for the Piano Quartet. In all three performances, the string players indulge in some sweeping rubato gestures in the transitions—ideal for this music—and Eisinger seems to goad them even further, into daringly broad and opulent phrasing. The gamble always pays off.

As with most of Reger’s chamber music, the competition for these three works is select but strong. And, as usual, the benchmark is the MDG series from the 1990s. The string trios there, from the Mannheimer String Quartet (MDG Gold 336 0711 and 336 0722) are weightier in tone and recorded in a warmer and more ambient setting that is easier on the ear where these are more confrontational. Interpretively, they are similarly well executed and conveyed, so the two versions deserve joint top billing. But don’t miss the excellent version from the Vogl Trio on Gramola (98943). Their approach is lighter and more conversational in the counterpoint, lacking a little in drama but still impressive.

The MDG version of the Piano Quartet, again with the Mannheimer String Quartet, with pianist Claudius Tanski (336 0714) has a compelling sense of urgency in the first movement which Trio Lirico seem to lack, at least by comparison. But the audio quality on the new version is superior. The other versions available are not competitive: The Fanny Mendelssohn String Quartet (Troubadour 1415) is rushed, while the Aperto Piano Quartet (Naxos 8.570786) lacks focus and engagement, and neither version comes close to this or the MDG for audio quality.

Generous running time and an unusually well-translated booklet round out an attractive package. Just one complaint: The Audite label used to champion SACD. Its new approach seems to be to issue standard CDs, but with a high-resolution, surround-sound download equivalent. I’m sorry to have missed out on that, but it could potentially elevate this joint first into a clear winner.

Though one of Germany’s oldest orchestras, the Staatskapelle Weimar has never been a major presence on disc. Just over a decade ago, though, Naxos released the first of a trio of well-received discs of them playing Strauss, an Alpensinfonie (9/06) that was followed by a Four Last Songs (5/08) and Sinfonia domestica (1/10). This orchestra, where Strauss himself had laid the foundations of his conducting career in the 1890s, revealed itself to be a force to be reckoned with in the composer’s works.

This fact is underlined in this fine new recording under Kirill Karabits, who has been juggling his job as music director in Weimar with his post at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra since 2016. It’s an interesting programme, too, offering the early (though subsequently revised) Macbeth, plus two scores that brought breakthroughs in their different ways: Don Juan and Tod und Verklärung. The occasional Festmarsch makes a welcome filler.

The virtues familiar from those earlier discs are apparent here in an orchestral sound that is rich and vibrant, with lively strings, rounded, warm brass and characterful woodwind – and Audite captures the sound most satisfyingly at the Weimarhalle. Karabits shows himself to be a very respectable Straussian, too, offering a beautifully paced, brawny and broody reading of Macbeth. It’s a performance that’s powerfully driven and characterised by impressive sweep and biting conviction; though it’s certainly not rushed, and the conductor takes plenty of time for that yearning climax that marks the score’s halfway point (at around 10'10" here).

Don Juan is hugely enjoyable, with plenty of sensuality (listen to that first romantic episode around three minutes in, with the harp nicely audible) and bristling élan – the strings really dig in to their tremolandos accompanying the final return of the big horn theme (at 14'27"), for example. Karabits turns in a rousing account of Tod und Verklärung, too, although for me it doesn’t quite match the warmth and lyricism of Sebastian Weigle’s terrific recent Frankfurt account (Oehms, 2/18). The Festmarsch is not a piece to return to often, perhaps, but it’s rousingly presented here in a rare outing on disc.

So what are the drawbacks? For all the disc’s enjoyability, one notices that that Weimar orchestra doesn’t always command the same sharpness and clarity of some of its more glamorous German competitors, with some details occasionally getting lost. But there’s still an enormous amount to like in these vivid, committed performances.

Beethoven’s solo cello music is enjoying a moment in the sun right now, with a series of excellent new recordings (including François-Frédéric Guy and Xavier Phillips’s Gramophone Award-nominated set – Evidence Classics, 1/16) plus a comprehensive new study by Marc Moskovitz and Larry Todd (Boydell & Brewer). And rightly: the five sonatas respresent Beethoven in the laboratory – each one an inventive, radically individual experiment in texture and form – while the sets of variations are entertainment music at its most ingeniously playful. Marc Coppey and Peter Laul have set out to capture some of that sense of spontaneity and risk. They recorded this complete cycle in a single marathon live performance in the Small Hall of the St Petersburg Philharmonia – the venue where Beethoven’s Missa solemnis received its first performance in 1824. And they never flag: from the first climax of Op 5 No 1 to the thunderous closing fugue of Op 102 No 2, these performances are brisk, alert and almost supernaturally energetic.

But while the recorded acoustic – which slightly favours the piano – is reasonably well balanced and clear, this still feels unmistakably like live performance. The tension can be exhilarating: sforzando chords explode off the page; there’s an exuberant theatricality to the extraordinary cadenza-à-deux near the end of the first movement of Op 5 No 1; and the livelier variations – as well as the Haydnesque finales of Op 5 No 2 and Op 69 – go with a headlong swagger and a swing.

In short, there’s a continual static-buzz of excitement throughout these two discs. These are performances of extremes, with a strong leaning to the extrovert, and you might prefer more of a sense of inwardness and space in the slower variations, say, or the Adagio of Op 102 No 2. Moments of reflection are rare here, and the questioning, fantastic mood that opens Op 102 No 1 doesn’t really survive the first Allegro, just as the pair never find an entirely persuasive path between lyricism and display in Op 69. Marc Coppey’s cello tone, mellow on the lower strings, can be slightly constrained at altitude, while Laul’s bright, bravura pianism leaves little scope for mystery or indeed refinement.

If asked to choose, I’d say the G minor Sonata, Op 5 No 2, is perhaps the single most convincing performance here; it’s a work that thrives on volatility and outsize gestures. This is not to belittle Coppey and Laul’s achievement, or the verve and conviction of these performances. But a thrilling live occasion doesn’t always make for a great recording, and this set is perhaps too headstrong and too relentless for endto-end listening. No one wants vanilla Beethoven but there is more subtlety to this music than you’ll find here. And, at present, it’s fairly easy to find it elsewhere.

Le dialogue de Manuel Fischer-Dieskau (fils de Dietrich) avec la Canadienne Connie Shih conjugue les sonorités pures, modérément vibrées et très justes du violoncelle, à celles d'un piano agile mais plutôt sec, d'approche plus classique que romantique. Les tempos sont assez rapides, la technique est sûre, les intentions soignées. Et pourtant ... Excès de révérence à I'égard du Mâitre de Bonn? Manque d'appropriation de la partition? L'ensemble est singulièrement dépourvu de tension, notamment parce que les musiciens ne font pas assez vivre la dynamique reliant ou opposant leurs deux instruments. Le discours, certes raffiné, perd une partie de sa substance. Les timides vagues de crescendos / decrescendos ne sauraient tenir lieu de contenu expressif. Reste une version suffisamment séduisante pour inciter I'auditeur a prendre une part du travail.

A I'autre bout de la galaxie, Audite confie les cinq sonates et les trois cahiers de variations au violoncelliste francais Marc Coppey et au pianiste russe Peter Laul. Les variations bénéficient, contrairement au jeu un peu maigre de Connie Shih, d'un piano ne demandant qu'a se faire Iyrique, chaleureux ou brillant, devant son partenaire (qui garde un peu plus de réserve). Forts du lien organique avec un répertoire qu'ils pratiquent ensemble depuis plus de vingt ans, Coppey et Laul habitent un Beethoven résolument romantique, porté par de grandes envolées et, pour le coup, par une tension considérable. Un tour de force dans ces tempos très lents (trop pour l'Opus 15 n° 1). Les interprètes visent la grande ligne ; le déroulé dramatique de la partition, avec ses alternances de véhémence et de confidence, I'emporte sur le relief contrapuntique. Pour I'esprit, pour I'humour évasif ou féroce, mieux vaut retourner à quelques versions d'élite – ca cogne plus d'une fois, et le scherzo de l'Opus 69 est carrément lourdaud ... L'énergie foisonnante du duo serait sans doute irrésistible dans la salle de concert, mais à I'épreuve du disque, elle avoue quelques limites.