The Izmir Symphony, whose home is found on the Aegean coast, was established in 1975. This recording, made in Munich in 1995, is its first and the first ever by a Turkish orchestra outside of Turkey. It gave me my first chance to hear music by a Turkish composer and a Turkish orchestra.

Composer-conductor Betin Gunes was born in Istanbul in 1957 and studied piano and composition at the Istanbul State Conservatory. From there he went to Germany to study composition, conducting, trombone, and electronic music. His Izmir Alto Trombone Concerto was given its first performance in 1993 by the Izmir Symphony with the soloist heard here. I have written about Thomas Horch before (Nov/Dec 2000: 281; Mar/Apr 2001: 213). Principal trombonist of the Bavarian Radio Symphony, he certainly has good tone and all of the requisite skills, but his playing can be forceful and uninspiring. He has adapted very well, though, to the alto trombone, a little instrument with little solo literature. Pitched in E-fiat, it is not an easy double for tenor trombonists accustomed to instruments in B-flat. Players like Christian Lindberg, Joseph Alessi, and Alain Trudel make it sound light yet full, like a large flugeihorn. Horch compares quite favorably with those artists.

Lyricism, nifty group pyramids and trills, and restraint--unusual for a trombone piece--mark Gunes\'s concerto. In a wary and mysterious I, the soloist plays lyrically over spare orchestral textures. The furtive mood continues in II, as quiet lines from strings and woodwinds lead to lovely playing by Horch. Energy finally becomes a factor in III, but never to the extent I expect. Still, the piece is nicely proportioned, always interesting, and attractive. Gunes favors rich sonorities and has a good imagination. Horch\'s performance is excellent, and the orchestra complements him well.

If Gunes the composer knows how to make the Izmir Symphony sound good, Gunes the conductor doesn\'t fare as well in Villa-Lobos\'s Bachianas Brasileiras 7, where the orchestra sounds washed out. Vague instrumental tone qualities are the products of modestly competent players. Distant miking in a concert setting does not help. The worst problem is anemic bass and tuba sound.

These concert performances by two distinguished friends who often collaborated (from the Archives of the Bavarian Radio) are finely polished, poised, and enjoyable. But since there are several superior recordings of these two concertos, this release may primarily be of interest to fans of Curzon.

The tempos in both works tend to be lyrically conceived but slightly sleepy, thus lacking a sense of direction and proportion heard in the versions by Rubinstein and Bilson. Curzon brings a lot of finesse to the music in the slower passages of Concerto 21, but in the fast sections does not match Rubinstein\'s supreme fluency or tonal control. The perfect choice of tempo in Rubinstein\'s and Bilson\'s recordings makes the tempos in Curzon\'s seem staid. Bilson\'s performance of Concerto 21 (Archiv) is one of the most satisfying recordings of anything I know. Of course, the balance between forte-piano and orchestra is quite different than it is with a modern concert grand and symphonic orchestra, and therein lies some of the charm and rightness of this approach to 18th Century sonority. Another superb recording of this work with forte-piano is Immerseel\'s (Channel).

The orchestra remains strangely subservient to the soloist, almost repressed, until it plays alone, when it bursts forth with a kind of brash insistence.

Curzon seems to be in better form in the C-minor Concerto (recorded four years later in 1970). There is little to find fault with here, except the lack of forward motion when compared to Rubinstein, Bilson, and an exceptionally beautiful recording of this tragic work by Justus Frantz (Eurodisc).

Recorded sound is clear and well balanced, if nor quite of present-day standards.

Many folks frown these days when a musician flaunts the title virtuoso. Modesty prevails. Just identify a performer as a virtuoso and he will blanche. Best to just call him a musician, as though the plainer term was antithetical and more honorable than the fancier. Giovanni Bottesini proudly billed himself as the virtuoso of the double bass. His career was sustained by the romantic obsession with virtuosity. A virtuoso was set apart from other musicians not only by his astounding technical prowess. That was merely the first condition. The second was closer to the bone. A virtuoso incorporated his instrument as part of his sense of who he was. Paganini's name cannot be invoked without the violin immediately springing to mind, even though Paganini played the viola and guitar with the same amazing facility. Liszt epitomizes the piano. Still it was not enough that a virtuoso's name become synonymous with the instrument; the instrument must become his means of expression. The virtuoso must write great music in collaboration with his instrument. Among the many musicians who could be classified as virtuosos in the 19th Century only Paganini, Liszt, and Chopin wrote music that has endured beyond their own abilities to animate it. Yes, there is a hefty list of occasional and user-friendly works written by a host of virtuosos who are long dead. Most of them require a supreme instrumentalist to breath a moment or two of life back into them.

These pieces written by Bottesini to show off his skills and the potential of the double bass are sometimes sweet, sometimes saucy, always skillful works of no great staying power. Bassist Michinori Bunya does a credible job of playing them. He brings elan, a sense of timing worthy of the Flying Wolendas, and the same kind of madcap unpredictability that Jonathan Winters used to bring with him onto the set of the Tonight Show. The playing and the music are full of surprises. At your local classical music radio station this is the kind of music that the program director or computer operator salt into that part of the day they insist on calling "drive time" or "the drive home" when they need pieces that require no thought that might pull your attention from the road or the promotional announcements.

I imagine Bottesini himself played with a good deal more elegance and poise than Bunya. The arrangements by Bottesini for the accompanying string quintet are never less than accomplished. So in the end something is missing--the animating presence of the virtuoso himself. It's just such liveliness that makes the work of the contemporary double-bass virtuoso Edgar Meyers bearable.

Don\'t be misled by the packaging. The liner gives the title in German (Die Sieben Worte Christi am Kreuz), but the work is in fact sung in Latin. It comes from 1859, a time when the composer was engaged with liturgical and religious music; in later life he restricted his composition to the orchestral and chamber music he is known for. The Seven Words was, for reasons unknown, not performed during Franck\'s lifetime, and in fact was not discovered until 1977. This performance dates from 1979, shortly after the discovery. Franck supplemented the traditional Seven Words with additional text, both biblical and free. His music is sweet and lyrical, rather Mendelssohnian in flavor (as is so much 19th Century church music), and free from Franck\'s penchant for incessant modulation. The overall effect is meditative, not dramatic, even in poignant sections like \'My God, why has thou forsaken me?\'

The performance is certainly adequate for such a rare work. Most impressive is soprano Edith Wiens, who sounds terrific: full, rich, and expressive. A valuable release, then, for seeing another side of Franck and the state of church music in France around 1860.

A summer\'s day is good for listening to this kind of romantic music. Albert Dietrich (1829-1908) was the composer who contributed the first movement of the FAE Violin Sonata that Brahms and Schumann also helped with. He had a fine lyrical gift, judging by this 27-minute Cello Sonata, though he isn\'t as compellingly memorable as his two friends. I wonder how he and his older contemporary, Theodor Kirchner (1823-1903) felt when young Brahms (b. 1833) died in 1897? It is nice to couple these good but not great composers with short works by Schumann and Brahms that complement them without forcing a comparison. The Brahms intermezzos are played in transcriptions by Paul Klengel (1854-1935), violinist brother of Julius Klengel, the famous cellist. It is Paul who transcribed the First Violin Sonata of Brahms into a cello sonata, and he is responsible for numerous similar rearrangements of Brahms\'s works. The Opus 116:4 and Opus 117:1 are sensitively handled. Kirchner\'s Eight Pieces are imaginative and harmonically i nventive. All of this is played with warmth and sensitivity by these Munich-based musicians and recorded naturally.

As with the Kubelik recording of Mahler's Symphony 2 (July/Aug 2001), this 1976 concert performance of Symphony 7 is not to be confused with his 1970 studio recording with the same orchestra. I do not have that earlier recording on hand, but if memory serves, both have the same shortcomings. Although this is a well-conceived, straightforward performance, Kubelik ignores so many of Mahler's detailed notations--details that must be observed if Mahler's rampant imaginative ideas are to be realized--that the performance becomes a mere playing of the notes. For instance, the soaring, ecstatic flight of the strings in I (11:05-12:25) is neither soaring nor ecstatic. In the coda, the wild, screaming piccolos and the heavily scored battery--snare drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, tambourine, timpani, triangle--are scarcely heard (compare with the Horenstein, where they are heard best), and much orchestral color is thereby lost. In II, Mahler surely had more mystery in mind in this 'Night Music' than Kubelik gives us. The "Shadowy" (Mahler's word) III is very unshadowy under Kubelik's baton. (To experience that, try Bernstein or Thomas). The phantasmagoria is almost completely missing. Even the famous fffff(!) pizzicato (four bars after cue 161; "so intensely incited, that the strings strike the wood") sounds like a mere pluck (try the Sony Bernstein!). IV is quite good; Mahler's imaginative combining of guitar and mandolin in this movement is clearly heard (not so in many recordings). The finale brings us back to blandness. True, it is very spirited, but the movement's wild humor is in short supply. In the coda, Mahler throws every thing in but the kitchen sink, but here we do not hear much of it. In short, the movement's delicious vulgarity is lacking.

Despite the fact that many of the instruments (especially percussion) are scarcely heard, the recording has good sound. There are those who prefer their Mahler underplayed, with emotions held in check. I can recommend this recording to them, but as I have said often in these pages, underplayed, unemotional Mahler is an oxymoron.

Franz Paul Lachner (1803-90) was the son of an organist and composer and brother of two other professional musicians. He began studies with his father, but in 1822 he moved to Vienna where he became organist of the Lutheran Church. He completed his studies with Simon Sechter and Abbe Stadler. He became friendly with Schubert, Beethoven, and others. He moved up in Viennese musical circles until he moved briefly to Berlin. In 1836 he returned to Munich and became a fixture of the city\'s musical life.

In 1852 he wrote a setting of Sophocles\'s tragedy Oedipus for theatrical performance with a narrator, cast of speakers, chorus, and orchestra. It is an impressive work. Unfortunately this recording is aimed strictly at the German-speaking marketplace, for the notes and full text are supplied only in German. The music is dramatically written, in the mid-l9th Century style. The chorus sings very well, and the narrator is superb. So are most of the members of the speaking cast, with the sole exception of Oedipus, who speaks harshly and with emotions that bring to mind a Nazi party leader. Fortunately his role is minor. I should emphasize that the chorus and narrator have the major roles and are both splendid.

The recording is excellent in range and spatial positioning. I would strongly recommend its purchase to those who have wide ranging collections and who either speak German or don\'t mind their inability to read German. The recording is so clear that following the German text is easy.

Clifford Curzon was a finicky perfectionist who never liked the recording process and never seemed satisfied with his recorded performances, however favorably they were viewed by everyone else. His repertoire was not very extensive, but what he played, he played exceedingly well. In this respect he resembles Michelangeli and Lipatti. We are left with a somewhat sparse catalog of mostly splendid performances--far less complete than it could have been.

Curzon recorded expressive and powerful accounts of these two concertos with Knappertsbusch and the VPO in the mid-1950s. They are scheduled to be released soon on a low-cost Decca CD. Why, then, do we need these items from Audite?

Well, simply because these 1977 performances are even more poetic, grandly shaped, spontaneous, luminous, splendidly proportioned, and totally effective than the earlier ones. What is more, Kubelik and his great orchestra supply as sensitive and romantically supportive an orchestral backing as one could imagine--a framework for Curzon\'s pianism even more elegant than the formidable Knappertsbusch manages. Also, the sound here, though exhibiting less warmth and resonance than one expects from the Herculessaal, is more spacious, better focussed, and precisely imaged than in the earlier issue. Curzon is more expansive, and his sensitive and poetic shaping of phrases and paragraphs puts this release right into the top drawer. This is most impressive in No. 4, a work that is clearly structured on a Mozartean model. The Emperor is a little more straightforward, though still grandly proportioned and nobly expressed. Curzon\'s runs and trills are often slightly uneven, intentionally so I think, to give each of them i ts unique and individual profile. The uniquely poetic quality of these readings really puts them in a class by themselves. This is a full-price release, and it is worth far more than the asking price. It demonstrates this artist\'s work at its best.

Marimba music holds the spotlight in Marimba Spiritual, a collection of contemporary pieces played with verve and sensitivity by Katarzyna Mycka. Again, the pieces are friendly, fresh, and inviting. Many exemplify the recent trend toward fusions of African and European music, a natural in-between terrain for percussion music. Especially pleasing are Matthias Schmitt\'s \'Ghanaia\', an exploration of the marimba\'s African roots; Marcus Halt\'s \'Marimbasonic\', a more abstract and virtuosic work emphasizing the marimba\'s coloristic possibilities; and Ney Rosauro\'s amiable, pop-oriented Concerto for Marimba and Percussion Ensemble, where Ms Mycka is joined by half a dozen talented colleagues. The delicate, liquid sound of the marimba can be magic: listen to the quietly sustained repeated notes, like a floating organ, in David Maslanka\'s My Lady White, or the lyrical efflorescence of Keiko Abe\'s Dream of the Cherry Blossoms.

One thing is made delightfully clear in this disc: contemporary percussion music need not be bangy and in-your-face. With players as masterly as this, it can even be charming and poetic.

This fine recording offers works composed during World War II (Martin and Hindemith), in the early 1950s (Serocki and Defaye), and more recently (Denisov and Gunes). There is no humor in either of the WW II-era pieces. Swiss composer Frank Martin\'s Ballade (1940) is a subtle, jazz-infused work that has the trombonist crooning soulfully in the high register much of the time. It requires real strength and stamina, and given Thomas Storch\'s stature--former principal trombone of the Berlin Philharmonic and now principal of the Bavarian Radio Symphony--it comes as no surprise that he has plenty of both.

Hindemith\'s Sonata (1941) is the cornerstone of the trombone recital repertory. Calling for powerful playing by both soloist and pianist, the work can come across as brutal unless opportunities for nuance and warmth are explored. My favorite recordings, by John Kitzman (Sept/Oct 1998: 283) and Ben Haemhouts (March/April 1998), bear little resemblance to each other--except that both show warmth and lyricism. Storch\'s reading is powerful, driven by fast tempos. While he occasionally eases the intensity, he is too relentless for my taste.

The postwar works are light and playful. This may be the best recording of Kasimierz Serocki\'s Sonatine (1953), played with appropriate zest by Horch and spikiness by Walter-Lindqvist. Jean-Michel Defaye\'s Two Dances (1954) has been recorded more often than any other trombone piece. Why? Well, it is a pleasant foray into the pop realm--\'Danse Sacree\' is a soulful ballad, and \'Danse Profane\' is lively--and an opportunity to show off the player\'s high register: Horch plays it well, as has every artist who has recorded it.

Edison Denisov explores extremes of register, microtones, and sympathetic vibration in his spooky Choral Varie (1979). Horch\'s reading is similar to one by Christian Lindberg (Nov/Dec 1991: 193) and more leisurely than one by Benny Sluchin (Jan/Feb 1990: 125). This is the first recording of The Trombonite (1993) by Turkish composer Betin Gunes. Horch delivers the most remarkable display of alto trombone virtuosity I have ever heard; but the modernist, meandering, and rather dreary piece does nothing for me.