Die Dokumentation mit Einspielungen des Pianisten Géza Anda war notwendig. Sie...

Die Dokumentation mit Einspielungen des Pianisten Géza Anda war notwendig. Sie...

Die Dokumentation mit Einspielungen des Pianisten Géza Anda war notwendig. Sie...

Die Wege des Musikmarktes sind manchmal ziemlich verschlungen – und so erscheint nun bei audite der Mitschnitt eines Live-Konzerts aus der Berliner Philharmonie, der bereits fast zehn Jahre alt ist: Er enstand im September 1998, beim Auftakt-Konzert der letzten Saison, mit der Vladimir Askenazy seine zehnjährige Ära als Chef-Dirigent des Deutschen Symphonie Orchesters Berlin beendete.

Sein langjähriger Freund Pinchas Zukerman ist hier als Solist im A-Dur Violinkonzert von Mozart zu erleben und beide gemeinsam liefern hier eine runde, eindringliche, aber nicht zergrübelte, im besten Sinne des Wortes "klassische" Mozart-Interpretation ab. Für Freunde von Richard Strauss-Orchesterwerken mag die hinzugefügte Symphonia domestica ein zusätzliches Argument sein.

The organ of the papal Basilica of St Mary in Kevelaer, Germany, is a monumental...

Voller, farbiger und offener Klang springt den Hörer auch in der normalen CD-Version schon vom ersten Takt an. In Audites Grieg- Sammlung hat die in Stuttgart, Wien und Moskau ausgebildete Hideyo Harada 22 der 66 „Lyrischen Stücke“ des Norwegers ansprechend zusammengestellt, und auch ihr Spiel nimmt für sie ein. Es besitzt Freiheit, Flexibilität und eine gute Dynamik, wirkt allerdings im Ganzen fast zu konzerthaft, um den oft intimen Tönen dieser Klavierlyrik voll gerecht zu werden. Und „große Alte“ wie Rubinstein oder Gilels, aber auch Katsaris oder Andsnes sind ihr in der intensiven Nachzeichnung der Melodien und der Formbögen meist um einiges voraus.

“Avec leur beauté tonale et leur virtuosité, les Sonates d’Eduard Franck...

There were improvements to be made on Abbado’s 1980 Vienna recording of Mahler 3, especially given dim timpani strokes and sour chording in the final bars, and this live 1999 performance with the Berlin Philharmonic in London’s Royal Festival Hall gains in terms of refinement. Surprisingly, perhaps, the lyrical high-spots move faster than before, rather than slower, relating more tellingly either to their folksong roots (the posthorn serenade) or to the world of searing music drama, whether supporting the deeply expressive phrasing of alto Anna Larsson or bringing the Parsifal touch to the finale. Abbado’s miraculous flexibility has been honed to a fine art, as the flower-piece now tells us, and the inner-movement textures are as supernaturally and beautifully ‘live’ as Rattle makes them on EMI. The explosive ‘panics’ of the Symphony, though – and I use the term in the original, godlike sense Mahler intended – are never as threatening as either Rattle or Kubelík, in another live performance captured just before his 1968 studio recording, make them. Kubelík’s reading dates from a time when every orchestral nerve was straining to register the shock of the new, and if this occasionally means sour intonation and brass solos much less rounded than those of Abbado’s aristocratic Berliners, it does come closer to the anarchic voices of nature which resonate throughout the Symphony. This and other later instalments in Audite’s Kubelík Mahler cycle are much nearer in time to his DG studio recordings than revelatory early instalments, but his intensely mobile, very Bohemian point of view is worth hearing in either format.

Collectors who like to keep a chamber of horrors in their CD library must not be without Scherchen’s live Mahler Five. Did the Philadelphians know what they were in for when they finally lured the 73-year-old conductor over to America to give the work its first performance in its illustrious concert series? They got not only Scherchen’s extremes of fast and slow, but a scherzo where the second waltz strain becomes a lethargic trio, the opening is repeated and the rest disappears until the coda, and a finale with a further 200-odd bars missing (for which the hagiographic booklet note fails to prepare us). Scherchen is invariably master of the mess he makes, but the opening trumpet solo is a disaster and the strings can barely be heard in the dismal Philadelphia acoustics. What a relief, then, to turn to Kubelík conducting the Sixth in Munich four years later. This is a performance of consistent headlong intensity, an inch or two more hair-raising than Kubelík’s DG studio recording made the same month, and only relaxing at the still centre of the Andante: not perhaps for those who want to be clubbed over the head by Mahler’s marches or scared out of their wits, but decidedly the work of a flexible genius among conductors.

Anthony Rolfe Johnson gives wonderful performances of two of Britten’s finest song cycles and the ardent Canticle I, consistently beautiful in vocal quality, and almost miraculous in their integration of clear, expressive diction with a smooth legato line; the piano parts are perfectly coloured and weighted by Graham Johnson. The recordings by Peter Pears and Britten himself remain essential documents of the composer’s intentions. But this bargain-price reissue, with excellent notes and good sound (although the piano is perhaps a little over-reverberant), deserves a place in every serious collection. As a bonus, Rolfe Johnson adds four familiar folksong settings, sung with a subtlety and sensitivity which, whenever direct comparisons come into play, knock spots off any of the competition here. However, the Britten collection on Regis, originally issued by IMP Masters, does include an enjoyable account by James Griffett and guitarist Timothy Walker of the rarely heard, pithy cycle of Songs from the Chinese; and in Canticle II, Griffett and Paul Esswood combine memorably as the voice of God over Judith Ridgeway’s radiant piano chords. On his musical tour of Europe, Neil Jenkins goes for sturdy projection of the texts and melodies of the original folksongs, rather than the subtler inflections of ‘art song’; the Czech guitarist Jan Žácek provides fluent support. As well as existing settings by Britten (in uncredited rearrangements), Seiber and Rodrigo, there are some brand new arrangements: Geoffrey Burgon’s straightforward versions of three English songs; Antonín Tucapský’s nostalgic treatments of five songs from his native Moravia; and Žácek’s own, often over-tricksy, renderings of songs from the British isles.