An excellent recording of Italians playing French music. Guglielmo Pellarin is principal horn of the Santa Cecilia Academy Orchestra in Rome; Federico Lovato has a thriving career as pianist, cellist, and artistic director of the orchestra I Solisti in Villa. The program offers mostly standard works, but some listeners might not be familiar with the works by Jean-Michel Damase (b 1928) or Jean-Michel Defaye (b 1932). Damase bases much of his three-movement, 15-minute introspective Horn Sonata on a melody from Wagner’s Siegfried-Idyll. Defaye’s ‘Alpha’ (1973) is dissonant and compact, demanding much technical skill but ending in a quiet brooding mood.

Like Vol. 1 of Audite's survey of Edvard Grieg's complete symphonic music, Vol....

Wer César Francks Orgelwerk interpretiert, sollte ganz im Sinne des Komponisten die große innere Ruhe wahren, auch mit der Agogik einen sensiblen Umgang pflegen. Hans-Eberhard Roß entwickelt an der 1998 erbauten Goll-Orgel von St. Martin in Memmingen beste „Franck-Tugenden“. Er lässt sich in der mittlerweile auf sechs CDs angewachsenen Gesamtedition auf keine Experimente ein. Weder überzieht er die Klangfarbenpalette noch überhitzt er die Tempi. Ein warm timbrierter satter Orgelklang prägt entscheidend das musikalische Profil. So erscheint besonders schlüssig, dass der Organist die fülligen Orgelwerke von allem dräuenden Tiefsinn frei hält und auch den musikalischen Fluss keinesfalls künstlich aufstaut. Das gibt den mit „largement“ und „moderato“ bezeichneten Passagen im E-Dur Choral (CD 6, Take 24) eine im ganzen gesehen unaufdringliche Note. Zart und verhalten tönt der Anfang. Über farbreiche Stationen bei durchwegs flexibler Tempowahl entwickelt sich der im Todesjahr 1890 geschriebene Choral Nr. 1 bis hin zum hymnischen Choralabschluss. Kontrastierender, sensibler Wechsel der Register, verleiht dem „Grande Pièce Symphonique“ op. 17 (CD 2, Take 2) lobenswerte Klarheit in der Linienführung der Stimmen. Dem authentischen Klangbild der Orgelwerke César Francks kommt die Leuchtkraft der Goll-Orgel besonders entgegen. Bis ins machtvoll gesteigerte Goßplenum (Pièce Héroique aus „Trois Pièces pour Grand Orgue, CD 4 Take 10) bleibt der farbgesättigte Klang auf allen Ebenen gut durchhörbar. Auch wenn Hans-Eberhard Roß nicht jene klangliche Aura, jenen heiligen Schauer und ein inbrünstiges Pathos hörbar macht wie zur Entstehungszeit im späten 19. Jahrhundert beim Organisten César Franck in Ste.Clotile üblich gewesen – das akkurate Spiel mit Händen und Füßen betont jedenfalls die Einheit der kompositorischen Gestalt. Das gilt auch für die technisch anspruchsloseren, alternativ für Orgel oder Harmonium komponierten Werke (CD 5 Take 1 – 8).

Im Übrigen überrascht die zweikanalig publizierte Sammlung mit Trouvaillen des Franckschen Orgelrepertoires, die in einer ursprünglichen SACD-Veröffentlichung als Ersteinspielungen vorgestellt wurden. Was César Franck für Harmonium komponierte, liegt jetzt komplett in der Fassung für Orgel vor. Als eine phonografische Entdeckung gelten hier zwei in den 1970er und 1980er dem Archivschlaf entrissene Werke. Das lässt den Schluss zu, dass Franck mit der Sammlung „Pièces pour Orgue ou Harmonium“ gezielt – abseits der anspruchsvollen sinfonischen Großwerke – auch spielpraktisch an simplere für den Gottesdienst gedachte Verhältnisse gedacht hat. Dass diese „leichte Ware“ von unschätzbarem Wert für den liturgischen Gebrauch ist, darüber mögen Orgelmeister wie Kirchenmusikdirektoren bei ihrer musikalischen Amtsausübung nur schwärmen. Der erwärmende, weit mensurierte Klang der Goll-Orgel in Memmingen evoziert Kraft und Substanz, bewahrt mithin all jene klangliche Physionomie die Cavaillé-Coll-Orgeln so unverwechselbar macht: Fülle und Farbkraft für all die warmtimbrierten Tutti- oder Tempo-Exzesse, worüber die sinfonisch großorchestral romantische Orgelliteratur – besonders die aus Frankreich – so reich gebietet.

Wer Franck auf der Orgel interpretiert, braucht orchestergemäße Dispositionsfähigkeit über ein weit differenziertes Klangspektrum so wie eine blendende Technik. Diese Erwartungen erfüllt Hans-Eberhard Roß, Dekakantskantor an St. Martin in Memmingen, auf fabelhafte Weise. Mit Verve und Hingabe, mit fein dosiertem französischem Timbre, sorgsam im An- und Abschwellen der Töne, inszeniert der Kulturpreisträger 2012 der Stadt Memmingen seine Vorstellungen, die ihn auch als Konzertorganist zu sinnreicher, ungewöhnlicher Programmgestaltung inspirieren. Exakte Registrierungen aller Stücke, auch Kurzvideo über den Aufbau der Orgel, sind über www.audite.de zu erfahren. Einen ausführlichen Report über die Produktion enthält auf vierundsechzig Seiten das zweisprachige Booklet (http://www.audite.de/de/product/6 CD/21413.

…Kna moderates his usual legato style and is more tough and flexible…

To read the complete review, please visit American Record Guide online.

This edition undoubtedly has the best sound of any and certainly the best notes…

To read the complete review, please visit American Record Guide online.

...These recordings were remastered from the original master tapes, so the sound is good for its time...

To read the complete review, please visit American Record Guide online.

The Garhammer organ…sounds rich and magnificent…

To read the complete review, please visit American Record Guide online.

If you like your Beethoven slow and incomparably well-played you’ll find this release a real treat, indeed a thrilling experience, one of the greatest ever engraved on records.

One end of the spectrum of recordings of the Beethoven concerto is anchored in a famous Heifetz/Toscanini performance with the NBC Symphony, made about 1937 in the utterly dead studio 8H in RCA’s New York facilities. At about 36 minutes, it must also be the fastest, and though Heifetz was technically perfect, the sound kills it. It was the first recording of the work I ever owned, and in the light of 65 years of listening, has to be the worst.

If Toscanini was the fastest, Karl Böhm at 48 minutes is by far the slowest performer, slower by far than Furtwängler and Menuhin in their fine account (four minutes faster than this one). If it weren’t for the level of tension and commitment attained and maintained by everyone involved, it would be a ridiculous flop. Instead, it is flat out the finest account of this difficult work I’ve ever heard. Ferras, then at the ripe age of 18, plays at a level of intensity as well as flawless execution and intonation I could hardly imagine possible. He was at this time at the zenith of his career, one later disrupted by drug and alcohol addiction, and problems of personality—ending in suicide at age 40. Audite’s restoration has brought forth sound of remarkable clarity—perfect in equalization, absolutely free from noise and distortion. It’s a remarkable sonic restoration. The Berlin Philharmonic of the time was Furtwängler’s group, a highly refined and flexible ensemble. Its performance here is, under his friend Böhm, superb.

There is one problem, however, and it is the fault of the original engineers, who carelessly omitted the initial section where the themes are introduced at the beginning of I. It is to be repeated note by note, though this performance, as recorded, omits the first statement entirely—roughly a bit more than one minute of music. Of course, the missing section could easily have been copied and dubbed in, but the producers feared that an exact repetition would not have captured the nuance and total integrity of the performance as a whole. So they left it out. It does not make all that much difference, and unless you’re listening critically, you may not even notice it, but if you’re ruthlessly committed to perfection, you’ll have to copy it and insert it yourself. I have the equipment to do this easily, but I’m not planning to do it.

I had a faint recollection of another performance, somewhere in my archives, that bore some imperfectly perceived and half-remembered connection to this one. I searched my uncatalogued and haphazardly shelved archives, and after a while came on a CD recording of the Beethoven concerto on Urania played by (guess who) Ferras and Böhm with the excellent Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, recorded at about the same time as the Audite! Trembling with excitement I fed it to my player and was rewarded to hear another great performance of this music, with both sections of the introduction in place, and perfectly played. The tempos are also slow, though at 46 minutes they are slightly faster than in the Audite recording. The same high level of interpretation and execution is nevertheless achieved. I’m afraid that recording may be difficult to come by, since the Urania label expired several years ago. Still, copies may be around online or from other archival sources. There are other fine performances of the music by Menuhin, Oistrakh, Fritz Kreisler, Szigeti, Milstein, and others too numerous to mention. I must suggest, however, that this recording excels all its competitors.

The same high level of interpretation and execution can be heard in the accompanying recording of Alban Berg’s concerto, with the RIAS orchestra led by Massimo Frescia, though its effect is somewhat less smashing if only because Berg’s concerto, fine as it undoubtedly is, isn’t quite as monumental as Beethoven’s. Nevertheless what is heard is not excelled by any other recorded performance of it that has come my way. A splendid accompaniment is also a substantial asset.

The CD is packaged in an attractive case with extensive notes and commentary, to top off one of the most remarkable musical experiences that has ever come my way. Don’t even think about it, just get it.

This is the second disc from organist Martin Neu illustrating the stylistic connections between the organ works of JS Bach and German composers of the preceding generations. The first one (Audite 92.547) explored Bach’s links to masters of the North German school like Georg Böm (1661–1733) and Dietrich Buxtehude (c1637–1707). This one looks at the influence of South German organist-composers like Georg Muffat (1653–1704), Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706), and the even earlier generation of Johann Caspar Kerll (1627–93) and Johann Jakob Froberger (1616–67).

If Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was the dominant influence on the North German school, his southern counterpart was Girolamo Frescobaldi. As young men in the service of the court of Vienna, both Froberger and Kerll were granted financial support to study with Frescobaldi in Rome. In the early 1680s, Muffat studied in Rome with Bernardo Pasquini, who was much influenced by his close study of Frescobaldi’s works. Pachelbel meanwhile absorbed the influence of Frescobaldi through his studies with Kerll. Bach was familiar with the works of these composers and Frescobaldi himself, and this was an important source of the Italian influence found in his own organ works.

The program opens with Bach’s Toccata in F, so notable for its canonic writing over a sustained pedal—common in Pachelbel’s toccatas. The double fugue in F that is usually linked with Bach’s toccata was probably composed independently. It concludes the program. Muffat is represented by one of the toccatas in his important publication Apparatus Musico-Organisticus (1690). These consist of a sequence of short sections that vary in texture and tempo.

Pachelbel’s fugues on the Magnificat were intended to be performed in alternation with the singing of verses from the canticle. A complete suite would consist of six fugues, but Pachelbel’s autograph is lost, and surviving manuscript copies do not contain complete suites. For this performance a suite has been compiled from fugues in a Berlin manuscript copy; and for the final fugue in the Doxology, JS Bach’s Fugue on the Magnificat (S 733) is used, though it is based on the Tonus Peregrinus rather than the First Tone. For this performance the intervening verses are sung by tenor Wilfried Rombach. Kerll’s toccata, like those of Muffat, consists of several contrasted sections, while Froberger’s Capriccio in F displays the unmistakable character of the Italian canzona.

The greater part of the program is played on the 2005 Metzler organ at St Francis Church, Stuttgart-Obertürkheim. It is an instrument of two manuals and pedal with 25 stops. In a brief essay, Andreas Metzler explains that the organ is essentially baroque, but with no attempt to copy a particular historical instrument or style. “Instead, we attempted to realize a baroque idea in a new and personal manner.” The result is extraordinarily attractive as heard on this recording. The full plenum is brilliant but not strident—a major achievement for any builder. Neu plays the Bach Fugue in F on full organ with the 16- foot Bourdon of the Hauptwerk and chorus reeds. On many organs—including some historical ones—this would produce a chaotic jumble of sound, but here Bach’s intricate contrapuntal argumentation is distinctly audible from start to finish. The quieter registers are also very attractive. On hearing the opening movement of Bach’s Trio Sonata in C, I thought the music might sound more cheerful with a lighter and more delicate registration. Neu’s detailed registrations are not printed in the booklet, but they can be obtained in PDF format on the Audite website. On consulting that, I am not sure he could have found a better combination for the movement.

The earlier pieces by Kerll and Froberger are played on the historic organ at St John’s Church, Laufenburg, Switzerland. It is a singlemanual instrument with eight stops built in 1776 by Blasius Bernauer. As one might expect, its tone does not have the heft of the Metzler, but it too is attractive and well suited to the music.

Martin Neu’s performances are a delight. It is refreshing to hear early organ music treated as music, not just so many historical artifacts subjected to brittle and dispassionate playing in the name of historical performance practice. Neu is never anachronistically self-indulgent, but he displays great sensitivity to the flow and phrasing of the music and chooses registrations that suit its character, especially in the multi-sectional toccatas. In each of Pachelbel’s Magnificat fugues, the registrations capture the character of the verses represented.

Leo Blech (1871–1958) was a popular and prolific Victor artist in the 1920s and 30s whose career was wrecked by the Nazis late in life. It was resumed after the war, yet after a 20-year hiatus Blech seems to have attracted little notice outside of Germany, and his abundant shellac recordings were rarely transferred to newer media. Indeed, they were hardly suitable to post-war taste. These broadcast performances, made in 1950 when the conductor was 79, differ little in manner from records he made in the 1920s, which seems all to the good to those who prefer the grand old style to the desiccated internationalism that followed.

If the RIAS musicians respond to Blech with obvious enthusiasm, they seem to have had difficulty following his motions, for entrances and balances lack the precision one expects and that Blech obtained in his earlier recordings. It may be just that he was getting old or that there was not enough rehearsal time, but I think I hear something more than that—an orchestra more accustomed to being told exactly what was required of them struggling to follow the lead of a conductor accustomed to a more fluid working relationship with his players. They grasp the idea, but the execution tends to be rugged.

However that may be, the interpretations seem a throwback to the earlier times of Nikisch and Mahler, with untethered tempos, free rubato, and much striving for rhetorical effect: hoary old Leo Blech grabs the listener by the collar and never stops shaking. This can be exhausting in the long Schubert performance, which suffers by comparison to Furtwangler—who used similar devices with a sense of control lacking here. Blech can be heard to better advantage in this symphony in his studio recording, the ancient Victor M 33. But there is a poignancy about this late performance not to be gainsaid: it is not merely the survival but the positive assertion of 19th Century musical values in bomb-shattered Berlin. It was a bold thing for a Jewish conductor to return to Germany after the war (the story is well told in the liner notes) and Blech must have felt that he had important things to convey to a younger generation of listeners. In the Chopin concerto he finds a fit companion in the Hungarian pianist Julian von Karolyi (1914-93) who swoops and teeters and soars in the best old-fashioned virtuoso manner. The broadcast sound is wooly, not much of an improvement on Blech’s early electrics, but the sense of occasion triumphs over all in this moving historical reissue.