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BUZZ: "If you're interested in Furtwängler's views on the German Requiem, this is the performance to hear. Furtwängler led a reading of unusual intensity on this date. It's not that he emphasizes the music's contrasts, although these are given their due. It's more a matter of how he makes the music flow from one measure, phrase, section, and movement to the next; this is A German Requiem as a broad, inexorable river taking the listener to the peace of the afterlife. There is comfort here, but it never cloys or is sentimentalized. Strength provides the drama, not the application of sweetness or spurious effects. Although the two Swedish soloists are provincial, the chorus gives a strong, inspired performance, and the orchestra holds its own. Technical perfection won't be found here, but the missed notes and moments of ragged ensemble in no way detract from this reading." -Raymond Tuttle, classical.net |
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BUZZ: Born in Romania in 1919 and part of the Italian avant-garde since before the Second World War, Vlad allies himself with the Schoenbergian concept of "pantonality"-something inclusive rather than exclusive, since, as he says, "there is no such thing as non-tonality; there are, rather, different tonal relations." (The late Igor Stravinsky, a good friend of Vlad's, regarded himself perhaps as anti-tonal-that is, able to achieve a suspension of tonality, as if one were going against it without canceling it.) Vlad fully exploits his compositional freedom and cannot be called a strictly dodecaphonic composer, though he skillfully uses techniques developed by the Schoenberg school. But his music is eminently listenable and has an immediate appeal to those not interested in technical intricacies. The works by Roman Vlad presented here, which are all recording premieres, are performed by two enthusiastic interpreters and dedicatees of his creative efforts. |
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BUZZ: John Ardoin writes in his note: "[In 1950] Furtwängler made his only studio version of the Eighth, and its sound is surprisingly harsh (with the Vienna strings more glassy than glossy), and the performance unexpectedly exaggerated in many places. Luckily, this EMI recording is not our principal means of measuring Furtwängler and the Eighth. Offsetting it is the more fluid and spontaneous live performance issued by DG from a live concert in Berlin in 1952. All the qualities that Furtwängler seems to have been reaching for in the score come to fruition here. From the opening, with its freedom of phrase, there is a feeling of being present at the birth of an original and poetic entity. The famous G major melody in particular has a unique, living sway to it, and not once does Furtwängler's imagination flag. During the course of this individual performance, one hears every detail in the score in miraculous balance." As to the major work on this CD, he writes, "Despite the magisterial results [Furtwängler] often achieves, no one performance stands out as ideal, though oddly enough his single studio performance (DG) comes closest to tying up all the work's loose ends and creating a consistently expressive whole." Both performances have been re-processed with state-of-the-art digital technology. |
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BUZZ: Harris Goldsmith writes in his note: "This 1948 version is almost completely without mishap. Indeed, there is ample reason to consider it the finest of the Maestro's achievements with this monumental Masterpiece [the Requiem]. The pacing resembles that of the November 23rd, 1940 performance in its nobility and unhurried breadth. A few sections of the Dies Irae are a shade tauter, less rhetorical and more flowing. A comparison between the 1938 BBC Requiem, which seems to me overly beefy and sectionalized, with the 1940 broadcast (Music & Arts CD 4240) affords striking evidence of Toscanini's quest for greater classicism and economy. By the 1948 performance that transition had been carried a step further still. But happily, there is nary a trace of that "late-Toscanini" impatience so characteristic of the 1950 La Scala and 1951 NBC Requiems (whether live or doctored recordings)". |
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© 2012 Music & Arts Programs of America. All rights reserved.
CD-289(1) WILHELM FURTWÄNGLER CONDUCTS THE BRAHMS REQUIEM. Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45. Stockholm Konsertförenings Orkester, Musikalista Sällskapet Kör, Kerstin Lindberg-Torlind, soprano; Bernhard Sönnerstedt, baritone; Konserthuset, Stockholm, 19 November 1948. 2008 digital restoration; notes by the late John Ardoin and Roger Dettmer. Total time: 79:25. Previously released 1988 & 2000. UPC # 0-17685-02892 2
CD-1217(1) ROMAN VLAD: RECORDING PREMIERES: Studi Dodecafonici (Dodecaphonic Études) (1943-1957); Variazioni intorno all'ultima Mazurka di Chopin (1954) (Variations around Chopin's Last Mazurka); Sognando il Sogno: variazioni su di una variazione (Dreaming the Dream: Variations on a Variation) (1972). All with Carlo Grante, piano [rec. 2008]. Le ciel est vide (The Sky is Empty) (1952-1953), with Orchestra and Choir of Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome, Giuseppe Sinopoli, conductor [rec. Dec. 1997]. A co-production with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome. Notes in Italian, French, German and English. Total time = 68:26. UPC# 0-17685-12172 2
CD-1218(1) FURTWÄNGLER CONDUCTS SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 8 ("Unfinished") in B minor, D.759. Berlin Philharmonic, 10 February 1952. Symphony No. 9 ("Great") in C major, D.944. Berlin Philharmonic, [for DG] December 1951. Digital restoration: Lani Spahr (2008), using the acclaimed harmonic balancing technique. Total Time = 79:43 UPC# 0-17685-12182 1
CD-1219(2) VERDI: REQUIEM AND TE DEUM. A PREVIOUSLY UNISSUED TOSCANINI CONCERT RECORDING. With Herva Nelli (soprano), Nan Merriman (mezzo-soprano), William McGrath (tenor) and Norman Scott (bass) and the NBC Symphony Orchestra Collegiate Chorale under Robert Shaw Carnegie Hall, New York, April 26, 1948, cond. Arturo Toscanini. Digital restoration: Aaron Z. Snyder (2008). Notes by Harris Goldsmith. Total times = 61:35 and 37:19. UPC# 0-17685-12192 0