Norwegian composer Christian Sinding was winding down his long career when he wrote the Symphony No. 3 in F, Op. 121, and Rhapsody for Orchestra: Vinter og Vår heard here. CPO has elected to refer to the latter work as Sinding's Symphony No. 4, even though the work is laid out in seven short movements and is more of a tone poem or suite. The ...
Aside from his legendary Ballet mécanique, which still gets played as a kind of souvenir of the madcap 1920s, George Antheil's concert music has mostly fallen into obscurity. In spite of his reputation as an enfant terrible who hobnobbed with the leading lights of the avant-garde, his works attract less attention than the details of his life. ...
"Your favorite Western composer is Mozart?" Conway asked. "That is so," the High Lama replied. "Mozart has an austere elegance which we find very satisfying. He builds a house that is neither too big not too little, and he furnishes it in perfect taste."So wrote James Hilton in Lost Horizons and it's as true now as it was in 1933. Okay, so the ...
Volume 5 of Profil's Günter Wand Edition is devoted to Carl Orff's massive and enormously popular cantata, Carmina Burana, in a stirring radio performance presented with the NDR Sinfonieorchester in 1984. In musical terms, this is a fine rendition, with controlled solos from soprano Maria Venuti, tenor Ulf Kenklies, and baritone Peter Binder; well ...
"Karl Böhm's unyielding harshness and youthful spirit?" Surely that translation from the liner notes for this disc is incorrect. How could Böhm, incontrovertibly one of the greatest Austrian conductors of the middle years of the twentieth century, possess both qualities simultaneously? Indeed, while many musicians could testify to Böhm's ...
Contemporary with Berlioz, Cherubini, and Gossec, Georges Onslow contributed to the small body of French symphonies at a time when opera reigned supreme in Paris and the influence of Beethoven was only beginning to be felt. In Onslow's hands, the Classical form undergoes Romantic expansion and heightened drama, though not as extreme as Berlioz's ...
In his time, Paul Wranitzky was one of the most highly regarded and one of the most successful Austrian composers. Not only did he work for the Esterhazy family and receive commissions from the Hapsburg family, he led the premieres of Haydn's "Creation" and Beethoven's Symphony No. 1. After his death in 1808, however, Wranitzky's reputation ...
The excavation of the symphonists who labored in Beethoven's shadow has yielded some worthwhile music (by Kalliwoda, for example), and plenty more music that was set aside with the crystallization of the canon is on the way. Here Germany's North German Radio Philharmonic (NDR Radiophilharmonie) offers music by Friedrich Ernest Fesca (1789-1826), a ...
At odds with bourgeois Parisian tastes for opera and parlor music, Louise Farrenc pursued instead the ideals of German absolute music, as exemplified by Beethoven. The three works presented here were remarkable achievements for a woman composing in an antipathetic environment, though French aversion to German forms mattered more at the time than ...
Although the "golden age" of operetta has come and gone, composer Franz Lehár isn't in any real danger of being neglected so long as The Merry Widow continues to tread the boards of the world's stages. But as his first major "hit," and as an operetta stylistically limited by the constraints of contemporary fashion and tradition, The Merry Widow ...
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