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Record Reviews

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Extract

  • Henze's Undine and Nindi Symphony Guy Rickards

  • Elgar 3 Calum MacDonald

  • Howard Skempton, accordion Mark Cromar

  • Nyman's Concertos Peter Quinn

  • Frankel's Concertos Guy Rickards

  • Philip Martin Sarah Noon

  • Holliger and Carter Peter Palmer

  • lszlo Lajtha Bret Johnson

  • With a Minimum of Means Mark Cromar

  • Bantock's Sappho Mike Seabrook

  • Italian Chamber Music (2) Tristram Pugin

Type
Record Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

page 39 note 1 On a fascinating companion disc (NMC DO52), Anthony Payne provides a full commentary on the sketches, many of which are played (by Robert Gibbs and David Owen Norris) in the arrangements for violin and piano Elgar made in order to try over his ideas with W.H. Reed. It's a nice touch that Gibbs performs on Reed's own violin.

page 46 note 1 On Dynamic CDS 81, a disc otherwise reviewed in Part 1 of this survey (Tempo 203, pp. 38–9).

page 47 note * Tempo 203, p. 37.

page 48 note 2 An imaginative and unaffected use of Italian to describe performing nuance far from the ossified Italian or transalpine music conservatories is of course a mark of the composers of C.T. 's generation.

page 50 note 3 This ‘toccata’ finale raises interesting questions about the influence of Itahan neoclassicism on American music of the 1930s and 40s. Barber's First Symphony was written in Rome, as was Hunter Johnson's Piano Sonata. Sessions wrote his First Piano Sonata in Florence. But the composer that comes to mind in connection with the Casella Trio is William Schuman, in particular the finale of his Third Symphony. As for the performance, German musicians ar e often very good with Italian music and the Trio Parnassus is no exception. They are less good with French music and any music that has a symbolist aesthetic. In the case of the Arrieu Trio, the music is made to sound more trivial than it is through innocent overstatement. As for the Bloch Nocturnes with their disquieting poetry, they are nearly reduced to routine character pieces. But then Max Reger used to dream of French orchestras giving all that suppleness of rhythm to his orchestral pieces that he never heard at home. More amusing than disconcerting, however, is Jürgen Arm' s well-meant assertion in the programme notes that the rhythmic profile of the Casella trio reflects a totalitarian society, whereas that of the trio by Claude Arrieu a well functioning social democracy.

page 50 note 4 Other exquisite strategie s of choice are to be found in the material for Stravinsky's Le baiser at lafée, where not a phrase comes from a Tchaikovsky ballet, and in La boutique ftmtasque of Respighi, where not a phrase comes from a Rossini opera.

page 50 note 5 Recorded on Dynamic CDS 68 with Sonates 1 and 2, reviewed in Part 1.

page 51 note 6 Listeners beware! The Andantino con innocenza at track 2 opens with the coda of the Preceding movement. By track 3 things are back to normal.