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William Alwyn (1905-1985) has been overshadowed by his more famous British contemporaries, Britten, Vaughan Williams, Walton, and Tippett. In the sense that his musical voice is not as unique and distinctive as theirs, he probably should be considered to be on a slightly different level than those colleagues. But he surely does not deserve the almost complete neglect he has had in concert and recording life outside of the UK. Alwyn's music may contain echoes of others (one hears reminders of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Walton in particular), but it is music that will give any sympathetic listener a great deal of pleasure. Alwyn's music is clearly of the 20th century, but his musical DNA is just as clearly that of a Romantic. His symphonies have about them the sense of grand gesture and dramatic impact that were in short supply in the middle third of that century, and his keen ear for orchestration and his ability to craft genuine melodies just add to the effectiveness of his works.

There is a third Naxos disc (8.557647) that completes the cycle of Alwyn's five symphonies (and adds a Harp Concerto), but I haven't heard it. Listening to these two discs, my first reaction was, as it had been in the past, that these works are unjustly neglected. They are well shaped, build to impressive climaxes, and are filled with imaginative writing and deeply felt poetry. I then went to the Chandos complete set under Richard Hickox (CHAN 9429), Dutton's wonderful transfer of Barbirolli's recordings of the first two (CDSJB 1029), and the Lyrita set conducted by the composer (SRCD 227 and 228, out of print), and found even more power and beauty in the music.

These Lloyd-Jones recordings are more than adequate presentations of Alwyn's symphonies. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic plays with rhythmic incisiveness and precision, and the tempos and tempo relationships are all convincing. But when you set them aside those older recordings, the shortcomings become evident as well. The principal ones have to do not with matters of technical execution or structural deficiencies, but with matters of color, dynamics, and balance. This is an area of performance that is a bit harder to put into words than issues regarding tempo, or precision, or intonationbut it is one of the most crucial issues in distinguishing performances from each other. Music is, after all, about sound-and the quality of the sound produced by a performance is central to that performance's success. That may be particularly true in Alwyn's rich and carefully thought-out sound world.

These performances seem to me to be harder in sound than their recorded rivals. The strings in particular do not have the plushness of tone found on the Hickox set and the others. Brass tends to dominate a bit in the overall sonority, and there are not as many gradations of soft in these performances than there are in the others. The result is that the beauty and grandeur of the music is more completely conveyed in the recorded competition.

Alwyn's Lyrita set is hard to find now and despite the obvious authenticity of having the composer on the podium, there are a few awkward transitions of tempo and other signs that Alwyn's principal career was not that of conducting. For those who love his music these discs would make a wonderful second set. The same can be said of the Barbirolli - though here it is the early- 1950's monaural sound that is the biggest hindrance. Barbirolli was closely associated with these works;. he gave the first performance of Symphony No. 1, commissioned the Second and introduced the Fourth at a Proms Concert in 1959. He clearly loves the music and gives wonderfully committed readings, but there is so much color in this music that one misses the openness of modern stereophonic sounds.

Richard Hickox's Chandos set is all that one could ask for in this music. Chandos's rich record sound suits the music perfectly, Hickox and the LSO seem to revel in the rich sonorities and the coloristic and dynamic variety inherent in the scores and there is a wonderful combination of momentum, lyricism, and grandeur in these performances.

Again, I don't want to be too hard on this new set. If you can't find the Chandos set and the music interests you, these are not in any way poor performances. And Naxos's recorded sound, while not quite as spacious as Chandos, is open and clear and natural. If this new cycle serves to call attention to these wonderful scores, then it will have serves a noble purpose.

Leonardo Balada is a Catalan born composer, long resident in the United States, who has been heavily championed by Naxos. This is their seventh CD of his music; previous issues include symphonies, opera, concertos, and orchestral pieces. Presumably, the CDs are selling, and if so, it is probably due to the stylistic change Balada underwent from the mid 1970s on. At that time, he moved from an uncompromising avant-garde language to one that incorporated ethnomusical elements, notably Spanish and Afro-American. The composer describes the characteristics of his early style in the CD notes: "atonality, aleatoric devices, clustered harmonies, no tunes, no traditional harmonies, strong rhythms and big contrast of dynamics." Balada's change of direction continued to incorporate most of these elements-he added tunes and traditional harmonies-with the result that his recent music, while lighter and more user-friendly (and Naxos-friendly), in no way signifies a softening. It remains gutsy, energetic, and individual. On the latter point, I quote the composer again: "Do I cease being myself if I dress in a conventional suit today and in a colorful toreador costume tomorrow?" In Balada's case, at least, the answer is no: a personal stamp permeates his work, no matter what style he employs. Partly this occurs through his idiosyncratic scoring. Balada' s orchestra is rarely, if ever, an integrated entity; it is a group of individuals or sections who each have something specific to say, sometimes in accordance with each other but sometimes completely at odds. One has a sense that Balada has gathered his music together rather than molded and smoothed it, which is why it is often unpredictable and exhilarating.

The reason the composer felt the need to address the subject of his stylistic switch is directly related to the Fifth Symphony of 2003. This work, over the course of its three movements, takes a deliberate journey from the avant-garde to the folksy. It is one of several works I have heard lately inspired in some way by the events of September 11,2001 (not all of them American, incidentally). Many were written as an instant response and exhibit a reverent and memorial outlook. So does Balada's symphony in the slow movement, but the first movement is another matter: although titled "In Memoriam," it is an almost literal representation of the horror and chaos of that fateful morning, something no other composer to my knowledge has attempted. (The closest parallel might be John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1, with its graphic depiction of the AIDS crisis.) The movement begins ominously and soon works itself up into a lather of restless activity. The collisions themselves are suggested by passages of vigorous, percussion-led fortissimos separated by very quiet minor chords suspended, as it were, in disbelief. Pandemonium swiftly builds, with the interval of a falling third prominent-the interval we associate with emergency vehicles. The falling third motif is played in counterpoint with the statements getting closer together, an almost pictorial depiction of ambulance sirens echoing through the streets of New York as they converge on the scene of destruction.

Clearly, Balada has set the stakes high for his slow movement, which is entitled "Reflections." Again, it begins as an almost literal reflection, the shimmering string-based texture calling to mind the gently rippling surface of a lake. Out of this, a solo oboe begins a lament using, once again, the falling third motif but now revealing it to be linked to the melodic contour of a Negro spiritual. Before long. a slow-moving pulse is established and the comforting world of the spiritual specifically evoked. Solo piano and later trumpet are featured, gently drifting in and out of the pointillistic texture.

The transition between the tough first movement and the tender second is efficiently managed: together they add up to a powerful statement. The work could have legitimately ended at that point. but Balada goes on to close with an up-tempo third movement called "Square Dance." He mixes in the stylistic fingerprints of the hoe-down-stamping rhythms, clopping woodblocks and double- stopped fiddles-using his individual orchestral palette, and produces a piece which is undeniably effective in its own right but somewhat problematical as a conclusion to this symphony. It's quite a leap from the opening movement to this, not just stylistically but in terms of the emotional expectations set up in the earlier sections, and I feel the work as a whole would be stronger with a tougher, perhaps more urban sounding finale. A fascinating score, even so.

The other works on the CD are not so ambitious, but all exhibit the composer's skill, control, and fastidious ear for color. The 10-minute Prague Sinfonietta was a commission for the Torroella International Music Festival in Catalonia. A chamber orchestra from Prague was to perform the premiere, which led Balada to the title and the idea to bring a Mozartean perspective to the Catalonian sardana (a national dance). The result is another typical piece of stylistic fusion. The three Divertimentos, a suite for string orchestra, play with instrumental textures in much the same way as Frank Martin's Etudes. Finally, Quasi un pasadoble from 1981 is a short tone poem, opening with impressionistic musings before lurching into a quirky march and snatches of carnival music.

Balada's interesting, enjoyable music continues to be a delightful discovery on Naxos. I can heartily recommend earlier issues, which contain concertos for violin, piano, and guitar. This disc is another winner. The Seville Royal SO under Alonso-Crespo is new to the series, replacing the Barcelona SO and Jose Serebrier (and others); they are right inside Balada's idiom. As is their wont, the Naxos engineers produce a close-miked sound-brilliant, dynamic, and detailed.

Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) himself called Prinzessin Brambilla an anti-Wagnerian opera, and averred in later years that "for the first time, the attempt was made to withdraw from the coercive power of Wagner's overwhelming genius, by thumbing its nose, in grotesque tone, against anything that smacks of pathos or tragedy." This is both self-serving and inaccurate, for numerous foreign composers had achieved international success through high-spirited comic operas that completely ignored Wagner. Within the German sphere of musical influence, however, Prinzessin Brambilla was probably the first performed opera since Cornelius's delightful Der Barbier van Baghdad (1858) to buck not just Wagner but the grand Romantic sensibility.

The plot of the work comes from E. T. A. Hoffmann, though I find elements of it suggestive of both Carlo Gozzi and Ben Jonson. On the eve of the Roman Carnival at the turn of the 18th century, the fantastical Prince Bastianello (who mayor may not possess magical powers; it's never clear) and his sly servant Pantalone decide to have fun at the expense of the populace. They fasten upon an actor, Claudio, who daydreams about having a noble background and wife. Under the influence of Bastianello, Claudio comes to believe he is a prince looking for his lost love, Princess Brambilla. He repeatedly rejects his fiancee, the seamstress Giazinta, only to come to his senses during the unmasking that follows the Carnival-when it's revealed that the Carnival Princess he's danced with, his supposed Brambilla, is actually Giazinta. There's a good deal more to matters, including a subplot involving Pantalone's recurrent spurning of his wife Barbara, but that's the gist of it.

Musically, the opera shows great similarity to the mature works of Ferruccio Busoni. Prinzessin Brambilla possesses the same enormous energy, hard-edged satire, frequent recourse to counterpoint, and willingness to treat late Romantic, Baroque, and Classical styles as grist for quick juxtaposition that were Busoni hallmarks. Unlike Busoni, however, Braunfels supplies a potent core of lyricism in his opera; and the cruel manipulation of Bastianello is a corrective that ultimately helps anchor the all-tooeasily obsessed Claudio in reality. Prinzessin Brambilla is an inventive, sparkling work, not on the level of the composer's delightful Die Vogel (London 488679), but definitely worthy of revival.

This live, 2003 performance is middling, but on the whole, competent. Shaw's light, soaring tenor is its greatest asset, followed by Paul's high baritone. Enrico Marabelli's baritone is dry though effective. Lo Forte's voice is too thick, monochromatic and ungainly (with a wobble whenever she presses for volume) to make much of Giazinta, the female lead. Her juxtaposition to mezzo Ekaterina Gubanova is unfortunate, since the latter has that vocal control and focus the former lacks. All the artists with the exception of Shaw could have done far more dramatically with their lines; though as the performance was live, it's probable more of their energies were put into movement than dramatic interpretation of this unfamiliar work. (A lot of movement can be heard on stage, but the sound quality is good, if perhaps balanced a shade too much in favor of the orchestra.) Finally, the Cracow instrumental forces are barely equal to the effort, even at Belardinelli's overly relaxed tempos.

The liner notes focus on the opera, but are decent of their kind. A synopsis is provided with CD points, but neither original text nor translation is included. This last is especially missed. But despite this and the album's short timings, Prinzessin Brambilla is truly worth knowing. We can hope for a more vigorous performance with a stronger cast at some time in the future, but in lieu of that, we have this quite decent one, now.

The Fantasia eontrappuntistiea is a tough nut for performers and listeners alike, though more approachable for both in its two-piano version, made in 1922. It is rarely attempted and, arguably, its most compelling interpretations-manic hysteria projected by the young Peter Serkin and Richard Goode (LP, Columbia MS 6891) and dreamlike radiance divined by Ursula Oppens and the late Paul Jacobs (LP, Nonesuch 79061)--were left behind in the Silver Rush. CD-era accounts have tended toward the cautious and pedantic; for instance, Ronald Stevenson and Joseph Banowetz's oddly muted take (Altarus AIR-CD-9044) or Serkin's stiffly maundering re-make with Andras Schiff (ECM New Series 1676/77). Schiller and Humphreys, on the other hand, are briskly paced while evincing a tonal warmth in which Busoni's punetus contra punetus lifts lyrically into invitation, ingratiation, and, at moments, exhilaration, if at the cost of leaving his astounding play of parts under-articulated.

A similar approach informs the Mozart arrangements-the relaxation of contrapuntal rigor (brilliantly incisive leading parts against barely audible subsidiary detail) is the duo's tradeoff for tonal finesse rather than the fault of Naxos's close, balanced sound. Details of Busoni's attentions, by the way-elisions and occasional recomposition-and their rationale may be found in Larry Sitsky's Busoni and the Piano (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), a beguiling and invaluable companion that no one who cares for this fare should be without.

Schiller and Humphreys do as well as anyone with the Improvisation on "Wie wohl ist mir. " Composed in 1914 during a stay with Marchese Silvio delle Valle di Casanova on Lago Maggiorewhere the Futurist Umberto Boccioni painted the familiar portrait of Busoni reproduced on the album cover-the Improvisation is a recomposition of the final movement of Busoni's Second Violin Sonata, completed in 1900, that is, the ripest late Romanticism, from the vantage of Busoni's final and decisive "turning point" toward the compact, laconic, visionary Modernism of his last decade. The upshot is curious, mixed, and interesting rather than persuasive. Schiller and Humphreys do as well as anyone with it and better than most by giving the heterogeneous elements their head, so to speak, as they arise. Despite the reservations noted, this collection affords abundant pleasure and is enthusiastically recommended.

Enescu's Oedipe is the antithesis of Stravinsky's more or less contemporary setting of the story: tonally opulent where Stravinsky's is severe and hard, effusive where Stravinsky's is compact, luxuriously curved where Stravinsky's is brittle and angular, emotionally enveloping where Stravinsky's is self-consciously distant, rhapsodic where Stravinsky's is rigorous (indeed, one of Enescu's favorite markings is senza rigore). Enescu's patient wash ofrich post-impressionistic textures and his rhythmically supple declamatory style suggest a prime source in Pelléas. But Oedipe is darker and more violent. Its vocal writing is more extreme (including a fair amount of Enescu's equivalent of Sprechstimme); and even though its whispers are as subtle as anything in Debussy's opera, both in its explosive choral outbursts and in its lacerating cries of deep psychological trauma, it's less intimate, more public. It's not atonal in the sense, say, that Wozzeck is; but Enescu's harmonies are consistently unstable (especially in the brief quarter-tone writing), and while they recognize tonal centers, they tend to resist them. The orchestration is consistently evocative, too, and sometimes surprising (e.g., the saxophone at a crucial point in Oedipus's climactic act III speech, the musical saw at the end of the confrontation with the Sphinx). Even though Oedipe is widely (and rightly) considered Enescu's masterpiece, it has never caught on with the wider public (see David Johnson's rather tepid response in 14:4); indeed, although it's been recorded at least twice before, this is the only readily available version. (The old Electrecord LPs are long gone; on the Internet sources I've checked, Foster's EMI version either isn't listed at all or else requires special ordering with no guarantee of arrival.) But you shouldn't let its rarity deter you: if you appreciate Pelléas, Bartok's Bluebeard, and Szymanowski's King Roger, you'll find Oedipe a gripping experience as well.

I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the Naxos performance. Oedipe is a longish opera: besides distilling Sophocles's Oedipus Tyrranus and Oedipus at Colonnus in the last two acts, it includes two earlier acts centering on Oedipus's birth and on his young manhood before becoming King of Thebes. But while it's long, it's not at all garrulous, and the cuts introduced here-some- where around 15 or 20 percent of the score-don't tighten the opera so much as undermine its integrity and power. It's not simply that Gielen has cut much of the non-narrative material (some dance music toward the beginning, for instance, or the opening invisible chorus and much of the victory chorus that frame act II)-although even these decisions crucially alter the balance of the experience, especially in act IV. No, more damaging still, he has excised a lot of dramatic dialogue as well, including much of Oedipus's act II description of his encounter with the Oracle and (more incomprehensible yet) most of the big speech (starting just before rehearsal 364 in the final act) where Oedipus interprets, for Creon and the Thebans, the meaning of his life.

Nor is Gielen temperamentally an ideal Oedipe interpreter. There's plenty to admire here: he conveys the score's brilliance and its bursts of high-modern jaggedness with striking power (listen, for instance, to the violent exchange between Oedipus and the Shepherd in act III); but Gielen is not sympathetic to the impressionist strands, and the more rhapsodic passages often seem ill-defined and directionless (listen, as but one example, to the fairly flat performance of the onstage solo flute in the second tableau of act II). The orchestra plays reasonably well-although the strings are thin, and there are more than a few moments of the loose ensemble you expect in an unedited live performance. The choral passages could use more heft.

Fortunately, there is some magnificent solo work. Pederson sings with accuracy, weight, and a sure sense of the rhetorical force of his lines; he is arguably an even more wrenching protagonist than Jose van Dam on Foster's EMI recording. Lipovsek, in a clever bit of casting, plays both the Sphinx (a role she played for EMI) and Jocaste; she's impressive too, especially in the way she invests the Sphinx with a post-Carmen sexual danger. And while the High Priest too often swallows his words, Creon, Tiresias, and Thesee all come across as vivid characters. The sound is decent; the booklet contains a plot summary but no libretto.

In sum, Gielen's recording is an uneven affair. But whatever its weaknesses, it does give you a good sense of the flavor of the score; and since, as I've said, the competition is hard to find, this Naxos version is tentatively recommended. Still, our lives would be fuller if EMI would give the Foster another wide release.

Ernst Wilhelm Wolf (1735-1792) was a child prodigy, reputedly skilled in thoroughbass at the age of seven. Subsequently trained in Eisenach and Gotha, he was greatly influenced by compositions of C. H. Graun and C. P. E. Bach, both of whom were popular in the latter. (Bach himself heard one of the young composer's early works given in court, and praised it highly.) Wolf found his milieu at the Weimer court, where he was successively Konzertemeister in 1761, organist in 1763, and Kapellmeister in 1772-the last being a post he held until his death. He was part of the renowned artistic "Round Table" established by the young Duchess Anne Amalia, a group that also included at various times Herder, Kotzebue, Einsiedel, Wieland, and the young Goethe. At one point Frederick II of Prussia tried to woo Wolf away as a successor to Bach, but Amalia convinced the composer otherwise. It was a wise move, both on the part of the Duchess and the composer. Wolf's musical tastes were sophisticated and cosmopolitan, despite his solidly Baroque training, and Weimer was far more open to foreign artistic influences than the autocratic court of Prussia.

Much of Wolf's output was, sadly, lost over time, including several dozen motets and harpsichord concertos, various other sacred works, operas, and sonatas. Fortunately, at least 26 of an estimated 35 symphonies of his survive, from which the four on this release are drawn. With one exception, they remain undated, though some general conclusions can be hazarded.

The Symphony in D would appear to be the oldest of the works. One-quarter the length of the Symphony in F and roughly one-third the length of the other pair of symphonies on the album, its three movements pass by so quickly and formally (with only the most schematic and brief of developments) that they could almost be missed. Nevertheless, the opening Allegro, despite the ceremonial character of its first theme (with trumpets blazing) reveals the strong influence of. P. E. Bach, in its propulsive, mercurial rhythms, short melodic breath, and sudden harmonic shifts. Much the same can be said of the finale, while the Andante suddenly displays Italianate manners at their most basic, with a simple melody over an Alberti bass.

The Symphony in C from 1786 jumps abruptly into the sound world of the late Classical period. The complexity and time span of each movement has broadened dramatically, and the thematic material has gained genuine individuality. The Andante begins with a noble theme stated by a pair of clarinets in thirds, to which some pleasant touches of non-functional harmony are added when the orchestra enters. It ends abruptly on a seventh chord, much like e. P. E Bach's slow movements, and leads to a blandly energetic Minuet (this symphony is the only one on this album to follow the Austrian fourmovement model, instead of the older three-movement form derived from the Italian opera Sinfonia) that sandwiches a central section featuring flutes in an ethereal Gluck-like melody. The finale combines Bach again with Mannheim rockets, Italianate melodies for pairs of winds, and a preference for twoand occasionally three-part counterpoint that recalls Michael Haydn. Fascinating stuff.

Wolf must have had some extraordinary wind soloists at his disposal in Weimer. As much space as they get to exhibit their talents in the C-Major Symphony, the R-Major work provides still more. A pair of clarinets, and later, flutes, are featured prominently in the opening Allegro moderato, with thematic content offered in thirds, in counterpoint, or as solo with accompaniment. The sharp Bachian edges have been filed down with more recourse to development, though the extremely brief Andante movement remains a lyrical Italianate stub rather than a full participant in the symphonic process. The finale is an ingenious piece that incorporates a symphonic minuet and again recalls Bach's empfindsamer Stit (sensitive style), with the older master's unexpected harmonic shifts and wide, leaping figures adapted to the tastes of a later period.

The Symphony in F is the most elaborately composed work on this disc. By far the longest symphony of the group (24 minutes, as opposed to 7, 17, and 17), the Andante strides forward to center stage as the longest movement in the collection. It is a somber, haunting piece in typical AABA form that recalls Boccherini and the other Italians resident at the Spanish court, mixing Baroque and Classical elements with magisterial ease. Of all the selections on this release, it is this movement that stands out far above the rest. In an earlier phonographic era, Beecham would have cut a couple of repeats, slowed down matters appropriately for the tempo marking, and recorded it as prime lollipop material. Now we get it all, but at a pace that's too quick to let the weight and timbre of the music be fully felt.

This is my single complaint about Pasquet's conducting. Like quite a few other period specialists, he denies the period's composers the right to choose their own tempos. His faster movements are dynamically varied and convincingly performed (especially by the Weimer players' wind section) but rigidly paced, while his slow movements are only a shade less fast than everything else. Is it really a Romantic period anachronism to assume that when a composer writes andante, he genuinely wants something slower than moderato or allegretto?

The sound is crisp and nicely blended, avoiding the pitfalls of instrumentalists whose solos zoom out of nowhere to electronically dominate the proceedings. However, I do take issue with the banding that the producers of this album supply. The rallentando and seventh chord that concludes the C Major Symphony's andante is obviously intended as a quick lead-in to the minuet, but we have a six-second pause between cuts, instead. The liner notes don't live up to Naxos's usual standard, either. They're too generic, and poorly translated.

These caveats aside, this is an attractive release that once again demonstrates just how much fine compositional talent existed around the time of Haydn and Mozart that wasn't Haydn or Mozart. Let's hope for Volume 2.

The Group for Contemporary Music made several CDs of American music for Koch in the early 1990s, the above being one of them. Now here it is, reappearing as part of Naxos's "American Classics" series. I expect one of Fanfare's resident Feldman specialists covered it back then-I think Mike Silverton was doing it in those days-but I have been unable to locate any review. According to the CD information, this was a world premiere recording.

Although not to be confused with his monumentally long second string quartet, this late work of Feldman's still runs for almost 80 minutes. (Well, it doesn't exactly run.) Readers unfamiliar with this composer's music but interested in experimenting at the low Naxos price should dispense with any normal idea of the passing of time. Feldman's work unfolds at a snail's pace, with the result that every musical incident is examined in minute, close-up detail. Imagine walking down your garden path to the mailbox; now imagine doing it on your hands and knees with a magnifying glass, taking over an hour to complete the journey. You would know a heck of a lot more about the nature of your garden path by the end of it.

Of course, it's not entirely as simple as that. Feldman understood the big picture, form-wise: the apparent randomness of the sounds he dwells on in his own good time is kept in balance by a fierce musical intelligence. These sounds include rocking motifs, chords, and often even single notes, usually separated by moments of complete silence. Feldman requests the quartet to play without vibrato and, most of the time, using mutes. Much of the material consists of high harmonics. It is nearly all pianissimo or softer, except for some sudden loud interruptions-for example, at 26:00 and 33:30 respectively. (The Eastern-bloc composer Kancheli appears to have known his Feldman. Unheralded fortes are a fingerprint of his as well.) As the work progresses, earlier motifs or textures are revisited and developed, providing at least an unconscious sense of structure. In the end, the painstaking process undertaken together by the composer, the performers, and the listener creates a unique, mesmerizing context where sudden shifts of emphasis are almost seismic. The fortes mentioned above seem earth shattering. The occasional consonant harmony, unnoticed in another context, becomes pure balm. The slightest rhythmic acceleration feels like panic. High, quiet harmonics from the solo violin assume the cloak of unbearable loneliness.

For those readers already conversant with Feldman's world, it need only be said that this performance seems to me as good as it could possibly be. (I don't have access to a score.) The internal balance is finely judged, and all four members of the group must have spent many hours in meditation to be so at home in this time span. By the way, the stalwart players are Benjamin Hudson and Carol Zeavin, violins; Lois Martin, viola; and Joshua Gordon, cello. Recorded sound is first-rate. One can only hope Naxos will reissue the other recordings in the Koch series, particularly those of Wolpe and Wuorinen.

Morton Feldman's mind worked in a manner unlike that of any other composer. This fact alone makes him important and his music riveting.

Japanese composer Shiro Fukai (1907-59) was apparently better known in his native country for his nearly 200 film scores than his classical compositions, though he was thought of highly enough to be among those receiving a commission in celebration of the 2600th Year of the Emperor (not a single emperor, of course, but the anniversary of Imperial rule) in 1940. The resulting work, a ballet score entitled Creation, is included here. Illustrating several Japanese creation myths and concluding in the (then) present, the music does adapt at least one traditional mode from the agesold court music gagaku, though the primary impression it makes is not via styles indigenous to the island, but rather Ravel and early Stravinsky. Fukai's Francophilia is audible in the rest of this program as well; his Parodies are dedicated to Falla, Stravinsky, Ravel, and Roussel, respectively, and though not exactly mimicry, they touch on enough points of stylistic similarity to suit the title. Program annotator Morihide Katayama characterizes Fukai as a Modernist, but one that avoided the adopted artistic "savagery" of early Modernism (and the starkness of traditional Japanese folk and court music) in favor of a French-influenced manner of sweetness and light. This may account for Fukai's renaming one of the movements from an earlier version of the work, changing the dedication from Bartok to Roussel, apparently without altering a note of the music. (A movement dedicated to Malipiero was removed completely.) Though Katayama also cites Bolero as an influence on the Songs of Java's gradual crescendo, Fukai's colorful orchestration outdoes even Ravel, with chiming percussion reflecting Javanese gamelan, a brief but prominent part for saxophone, and even something approaching an insistent jazz riff in the brass. (In a curious editorial gaffe, Naxos labels both Creation and Songs of Java as "World Premiere Recordings," though Katayama's notes mention a recording of the latter being popular in wartime Japan.)

The recorded sound is good, and the performances do the job, although additional rehearsal time might have helped bring out a bit more of the music's color and flair. Fukai's music often has a familiar ring to it, but that actually enhances, and not distracts from, what is a pleasant divertissement.

Belgian trained Felix-Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911) was an indispensable link in the continuation of the French Romantic organ tradition founded by Franck. He was a stalwart advocate and popularizer of the organ as a legitimate concert instrument apart from its churchly service, and became an international superstar whose tours took him as far a field as the United States. He was also the bridge between Widor, who preceded him as professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory, and Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Nadia Boulanger, and Marcel Dupre, all of whom can be counted among his many students. He also distinguished himself as a musicologist, editor, publisher, and champion of 17th- and 18th-century organ works, and, along the way found time to establish, with Charles Bordes and Vincent d'indy, the Schola Cantorum in Paris.

After his death, his students, most notably Dupre, strove to keep his musical legacy before the public. In the wake of World War II, however, he faded into obscurity, not because his music was in any way deficient, but because a new Zeitgeist was afoot in the world. Many had reasoned that both World Wars I and II were inextricably tied to the Romantic tradition. Hitler was, after all, a stalwart Wagnerian. Musical esthetics and language had to change if we were to avoid the horrific results of the past. In light of Schoenberg's atonal experiments and Messiaen' s expansion of musical language into uncharted realms that would ultimately lead to Pierre Boulez, Guilmant's music seemed hopelessly archaic and, to use a word bandied about during the tumultuous years of the 1960s, "irrelevant."

More's the pity. His music is finely crafted, masterfully exploiting the Cavaille-Coll organs that were developing, synergistically, along with him. The year 1984, however, saw a turnaround as far as Guilmant's reputation is concerned. A reprint of the greater part of his works appeared in the United States. European publishers quickly followed suit, and he is once again before the public.

This collection offers a good mix of his religious and secular music (he was a pretty evenly bifurcated composer in those two realms). As performed by Robert Delcamp on the Casavant organ Dp.2654 1961/2004 of the All Saints Chapel at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennesee, I found the liturgical pieces the most arresting. The Lamentation in D Minor, the Offertoire O filii, and the Noellanguedocien are characterized by an ecstatically hushed religiosity quite unlike anything found in either Widor or Vierne. Guilmant was an admirer of Debussy, and Impressionistically pastel coloring (brought to the fore by Delcamp's apt registration choices) heightens the exquisite affect of these pieces. Delcamp's other virtues lie in his unerringly effective tempos, clear at1iculation, fine sense of dynamic shading, and his ability to project the feeling lurking beneath the notes. He also has a fine sense of musical rhetoric and drama, as shown in his performance of the Lamentation.

The collection ends with the Finale of Guilmant's Sonata No. I in D Minor-an elaborate sonata-allegro movement with a swirling toccata-like first subject and a hymn-like second subject. The young and brilliant Felix Hell on Reference RR-IO I CD (where all three movements are perfanned) takes it at a considerably quicker tempo (7:25 as opposed to Delcamp's 8:56). Delcamp, on the other hand, gives far more space for the hymn to breathe, and more firmly underscores the piece's rhetorical flourishes. Were they conductors, Hell would be Toscanini and Delcamp would be Walter.

For Naxos to undertake a complete recording of one of Handel's most vocally demanding operas was a bold move indeed. When the opera in question brings them into competition with star-studded opposition in the shape of recordings by Christopher Hogwood and Rene Jacobs, it might be considered one step beyond boldness. Those sets, with detailed introductions to Rinaldo, were dealt with comprehensively by Bernard Jacobson and me in, respectively, Fanfare 24:4 and 27: I, easily accessible for those interested via Fanfare's online Archive, if the relevant issues are not at hand. And while on the subject of the www, if you buy this new Naxos you can download a copy of the original Italian libretto from their Web site; there is no English translation, although the booklet does have a synopsis.

Kevin Mallon's recording of Handel's first London opera stems from performances given in association with the Toronto-based Opera in Concert, an organization devoted to covering "a stylistic gamut of rarely performed operatic repertoire." Well, in the present case I guess that may be true of North America, though it hardly is of Europe, where Rinaldo is one of Handel's more frequently performed operas. Here, it is given in its usual complete from, which is to say that Eustazio's act II "Scorta rea," and Goffredo's "Sola del brando," both of which were cut by Handel before the first performance (but included by Hogwood), are omitted.

I've had plenty of good things to say about the Kevin Mallon discs that have to date come my way, but despite the obvious integrity of the performance, there's little here to praise, I'm afraid. Dramatically, for reasons discussed in my review of the Hogwood set, Rinaldo is one of Handel's weaker operas, being largely dependent for success in performance on two crucial elements: vocal brilliance and spectacular scenic effects. The latter is obviously not applicable in an audio recording (though we get even more sound effects here than on the rival recordings), placing even greater onus on singers and conductor to ensure that Handel's score emerges with all its scintillating youthful freshness and vigor. That is precisely what does not happen here, and I fear the fault lies largely with Mallon's direction, which is hampered by tempos that frequently drag, and stolid, earthbound rhythms. Even in quicker numbers, there is a kind of all-purpose forward momentum allowing for little inflection or nuance. Just as bad is the treatment of secco recitative, which is performed in the style of 17thcentury recitative cantando, something closer to arioso. As a result, it often seems interminable, with any illusion that the characters are actually communicating with each other reserved for very few moments. This is a facet of 18th-century opera to which many listeners (and critics) pay little attention, but as Alan Curtis has convincingly proved, it makes a huge difference to dramatic veracity.

Few, if any, of Mallon's cast will be widely known, so it would be pleasing to report that there is a hitherto hidden star among the names. There isn't. Judging from the biographical notes, none have made a specialty of Baroque opera, and despite some moderately pleasing voices, that is the impression conveyed. Excessive vibrato rules in practically every case, as does an inability to produce disciplined cantabile-singing or cleanly articulated fioritura. The Armida of Barbara Hannigan is an exception, but the voice is so lightweight, so soubrette-like as to convey little of the character of the passionate, emotional spitfire. The bass Sean Watson also impresses as Armida's would-be lover Argante, but after also giving due credit to the Aradia Ensemble for some excellent playing, that's about it, I'm afraid. If you caught this performance well presented in a provincial opera house, you'd probably feel you'd had your money's worth, allowing for some longueurs that might have left you longing for an interval and the bar. As a recording, it is simply not remotely competitive with either the Hogwood or the Jacobs, despite their weaknesses, Naxos's excellent sound, and the substantial price advantage.

It is not unheard of nor is it uncommon for conductors to pursue a second career as composers. In the first part of the last century, there were several distinguished people that, to a greater or lesser degree, took up the pen with varying degrees of success. These include Otto Klemperer, Felix Weingartner, and Hamilton Harty (1879-1941).

Harty's first musical appointments were at churches in Northern Ireland. In his teens, Harty relocated to Dublin, where he studied composition with Michele Esposito. The influence and importance of Esposito were important and Harty dedicated the overture and concerto on this release to his mentor. Because of the less than sterling musical infrastructure in Harty's homeland, he moved to London where he quickly became a widely sought accompanist and later conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Today, however, Harty is known more for his 13-year tenure as conductor of the Halle Orchestra of Manchester. Harty was responsible for the introduction of many works to the English concert-going public. These include the Ninth Symphony of Mahler (1930) and Shostakovich's First (1932). From 1933, Harty worked mainly with the orchestras in London, where he led premieres of symphonies by Walton and Bax. He was knighted in 1925 and received the gold medal of the Philharmonic Society in 1934.

Most of Harty's lush, romantic, and beautiful music was composed in the first two decades of the 20th century and, as his podium reputation rose, Harty had less time to devote to composition. Harty belongs to the same generation that sired Arnold Bax, John Ireland, and Harty's exact contemporary, Frank Bridge. As a composer, Harty was far from prolific, but he was a sensitive and meticulous craftsman. His original compositions are few in number, but there is self assuredness, exceptional ability, and a high degree of consistency found throughout. There is an overtly Celtic feel to many of his works, including the Irish Symphony, With the Wild Geese, and The Children of Lir, but even in works such as A Comedy Overture and the piano concerto, one cannot help but detect a twinkle in Harty's eye and a bit of the brogue in his musical syntax. In addition, Harty also adapted excerpts from Handel's Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music for modem symphony orchestra and prepared orchestral arrangements of several short piano pieces by his compatriot, John Field.

The music on this release-the second that Naxos has devoted to Harty's music-was composed between 1906 and 1922 with the overture being the earliest example of Harty's craft and the piano concerto the latest. With the exception of the Middle Eastern inspired Fantasy Scenes, this release is facing formidable competition by way of a midprice Chandos three CD set of Harty's orchestral works by the same orchestra but a different conductor, Bryden Thomson. Unfortunately, Naxos gets the short end of the stick on this outing.

The playing is excellent, as are the intonation and overall ensemble, but the tempos-at least on the works common to both the Naxos and Chandos releases-are another matter entirely. The Overture comes in at 13:08, just over a minute shorter than Thomson, and while I can live with that, I cannot say the same for the Piano Concerto. Here, Donohoe and Yuasa run through the score at warp speed, turning in a reading that, at 30:05, sounds rushed when compared to Malcolm Binns and Bryden Thomson's timing of 37:42. Though technically brilliant, Donohoe misses the mark elsewhere by consistently failing to linger and to squeeze the music for everything it's worth. By comparison, Binns is dreamy; he milks the phrases, especially in the opening measures of the Allegro risoluto. And while the sound on this Naxos release is wholly acceptable, it nowhere approaches the aural opulence found in the Chandos set.

In my opinion, Harty's pleasant and consistently attractive music requires that a more lyrical approach be applied at certain points in the scores, something that has apparently been overlooked here, but an aspect that is certainly apparent in the Chandos set. The bottom line is this: do you simply want a recording of Harty's wonderful Piano Concerto, or do you want it played as if he were an Irish Rachmaninoff? If the latter is your choice, invest in the Chandos set, which also includes the Violin Concerto and other scores, for it's the best around.

It's a cliche, but in this case, also true: the suicide of Bo Linde (1933-1970) at the age of37 shocked the world of Swedish classical music. He was considered the most promising composer of his generation by many of his compatriots, and the most likely to make a mark on the international front. Linde was a member of a young composer's group frequently referred to as "50-talisterna," or "belonging to the 1950s," whose exemplars were emotionally expressive composers that extended but did not abandon tonality. These included nationalists, such as Larsson (also Linde's teacher), and more prominent figures like Shostakovich and Britten.

The composer was undeniably precocious, submitting his Piano Concerto No. 1 as part of his application for admission to Stockholm's Academy of Music. Musical maturity also arrived early, so that the Violin Concerto of 1957 already displays an easy confidence, emotive power, and consistency of inspiration at a very high level. Linde's musical language is conservative but recognizably of the 20th century. The Violin Concerto recalls Barber and Prokofiev in general style, though Linde was more subtle in his neo-Romanticism than the former and less satirical than the latter. (Shostakovich comes to the fore in the Cello Concerto, though there is no sense in either work of Linde staking out part of the sound world of another composer as his own.) Movements in both concertos break into multiple smaller expressive units, sometimes enclosing entire movements within themselves, and linked through the understated reuse of transformed themes.

Sundkvist leads a rhythmically taut pair of performances whose clarity helps bring out the nuances of Linde's orchestral thought. The relatively small (52 members) Gavle SO delivers both discipline and refinement. Gomyo's reading of the Violin Concerto is more assertive and varied in character than the one I've possessed for years, featuring Karl-Ove Manneberg under Rainer Miedel's direction: a mercurial, well-judged interpretation. Maria Kliegel is expansive and robust in the Cello Concerto, yet misses nothing of the lyrical warmth in the work's final movement.

Sound quality is good, with just enough plush to add bloom to the instruments, and not enough to smear the textures. Good liner notes accompany this release, and I only wish that Naxos had put the remaining time on this CD to use-perhaps with a recording of Linde's Sinfonia. Regardless, this is an excellent album by an unjustly neglected 20th-century master, well worth the purchase.

I continue to enjoy the music of Paul Moravec (b. 1957), a younger composer of a conservative bent who's enjoyed an enviable success recently. Even though his language and stylistic stance isn't closest to my heart, I feel his recognition is well deserved, in fact more than some of the composers with whom he's often categorized as new romantic/tonalist. The reason is pretty simple: Moravec's music strikes me as extremely sophisticated in its workings, but not calculated in its effect. I think he feels he must investigate his materials to their greatest depth with the tools of the standard Western tradition, but that investigation must truly be "in depth." There's none of the sense of pandering to or placating of audiences that passes for a lot of "accessible" new music nowadays. In fact, Moravec's music, despite an ingratiating surface, is extremely dense, as The Time Gallery (2002) in particular demonstrates.

That work is the centerpiece of this disc. It's a "meditation" on the nature of time, written after a visit to the eponymous exhibit at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, which shows a history of timekeeping and its tools over the centuries (I've been there too, and yes, it's fascinating). Moravec creates in each of his movements a type of "flow" which suggests the different human approaches to time. The first movement, "Bells: Devotional Hours," is inspired by the divisions of the day that structured medieval life. The second, "Time Machine," is an evocation of the Newtonian clockwork envisaged by the Enlightenment. The third, "Pulse: The Feeling of What Happens," is based on the rhythms of the human heartbeat, and the fourth, "Overtime: Memory Sings," is a blend of the three previous, where the human consciousness creates a new model of time that transcends mere "chronocicity" (my neologism).

The whole piece lasts about 45 minutes, and each movement is introduced by a concrete sound pastiche (such as the ticking clocks of the second or the heartbeat of the third) that sets the stage for the musical interpretation that follows. Several things leap out of this music. First, it is brilliantly orchestrated: Moravec knows how to combine just six instruments (this is the standard "Pierrot" sextet so beloved of contemporary composers) into sonorities that suggest something far more orchestral. He also knows how to make a wickedly witty sound, such as the jaunty little figure in glockenspiel and piccolo in the first movement. (For the record, the superb Eighth Blackbird consists of Molly Alicia Barth, flutes; Michael L. Maccaferri, clarinets; Matt Albert, violin; Nicholas Photinos, cello; Matthew Duvall, percussion; and Lisa Kaplan, piano.) Second, he has the courage to follow an idea over a long span and investigate it in depth. This is particularly the case in the second movement, which divides into four sections and moves from an exhilarating scherzo to a more languid interlude inspired by pendular motion, to a breakneck ostinato that repeats a figure into obsession, which then necessarily melts down under the heat in the fourth.

Finally, the composer is eager to tackle big ideas in his music. He is obviously searching for an artistic result that not only pleases and projects beauty, but stimulates thought and questioning. I don't feel that Moravec's more conservative approach is meant to coddle the listener or sustain a status quo.

Do I have criticisms? Well, yes. At times, the music can still go into too much of a Hollywood sound, a sort of lush, heart-on-sleeve Romanticism that I feel actually detracts from the virtues of the work. Likewise, the sound collages at the start of each movement, while fascinating, could frankly be made more integral to the music. As sonic epigrams, they work, but I'd love to hear them woven more into the fabric of the piece, which I think would push it to even greater discoveries.

Finally, the work strangely doesn't have a real slow movement. This is more of an observation than a criticism. (Since I've been relistening recently to the Beethoven cello sonatas, which mostly share this quality, one can say Moravec has a good precedent.) The third movement would seem to be the logical place for such a breather, but it in fact becomes a sprightly romp after a soft beginning of the heartbeats. The final movement has an elegiac cast, but it, too, pushes to extremes of intensity. The upshot is that the music is restless, questing, and driven. So long as one accepts that early on, there's no problem, but just be prepared for a different sort of ride over its span than you might expect from its surface language.

The other two short pieces, both for violin and piano, are similarly breathless, but this seems appropriate to their stance as character pieces. Protean Fantasy (1993) is aptly titled, as it races through its course with seemingly limitless energy. And the 2002 Ariel Fantasy is a prototype of the succeeding Tempest Fantasy for mixed quartet, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and which I've already reviewed in Fanfare.

Okay, I've gone through my balance sheet, which remains very much on the positive side. All is superbly performed, and the sound is clear and full. Moravec is a composer of substance, integrity, and imagination, and I continue to look forward to upcoming works.

Four British composers give the tuba a good workout, beginning with Ralph Vaughan Williams. His concerto from 1954 displays all the hallmarks of the composer: tunefulness of the English pastoral variety, expert scoring, and a thorough knowledge of the instrument's capabilities, notably its mellifluous upper register. The first movement galumphs along in 6/8 time, the thematic material recalling the finale of the Fourth Symphony, then a typically mellow slow movement follows. The Sixth Symphony is recalled in the dramatic finale. The venerable master broke no new ground in this piece (as he did in some of his later works); still it is swift, enjoyable, and well crafted.

That description applies to the other concertos as well, all of which were composed in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Edward Gregson has written a lot of music for brass-the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble recorded his brass quintet years ago for Argo-and he is comfortable with concerto form, as witness the fine Chandos CD of his clarinet and violin concertos. His tuba concerto is memorably melodic and heavily (but expertly) scored a la Hollywood wide-screen. The first movement's thematic material makes attractive use of the Lydian mode. I am not acquainted with the work of Roger Steptoe (b. 1953) or John Golland (1946-1993) but their concertos are similarly from the sophisticated end of the British light-music genre. Harmonies are spiced with dissonance, but overall the appropriate adjective is jolly. I particularly liked Golland's concerto, which boasts a moody and reflective slow movement.

The performances are just right. James Gourlay is both mellow and nimble, while Gavin Sutherland and his band are completely at home in this kind of music. Recording is fine. When I played the CD on a small portable system, the speakers buzzed merrily in sympathetic vibration: that is the nature of the tuba's full timbre, but it's not a problem on a regular system. An enjoyable disc, with more variety in it than you might suppose.

Much of this program falls into the category of light classical, or pops music. Alla Pavlova, Moscow born and trained, now a resident of New York City, writes well-constructed material that is drenched in nostalgia, and yet each work on this program has a distinct profile. Monolog is an homage to the composer's music-loving father, an amateur violinist. It is sweet and short, in just the right proportions; the brevity of the piece keeps the sentimentality of the music from welling over into sappiness. Old New York Nostalgia is also, at first blush, too simple and relentlessly tonal to have any lasting impact, and yet there is an integrity and good old-fashioned craft at the core of this writing that draws the listener in, and even encourages repeat hearings. Her memories tend to be sweet with little bitterness; even the "Lullaby for the Twins," a 9/11 tribute, oddly skirts any intense emotions.

The centerpiece of the program is Sulamith, a ballet suite based on the Russian writer Alexandre Krupin's tale of a love affair between King Solomon and one of his servants, the eponymous young waif. The oriental flavor of the music brings to mind Rimsky and Scheherazade, less the soaring sumptuousness. That's the rub; Pavlova, in all of the music on this CD, seems determined to keep her emotional burners on low, even as she flirts with coy melodrama. Her symphonies, which have also been recorded by Naxos, may tell a different story. Certainly, her voice is intriguing enough to merit an audition.

Rossen Milanov is a young conductor of Bulgarian origin and seems to be one of the more promising talents of his generation. He has become highly admired in Philadelphia, as the associate conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he has consistently displayed a sensitive ear for color and dramatic shape, which are appropriate attributes in this music. The Moscow ensemble is gently sonorous, warmly sympathetic to the music

Given the fact that Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) was once viewed as one of the finest pianists in Europe, not to mention an exceptional composer, it is surprising that his name and music are not better known today. The reason may be that most scholars have been interested in Ries's book of recollections about Beethoven and, until recently, few have turned an eye toward his music. However, that has begun to change, as over the last few years, the German label CPO has recorded all eight of Ries's symphonies and late in 2005 embarked on a cycle of his string quartets. While still in its early stages, the slow but steady exhumation and re-evaluation of Ries 's music continues and in my opinion, each new release serves to underscore the fact that the neglect of Ries 's music has been unwarranted. The problem was that Ries was overshadowed by the revolutionary genius of his contemporary and friend, Beethoven.

The men had a long-standing friendship; it began in Bonn where Ries's father taught Beethoven. When the court was disbanded in 1794, Ries continued to study with his father, moving to Munich in 1801. Later that year, Ries relocated to Vienna where the well-established Beethoven agreed to take him on as a piano student. During their three-year professional relationship, Ries acted as Beethoven's secretary and copyist, lending further credibility to the aforementioned assemblage of recollections.

Even though Ries was a composition student of Albrechtsberger, Beethoven's music cast a spell on his younger friend, so much so that Beethoven once said of Ries's music, "He imitates me too much." Ries's career seems to have taken off in 1809, and between then and 1824 Ries spent four years in Stockholm and 11 more in London, where his reputation and the appreciation for his music solidified.

Ries composed nine concertos, one for the violin and eight for the piano. Even though the piano concertos were numbered sequentially in the order of publication, they were not engraved in the order in which they were written. For example, the Concerto No.6, published in 1824, was the fifth published, but probably the first composed, as the autograph is dated Bonn 1806.

This first release in a cycle of his piano concertos by Naxos offers further material by which to judge Ries's abilities as a composer and pianist. The concertos on this disc are separated by two decades, and afford us the opportunity to examine the composer's development. Op. 123 was quilled not long after Ries's studies with Beethoven, while op. 151 was written two years after his return from London and bears the subtitle "Gruss an den Rhein," an affectionate tribute to the region in which he grew up. While op. 123 unquestionably inhabits the world of Beethoven, op. 151 adumbrates the music of Chopin, especially in the delicate and lovely Larghetto.

Klaus Heymann and Naxos are well known for their forays into the brushwood of music history in an effort to find neglected gems, and they have succeeded yet again. Even though they may lack the indisputable genius and innovative qualities found in Beethoven's concertos, they hold the listener's attention and augur well for Ries's contemporary reputation as performer and composer. This is not profound music, but it is unquestionably music of strength, character, and appeal. Furthermore, it offers formidable technical challenges to all who open the scores.

Christopher Hinterhuber is an established artist with an exceptionally well-stocked toolbox that allows him to confront the technical and expressive difficulties of Ries's concertos and come out a winner. His digital dexterity is first-rate and his ability to extract the brilliance as well as the emotion from Ries's scores is equally impressive. Uwe Grodd may well be one of the most underrated conductors active today. He has distinguished himself in numerous Naxos releases, and this is no exception. Grodd and the excellent New Zealand Symphony Orchestra-perhaps the finest in the Pacific Rim-succeed in offering performances that are wholly committed by way of excitement, sentiment, and drama. Sonics are first-rate, too, and in keeping with Naxos's bright but never constricted audio perspective.

If you don't know Ries's music, this budget release from Naxos offers an excellent introduction. Once you're hooked, move on to the symphonies on CPO; I can almost guarantee that you won't regret it!

Even though his name is lost to all but musicologists and then only a precious few of them, Samuel Arnold (1740-1802) was a gifted musician, highly respected theater composer, conductor, and an outstanding musical historian in Georgian England.

Arnold was the son of Thomas Arnold and probably Princess Amelia, a student of Handel. Arnold studied with Bernard Gates, a pupil of John Blow, and from the mid 1760s was active as a composer for the summer concerts at London's pleasure gardens. By 1769, Arnold's struggle to stay afloat financially ended abruptly when he came face-to-face with financial ruin as the result of a £10,000 embezzlement. However, the resourceful Arnold rekindled his relationship with the London theaters in 1777, when George Colman the Elder secured Arnold's talents as house composer for the Little Theater in the Haymarket. Additional positions included posts as organist at the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey and head of the Academy of Ancient Music. In 1786, Arnold commenced editing a complete edition of Handel's works and had completed 180 volumes by his death in 1802. Arnold is buried in Westminster Abbey, along with two of England's other musical greats, Handel and Purcell.

Samuel Arnold wrote no less than 60 works for the stage, including The Maid of the Mill, the first English opera to have action finales in the manner of its European counterparts, The Castle of Andalusia, Turk and No Turk. and the oratorio The Prodigal Son (1773), the last work performed at Oxford on the occasion of Arnold's receiving the degree of doctor of music from Oxford University; all of these further solidified Arnold's reputation as a first-rate composer for the English theater.

Generally, composers active at the time would assemble works in sets of six or 12 for publication, as with the six concertos of Handel's op. 3 and the dozen that make up his op. 6. Arnold's half-dozen overtures fall into that pattern. There were exceptions to the rule, though, notable examples being Thomas Arne's seven trio sonatas and William Boyce's eight overtures and three concerti grossi.

The six overtures recorded on this Naxos release from the spring of 1996 were composed for the concerts at Marylebone Gardens and published in parts by John Welcker, c. 1771. They are high-spirited works and, as noted by Dr. Robert Hoskins in his excellent annotations, are composed in a "homophonic idiom, with fast tempos, pleasing tunefulness, and colourful contrasts [that] had resonances with the gardens' audiences." Although Arnold's idiom is indebted to that of Johann Christian Bach and composers of the Mannheim school, there is a decidedly English ring to each work.

Apropos overtures, that to Polly, the long-delayed successor to Gay and Pepusch's The Beggar's Opera, didn't grace the boards in London until 1777. It came on the heels of a revival of The Beggar's Opera that included new music written by Thomas Linley. Arnold's curtain raiser is nothing more than a medley of 13 tunes from the prequel to Polly. On the occasion of the premiere, a critic wrote in The Morning Post that "the airs were arranged and blended with great judgement" and "we do not remember any Overture being more enjoyed."

The eight tracks that comprise Arnold's music to Macbeth were composed for a 1778 production of Shakespeare's masterpiece at Colman's Little Theater, but the critics weren't as kind as they were to Polly the previous year, complaining of botched lines, provincial dialects, and inappropriate costumes. While there is newly composed music in the score, Arnold also relied upon traditional Scottish tunes, including The Braes of Ballenden and Lochaber and a march from Henry Purcell's incidental music to Bonduca.

Arnold's op. 8 set is the strongest music on this Naxos release, being characterized by that typical English bent for a sprightly tune in the outer movements and uncomplicated lyrical material in the slower central sections. Beneath this seemingly simple exterior though, one finds enviable craft in the alternation and working out of thematic material, not to mention refined phrasing, and some interesting and colorful timbres.

Kevin Mallon and the Toronto Camerata-incorrectly identified on the cover as the Toronto Chamber Orchestra-have recorded several discs for Naxos, including symphonies of Ordonez and Vanhal, as well as CDs of violin concertos of Saint-Georges and flute concertos of C. P. E. Bach. The band's playing is consistent from release to release: it is always alert, in tune, and successfully carries the message of the music in question, whether profound or not. This latest release in its discography is well presented with charm and elegance in bright and resonant sound, making for empathetic interpretations that unquestionably bestow long-belated credit to the bulk of the material, i.e., the op. 8 Overtures.

Composer/conductor Dan Welcher now lives in Texas, but he was composer in residence with the Honolulu Symphony in the early 1990s. While there, he composed a 40-minute symphony, as well as the above-named work for narrator and orchestra, Haleakalii. This program was recorded at the time, and originally released on the Marco Polo label.

Welcher is a terrific orchestrator. The indigenous fable of how Maui snared the sun and thus caused the seasons to occur is a colorful tale, eliciting brilliant, cinemascopic scoring from the composer (incorporating the use of traditional Hawaiian instruments). His depiction of the angry sun spitting fire is hugely exciting in the naturalistic manner of Jon Leifs or the Strauss of Eine Alpensinfonie. The same sure hand is heard in Prairie Light. "Three Texas Watercolors of Georgia O'Keeffe": these three tone poems-generally corresponding to O'Keeffe's images of morning, noon, and nightresemble the open-space film music of 1940s Aaron Copland and even Ferde Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite, though Welcher writes in a more sophisticated language than Grofe. Finally, the Clarinet Concerto, written for this CD's soloist, draws on some jazz influences but retains overall the composer's mid-20th-century style. It, too, is expertly scored and filled with felicitous touches.

What Welcher lacks, in my view, is a knack for finding memorable or individual thematic material. For all the expertise and sharp response he displays to Ann McCutchan's text in Haleakalii, the work doesn't come near Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolfin melodic memorability (which, in my opinion, is the feature of Prokofiev's piece that draws listeners of all ages back, time and again). I presume Haleakalii was composed with young people in mind; Richard Chamberlain's hammy narration would suggest as much. Chamberlain gets pretty hard to take over several listenings. Unfortunately, he chooses to dramatize the text when the orchestra is doing the same thing: a touch of overkill.

Make no mistake, however: there is sensuous, interesting music on this disc, finely performed, especially by clarinetist Bill Jackson. The recording is spacious and well balanced. I just can't help feeling something is missing. I would be intrigued to hear where Dan Welcher has taken his incontestable orchestral skill since 1991.

The music of Charles Wuorinen presents listeners with a simple challenge: the closer you listen to it, the better it works. But this is a truism, isn't it? Not really. Wuorinen belongs to a generation of American composers (he was born in 1938) who place the highest value on craft. There is rarely anything flashy or sensational about his music; even his percussion music is remarkably delicate. Nor is his music merely technically impressive. Expressivity is deftly woven into the fabric of these works.

Wuorinen's fascination with the technique of composition is reflected in the challenging instrumentation of these six chamber works from the early 1980s. All are trios, and all but one include brass. Trio for Bass Instruments, scored for bass trombone, tuba, and string bass, demonstrates the composer's keen sense for timbral values, both dramatically (and essentially emotionally) and in terms of the relationships of differing timbres. This may seem like an obtuse way of stating an obvious musical characteristic, but it is a rare and elusive gift when expressed at this level, putting Wuorinen in the company of Stravinsky, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, and ultimately, Mozart. This is an odd grouping superficially, but all of these composers, regardless of the other elements of their styles, were keenly aware of the unique values of the sounds of different instruments, and of the catalytic effects created as the threads are woven together.

It is natural that an ensemble of low instruments would generate the subtle sparks of wit that are thrown off here. In all of the music on this program, there is an engaging sense of drama, even theatricality, that ameliorates the dense poly tonal harmonic structure. In the Horn Trio, and in the Horn Trio Continued that came one year later, the energy level spikes up a few notches, nearly frenetic at times, but always remains controlled and organized. Wuorinen's style in the Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano is consistent with the other works, but the temperature is cooler, with a more elusive emotional appeal. As is the case, too, with the Double Solo for Horn Trio, this Trio is more interesting than it is purely entertaining.

The Trombone Trio is the most unusual work here, with the daunting textural and balance challenge of combining trombone, piano, and vibraphone. The key is limiting the dynamic range of the trombone, which has the side benefit of revealing a surprising range of subtle colors and textures from an instrument generally known for a brash insouciance. Here is a superb example of bold timbral blending as well as a sensuality that is probably not normally associated with Wuorinen. His ability to balance all of these elements in a way that does not favor any individual component marks his best work, and marks this composer as a true American master. It almost goes without saying, although it shouldn't, that the performances by The Group for Contemporary Players, cofounded by Wuorinen and Harvey Sollberger, are outstanding.

The Korean-born composer Isang Yun (1917-95) escaped political persecution in his home country by living in Germany for several years, where his reputation and his music, a deft blend of Western chromaticism and Korean folk influences, both flourished. Much of his ceuvre has been faithfully documented on the Camerata and CPO labels, and now Naxos joins in with this welcome disc. The Korean Chamber Ensemble performs with an engaging balance of power and poise, and conductor Borkowski provides several new perspectives on familiar scores.

For one, he offers Tapis (1987), not in its original scoring for string quintet (quartet plus double bass) as was recorded previously on cpo, but in the composer-sanctioned version for string orchestra. In this case, a certain amount of intimacy and nuance is lost-the variety of harmonics, glisses, pizzicato, and vibrato effects which color the quintet textures are swept up in a larger sense of flow, as are the sweet, birdlike fluttering and songful intervals of the individual instruments. In their place, the larger ensemble creates a stronger dramatic ambiance, with a greater emphasis on the contrasting episodes of agitation and tranquility, and a clearer sense of the symbolic separation of low and high strings. There is a significant difference between the two versions, and it's certainly worth hearing both.

Gong-Hu (1984), for harp and 13 strings, was composed for virtuoso harpist Ursula Holliger, and her 1985 recording for Camerata, conducted by her husband Heinz Holliger, is nearly five minutes faster than the new Park/Borkowski performance. The Holligers' forward momentum highlights lyrical flow even as the music alternates between contemplation and flamboyance, with the pointed attack of the harp woven into the swooping, soaring strings. Again, Borkowski looks for the drama in the score, and by his lingering ever so slightly over key passages, the episodic writing has better definition and the folk motives emerge with heightened clarity. The composition is named after the model of Chinese harp that has been a prominent part of Korean music for over 2000 years, traditionally (and symbolically) seen as an instrument for women. Don't be misled, however; there's nothing mild or passive about the difficult role of the harp here, and Rana Park is up to the task, in fact adding a bit more percussive edge to an interpretation equally impressive as that of the music's dedicatee.

Yun's characteristic use of Korean modes and microtones-"bent" reed and sliding string pitches-is brought to the fore in the Chamber Symphony 1 (1987), scored for string ensemble and pairs of horns and oboes. The oboes, a counterpart to the Korean piri, make the most of these extended techniques, as the horns inject fanfares and sustain tones amid string passages of stress and nearstasis. If you've never heard any of Yun's music before, this piece shows off his approach well.

All in all, an attractive disc, and at the price, recommended to the curious as well as aficionados.

Another "Robin and Marion" coming so soon after Ensemble Micrologus (28:6) is remarkable, for we now have four attempts to fill up a CD with the dramatic pastourelle that had first appeared on records three times in a bare-bones 11 to 13 minutes. On those three, Safford Cape and Joel Cohen included only the 16 songs, while Thomas Binkley supplied a thread of dialogue while omitting a few minor songs at the end. Since the original play is mostly spoken, the story line was largely lost. Guy Robert on Arion was the first to add more dialogue, three motets, and three songs. Binkley's second version on Focus was even longer by dint of a musical prelude but slightly less dialogue. Micrologus used no dialogue but prolonged the music with a lot of instrumental extensions and added six motets, five songs, and three estampies reals. Now we have the longest traversal of all, with the complete dialogue (it seems), three motets, and three songs. Like Binkley I, Robert, and Micrologus, this includes the motet on "Robin m'aime" from the Montpellier Codex, performed here three times. All these discs, of course, include the basic 16 songs.

The most notable difference on this presentation is the dialogue spoken almost simultaneously, a narrator reciting the original dialect of French in the left speaker, the actors speaking colloquial English in the right speaker, with the songs spread across the center. Consequently, only the songs are printed in both languages in the booklet. (Focus printed songs and dialogue in both languages, Arion only in the original.) Clearly, these four CDs are not much alike, and the inveterate collector will learn a lot by hearing all four. This version has a hectic busyness in the way the narrator tries to squeeze his lines into the fast-paced play, but the added sound effects enhance the sense of a staged play. I must add that Robert's baritone knight fits the character better than his rivals, but Pitts's knight has the best sound effects. All four CDs are currently available, but this one has a real price advantage.

This brilliant, briskly paced Damnation serves up the story almost offhand, with reliable panache spiriting up the big moments-Hungarian March, Easter Hymn, Soldiers' Chorus, "Ride to the Abyss," and so on-with plenty of flash, and solos with more than adequate command, though none of it strikes very deeply. Beset by occasional vibrato, Myers's light tenor projects a tremulous Faust. Todorovitch's mezzo flickers from darkly honeyed to piercingly bright with the air of a proneither demure innocence nor much involvement is at play. Alain Vernhes's metallically edged baritone teeters sardonically from suave to sinister-an ideal combination-without managing a memorable Mephistopheles in the manner of, say, Singher, Bastin, or Van Dam. Sound places the vocalists in the porches of your ears, though the orchestra's not far behind, even in intimate moments, while climaxes come across with a cataclysmic wallop. A few bars from Monteux, Munch, Sir Colin Davis (early and late), Kent Nagano, or Myung-Whun Chung, for starters-or singing actors such as Andre Turp, Keith Lewis, John Shirley-Quirk, Regine Crespin, or Anne Sofie von Otter, to name but a few-will serve to demonstrate what dramatic and expressive riches lie beneath Berlioz's spectacular sonic surfaces. But this is a sonic spectacular and the price is inviting. A synopsis cued by track is provided: for the libretto one is referred to the Naxos Web site.

Jacob Druckman (1928-1996) was in the 1970s and 1980s one of the most prominent American composers of orchestral music. His style was colorful and dramatic. He combined elements of avantgarde practice with a lyricism and sensuality that made his work far more accessible than many of his New York counterparts. If one can think of an analogue, his non-dogmatic approach--experimental yet also imbued with tradition-is about the closest to that of Berio of any American composer.

This disc, however, highlights a different side of Druckman, presenting several of his major chamber pieces, from several phases of his career. It begins with the Second String Quartet (1966), a work very much of its time. The language is spiky and episodic. Almost nothing is repeated, and the flow is one of "moments" that don't necessarily imply a connection one to the next. There is a great deal of craft, invention, and even moments of calm beauty within it, but overall it wears down one's engagement over time. There are several points where the shadow of Carter's work from the period is felt, but there's not the same sort of "architectural" sensibility that can pull one through the rougher patches.

The String Quartet No.3 dates from 1981, and even though it begins on the same pitch, the second stopped upon, it moves in a very different direction and manner. This is a substantially longer workalmost half an hour-divided into three movements, yet also united by a "braided" structure that alternates a set of variations on its opening chorale with a recurrent scherzo (the effect is now more reminiscent of George Rochberg, whose quartets of this period used similarly cyclic structures). The music is far more developmental in a traditional sense, the spirit more overtly "French" in the delight in arabesque and fanciful detail, and the motives are memorable. I find it rewards more each time I listen.

The final string work, Dark Wind, dates from 1994, close to the composer's death, and is perhaps the most traditional of all, in that it feels almost like an homage to the Ravel Duo, in large part because of the arpeggios (bariolage) in both instruments. It's also fascinating to note that in all three of these string pieces, there's a common gesture throughout-a sustained tone that crescendos and suddenly "explodes" into a flurry of delicately articulated, rapid notes.

Reflections on the Nature of Water (1986) is a solo marimba work that was written for William Moersch, but has become closely associated with Daniel Druckman, the composer's son and the principal percussionist of the New York Philharmonic. I remember when I first heard the work (a six-movement suite) a few years back, it seemed a bit generic to me. Now I don't know what I was thinking. Perhaps the fact that it is so idiomatic, elegant, and elemental, rather than being a catalogue of the composer's tics applied to the instrument, at first misled me, because it didn't seem personal enough. Now it just sounds wonderfully, essentially musical.

Druckman was also important as a political force in the field, having taught many important younger composers at Yale, who now are tearing up the field. By curating an important Horizons festival by the New York Philharmonic called "The New Romanticism," he did as much institutionally as anyone to shift the modernist paradigm to postmodernism. I can't help but feel that his orchestral legacy is his strongest-there was something about the power and sonority of the symphony that brought out his greatest bursts of imagination and risk-taking. The chamber music is a little more restrained and, frankly, no matter how detailed, its imaginative resources seem restricted mostly to its surface; there's not a lot of deep expression imbued in its structure and flow. In terms of chamber music, it seems even more to me now that his greatest achievements are in the realm of solo literature, as this marimba work and his extraordinary Valentine for double bass demonstrate.

So in the end, I am glad this release is here for our consideration, but I also feel it is more important archivally, filling out Druckman's recorded ceuvre, and as such will appeal most to those already familiar with and amenable to his music. These are all superlative performances that present Druckman's vision in the best possible light. The sound is also clear and clean.

When I first heard this CD, I thought that Josef Bohuslav Foerster's music was a bunch of pretentious orchestral claptrap, but repeated listenings revealed numerous unsuspected felicities. Foerster is a minor Romantic composer whose easily accessible music should appeal to anyone who enjoys Dvorak and Smetana, or even watered down Richard Strauss. The Festive Overture is a ceremonial piece composed in 1907 for the opening of a new theater in Prague. It opens with an arresting timpani motif that the composer passes through other sections of the orchestra with some minimal variations. It becomes a brass fanfare before returning toward the end. There is quite a bit going on musically here, but the dense block-like orchestration makes it sound simplistic.Me mladi contrasts a jaunty, syncopated theme with a gorgeous, lyrical effusion that closely resembles the motto theme of Carl Nielsen's Fourth Symphony with an added Dvorakian lilt. Foerster's symphonic poem was actually composed before Nielsen's symphony. The orchestration is more varied in Me mladi, but a dramatically ineffective series of false endings weakens it from a structural standpoint.The Symphony No.4 is a major work that is clearly on a higher creative plane. Foerster was a devout Roman Catholic, and this piece, subtitled "Easter Eve," is presumably a reflection of his religious beliefs. It is full of pleasant melodies and more finely nuanced orchestration, but it is still probably too long. The second movement is a case in point. Despite the presence of several charming melodic ideas, it is just too repetitive. A symphony like this typically runs into finale problems, and this at least partially turns out to be the case. The fourth movement is nearly 16 minutes in length. It begins with a slow six-minute Lento that just meanders along and goes nowhere. You want him to get on with it. The tempo picks up slightly, and then the same thing happens again. Foerster's musical style and religious background have been compared to Bruckner. They may both be long-winded, but Foerster clearly lacks Bruckner's distinctive personal voice. An organ joins the orchestra in the expected radiant conclusion that the program notes liken to "approaching the gates of heaven."

This is a solid orchestral recording that presents an honest sonic portrait of a full symphony orchestra in a concert hall, but is consistently lacking in the harmonic richness and dynamic impact that the music requires. The organ does provide a suitably rich sonority as it underpins the full orchestra at the end. As is the case with many Romantic pieces on the periphery of the basic repertoire, the music becomes dull when it is played by a provincial orchestra, which is exactly what The Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra is. I would venture to say that Foerster's Fourth Symphony would provide a sumptuous orgy of sound if it were played by an orchestra with the sonic luster and virtuosity of the Philadelphia Orchestra or the Vienna Philharmonic. Unfortunately, recording companies rarely have the nerve to use world-class orchestras in risky ventures like this. Nevertheless, anyone interested in large scale, off the beaten track, late 19th-century Romantic music should enjoy this.

First, this is Gloria Coates (b. 1938) not Eric. Second, we have a welcome addition to a stilltoo-small discography of one of the most original living American composers. I will confess this is my first encounter (far too late) with her music, but I have been primed by word of mouth, above all by fonner Fanfare critic Kyle Gann, who praises her lavishly in his American Music in the Twentieth Century. And the advance word has been confirmed by the music I've finally heard.

Coates is definitely a composer in the mold of the American "ultramodernists" of the early 20th century. The listener will immediately sense an adventurous, uncompromising, cantankerous spirit in her work that is a descendant of such as Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, and Crawford. Her most distinguishing technique is that of the string glissando, which in lesser hands can be a cheap symbol of modernist instability, and a passport to aural seasickness. Not here. Coates is careful to place her sliding tones at the service of larger processes: canons in particular, or "additive/subtractive" lines that expand and contract the range of the glissando over time and in perceptible patterns. She's a wonderfully paradoxical composer because, on the one hand, the music is highly experimental in its surface technique, but on the other hand, classical in its attention to form and development within the symphonic argument. She's a very conceptual composer, as both the titles of movements (Symphony No. 7's movements are "The Whirligig of Time," "The Glass of Time," and "Corridors of Time") and her attachment to strict processes, nowadays called algorithms, may suggest. But no matter how idealistic the music, it always carries a visceral impact, or in good old American terms, a real wallop.

The three works on this program nicely cover the composer's entire symphonic cycle (up to this point), dipping into the start, the middle, and end. Symphony No. I (1972-73) is her best-known work, also referred to as "Music on Open Strings." The work begins with an alternate pentatonic tuning of the instruments, and in the third movement incorporates the scordatura (retuning) of the strings back to the conventional tuning into the real-time performance fabric. Not all the sounds are just the five pitches, though, as Coates inserts all sorts of glissandos that enrich the texture, even if they don't establish other finn pitch centers. It's a highly original work, and a bracing combination of both minimalist and modernist practices.

The Symphony No.7 (1990; a tribute to "Those who brought down the Wall in PEACE," though there is little I hear that's programmatic in the actual music) is the most European sounding of the three works: not a surprise, as the composer has lived her mature artistic life in Germany, another marker of her "outsider" status. It's highly abstract in its materials, and verges on being the work whose glissandos wear out their welcome. But just when I started feeling the music was becoming predictable (in the first and third movements), it marshals its forces to create overwhelming climaxes that simultaneously sound surprising yet natural. I don't know exactly what the technique is, but I suspect Coates has deep processes at work that lead to a culmination one desires but can't easily predict. The relentless growth and impact of the piece, a storm in sound, is similar to Xenakis's Jonchaies for orchestra, though I don't claim it's quite as great a work.

The final work, Symphony No. 14 (2001-02, "Symphony in Microtones"), is by far the most American-sounding piece, for at least two obvious reasons. First, the piece (for strings and timpanionly the Seventh uses full orchestra on this collection) divides the string orchestra into two halves, tuned a quarter tone apart. Some of the music is so dense one doesn't really perceive the differences, but in cases of the hymn quotation discussed below, it can be striking. The effect is the most Ivesian of this set and, in particular, I think of the composer of the Robert Browning Overture as an antecedent here.

Second, the first two movements quote pieces by Supply Belcher (a late 18th-century Maine hymnodist) and William Billings, the Boston Revolutionary-period composer who was himself an aesthetic revolutionary of the first order. The Billings choice is particularly apt, as it is "Jargon," his completely atonal (though better stated, it could be called "non-functional," as all the intervals are consonant, but they don't make up traditional tonal chords) choral work, a message from another universe to the 18th century. In both movements, the antique sources emerge from Coates's swirling textures like apparitions, an effect that is magical and unnerving. In the Billings movement, after appearing, the source is then stated with the quarter-tone difference, which feels like a true enrichment rather than a mere distortion.

In short, this is remarkable music. At times it can seem too crude and obvious, spurning standards of polish and taste, and then at the next moment it blindsides you with the power of its vision, a balanced match of manner and substance, form and content, style and idea. And on top of it all, if the booklet's cover is any guide, Coates is a talented visual artist as well, in the tradition of Ruggles.

The sonic standards of the disc are variable: Symphony No. 1 is a recording from 1980, with more surface noise than we're now accustomed to, and No.7 comes from a concert recording of the world premiere. Only No. 14 has the clarity and crispness listeners have come to expect. At the same time, this doesn't bother me, as none of the earlier sonic flaws are too distracting, and the music overcomes any such obstacle on its innate strengths. There is one serious competitor to this disc, cpo 999392, which includes Nos. I and 7, substituting No.4 for No. 14. I have not heard it, but I note from its online data that No.1 is also a live recording from the same year as the Naxos (1980), and No.7 was recorded in 1991, so I suspect at the very least there are similar sonic issues involved. I have a hunch that, based on repertoire, the Naxos disc will be preferable as an introduction, providing a broad sweep of the composer's career. But based on what I've heard, I also suspect if you are hooked on Coates, you'll probably need to get the cpo eventually.

The distinguished but much underappreciated American composer Vittorio Giannini (1903-1966) has yet to be properly evaluated and recognized for his signal contribution to American music. This Naxos release of the bulk of his scores for symphonic winds-all of them, except for the Third Symphony, making their commercial recording debut-therefore marks a significant first step in that direction.

When he began to concentrate during his later years on non-vocal efforts, after establishing a thensolid reputation as a composer of operas and art songs, Giannini turned his attention to a field that had quickly proliferated after World War II. Instead of treating this medium as an incidental or occasional outlet, however, he gave it the same high degree of seriousness and professionalism based on tried-andtrue traditional methods that had sustained all of his output. All of them pieces written on commission during the last decade of his life, these five works exhibit a synthesis of lyrical afflatus and formal rigor reflective of his intuitive infusion of Romantic materials into neo-Classical structures.

The most famous is the Third Symphony of 1958 that, although it exploits the coloristic potential of the woodwinds, brass, and percussion with striking imaginativeness, could work just as convincingly in full orchestral dress. Not only is it full of lovely themes and provocative rhythmic inventions, but all four movements show an ambitious and integrated developmental logic unusual in this kind of repertoire--a quality shared on a smaller scale by the four shorter works here.

Although the Dedication Overture, written for the North Carolina School of the Arts, has a more simplistic plan suitable for such a basically ceremonial work, the Fantasia, Praeludium and Allegro, and Variations and Fugue have an impressive quotient of concentrated energy and momentousness that makes for a notably elevated level of discourse. His final work for band, the overwhelmingly powerful Variations and Fugue of 1965, for example, with its closing double fugue, reveals Giannini exploring the considerably more astringent harmonic idiom that characterized most of his later music.

This release is part of Naxos' s worthy series of Wind Band Classics, which included an earlier survey of another master of this genre, Vincent Persichetti, as performed by topnotch ensembles. The University of Houston group under Tom Bennett has, to our knowledge, not made that many recordings to date, but they certainly acquit themselves with exemplary polish and precision here. One might hope for a bit more panache, as heard in the old but definitive Eastman-Rochester recording under Clyde Roller, but Bennett and his crew approach Giannini with requisite command and conviction.

This disc should appeal not only to band aficionados but also to all with an abiding interest in our native music. Now, what about a recording of some of Giannini's six other outstanding symphonies? It's long overdue.

Naxos's Haydn symphony series, which is nearing the finish line, has traveled around the globe, usually finding responsive ensembles and responsible interpretations within the modern-instrument milieu. This Canadian expedition is a complete success. Toronto Camerata (which is also the name of a local chorus specializing in a cappella performances) uses modem instruments, but in many ways heeds period practices: Mallon takes every repeat, including those in Menuetto da capo. The strings have a slightly plangent sound; nine violins are joined by three violas, two cellos, and a double bass. There are no timpani or trumpets in these early symphonies. The recorded ambience (Toronto's Grace Church on the Hill) is live and lively; strings are up close and clear, but oboes and horns, more removed from the microphones, are enveloped in reverberance.

Those who are learning the Haydn canon as Naxos proceeds will be astonished anew by the consistently high quality of his output and by the spirit and spice of even his earliest symphonies. The numbers we use were assigned almost 100 years ago by Eusabius Mandyczewski, and 20th-century research has shown that they are not quite accurate among the early works. No. 15, for example, was one of the very first--composed before Haydn came to Eisenstadt to work for Prince Esterhazy. Its opening movement has the initial Adagio section return after an Allegro that bears little relation to sonata form. Nos. 16 and 17 have only three movements, each lacking a Menuet, but are obviously far more advanced than No. 15. Haydn was always experimenting, and No. 16 has an almost Schubertian Andante. It also employs horns not found in the score printed with the Goberman LP. No. 17 is particularly lively and richly orchestrated; this time an oboe appears that is missing from the Goberman score (which includes emendations by H. C. Robbins Landon in the early 1960s).

These performances are smoother than those in Adam Fischer's complete set of Haydn symphonies, and the recordings warmer as well as clearer. Toronto Camerata's playing is also more confident than that by Roy Goodman's Hanover Band, which does not take all the repeats. These are delightful recordings in every way, surpassed only by the period-instrument performances of Derek Solomons's L'estro armonico, few of which have reached CD.

A welcome opportunity here from Naxos to reappraise the first two of Kabalevsky's four piano concertos. The first, an early work dating from 1928, has received but scant attention from the record companies (there was an interesting Olympia recording at one point). Influence-spotters will have a field day here-the opening bassoon is surely a nod in the direction of Mussorgsky's Boris before Rachmaninoff takes over. The second movement reveals elements of a toned-down Prokofievian spikiness, something to return in the finale. Unusually for a concerto, all three movements are of roughly equivalent length (10:53, 10:28 and 10:14).

Although bombast is an easy accusation to make here (try after eight minutes into the fifth. movement), this is eminently approachable music. Even the tinge of melancholy that runs through the first section of the bipartite slow movement does not stem from despair, acting more as a contrast to the sparkly second part. There is even fun here-the piano glissando that announces the finale is a wonderful way to introduce the ensuing folksy theme. Kabalevsky's gentle consideration of his materials and his generally exuberant nature ensure an easy ride.

The pianist is the Korean In-Ju Bang, who starts her studies at the Juilliard School this year. She plays very beautifully, with a full tone and a temperament that suits the lyric as easily as it loves displays of virtuosity. Bang's staccato can be tartly spiky, something that continually illuminates the finale. The experienced Yablonsky and his forces accompany with consummate ease.

The Second Concerto began life in 1935, although Kabalevsky returned to it in 1973 to offer a revised version. Prokofiev's shadow is once more a visitor to the score, although only an intermittent one (he tends to zoom in and then out of focus) and if Rachmaninoff also appears, it is more the late Rachmaninoff (think the Fourth Piano Concerto) than the earlier swashbuckler. In many ways, this is a more rewarding listening experience than Kabalevsky's first essay in this genre. The most impressive movement is the central Andantino semplice, full of Russian warmth and tenderness. Yablonsky inspires his Russian Philharmonic forces to hushed utterances; Bang's response is nearimprovisatory, and all the more impressive for it.

The excellent Kathryn Stott has recorded this concerto coupled with the Third Concerto on Chandos CHAN 10052 (see Peter Rabinowitz's review in Fanfare 27:3). The Chandos recording is undeniably superior to that by Naxos, having more perspective (although some might find it a little too upholstered). Yet, it is Bang that brings a freshness to the score that is in the final analysis significantly more stimulating.

The recording is satisfactory (although it is the trumpets that suffer most from the recording's lack of depth). An interesting disc.

This is my first encounter with Antoni Wit's Mahler series, and I can't think of a more challenging way to get my feet wet. There are comparatively few low-cost recordings of Mahler's gargantuan "gift to the whole nation," so Wit has, at least, the advantage of value- for-money. To determine whether that is enough to tempt prospective buyers is at least one of the objectives of this review.

One is struck by the full-bodied sound production from the very first notes: the wide soundstage easily accommodates the huge number of performers, yet there is enough instrumental definition to allow Mahler's ingenious orchestration to be audible. The choral singing is accurate and intelligible, if somewhat under-characterized: compared to, for instance, Solti's Viennese choristers, this is singing that is competent and pleasant rather than compelling. The soloists sound youthful and well matched, for the most part eschewing vibrato (all to the good as far as I'm concerned).

Wit's tempos in part I communicate the power of Mahler's text without the haste of Gielen (Sony) or the sheer momentum of Solti (Decca). The conducting is of the Haitink-Bertini school: straight forward, unexaggerated, almost self-effacing. One finds few of the gestures that characterize either Tennstedt's classic recording or Rattle's recent one, both of which take a more personal view of the music. Listeners who value objectivity in Mahler will no doubt approve.

Part II continues in the manner of the previous movement, without the needed change in focus: as the landscape passes in review, Wit is satisfied with, for the most part, being the attentive but not intrusive tour guide, though there is finally some emotional involvement with the arrival of the first big theme at the 3:38 mark. From that point onward, we are more engaged by the unfolding drama. The choral singing at "Waldung, sie shwankt heran" is mechanical and uninflected, lacking character, though there is some gain in sensitivity near the end of the passage. The baritone and bass solos are effective enough, though both are somewhat light-toned, and the orchestra almost overwhelms them in its swelling enthusiasm (more a failing of the engineers than the singers, perhaps).

The engineers face the problem of presenting either a natural perspective for the choruses, or of artificially spotlighting them for added clarity; the Naxos team opts for the former, with the result that the chorus sometimes sounds a bit distant and indistinct, especially in part I; this is less of a problem as the More Perfect Angels, Blessed Boys, and other select groups make their appearance in part II. The Doctor Marianus of Timothy Bentch is one of the highlights ofthis section. His Heldentenor capability doesn't obscure the sensitivity of his characterization. Jadwiga Rappe sings her Mulier Samaritana part with a muffled head-voice that obscures her words in an unpleasant way; the other two women in this trio section are more successful, and Izabela Klosmska's Gretchen is delightfully direct.

With "Blicket auf1" Bentch resoundingly initiates the closing section, and the choruses rise to the occasion. The "Chorus Mysticus" is presented with sensitivity but is once again obscured by the engineering--or the hall acoustics. The final few minutes are effective at producing a fitting conclusion to this daunting undertaking; what's missing is the goose-bump inducing thrill of the absolute integration of first-rate sound and performance.

To answer the question posed at the beginning of this review: yes, this recording is certainly worth the money, and if price is your overwhelming concem, this is a good bargain and a very good performance. If you seek a more adventurous and dynamic Eighth, though, Solti's Decca Legends recording, on one disc, is cheaper and probably more nourishing in the long run. And if price is not a concern, I recommend Rattle's new EMI recording in its DVD format for an Eighth that is thoughtful, sometimes provocative, always expertly played and sung, and is presented in absolutely first-rate sound.

Many years ago I made the discovery that, at least in terms of recordings, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, once thought to be the epitome of highbrow esoterica, had become more popular than the Nutcracker Suite. Recently I've found a new Mozart Requiem in almost every package that has come my way from Fanfare's Tenafly nerve center. Has Mozart's unfinished swansong become the new Messiah? Obviously not, if you take the Christmas Messiah tradition into account, but the Requiem certainly seems to have gained an edge in the recordings department--due, in part, to the Mozart anniversary, of course, and also, no doubt, to the fact that it fits on a single disc. Dueling scholars contribute to the profusion of Requiem recordings as well, as musicologists scramble to see which one can do a better job than the much-maligned Süssmayr of bringing the magnificent torso to completion. The days when the simple fact of a new recording of the Requiem was itself noteworthy is long gone.

This latest version, by the Danish conductor and choir master (and founder of the Gewandhaus Chamber Choir) is one of the most vigorous I've heard. There are no sentimentallongeurs here for Maestro Schuldt-Jensen, who infuses the score with exceptional urgency. It's too easy to make the point by comparing Schuldt-Jensen's running time with those of Giulini's static version for Sony, but I'll do it anyway:

Introit
Kyrie
Dies irae
Tuba mirum
Rex tremendae
Recordare
Confutatis
Lacrimosa
Domine Jesu
Hostias/Quam olim
Sanctus
Benedictus
Agnus Dei
Lux aetema

Giulini (Sony)
5:26
3:08
2:03
4:40
2:51
7:05
3:22
3:43
4:23
5:42*
1:56
5:47
3:40
6:29

Schuldt-Jensen
4:05
2:15
1:38
2:46
1:47
4:27
1:51
2:38
3:05
3:18
1:23
4:24
2:25
4:52

The Leipzig musicians are splendid, fully capable of negotiating the fine line between swift and hectic. Listeners, however, should not expect to be soothed by this performance. The multinational quartet of soloists (Allan is Australian, Snell is a New Zealander, and Buter and Ullmann are Gennan) also acquits itself well. Allan's voice hovers somewhere between a traditional vibrato and a more astringent white sound-not an uncommon place for a singer to be these days. Overall, this is a satisfying performance, well worth hearing. Incidentally, not only is the Süssmayr version used, but the index in the booklet identifies which movements were composed by whom. Truth in advertising! I hadn't seen that before.

Two brief and relatively unfamiliar fillers precede the Requiem on the disc. Mozart composed Internatos mulierum at the tender age of 15, after he had spent some time in Italy studying counterpoint with Padre Martini. As always, one suspects that hearing Mozart's ability to absorb and apply his lessons must have been a trial to older, less facile students of the art. First-time listeners to the second piece, Misericordias Domini, composed four years later, are in for a startling surprise. Were I to review The Da Vinci Code (which isn't about to happen), I wouldn't give away its ending, and I'm not about to reveal the surprise in Misericordias Domini. Listen, and be amazed!

My only reservation about this release is that Schuldtlensen's brisk Requiem left room for considerably more music on the disc. But it earns a firm recommendation, anyway.

Oh, by the way, I should concede that The Nutcracker ballet, now such a staple of the Christmas season worldwide, probably gets far more live performances than the Brandenburgs and the Suite combined.

Lorenzo Palomo (b. 1938) writes in a bright, picture-postcard Spanish idiom: the melodic twists and modal tunes, the castanets, the guitar's flamenco strumming and its imitation by the orchestra are all familiar. The works on this CD show off Palomo's orchestral mastery-he is also a conductor-and bring to mind Frühbeck de Burgos's own arrangement of the Suite espanola by Albeniz, a hit light music record of the 1960s.

Andalusian Nocturnes is a six-movement suite for guitar and orchestra written for Pepe Romero, who, like the composer, hails from the Andalusian region of Spain. Though titled Nocturnes, the six movements are by no means all soft and languid: these are the vibrant evenings in Falla's Spanish gardens rather than the hot, dry nights of Mompou's piano miniatures. The work is filled with many enjoyable and atmospheric moments, though I found a couple of the folk-like themes too simplistic to generate much interest. My favorite movement is the fifth, "Nocturne of Cordoba"; here the composer displays great delicacy and creates a mysterious nocturnal atmosphere which is genuinely compelling.

The selection of Spanish songs consists of two cycles, An Andalusian Spring and Memories of Youth, plus two others, Tientos and Full Moon. They are original settings, not adaptations of existing traditional melodies; even so, they sound a lot like Iberian cousins to Canteloube's Songs of the Auvergne. If you enjoy that ubiquitous work, you will certainly respond to these songs. (Texts are not provided but are available as a download from Naxos's Web site.)

The Andalusian Spring cycle was composed at the request of Montserrat Caballe. Not only that, the great diva performed it several times. Maria Bayo is the natural successor to Caballe and Victoria de Los Angeles in the Spanish repertoire. She produces a radiant tone and a certain amount of heft when required. (On the last note of the final song she oversings and pushes herself slightly off pitch, a rare slip-up.) Pepe Romero and Frühbeck de Burgos, well-established musical stars with a vast number of recordings to their credit, maintain their high standards here. (Incidentally, will Universal ever issue Romero's 1980 performance of Moreno Torroba's elegant guitar concerto DiGlogos on CD?)

The sound is spacious and full, not quite as in-your-face as in some other Naxos recordings. All in all, a distinguished issue of likeable music: a CD you could give as a gift without much risk of missing the mark. Palomo may not mine his Spanish sources with the elemental depth of Surinach or view them through the postmodern prism of Balada, but his music does what he intended it to do: beguile and entertain.

History may retrospectively declare Ned Rorem the most substantial and underrated composer of our age, perhaps in the long run more substantial than Barber and Ives. Wherever he ends up on the roster of music of the last 60 years, Rorem is one of our few remaining direct living links to Debussy, Ravel, and the world of Cocteau. His brilliance as a diarist flows into his music, and his musicality flows back into his literary output. Though known predominantly for his songs, his love of song form energizes his instrumental palate, as this CD, which offers a choice smattering of Rorem's orchestral works, demonstrates.

Featured here is the Flute Concerto (2002), written for the exceptional Philadelphia Orchestra principal, Jeffrey Khaner. By the way, the Philadelphia Orchestra has some of the best principals in the world, of whom Khaner is one remarkable example. But the orchestra is not utilized here, despite the fact that the orchestra commissioned the piece-a trifle mysterious, I think. Scheduling difficulties, perhaps. The brief introduction of the concerto is followed immediately by a circular flute riff that establishes Khaner's notorious abilities right away. The lyrical is interspersed with assertions of the timpani, as if artistic sensibility were berated by some Cretan force. The piece proceeds with this narrative structure, almost filmic in its wanderings. Rorem makes striking use of solo piano along with the flute, a nod to his Ravelian past. Flute colors abound, with a chromatic underpinning, very much informed by song style. Also conveyed is a feeling of journey in the phrase by phrase, almost freely associative chronology, an awareness of traveling to a psychic destination with digressions, as though the inside of Rorem's mind were being translated into a racing hurdy-gurdy. A vocalise motif follows, then a dissonant hymn that is nonetheless reverential. "The False Waltz" is a melody askew, nostalgic and frenetic. Finally there is a return to the timpanic preamble, and the piece ends spiritually, without being sentimental, lyrically without being saccharine.

Also present on this CD is Rorem's Violin Concerto (1985). He must have been in a more restive rather than restful mood back then, though the piece is distinctive, and should be a key selection in the violin repertoire. The chromatic writing has inherent angst, intensity, and tension, distinguishing itself from other violin concertos with its stress and agony. There is a sense of the composer here being angry, incensed, and rushed, culminating first in a bitter and pungent Romance without Words, and then a driving satirical Toccata-Rondo, only to be followed by the conclusion, a restless sounding Dawn. Philippe Quint plays well, though lacking in a self-assured interpretation that brings his soul into the mix.

The first piece on the CD, Pilgrims (1958), though an early work, amply demonstrates Rorem's precocious gifts, based on the story of the suicide of a schizoid adolescent, the title of which comes from Hebrews 11.13: "These also died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off ... and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." The quote is evocative, and the mystical nature of the text flows into Rorem's music, leaving the listener in a state of troubled meditative calm.

I would recommend this CD for the premiere recording of the Flute Concerto, as well as for the premiere recording of the lush emotional Pilgrims.

It is a pleasure to welcome a young, relatively unknown pianist into the company of true Schubertians. Gottlieb Wallisch is a 28-year-old Viennese pianist who is developing a successful career. He studied in Vienna and in Paris, was a finalist in major international competitions (Queen Elisabeth and Concours Clara Haskil), and took first prize in the Stravinsky Awards (an international competition for young pianists held in the US.) He has appeared with many leading orchestras, and has already recorded several CDs showing a fairly eclectic repertoire, including music of Haydn, Mozart, Brahms, Strauss, and Pfitzner.

This is Wallisch's second Schubert CD, a continuation of his traversal through the fragments and unfinished piano works (the first volume is Naxos 8.557189). Here are completed (and some unfinished) movements that some editors have fashioned into standard four-movement sonatas from the various sources, according to what they believe may have been Schubert's intentions. It is a slightly complicated, but logical ordering based on various pieces of evidence (one that the noted English pianist/scholar Howard Ferguson follows in his scholarly edition of the sonatas published by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music). Wallisch himself supplies penetrating analytical notes for this beautifully recorded CD, describing and explaining the justification for these arrangements. He notes, among other things, that the piano-writing is often unwieldy and unnatural, betraying the "still rather inexperienced pianist, in no way a great virtuoso."

Scholarly considerations aside, Wallisch's performance demonstrates his complete musical empathy with Schubert. He plays with a light, sparkling touch and singing melodies, following Schubert's markings faithfully, with tasteful and unexaggerated expression. He brings out the essential character of Schubert's early style, which combines Mozart's pristine command of the Classical spirit with his (Schubert's) poignant (and sometimes startling) harmonic invention and depth of expression.

Awaiting Wallisch, as he continues this cycle, are the great sonatas of Schubert's maturity. With this promising start, one can expect to hear Schubert's piano masterpieces played with the same sensitivity and accomplishment the pianist brings to these earlier works.

Domenico Scarlatti, mestre du capella to the Infanta Maria Barbara, accompanied his pupil when she moved temporarily to Lisbon in 1723. While there, the Portuguese Infanta Don Antonio supposedly sent a promising young composer, Carlos de Seixas, to study with Scarlatti, who was 19 years his senior. The story goes that the latter reported back to Don Antonio, stating Seixas was one of the best musicians he had ever heard, and scarcely in need of further instruction.

It's a nice tale, and possibly even true. I for one would have liked to witness a first meeting between two such highly talented composers whose keyboard work reflects considerable similarities, despite their differences of age and upbringing. The issue of influence and the direction it ran has never been settled, and is likely never to be, given that Seixas died young, and his original manuscripts perished during the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. Out of some 700 "keyboard toccatas" he is known to have composed, roughly 95 survive, of which 80 were collected, edited, and published by the late Macario Santiago Kastner. Although it's never made clear in the liner notes to this release, presumably that edition is the one used by Debora Halasz in what has been announced as a complete traversal. This leaves approximately 15 pieces unaccounted for, if my arithmetical skills are still functioning. Kastner presumably found them of dubious authenticity, or they appeared after his death. I'd personally like to hear them regardless, whether authentic or not, as there is an inordinate amount of formerly attributed music that is quite good and never gets recorded. Not that I'm about to turn up my nose at any attempt to issue multiple volumes of Seixas, whose treatment thus far on CD has been sporadic at best.

The last release of Seixas that I reviewed in these pages appeared roughly a year ago, and featured Christian Brembeck (Musicaphon M 55867). There's little to choose, technically speaking, between Brembeck and Halasz. Both have fingers to spare, and easily manage the more virtuosic pieces without any loss of flow or control. Sound quality on both albums, too, is excellent, and to make matters more confusing, the harpsichordists adapt similar, judiciously chosen tempos in the few works they both perform.

However, there are significant differences between the two, and unfortunately they don't make choosing a single disc any easier. Halasz, for one, employs grace notes with frequency and usually in a way that seems both natural and appropriate to the music. She is willing to stretch the beat a bit even in rhythmically driven passages, though, when it can have a detrimental result. As an example, part of the powerful effect of the Sonata No. 50 in G Minor derives from its headlong impetus and strong first beat. This is impeded when the beat in question is lengthened and weakened, as Halasz routinely does. When the harpsichordist resorts to this, he/she invariably draws attention to the strategy, interfering with our enjoyment of the music.

Brembeck is more straightforward. His beat is firm, and when he uses ornamentation it appears within existing rhythms. He also offers a pair of instruments, a rich sounding modem model based on a 1746 Blanchet, and a sweeter one that imitates characteristics of Merzdorf harpsichords of the early 1700s. Halasz offers one harpsichord, a copy of a 1734 Haas, though on evidence of this album, it has a pair of manuals that are used with discretion.

But on the aforementioned Sonata No. 50, Brembeck only repeats the first section, and gives the second section a single performance. This he does more often than not, whereas Halasz plays both sections twice-- relatively standard practice today. In the Sonata No. lO in C Major, the second section is of appreciable length, and the difference between the two recorded versions is, as well: 13:06 for Halasz, 8:13 for Brembeck. The shape of the result is substantially different, depending upon which version you hear.

This puts a different complexion upon matters, and inclines me slightly towards Halasz-who also holds the trump card in the form of a complete, forthcoming recorded edition. But you really can't go wrong with either of these two releases that, in their differing approaches to this music, offer a selection of fine music discerningly performed.

There have been numerous new releases of the music of Shostakovich in this centenary of his birth. This is an interesting and well-chosen collection of relatively obscure pieces that are quite variable in quality. The Execution of Stepan Razin is a major work, which I would not hesitate to call a masterpiece based on its intensity alone. The music reflects Shostakovich's take on the Russian vocal and choral tradition in general, and the influence of Mussorgsky in particular, but it is unmistakably Shostakovich from beginning to end. The basic style is similar to his 13th Symphony that immediately preceded it. Some quiet orchestral passages are also reminiscent of the first movement of the 11th Symphony. Both choral pieces utilize texts by Yevgeny Yevlushenko. Stepan Razin was a 17th-century Cossack leader and folk hero who was executed after leading a revolt against Tsar Alexis I (the father of Peter the Great). The Execution of Stepan Razin is relentlessly grim, with lean orchestration, piercing dissonances, and powerful percussion effects to augment the highly effective choral and solo writing.

The 13-minute symphonic poem, October, is another matter entirely. It is still another musical commemoration of the 1917 revolution that seems to bring out the worst in Shostakovich (previously addressed in Symphonies 2 and 12). October is a relatively inconsequential work, in the style of his more banal film scores but a bit better, in that it is more understated. The Five Fragments are a fascinating collection of miniature chamber pieces that emanated from the maelstrom of creative energy that spawned the amazing Fourth Symphony.

The importance of this album will depend on your reaction to this interpretation of The Execution of Stepan Razin. It will be an overwhelming experience for anyone who has not had the good fortune to hear a good live performance or Herbert Kegel's electrifying Philips recording. Charles Robert Austin is excellent and sounds suitably Russian. In some ways, he is better than Siegfried Vogel in the Philips album. Vogel is listed as a bass and Austin is a bass-baritone, but it is Austin who sounds more authentically Russian. The chorus is adequate, but sounds slightly underpowered and too civilized for this grisly music.

The sound is straightforward to a fault. It is not as overtly spectacular or dynamic as it should be for The Execution of Stepan Razin, especially from the standpoint of the pivotal percussion effects. Bass punch is impressive, but the high frequencies lack presence and bite. The orchestral bells are nicely integrated with the orchestra to produce a truly eerie and unsettling effect that is superior to the high-pitched bells in the Philips version. The orchestra and chorus are both miked closely, so they blend well with an upfront aural perspective. Largely because of the choral and percussion effects, I would love to hear The Execution of Stepan Razin recorded by Telarc in Atlanta.

This recording of The Execution of Stepan Razin is a welcome addition to the CD catalog, and is more than adequate, even if it does not eclipse the dazzling Kegel interpretation.

The video version of the complete Zagrosek/Stuttgart Ring, on TDK, was reviewed last year in Fanfare 28:5; the four operas are available as a set or individually. An unusual aspect of this cycle is that a different team designed each of the productions. Additionally, the artists portraying the main roles changed from drama to drama. The result is that, for a number of reasons, the four performances vary in their degree of success, an aspect which is even more apparent now that Naxos is reissuing this Ring, taped between September of 2002 and January of 2003, for CD.

Lothar Zagrosek again makes a good impression overall for his idiomatic leadership. Some details that might go unnoticed with DVD are more obvious on CD. With nothing to look at, the Prelude to scene 1 seems curiously static and the octave trombone C#s that signal Erda's entrance are anything but fortissimo-undermining the impact of one of Das Rheingold's most dramatic moments. There's an unauthorized bass drum (or some other regular low-pitched thud) accompanying the anvils both times they appear, presumably to keep everyone together.

The sound was good for DVD, but less remarkable for an audio-only version. There's a great deal of stage noise, and entirely too much of Fasolt's death throes in the last scene. Naxos provides no texts, but tells you where to find a German libretto with English translations online if you don't happen to have one around from some other recording.

This disc is a collection of hymns, anthems, and motets, along with a Missa brevis, by the Canadian composer and organist Healey Willan. Willan was born in 1880 in England, but came to Canada in 1913 and remained there for the rest of his life, identifying himself as a Canadian "by adoption." He died in Toronto in 1968.

Willan's writing for vocal forces is both natural and skillful, and his music is deeply felt. Any six or seven of the 18 tracks as a group are beautiful. All 18 taken together at one sitting, though, turn into a rather unvarying, and even monochromatic, experience. Virtually all the music is slow moving (it was written for church performance), and after a while one longs for some angles, some drama, and tautness.

Still, listened to perhaps 20 minutes at a sitting, the experience is likely to be satisfying. Willan's voice is a conservative one, and his music will likely appeal to those who respond to, for instance, John Rutter (although I think there is more variety of musical grammar in Rutter's work).

These are loving and skillful performances. The Elora Festival Singers comprise a Canadian group deserving of much praise for the care and depth of feeling with which they sing Willan's music. They manage a very wide and subtly graded range of dynamics and colors. Approached in the right way, this disc is capable of bringing real pleasure.

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