This is the first totally non-Czech recording of Suk's tragic masterpiece, and it's brilliant. In case you don't already know the story, Suk wrote this harrowing, five-movement symphony to expiate the pain and grief of the double loss of his wife and father-in-law (who happened to be Dvorák), both of whom died within about a year of each other.

Asrael is the angel of death, and the music refers directly to Dvorák's Requiem (in its second movement) and seemingly to Slavonic church music as well. While often dark in tone, it is by no means lacking in color or contrast. The third movement reveals Suk as a master of the creepy scherzo to rival the Mahler of the Seventh Symphony, while the transfigured major-key ending is anything but facile, and achieves precisely the catharsis that Suk intended.

This performance is magnificent. Asrael has been recorded before, and very well, by most major Czech conductors, including Talich, Neumann, Pesek, Kubelik, and (less successfully) Belohlávek. Ashkenazy's performance here is as fine as any of them; indeed, he brings more sheer excitement to the finale than any other conductor on disc, and the playing of the Helsinki Philharmonic gives nothing away to the Czechs in the Talich and Neumann versions. Ashkenazy also enjoys far and away the best engineering: the coda of the first movement, with its hammering bass drum, wailing violins, and menacing brass, never has sounded more harrowing. And it's important that this music gets played by non-Czech forces in order to enter the general repertoire. It certainly deserves to be much more than a merely local specialty. If you love the symphonies of, say, Mahler or Tchaikovsky, then you really must hear Asrael.

This is an important release. A native of Azerbaijan, Kara Karayev (1918-82) was one of Shostakovich's favorite colleagues, and was a composer of genuine talent. Starting with what you might expect--an attractive nationalist style similar to Khachaturian's, here represented by the tone poem Leyla and Mejnun--he was later able to synthesize ethnic elements into a harmonious but modern personal style. The Third Symphony, for example, uses 12-tone techniques, but in an utterly lucid and melodious way. In this respect, Karayev resembles Frank Martin, whose use of serial methods similarly never overwhelms his own special voice. The work is brilliantly scored for a chamber orchestra, including important parts for piano and harpsichord (again shades of Martin), and if you enjoy good, serious, contemporary music you will find this most impressive.

The recital concludes with an instantly attractive suite drawn from Karayev's film music for Don Quixote--a set of miniatures in which "travels" function much as the "promenades" in Pictures at an Exhibition, setting off brief character sketches of Sancho, Aldonse, and of course Don Quixote himself, whose death is most movingly depicted at the very end.

The performances are basically very good. The Russian Philharmonic has its rough edges, particularly the violins in their highest register, but they certainly give a good account of themselves, and the repertoire itself is so worthwhile that it would be churlish to complain. We badly need a new recording of Karayev's ballet The Seven Beauties--complete, not the suite that appeared briefly on Olympia. Hopefully Naxos will turn this release into a series and allow listeners to get to know Karayev much better. [11/18/2008]

The liner notes to this release are incorrect in praising him for having created “a “purely instrumental genre,” as there is plenty of evidence that the composer intended these works as display vehicles for the dancers of the Académie Royale. We even know that the first, entitled Caprice (1711), was scored to show off the qualities of the celebrated ballerina Françoise Prévost, as was Les caractères de la danse (1715), which she danced before Russia’s Peter I.

Les Élémens was to eclipse the rest, not on account of its quality, but because of its impressive opening pages. They were meant to provide an audible and visual representation of the creation of the universe, and its distillation into the four Empedoclean elements of air, fire, water, and earth. (This isn’t as abstruse as it may sound. Medicine was based for centuries on this division, and we still use words created from this source to describe behavior: choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic, and sanguine. Nielsen derived his Symphony No. 2, “The Four Temperaments,” from them, as did Hindemith in his Theme and Variations of the same nickname.) The work begins with a chord comprised of every note in the D Minor harmonic scale. It represents undifferentiated chaos, and continues into a brilliant prélude depicting the primal order emerging from that sound. Then, as Rebel himself wrote, “To designate each particular Element in this confusion, I resorted to the most recognized of conventions. The Bass expresses Earth in notes slurred together and played with tremolos; the Flutes, in the rise and descent of their melody, imitate the course and murmur of Water; Air is painted by sustained tones followed by trills played on the piccolos; finally, the violins represent Fire by their liveliness and brilliance.”

Sadly, none of Rebel’s other choreographic symphonies have been recorded, but in compensation, we have four versions of Les Élémens from which to select. I haven’t heard Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre (Erato 382906), but Hogwood/Academy of Ancient Music (L’Oiseau-Lyre 475 9100) and Goebels/Musica Antiqua Cologne (Archiv 445824) are certainly competitive. Both offer good value, the former offset less by its very good analog sound than by a miserly disc length of fewer than 45 minutes.

As for the L’Orfeo Baroque Orchestra: it was cofounded by Michi Gaigg in 1996. The group reflects Gaigg’s vision of an authentic Baroque ensemble, one in which an edge to the instrumental tone of each section is standard practice, and the strings in particular have a bite to the articulation of fast figurations that emphasizes energy. The percussion and sharply defined string chords that start off Rebel’s Loure I, “La Terre et l’Eau,” offer a good example. Faster than Goebel, this element of earth treads heavily, but also swaggers. Better still is the Chaconne, “Le Feu,” where the kinetic excitement of the quickly played, cleanly articulated runs provide an excellent approximation of Rebel’s flickering fire. That isn’t to say the orchestra is incapable of delicacy: the “Rossignols” movement from the Les Élémens, and Hébé’s second air from the Castor et Pollux suite, both show an ability to draw down the vigor while maintaining focus—though I found Gaigg’s phrasing a bit stiff in the former, when compared to Hogwood.

The close yet resonant, churchly acoustics chosen for this album successfully overcome the wiry tone that I’d noted in a previous L’Orfeo recording of Wagenseil symphonies (cpo 999 450). I also found no evidence here of the intonational problems that dogged that release. Heard in a five-speaker setup, the SACD sound was slightly fuller than in stereo, but not enough to make a notable difference.

Ultimately, I find Gaigg and L’Orfeo marginally more exciting, colorful, and better defined in their playing than Goebel and the Musica Antiqua Cologne. In the Rameau, there is less room for doubt: Gaigg makes far more of the music than Cambreling/SW German RSO (Hänssler Classic 93018), while doing a significantly better job at bringing out its theatrical intensity than Brüggen/Orchestra of the 18th Century (Philips 426714). In short, this is definitely a fine release, and one to get if you enjoy either work—though admittedly, the album could have been longer. Now will someone please convince Gaigg to give us the other choreographic symphonies of Rebel?

Johann Rosenmüller (1619–84) was known in his day for producing rigidly crafted works of the older Schütz style with the melodic ebb and flow of the newer Italian forms. His two sacred concertos combine a sense of heightened festivity that serves as a fine foil for his more sentimental moments where the words are given an expressive pungency and often-virtuoso character with much vocal coloration. Jan Dismas Zelenka’s Laudate pueri brings us to the pinnacle of the high Baroque, though the soprano’s slower moments hint at the emerging Classical textures to come, sacrificing any sort of overt luminosity for a more declamatory, text-oriented presentation. Nonetheless, the outer movements are a wild ride indeed, presenting no little difficulty for the singer or player.

There are two pieces here for instruments alone. Gottfried Finger (1660–1730) worked for Queen Anne in London composing mainly instrumental works for varied and sundry combinations. This Sonata in C is a trio sonata for trumpet, violin, and basso continuo. Color, brightness, and various tempos play a large part in this demanding composition, making many facets of playing the clarion (high trumpet) show themselves in a very exposed way. All of these pieces are a bear to manage on the trumpet, and we should not for one minute take the early period attempts of these works as an example of how badly they must have sounded in the good old days; learning the art of clarion-playing required apprenticeship in a guild for many years, and if the type of music that was written for them is any indication, the performers must have been quite accomplished. Such is the case with Friedrich here. His playing is superb, and even those few difficult parts that seem to escape by the skin of their teeth are only indicative of how difficult this music is to bring off successfully, then and now. Such proves the case when hearing Johann Phillip Krieger (1649–1725). His Sixth Sonata for violin, viola da gamba, and basso continuo is from a collection of 12 sonatas published in 1693. This fugal, deeply contrapuntal music fits the stringed instruments like a warm glove, ending with a whirlwind display of fingered dexterity rarely matched in the era.

This is a sparkling release with nicely spread SACD sound, guaranteed to perk up your spirits and grant an hour’s relaxation and some terrific singing. Who could ask for more?

Jurowski and the Russian National Orchestra have returned to the original version of the Romeo and Juliet Overture, pairing it with the incidental music to Hamlet and the revised theatre version of the Hamlet Overture. The results are fascinating. Hamlet gives us a glimpse into a composer with a theatre director’s sensibility – he knows when to lend urgency to the players without overwhelming them, the music heightening but never upstaging.

Then, when the music must take centre-stage, he provides Ophelia’s exquisite songs of madness. There are fascinating influences from elsewhere – the Third Symphony, even hints of The Queen of Spades. And throughout, as in the alternatively spectral and violent Romeo and Juliet, Jurowski and his forces offer playing of drive and passion.

BBC Music Magazine 'Choice'

'Here is England’s first great opera presented with a truly cohesive sense of theatrical purpose, one which unusually allows the drama to unfold in a close identification with each of the cameo characters… we have a supremely wide-ranging, tragic and experienced queen from the start, inhabiting the shadows of ‘Ah! Belinda’ with early signs of deplorable fate, which are accentuated by an extended symphony luxuriating poignantly on this resonating conceit… Lucy Crow’s Belinda is a splendid foil for Connolly’s self-absorption, with her astute and increasingly desperate buoying up.'