Nielsen Symphony No.1 & Saul and David Prelude to Act II

The LP from which this was taken must have been in good stead not to mention the careful processing by HDTT in which they take justifiable pride. The results are very satisfying. The respectable liner notes are uncredited but are printed in too small a font and inexplicably in olive green on a light olive ground. This renders reading very difficult indeed. However as music-making this is an empowered recording worth the attention of true Nielsen fans.

Rob Barnett

MusicWeb International

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Prokofiev: Symphony No. 7
Lieutenant Kijé Suite
Love for Three Oranges Suite

Prokofiev: Symphony No. 7 in C# Minor, Op. 131; Lt. Kije Suite, Op. 60; Suite from The Love for 3 Oranges, Op. 33a

Nicolai Malko (1883-1961) enjoyed a special relationship with Sergei Prokofiev, having taught him conducting and also having given several premiers of the Symphony No. 7 in C-sharp Minor (1952), the composer's last before his premature death, in various concert venues. The symphony seems conventional and tame by former Prokofiev standards, the composer having abandoned his ironic discordance and dissonance for a plainer, more folkish style. It was premiered as part of a radio program for children and so labeled the "Children's Symphony." Shostakovich expressed admiration for the work, and it may have influenced his Symphony No. 15.

Most of the symphony is emotionally restrained, nostalgic and melancholy in mood, including the ending of the Vivace final movement. However, Prokofiev was later convinced to add an energetic and optimistic coda, so as to win the Stalin Prize of 100,000 rubles (because of official disapproval, Prokofiev was living in poverty at this time). Before he died, Prokofiev indicated that the original quiet ending was to be preferred. The premiere was well-received, and in 1957, four years after Prokofiev's death, the symphony was awarded the Lenin Prize. Malko's reading for RCA Victor gleaned much praise for its vitality and incisive playing from the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, which featured a host of fine principals, including Dennis Brain, French horn.

The first movement, Moderato in sonata form, opens with a melancholic first theme on violins, which contrasts with the warm and lyrical second theme on cellos. After a brief development section, the recapitulation of the two themes follows, and the movement ends in a reflective mood with the clock-ticking sounds on glockenspiel and xylophone. The second movement Allegretto is an autumnal waltz, reminiscent of Prokofiev's ballets Cinderella and The Stone Flower, while the third movement, Andante espressivo, sings lyrically. The Vivace finale, in C-sharp Major, contains an innocent cheerfulness. There is a slowing of pace and the return of the warm cello theme from the first movement. The symphony ends with the same tinkling sounds from the tuned percussion as the first movement.

Prokofiev composed music to the film Lieutenant Kijé in 1933 and compiled a suite from the film music as his Op. 60. The suite exists in two versions, one using a baritone voice and the other, employed by Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985), using a saxophone. The brilliance of the orchestration, especially in the winds, brass, and percussion, along with silken string writing, makes the music a natural vehicle for Ormandy's Philadelphia Orchestra. The fanfare of Kije's "birth," the bass fiddle and string legato for Kije's Romance, the rollicking Troika, and the contrapuntal Death of Kije exemplify "the Philadelphia Sound" at its best.

Prokofiev's The Love for 3 Oranges is his 1919 opera using a French libretto translated from the original Russian libretto based on the Italian play L'amore delle tre melarance by Carlo Gozzi. Antal Dorati (1906-1988), like fellow Hungarian conductor Eugene Ormandy, prided himself on the acoustical and sonorous energy of his ensembles; and for his second inscription of Prokofiev's six-movement arrangement (as Op. 33a) of his 1919 opera, he had the glowing talents of the London Symphony Orchestra, featuring among others, Barry Tuckwell on the French horn. Brilliant horn and battery forces explode in Les Ridicules, the music savage in the spirit of the Scythian Suite. The high piccolo, brass, strings, and thundering percussion section reign in The Magician Tchelio and Fata Morgana Play Cards (Infernal Scene). The famously ironical March has remained a concert staple since its inception. Dazzling string and brass syncopations mark the Scherzo. The erotic lyricism in strings and harp of The Prince and the Princess likely owes a debt to Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. The suite concludes with Flight, a moto perpetuo of dazzling colors with plenty of display work for every section of the LSO.

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Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 1 and Tchaikovsky Romeo & Juliet Overture

 

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Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2

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Rachmaninov Symphony No.3

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Roussel: Suite in F Symphony No. 3 Symphony No. 4

"HDTT's "HQCD" edition, actually does sound a good deal more wide-open-spacious than the LP pressings I had treasured over the years. If there is a hint of dryness in the sound, it suits this music's angular character very well. Moreover, HDTT, with this issue, has not only given us a treasure that ought never to have been out of circulation, and in excellent sonics, but has made some real strides in the way of professionalism in its labeling and documentation"
Richard Freed/Ultra Audio.com

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Saint-Saens Symphony No. 3

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Schubert Symphony No. 9 in C major, and
Schumann Symphony No. 4 in D Minor

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Schumann Symphony No. 1 and Manfred Overture

"No mincing of energies for the rollicking Allegro animato e grazioso finale, an orchestral romp par excellence. A combination of moto perpetuo and trumpet voluntary, this whirlwind realization is a triumph of the spirit on every level. Even the transitional string work blisters the ear. Flute solo and arching song from the cellos, hints of Mendelssohn's own cosmos. Once Munch begins the extended coda, there's no stopping the musical avalanche. Wow! Three ripping chords and we savor the existential gloom of Byron's Manfred, recorded 1961. The urgent context of the execution is the same as that for the Spring Symphony. Pulverizing trumpet interjections, anguished string harmonies, a ferocious rush to judgment, a virtuoso performance of the highest order. That Munch could be one of the most exciting conductors of his generation has this disc as living witness. Though I am stingy with kudos for discs that last under 60 minutes, this HDTT goes on our Best of the Year list for certain!"
Gary Lemco/Audiophile Audition

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Shostakovich Symphony No. 5/Selections from The Gadfly Suite

 

 

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Sibelius Symphony #5
Karelia Suite
Swan of Tuonela

Jean Sibelius Symphony No. 2 and 7

Pierre Monteux (1875-1964) brings a decided sobriety and classical poise to the 1902 D Major Symphony of Jean Sibelius, a work conceived in sunny Italy despite its “Northern” lights. Some find in this large, Romantic work the influence of Tchaikovsky. Monteux approaches the symphony not as an exercise in heroic gestures - in the manner of Kajanus or Koussevitzky - but as a confrontation of alternating declamatory and lyric bursts of energy. Typical of the Monteux ethos, he asks of the LSO its brilliant capacity for textural clarity, the focus in the opening Allegretto on the enunciation of motifs, with their truncated sense of sonata-form. The LSO woodwind, string, and brass section enjoy a particular richness and elasticity of phrase. The various, internal trills and rising scales that thunder up from the bases and tympani attain a blazing peroration before the music settles down in a resigned acceptance of either its “fate” or its convergence of a musical “mosaic” into a panoramic landscape. The modal second movement evolves from a tympani roll, pizzicato strings, and bassoon to create a broad, sustained, melancholy song of primal power. The LSO winds and low strings more than justify their repute as a “Sibelius” orchestra. The Vivacissimo third movement elicits from Monteux’s LSO a bravura tour de force for quick execution and visceral momentum, interrupted by a mournful oboe theme on a pedal point, possibly inspired by the suicide of Sibelius’ sister-in-law. The music segues seamlessly into the last movement, an Allegro moderato that rises majestically into an exalted vision - much supported by a glowing LSO brass contingent - which the composer once characterized as “Heaven’s floor.”

Lorin Maazel (b. 1930) comes to his conductor’s trade to the manner born. His predilection for the Romantics exerted itself early, when at fourteen he led an equally youthful Byron Janis and an orchestra in the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2. Maazel approaches one of the knottiest of the Sibelius symphonies, the Seventh (1924) a sense of musical mystery. In a letter to a friend (1918), Sibelius made it clear that “profound logic” was far from his top priority. The Seventh would be “about joy of life and vitality, with appassionato passages, in three movements, the last being a Hellenic rondo.” Maybe this was Sibelius’ smokescreen, because what emerged six years later was well wide of his declared mark: in the Seventh, Sibelius integrated all the “components” of a symphony into one seamless span, with all the motifs closely interconnected. Perhaps influenced by Debussy’s one-movement ballet Jeux, Sibelius exploits the rondo form, alternating slow sections with scherzandi.  A trombone theme serves as a kind of connective thread, and the music occasionally achieves the noble heights we know from Symphony No. 2 and Symphony No. 5. The uniqueness of the musical evolution of this piece, its fierce conciseness, led conductor and musical commentator Constant Lambert, in the concluding chapter of Music Ho! (called "Sibelius and the Music of the Future:"), to offer this explanation for the apparent failure of Sibelius's music to influence other composers of his generation:

It offers no material for the plagiarist, and is to be considered more as a spiritual example than as a technical influence. We are not likely to find any imitation of Sibelius's No. 7, such as we find of Stravinsky's Symphonie des Psaumes, because the spiritual calm of this work is the climax of the spiritual experience of a lifetime and cannot be achieved by any aping of external mannerisms. The Vienna Philharmonic under Maazel provide a seamless rendition whose internal logic cannot be denied. The smooth, even silken playing of the string and wind choirs achieve a liberating sense of melody and orchestral open-work that set a high mark in  Sibelius interpretation.
 

"Decca recorded the Symphony No. 2 at Kingsway Hall, London, in 1958, and it remains one of their best efforts of the period. The folks at HDTT have remastered the sound to excellent effect, especially on the HQCD to which I listened, the sonics very full, very open, very clean, and very rich. You’ll find good detail and transparency here without the balance being too forward, glassy, or hard (although, to be fair, there is a touch of that involved, a common quality in early Decca stereo recordings). The stereo spread is wide, with a modest sense of orchestral depth, reasonably quick transients, and good impact. Decca made the Symphony No. 7 recording in the Sofiensaal, Vienna, in 1966, where they obtained a slightly smoother overall response, with an even wider stereo spread, a bit more depth, and a tad more distanced miking. If it’s not quite as transparent as the Symphony No. 2, it makes up for it with an easy listenability."
Classical Candor

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Tchaikovsky Sym No. 4 / Swan Lake Act II Excerpts

Tchaikovsky’s F Minor Symphony of 1878 serves dramatically as his “Fate” symphony, much as the C Minor Symphony embodies “Fate” for Beethoven. In his various correspondences with his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky referred to the music as “our symphony” and even “your symphony.” Antonina Milyukova, an emotionally unstable former student in his composition class at the Moscow Conservatory, had entered Tchaikovsky’s life with declarations of love, which deeply confused him. Given Tchaikovsky’s desperate desire to conceal his homosexuality, a dutiful son’s desire to please his aging father by getting respectably married, and Milyukova’s persistence, Tchaikovsky capitulated to her advances. They became a married couple on July 6.

What was in the composer’s mind to be a strictly platonic relationship became intimate, and their union lasted just a few months. Tchaikovsky suffered a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide. He fled to France, Italy and Austria. He resumed work on the symphony towards the end of the year, completing it in Venice in January 1878. Nikolai Rubinstein conducted the first performance, which took place in Moscow in February.
Tchaikovsky disclosed the ideas and emotions which he had borne in mind while composing the symphony to Mme. Von Meck. The fury and hectic passion that suffuses the first movement embodies something of Tchaikovsky’s philosophy that unites aesthetics with poignant personal emotions. A militant brass fanfare opens the symphony and recurs throughout it. “This is Fate,” Tchaikovsky wrote, “the power which hinders one in the pursuit of happiness from gaining the goal, which jealousy provides that peace and comfort do not prevail, that the sky is not free from clouds – a might that swings, like the sword of Damocles, constantly over the head, that poisons continually the soul. This might is overpowering and invincible. There is nothing to do but submit and vainly to complain.” The two main themes of the first movement proper are a restless, yearning string melody and a wistful, dance like theme introduced by solo clarinet. Whatever moments of consolation exist, they are driven savagely into the background by the Fate theme. The coda is stark and uncompromisingly tragic: Fate seems triumphant, almost in the spirit of Liszt’s Totentanz.
“The second movement offers another tragic perspective of sadness,” Tchaikovsky continued. “Here is that melancholy feeling that enwraps one when he sits alone at night in the house exhausted by work; a swarm of reminiscences arises. It is sad, yet sweet, to lose one’s self in the past.” A vigorous Scherzo dispels the atmosphere of gloom, the strings playing pizzicato throughout. “Here are capricious arabesques, vague figures which slip into the imagination when one has taken wine and is slightly intoxicated,” states Tchaikovsky. In the middle section, oboes and bassoons give out a rustic dance tune, while brass and piccolo offer a humorous imitation of military band music.
A brilliant flourish for full orchestra propels the urgent, nationalistic finale. Woodwinds introduce the main theme, a Russian folk song about spinster women called In the Meadow There Stands a Birch Tree. A confident, march like theme appears. After this sequence is repeated, the atmosphere gradually loses its sense of confidence. The Fate theme demolishes the festivities, a suggestion of the inevitability of personal catastrophe. But Tchaikovsky resists Fate. “If you find no pleasure in yourself, look about you. Go to the people. See how they can enjoy life and give themselves up entirely to festivity. There still is happiness, simple, naive happiness. Rejoice in the happiness of others – and you can still live.” The music regains its momentum, concluding in a blaze of celebration. Led by the sure hand of veteran Pierre Monteux (1875-1964), the Boston Symphony delivers a rendition both sonically spectacular and architecturally elegant, the pathos never allowed to distort the essential Classical character of Tchaikovsky’s grand symphonic design.
Ernest Ansermet (1883-1969), conductor of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, was among the first to record in their entirety all three major Tchaikovsky ballets, for London Records. Swan Lake (1876) remains Tchaikovsky’s most vivid ballet score, based on Russian folk tales relating the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer’s curse. The Act II Scene presents one of Tchaikovsky’s greatest melodic creations, a haunting melody played by the oboe and picked up by tremolando strings and clarion horns. The Dance of the Little Swans, animated in brisk, light figures, features woodwinds and strings in lithe motion. Winds and solo harp set the misty tone for the Scene – Pas de Deux – then, a violin solo joins the harp for the plaintive cantilena that evolves over pizzicato figures and becomes increasingly animated, only to turn into a violin and cello duet of surpassing beauty. Pizzicato strings and percussion open the famous Waltz, a lilting melody with woodwind and deep string curlicues whose development rivals the elegant passion in any Viennese composition in the same genre.

 

 

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Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 and Music from the Nutcracker

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Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 "Pathetique"

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 - Otto Klemperer conducts Philharmonia Orchestra of London

Otto Klemperer (1885-1973) was one of the great conductors of the 20th Century, with a formidable reputation for austere, monumental, and transcendental performances of the great Germanic classics. In his inscription with producer Walter Legge's Philharmonia Orchestra --from an Angel EMI 4-track tape-- Klemperer finds a perfect vehicle for his own epic personality in Tchaikovsky's last symphony of 1893, the Pathetique, which compresses the composer's personal sense of tragedy into a statement alternately melancholic and fiercely militant.

The mark of the Philharmonia Orchestra--hand picked British musicians originally organized by Walter Legge and Sir Thomas Beecham for recordings, concert performances, and opera--remains the musical acumen of its individual members. The Philharmonia Orchestra helped resuscitate Herbert von Karajan's career, and its responsive players did no less (after 1954 until 197) for Otto Klemperer. The string and woodwind sound for the visceral Adagio. Allegro non troppo quite startles us from our musical complacency. The French horns at the coda provide a noble dirge for a powerfully driven movement. Klemperer's capacity for sweet resonance permeates the 5/4 Allegro con grazia, again with fulsome interior response from the Philharmonia woodwinds. The potent Allegro molto vivace may appear superficially defiant and liberating, but Klemperer finds subversive, tragic nuances even within the fortress of sound he builds from the Philharmonia's imposing brass and battery sections. From his own mentor Gustav Mahler, Klemperer held the last movement Adagio lamentoso in high regard --since Mahler modeled his own last symphony on its example --from the prominent bassoon part to the agonized series of hugely arched string sighs that soon hurtle through the orchestra. The effect proves overpowering, a rendition of Pathetique Herculean and unfalteringly sympathetic.

Great early EMI sonics

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Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 2
Liadov: 8 Russian Folk Songs

 A cornucopia of color effects graces this album, not the least of which is Liadov’s splendid 1906 collection of Russian folksongs, which I first heard in excerpt with Stokowski, then all of the set with Nicolai Malko. Taken from an RCA 4-track tape, the performance under Previn (rec. 1966) has a sensitively dynamic, polychromatic range that runs from the low strings to the triangle and battery section. The plucked strings, in I Danced with a Mosquito, for instance, simply shimmer with elastic energy. A Christmas Carol and Village Dance Song convey the heraldry of which Liadov was capable; an eminent miniaturist, his melodic gifts rival those of Rimsky-Korsakov.
Gary Lemco - Audiophile Audition

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Toch Symphonyn No. 3
Piston Symphony No. 6

Austrian composer Ernest Toch(1887-1964) had studied music despite the disapproval of his parents and learnt from ‘secret early study of Mozart’s scores’ the emotional wellsprings of music. You’d think that Toch’s music (‘from the heart – may it go to hearts,’ as he described Poems to Martha) would equip him to write for the movies, Hollywood’s principal industry. His score for the chase scene in Shirley Temple's 1937 Heidi perhaps remains his best-known piece of film music. But he was not the only composer to be disillusioned by the Hollywood experience. Toch didn’t go in for ‘systems,’ but Schoenberg thought enough of him to let him know when he was retiring from the University of California at Los Angeles so that Toch could assume the post. The Third Symphony, Op. 75, from 1955, probably had the most success of the seven during the composer's lifetime, winning the Pulitzer. Toch's interest in new orchestral sounds, plainly evident in the second symphony, extends in the third to new instruments, some (although not all) invented by the composer himself. This isn't a brand-new orchestra but really a furtherance of traditional practice, as one finds in Richard Strauss (wind machine), Gershwin (taxi horns), Varèse (siren), and Respighi (phonograph). Problems with some of the new "instruments" (some horns hooked up to compressed air – a "pressure horn" – and a "rotarion" – a rumbling box filled with wooden balls) caused Toch to find substitutes or eliminated them altogether, probably in the hope of increasing performances as well. Of course, these days a MIDI keyboard and digital sampler would make hash of such obstacles, as it has for Antheil's Ballet méchanique. Nevertheless, the call for unusual and home-made instruments has become a kind of two-edged sword. On the one hand, it kept interest in the symphony alive. On the other, the outlandishness of some of the instruments leads one to expect a different kind of piece. Indeed, the newcomers play very well with others, never insisting on the spotlight. Toch's use of a Hammond organ, for example, sounds pretty much like any other organ.
Other than its unusual sound-palette, the Symphony No. 3 proceeds like the first two: conventional structures replaced by an intricate skein of motific cells that extends to every movement. Toch wrote the work in response to a commission celebrating the three hundredth anniversary of American Jewry. While we don't hear an idiom based specifically on Jewish elements or even a program, the symphony commands attention because it takes an ultimately cheerier outlook than the first two. The second movement, a sort-of Brahms intermezzo, recommends itself in this regard. There may be an association with a Jewish pastoral, although there's nothing explicitly Jewish about it. It's a matter of tone.
Walter Hamor Piston Jr., (January 20, 1894 – November 12, 1976), was an American composer of classical music, music theorist and professor of music at Harvard University whose students included Leroy Anderson, Leonard Bernstein, and Elliott Carter. After his return from Paris, in 1926 Piston met Serge Koussevitzky, who asked him if he had written any symphonies. When Piston queried who would play them if he had, Koussevitzky replied: “You write, I play.” The association with the Boston Symphony, which began in 1928 – which would premier eleven of Piston’s works – culminated in a series of commissions, of Symphony No. 1, Symphony No. 3, Symphony No. 6, and Symphony No. 8. The Koussevitzky Music Foundation commisisoned the Sixth Symphony in celebration of the BSO’s 75th birthday, and the piece is dedicated to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky. Charles Munch led the premier November 25, 1955.
The work is in four movements, quite traditonal. The first movement, warm and flowing, is in sonata form. The second movement, light and fast, is marked Scherzo. The third movement offers a serene Adagio, theme one played by a solo cello, theme two by the flute. The Allegro energico finale presents two contrasting themes. The Adagio movement utilizes the B-A-C-H motto often found in that composer’s own work. If the first and third movements present broad and lyrical tunes, the second and fourth give us jazzy elements. The Scherzo has virtuoso elements for percussion, although delicate in nature and sonority. Rhythmically and harmonically grounded, the piece emanates the vital exuberance typical of Piston. The piece no less exhibits a diverse palette and continual color variation that maintain our interest in the progress of this potent music.

 

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Vaughan Williams A London Symphony/Sym. No. 2

Vaughan Williams: A London Symphony

Vaughan Williams' A London Symphony [No. 2 in D Major] provides Andre Previn and the London Symphony a virtuoso, impressionistic work on a grand scale. In a program note in 1920, Vaughan Williams suggested that Symphony by a Londoner might be a better title.
The symphony is in four movements.

1. Lento – Allegro risoluto

The symphony opens quietly, and after a few nocturnal bars, the Westminster chimes are heard, played on the harp. After a silent pause, the Allegro risoluto section, much of it triple forte, is vigorous and brisk, and the ensuing second subject, dominated by the wind and brass, evokes half-hour chimes in chromatic, short motifs. The LSO brass section enjoys every opportunity for brilliant display here. After a contrasting cantabile interlude scored for string sextet and harp, the vigorous themes return and bring the movement to a lively close, with full orchestra's playing fortissimo.

2. Lento

The chilly, fog-laden movement opens with muted strings playing ppp. Vaughan Williams said that the slow movement, a series of variations on three themes, intends to evoke "Bloomsbury Square on a November afternoon." Quiet themes led in turn by English horn, flute, trumpet and viola give way to a grave, impassioned forte section, after which the movement gradually flows into a wonderful coda nostalgically recalling each theme in turn.

3. Scherzo (Nocturne)

In the composer's words, "If the listener will imagine himself standing on Westminster Embankment at night, surrounded by the distant sounds of The Strand, with its great hotels on one side and the New Cut on the other, with its crowded streets and flaring lights, it may serve as a mood in which to listen to this movement." A Cockney sensibility reigns in this movement--perhaps influenced by Debussy's Fetes--which revolves around two scherzo themes, the first marked fugato and the second straightforward and lively. Imitations of piano and accordion announce a street party for the Trio. The piece closes with muted strings playing pppp.

4. Finale – Andante con moto – Maestoso alla marcia – Allegro – Lento – Epilogue

The finale opens on a grave march theme in the cellos, punctuated with a boisterous allegro section, with full orchestra initially forte and appassionato. After the reappearance of the march--via a tamtam-capped climax--the main allegro theme of the first movement returns. Following this, the Westminster chimes strike again, this time at three quarters past the hour (played by harp), and there is a quiet Epilogue for London and British Empire asleep, inspired by the last chapter of the novel Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells:
"The last great movement in the London Symphony in which the true scheme of the old order is altogether dwarfed and swallowed up... Light after light goes down. England and the Kingdom, Britain and the Empire, the old prides and the old devotions, glide abeam, astern, sink down upon the horizon, pass – pass. The river passes – London passes, England passes..."

The 1971 performance by Previn and his responsive LSO brings a resolute air of authenticity to this evocation of an imperial, imperious grandeur that by 1920 had faded into legend.

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Ralph Vaughan Williams/Symphony No 3 "Pastoral" and
Tuba Concerto

HDTT proudly announces its remastering of an already fine RCA recording from 1972 (LSC 3281) of the Vaughan Williams unjustly neglected Third Symphony (1922) coupled with the Tuba Concerto (1954), both performed by conductor Andre Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra, John Fletcher, tuba solo. Soprano
Heather Harper performs the lovely, wordless pentatonic recitative intoned over a soft drum roll in the last movement. Harper appears at the coda to lull the music into rapt silence.

The incredibly versatile musician and composer Andre Previn (b. 1929) came to America in 1939 as a result of Nazi anti-Semitism. Andre's great-uncle served as music director of Universal Studios. Andre Previn's avatars in music include his jazz-piano work and film scores through the 1960s; then, beginning in 1967, he succeeded Sir John Barbirolli as conductor in Houston. From 1968-1979 Previn led the London Symphony Orchestra. From 1976-1984, Previn served as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. After having left Los Angeles in 1989, Previn returned to composition, particularly two operas, A Streetcar Named Desire (1998) and Brief Encounter (2009).

Conceived in 1922 as a valediction for the "honored dead" of WW I, the Vaughan Williams Third Symphony also wishes to extol the sounds of peace and a transcendent return to Nature. Composer Peter Warlock called the score "a truly splendid work. . .the best English orchestral music of this century." The shimmering, often incandescent performance by Previn and LSO achieves a luminous gloss that HDTT processing has only made more fervently intense and immediate. The Tuba Concerto bears a direct relationship to the LSO, having been conceived for its principal player, Philip Catalinet, who first recorded the work with Barbirolli. Now among the most popular vehicles for the instrument, the Concerto receives a conscientious, colorful, often witty inscription from Previn and solo John Fletcher, restored in vivid sonics for its thirteen minute duration.

 

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Vaughan Williams/Sinfonia Antartica

 Vaughan Williams provided the music for the film Scott of the Antarctic in 1947, and was so inspired by the subject that he incorporated much of the music into a symphony. Robert Falcon Scott (d. 1912) and his expedition to become the first to reach the South Pole ended disastrously, with their dying a mere eleven miles from their goal. In the film version, John Mills plays the doomed Scott.
Months after the expedition succumbed to the fierce cold, a search party discovers the tent and the bodies. Scott's diary was also recovered, allowing the members to learn of the polar party's fate. The film ends with the sight of a large wooden cross with the five names of the dead inscripted on it as well as the “heroic” quote from Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." The movie may end majestically, but the Symphony ends in deepest gloom, the eternal Antarctic wind triumphant.
Vaughan Williams began the symphonic score in 1949, completing the work in 1952, with a dedication to Ernest Irving.[1] The first performance took place on 14 January 1953 in Manchester with Sir John Barbirolli conducting the Hallé Orchestra; the soprano soloist was Margaret Ritchie.
The five-movement work is scored for a large orchestra including three flutes doubling piccolos, two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, four percussionists (playing side drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, gong, bells, xylophone, glockenspiel, vibraphone, and wind machine), celesta, harp, piano, organ (used quite startlingly and effectively in a spot towards the end of the third movement) and strings.
There is also a wordless three-part women's chorus and solo soprano, who sing (like icy sirens) only in the first and last movements. The composer specified that the third movement lead directly into the fourth. The score includes a brief literary quotation at the start of each movement. They are sometimes declaimed in performance (and recordings), although the composer did not say that they were intended to form part of a performance of this “chilling” work.
Prelude: Andante maestoso (quotation from Shelley, Prometheus Unbound)
To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite,/ To forgive wrongs darker than death or night,/ To defy power which seems omnipotent,/ ... / Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent:/ This ... is to be/ Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free,/ This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.
Scherzo: Moderato (quotation from Psalm 104, Verse 26)
There go the ships, and there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to take his pastime therein.
Landscape: Lento (quotation from Coleridge, Hymn before Sunrise, in the vale of Chamouni)
Ye ice falls! Ye that from the mountain's brow/ Adown enormous ravines slope amain —/ Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,/ And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!/ Motionless torrents! Silent cataracts!
Intermezzo: Andante sostenuto (quotation from Donne, The Sun Rising)
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,/ Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Epilogue: Alla marcia, moderato (non troppo allegro) (quotation from Captain Scott's Last Journal)
I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint.
Occasionally in performance and recordings the preceding quotations are recited before each movement - notably Andre Previn's in 1968 for RCA with Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-1983). However, care must be taken, because the composer instructed that the third movement must lead directly into the fourth without a pause. The final notes of the third movement can be sustained as the superscription to the fourth movement is read, thereby ensuring no interruption to the music. The effect is particularly notable - and presumably intentionally so - since the other four movements each have their superscriptions read prior to the beginning of each movement. The horrific grandeur of the third movement is thereby held over into the bittersweet intermezzo. Previn's recording is the most accurate in this regard.

 

Compact Disc Burned on a Gold CD-R
HQCD (High Quality Compact Disc) Playable on all compact disc players
24bit 96khz Resolution DVD Playable on all DVD players
24bit 192khz Resolution DVD-A playback must support DVD-A
24bit 96khz Resolution Flac Downloads Playable through most media players
24bit 192khz Resolution Flac Downloads Playable through most media players