For many of us this Chandos release of Johann Nepomuk Hummel's (1778-1837) orchestral music is right up there with their legendary, award winning disc of his piano concertos that appeared some fifteen years ago. Each of the four works here (the first three are with piano) is a little gem.

As Franz Liszt would later do in his transcriptions based on popular operas of the day, in L'Enchantment d'Oberon (also known as Oberons Zauberhorn, 1829) Hummel creates a highly entertaining, virtuoso driven piano fantasy inspired by Carl Maria von Weber's opera Oberon.

Le Retour a Londres -- Grand Rondeau brillant (1833) makes its recording debut here. Dedicated to the great Czech-born pianist and composer Ignaz Moscheles, this fantasy is quite accurately described as an introduction and grand rondeau brillant. It may get off to a slow start, but rapidly accelerates into a knuckle-busting exercise shimmering with quicksilvery themes and tempos. Audiences must have been thrilled by it and you'll be too!

The A major piano concerto is an early work probably written around 1798 and very much in the style of Johann's teacher, the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It's a very beautifully crafted piece and right up there with many of his pedagogue's efforts in this medium. Interestingly enough the opening themes of the last movement and that of Wolfie's fifteenth concerto in Bb major are remarkably similar.

The program is filled out with a short, but sweet, set of variations for orchestra (no piano) which probably dates from around 1803 and is based on the old chestnut O du lieber Augustin. As was so popular in Hummel's day, the composer has easternized (in Turkish fashion) some of the variations, which will undoubtedly call to mind parts of Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio.

Howard Shelley is magnificent here as both pianist and conductor of with the London Mozart Players, who provide outstanding support in this superb sounding release from Chandos.

By all means make sure you try the other previous discs in Chandos's ever popular series of recordings devoted to this extraordinary composer. (P060418)

-- Bob McQuiston, Classical Lost and Found (CLOFO.com)

Looking for something new and different under the sun? Well, you've certainly found it here with this world premiere recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams' (1872-1958) highly entertaining, complete score for a 1909, Cambridge University stage production of Aristophanes' comedy The Wasps.

Written shortly after he returned from Paris and extensive studies with Maurice Ravel, the work is absolutely effervescent. The play itself is an ideal vehicle for incidental music, because it calls for only three main characters; a protaganist, an antagonist and a chorus. The composer takes full advantage of this by setting all of the latter's lines to music. In fact, one choral selection known as the parabasis, which was a kind of a central, dramatic, extempore section of Greek plays, becomes a highly dramatic, fifteen-minute "cantatetta," if you will.

For this production the two former characters along with any other bit parts were combined into one. All of the lines have been cleverly rewritten and updated so that modern day audiences will derive just as much pleasure from this delightful farce as those who attended the first performance of it circa 410 B.C. Although the dialogue can very easily be programmed out, it's so amusing that you'll probably want to hear it at least once.

Everyone listening to this release will be delighted to discover over an hour's worth of new numbers in addition to the more familiar sections that the composer later borrowed for his better known, five-part, orchestral suite of the same name. By the way, that's not a rattlesnake in the March Past the Witnesses (known as March Past of the Kitchen Utensils in the suite), but a member of the percussion section who in this original version has been instructed to "shake a bag full of broken china."

Granted this album is a hard act to follow, but those liking it might also want to try another, recent disc of some little known, choral music by Vaughan Williams. It includes the world premiere recording of his Willow-Wood cantata. (P060417)

-- Bob McQuiston, Classical Lost and Found (CLOFO.com)

This disc is one of those rare instances where both the music and recorded sound are truly exceptional. Olivier Greif (1950-2000) was born into a Parisian family of Polish Jewish stock. He was a very gifted child who at the age of ten entered the Paris Conservatory, which he graduated from in 1967 at seventeen.

He wrote his Sonate de Requiem in early 1979 to mourn the loss of his recently deceased mother. The composer described it as a meditation on the forfeiture of life experienced by the departed; the sense of bereavement felt by those left behind; and, the journey undertaken by the human soul as it attempts to find and unite with that from whence it originally came. Lasting about half of an hour, it's played without a break and makes reference to a number of older, well-known, secular as well as sacred melodies in much the same way that Charles Ives does in his music. Those familiar with Alfred Schnittke's very moving piano quintet, which was also written to honor his mother shortly after she passed away, may find more than just a spiritual resemblance between these two works.

The trio is another amazing piece and, like the sonata, certainly not something you'll soon forget. It's in four distinct movements. The first, titled "De profundis," begins with forte tone clusters a la Henry Cowell, and is designed to leave the listener in a state of dark despair. The next three provide increasingly effective respites from this emotional quagmire and culminate in a blaze of affirmative light. Don't be surprised if you become absolutely hooked on this highly original, very expressive music, and find yourself listening to it again and again.

Several of us who've heard this CD think it's one of the best chamber music recordings we've ever run across. The string tone is completely natural and the piano sound (from a Steinway D), probably the best we've ever encountered on any type of digital disc. Those with a penchant for the late-romantic and early-modern will find this release indispensable, while audiophiles will be awe-struck! (Y060416)

-- Bob McQuiston, Classical Lost and Found (CLOFO.com)

Once again we're indebted to Bridge Records for this latest addition to their series of discs featuring highlights from the invaluable collection of American, romantic/late-romantic, orchestral music recordings housed at the Library of Congress. This is certainly the most Ivy League of the releases to date in that three of the composers [Louis Coerne (1870-1922), Edward Burlingame Hill (1872-1960) and John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951)] studied with John Knowles Paine at Harvard, while the fourth [Horatio Parker (1863-1919)] taught at Yale, where Charles Ives was one of his students.

Chances are you've never heard of Coerne, which is surprising considering he was very prolific and frequently performed in his day. Represented here by his symphonic poem Excaliber, you'll find he was most adept at painting large orchestral canvases like those of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. Is that the "Woodbird" we hear every now and then?

Hill's Stevensoniana Suite No. 1 is a "not-to-be-missed" delight. It's in four sections, each of which is after a poem from Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. As the excellent album notes point out, this wonderful piece of musical nostalgia for the days of childhood could be considered an American counterpart of Claude Debussy's Children's Corner and Gabriel Faure's Dolly suites.

Like Frederick Delius' cantata by the same name, Carpenter's Sea-Drift was inspired by a poem from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. It's one of his finest works and demonstrates what an absolute master of chromatic manipulation and orchestration he was when it came to "tonescapes."

Although Parker's A Northern Ballad begins with a four note motif very similar to the opening of Bedrich Smetana's Ma Vlast, the influences here appear to be Anglo-Scandinavian rather than Czech. As a matter of fact it may remind you of those earlier works of Delius that have a great affinity with the music of his good friend Edvard Grieg.

All of these selections are in absolutely committed performances with Karl Krueger conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and very good stereo sound. This is another release of lesser known musical Americana from Bridge that's not to be missed! (P060415)

-- Bob McQuiston, Classical Lost and Found (CLOFO.com)

It never rains but it pours and that would seem to be the case for Swedish, modern music with the concurrent release of two discs featuring lesser known works of Kurt Atterberg (1887-1974) and a third with two, outstanding concertos by Bo Linde (see the newsletter of 30 March 2006).

The highlight of this Atterberg disc is his violin concerto, which is among the most beautiful modern Swedish utterances ever written. The demands on the soloists are substantial, but only in the service of the music and never just for show. The first movement is a melodic outpouring of major proportions. The second is a truly inspired adagio that cannot help but move you. The third begins in severe, agitated fashion and then takes on a more fanciful and cheerful aspect only to end in a gorgeous state or reverie and remembrance recalling the mood of the previous two.

The program also includes a rhapsody and an overture. The Varmlands Rhapsody is an extraordinarily lovely, Scandinavian, "tonescape" painting based on folk melodies. It starts off in rather dreamy fashion and then works itself up into a rustic "ramble" worthy of Percy Grainger, only to subside as it began. The overture was originally a student work that the composer revised some twenty years later when he refined and tightened its structure. It spite of these changes it retains its youthful, enthusiastic outlook and you'll find that it's very engaging music.

The performances are excellent and the recorded sound very good.

If you like this disc, do try the other Atterberg release referred to above. It features his captivating Sinfonia per archi along with some other really outstanding works for strings (see the newsletter of 30 March 2006). (P060414)

-- Bob McQuiston, Classical Lost and Found (CLOFO.com)

Since it got a rave review in Gramophone Magazine (09/05), it's taken six months for this incredible, opera discovery to cross the Atlantic. U.S. listeners will undoubtedly find that it was well worth the wait! Its composer, Armas Launis (1884-1959), was quite an intellectual and Finland's leading opera composer in the early 1900s. He was a true cosmopolitan and a Renaissance man with many interests. These included collecting folk melodies from the northern area of the Scandinavian Peninsula, which is known as Lapland.

He uses these extensively in this stage work, which he wrote in the late 1920s. Considering how well informed he was, maybe he got the idea from Leos Janacek, who had been incorporating Moravian folk music into his operas since the early 1900s. Be that as it may, Aslak Hetta is based on historical fact and concerns an uprising lead by a self-appointed Lapp king of that name. Along with a band of religious fanatics known as "The Shouters," Aslak attempts to liberate his people from Norwegian rule. However, his girl friend, who fears for his life, takes steps to see that the rebellion fails and in the process seals his fate. Oddly enough this aspect of the plot is somewhat similar to that of another, recent, Finnish opera discovery, Tauno Pylkkanen's Mare and Her Son.

Launis's work begins with a brief, spoken, explanatory prologue set to music, which at times may remind you of Giacomo Puccini's Turandot. The first act follows immediately and, while it shows the influences of Richards Wagner and Strauss, Launis conjures up a fascinating sound world all of his own. By the way, speaking of Janacek, there's one place here [disc-1, track-5, beginning at 00:04] where the music is reminiscent of his Sinfonietta.

The second act is overpowering with some of the most energetic and inspired, operatic writing one could ever hope for. It's replete with Scandinavian folk melodies, including one [disc-2, track-4, beginning at 01:55] that Edvard Grieg used in the fourth of his Norwegian Dances.

The drama mounts in the third act where Germanic influences are again much in evidence, and the opera ends tragically with the execution of Aslak.

This extremely powerful opera is presented in committed performances and topnotch sound -- You won't be disappointed! In fact this could mark the beginning of a long overdue revival for this very talented, but under appreciated, Finnish composer. (Y060413)

-- Bob McQuiston, Classical Lost and Found (CLOFO.com)