EDGARD VARÈSE : The Varèse Album (1972-2007) 2xCD / FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Here is a collection on the indie Wounded Bird Records that was once one of the linchpins of the Columbia Masterworks LP catalog, yet it has never been issued by anyone on CD: The Varèse Album. Issued in 1972, CBS's The Varèse Album was in itself a reissue, consisting of the albums Music of Edgar Varèse (1960) and Music of Edgar Varèse, Vol. 2 (1963), both featuring pickup groups led by Robert Craft and the first volume including Varèse's own realization on tape of Poème Electronique (1958). In 1972, The Varèse Album was thought to contain near to all of the works of Varèse, and since then that short catalog hasn't expanded by much. Listening to these early '60s recordings of Varèse works that have been recorded many times in the interim is illuminating; while in the '70s this was thought to be the Cadillac of Varèse recordings, time has not been kind to all of these performances. Craft's reading of Ionisation seems a bit fast and sloppy, Intègrales a bit too casual, but Octandre and Hyperprism remain good performances, and Poème Electronique is what it is -- the one and only realization of Varèse's final fully authorized work. The original Columbia releases were inexplicably stingy in disclosing who performed what on these albums; thanks to Wounded Bird, we finally learn that flutist Arthur Gleghorn was the soloist in Varèse's Density 21.5, one of the finest performances on this set. One aspect of this reissue that is not so good is that the original album liner is reproduced at a one-to-one ratio to the CD insert. As a result, the liner notes are literally unreadable -- it is like trying to read a copy of the magna carta as included inside a fortune cookie. While recorded performances of Varèse by Kent Nagano, Pierre Boulez, and Riccardo Chailly may offer better sound and more proficient readings of these works than found in The Varèse Album, it is still an important release historically and Wounded Bird should be applauded for returning it to the active catalog. by Uncle Dave Lewis  

All tracks & credits

SCHOENBERG : Five Pieces for Orchestra; Cello Concerto (after Monn); Piano Quartet (Brahms orch. Schoenberg) 2006 / FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Schoenberg was one of the pioneering composers of the twentieth century and the most important work on this disc is the original, forward-looking expressionistic Five Pieces for Orchestra, the general characteristics of which are brevity and intensity of expression and which falls into his compositional period between those of the late romantic and the twelve-tone or serial. It is the only original work.
In contrast, Schoenberg, as Stravinsky, arguably the two compositional giants of the twentieth century, often looked to the past for inspiration, and the remaining two compositions on this disc are representatives of this aspect of Schoenberg's work.
The cello concerto is based upon a keyboard concerto by Georg Matthias Monn, an eighteenth century Austrian composer and organist. Schoenberg "freely adapted" and overlaid Monn's ideas with additional counterpoint and harmonies characteristic of the late nineteenth century. Although originally presented to Pablo Casals for its premiere, Casals deemed it too difficult; it was later first publicly performed by Emanuel Feuermann. Here cellist Fred Sherry admirably negotiates the cello part.
The Brahms Piano Quartet is a work Schoenberg had performed as both violist and cellist. Because he felt the piano part dominated the string parts, he arranged it for orchestra, without adding anything of substance, so that the string parts would be more prominent.
Conductor Robert Craft is a specialist in the works of Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, and Varèse and his performances of Schoenberg's works were pioneering in their day. These reissues are more interesting for the cello concerto and the Brahms quartet, which are rarely recorded. Better recorded performances of the Five Pieces are available. by Jeffrey K. Chase 

SCHOENBERG : Serenade; Variations, Op. 31; Bach Orchestrations (2006) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Robert Craft has been Schoenberg's most committed interpreter since the Fifties when he led various permutations of studio musicians in a series of recordings of the Viennese master's complete works for the Columbia label. Personal commitment, however, proved no substitute for conducting technique, and many if not most Craft's Columbia Schoenberg recordings were almost as amusical as they were atonal. Fortunately, Craft grew both as a technician and as an interpreter, and his Nineties recordings of Schoenberg for the Koch label were far more musical and thus far more compelling. This disc joining Schoenberg's Serenade and Orchestral Variations with his three Bach orchestrations are Craft at his ripest and most knowing. With the American Twentieth Century Classical Ensemble plus English bass Stephen Varcoe, Craft leads a subtle, supple and amazingly melodious performance of Schoenberg's Serenade. And with the thoroughly English Philharmonia Orchestra of London, Craft leads a witty, muscular and intellectually bracing performance of Schoenberg's Variations and devoted, dedicated and delightful performances of his three Bach orchestrations. And in all three works, producers Robert Fine and Gregory Squires provide close, warm and detailed sound. For Schoenberg fans, no more need be said.  by James Leonard  

SCHOENBERG : Six a Capella Mixes Choruses (2005) FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

Although Arnold Schoenberg's Six A Cappella Mixed Choruses (1928, 1948) are prominently featured on this CD, the third volume of Robert Craft's Schoenberg Collection on Naxos, the recordings of the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10 (1908), and the Suite in G for string orchestra (1934) should not be overlooked as mere filler. In some ways, these instrumental pieces are the most interesting offerings, if not the most transparent, immediately gratifying, or successful. Since the six choruses are fairly conventional settings of sixteenth century German folk songs, they are the easiest to digest and the least challenging in their consonant harmonies and easy-to-follow canonic textures. The performance by the Simon Joly Singers is warm and ingratiating, and the entire set makes a strong case for Schoenberg's skills in arranging traditional music. But to better appreciate the development of his personal style, one should spend time absorbing the complexities of the String Quartet No. 2, passionately played here by the Fred Sherry String Quartet and beautifully sung by soprano Jennifer Welch-Babidge. This is one of the composer's most unusual and fascinating works, in which he tried to expand the medium in the last two movements by using the human voice as an extension of the quartet. The experiment is an interesting failure, insofar as the voice is never an equal, integrated partner in the ensemble, and remains outside it as the focus of attention. Composed for students, the surprisingly hard-to-play Suite in G is delivered with color and enthusiasm by the twentieth century Classics Ensemble, and is an unexpected example of Schoenberg's late dabbling in neo-Classicism and straightforward tonality. Naxos' sound quality is fine in all the recordings, though it is especially clear and resonant in the String Quartet No. 2. by Blair Sanderson  

SCHOENBERG : Violin Concerto; A Survivor from Warsaw (2008) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg lived through some of the worst years of the twentieth century and his music sometimes sounds that way. Five of the six works on this 2008 Naxos disc were written between 1942 and 1950, the years after Schoenberg had left Nazi Europe for Los Angeles and converted back to his natal Judaism. The spirit of those times brands four of the five works -- the anti-Hitler Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, the two grim a cappella settings of Dreimal Tausand Jahre and De Profundis, and especially the harrowing A Survivor from Warsaw. In the right performances, hearing any one of these works would be a searing and cathartic experience. Hearing them here in performances led by Robert Craft, the experience is certainly searing, but not ultimately cathartic.
A Survivor from Warsaw is surely overwhelming. With narrator David Wilson-Johnson taking the dramatic lead and the Philharmonia Orchestra providing the accompaniment, Craft's performance is nerve wracking. But when the Simon Joly Chorale enters at the climax, the effect only increases the intensity; it doesn't provide release from the horror. In the two a cappella settings, the chorale's articulation is precise and its intonation dead on, but again, while Craft's interpretation is frightening in its ferocious concentration, the climax is only more of the same. Wilson-Johnson returns for the Ode accompanied here by pianist Jeremy Denk and the Fred Sherry Quartet, but while his performance is sardonic and the instrumental ensemble's backing is brutal, the interpretation comes off as more snidely contemptuous than grandly indicting. The inclusion of the Prelude to Genesis from 1944, a piece written for an unmade film that was to depict the book of the Bible of the same name, is aesthetically of a piece with its contemporary works, with a dark and brooding opening climaxing in the creation of the world in a burst of chorale glory. And Craft's interpretation is again more successful in depicting dark than in creating light.
The program's odd man out is Schoenberg's 1934 Violin Concerto, a work composed in an earlier, entirely different, and much more genial musical world. Performed here with brilliance and élan by German violinist Rolf Schulte, the concerto is, relatively speaking for serial music, a lyrical work of vivacious virtuosity, showing Schoenberg at his most cheerfully neo-Brahmsian. Craft and the Philharmonia seem more relaxed here, particularly in the central Andante grazioso, and the finale's coda is suitably majestic.
In sum, while this disc may be mandatory for dedicated Schoenberg aficionados, only the heartiest of neophytes will want to sample anything except the Violin Concerto. Naxos' digital sound is clear and cool, but with an impressive sense of time and place. by James Leonard  

SCHOENBERG : Six Songs for Soprano and Orchestra (2007) FLAC (tracks), lossless

Having exhausted Igor Stravinsky's conductible repertoire for Naxos, conductor Robert Craft has turned his attention to Arnold Schoenberg; Naxos' Schoenberg: Six Songs for Soprano and Orchestra is already Volume 7 in his Schoenberg series. Of course, Craft has been here before in most instances, mainly through the incomplete, though comprehensive, Schoenberg series he did for CBS Masterworks in 1962-1964. That series was marked, in some cases, by unfamiliarity with the material and the vagaries of working with pickup choruses and instrumental groups specifically assembled for the recording, not to mention CBS' indifferent album mastering during that period, which could render outstandingly well engineered efforts dim sounding and crackly. These recordings, made at Abbey Road Studios between 2003-2006, improve on those earlier ones in every way; soprano Jennifer Welch-Babidge is certainly a step up from Ithaca College soloist Irene Jordan in the Six Songs, Op. 8, for soprano and orchestra, significant early Schoenberg works that relate to, and to some extent move stylistically forward from, Schoenberg's better-known Gurre-Lieder. Craft's Kol Nidre, Op. 39, from the early '60s for Columbia was a genuine failure; this version, featuring narrator David Wilson-Johnson, is quite good, as are the excerpts from Moses und Aron, a work Craft has never recorded before. There is a surprise in Ei, du Lütte, a Brahmsian nugget from 1895 that appears new to the recorded catalog. "Glück" from the Six Pieces for Male Chorus a cappella, Op. 35, is revealed to be a high-spirited and fun piece that looks forward to expanded choral techniques that would emerge in the 1950s, rather than the featureless jumble of voices on the earlier Columbia Craft recording. The only selection that falls a little short is Friede auf Erden, Op. 13; this is one of Schoenberg's most accessible works and is usually done with a tendency toward ethereal transparency; Craft adopts a heavier, more aggressive stance, and it is hard to say whether this approach works for it. Nevertheless, both in the 1960s and 2000s, Robert Craft's greatest strength is in his handling of choral music, and this entry contains a good selection of those Schoenberg works that the average listener would rather find less than punishing; on this basis alone, it is easy to recommend Naxos' Schoenberg: Six Songs for Soprano and Orchestra.  by Uncle Dave Lewis  

SCHOENBERG : Gurre-Lieder (2004) 2CD / FLAC (tracks), lossless

Schoenberg's Gurrelieder grew as he composed it. First conceived as a song cycle with piano accompaniment, it was premiered a decade later as a cantata for soloists, chorus, and enormous orchestra. It was also a passionately romantic young man's work finished by a fanatically modernist mature man and as the composer grew older, the composition got better in some ways and worse in others. Whether Gurrelieder ought to have grown into a cantata is arguable. The pointillistic orchestrations of the mature man are an improvement over the impressionistic orchestrations of the young man. But the passionate excess of the young man sounds dated when uttered by the mature man and Schoenberg's Gurrelieder can be a little too overwrought and a bit too overwhelming to be believed.
Robert Craft believes. Craft knew Schoenberg in the late '40s and he has championed his music as a conductor and writer ever since. This 2001 recording is Craft's first Gurrelieder and he clearly loves the work. He lets the young composer sing in the work's surging lyricism and he lets the mature composer wail in the work's passionate excesses. Unfortunately, the singers also wail to excess. Stephen O'Mara is strong but sometimes not completely in control, and Melanie Diener is powerful but too often not altogether in tune. Ernst Haefliger is a mellifluous speaker, the Philharmonia Orchestra is a magnificent instrument, and the Simon Joly Chorale is a gargantuan ensemble. Naxos' digital sound is enormous and all-enveloping. by James Leonard  

SCHOENBERG : Pelleas und Melisande; Erwartung (2008) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

This 2008 Naxos disc dedicated to the music of Arnold Schoenberg with Robert Craft leading the Philharmonia Orchestra re-couples performances on Koch International previously issued at the turn of the century. The opening Pelleas und Melisande first appeared with Pierrot lunaire while the closing Erwartung originally came with Transfigured Night. In either case, a rich, ripe late Romantic work is joined to a hard, harsh early atonal work, and in every case, it's easy to see where Craft's sympathies lie. His Pelleas is so clear and precise that everything in the score is audible. But his tempos are too inflexible, his textures too clean, and his interpretations too reserved. In a great performance of Schoenberg's Pelleas, the stakes should be life or death. In Craft's performance, the stakes are nickel and dime. Much more effective is the performance here of Erwartung. Part of the reason is Craft's greater sympathy for the violently expressive score. But a bigger part of the reason is the frighteningly intense performance from soprano Anja Silja. There have been scary performances of Schoenberg's one-act murder mystery before, but none of them are scarier than Silja's. On top of nailing the notes and bringing life to the angular vocal lines, Silja breathes fire into the homicidal sentiments of the text, and when combined with Craft's meticulous direction and the Philharmonia's virtuosic accompaniment, her performance is among the wonders of the Schoenberg discography. by James Leonard 

SCHOENBERG : Pierrot Lunaire (2007) FLAC (tracks), lossless

Originally released by Koch, these recordings of key works in Arnold Schoenberg's oeuvre are now part of Naxos' Robert Craft Collection, a series of reissues that reaffirms the conductor's unflagging devotion to modern music, even if the performances and recording quality periodically flag. The pieces predate Schoenberg's discovery of the twelve-tone system and are to varying degrees atonal and expressionistic, with the exception of the tonal Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 (1906), which was composed just before the atonal period. Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 (1912), is Schoenberg's best-known work, famous for introducing Sprechgesang or Sprechstimme (a vocal technique in which words are half-spoken, half-sung) and for influencing numerous modernist vocal pieces since. This angst-laden cycle on "three times seven poems by Albert Giraud in German translation by Otto Erich Hartleben" is convincingly played by members of the Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble, though Anja Silja's consonants are not at all clear, and the listener is obliged to acquire the libretto to understand what she is declaiming. Unclear enunciation is also a problem in appreciating the short, fragile song Herzgewächse, Op. 20 (1911), and the brooding Four Orchestral Songs, Op. 22 (1916), which are sung by soprano Eileen Hulse and mezzo-soprano Catherine Wyn-Rogers, respectively, though their voices are much clearer than Silja's and some of the words can be made out with close listening. The Philharmonia Orchestra is full-sounding and warm in Opus 22, suggesting that the musicians responded well to the music and to Craft's direction. The performance of the Chamber Symphony is rather more brusque and angular, and the playing by the full Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble is more typical of Craft's performances in its extremely dry tone and mechanically stiff lines. As one might expect of such a compilation, the recordings made at Abbey Road Studios (Herzgwächse, Four Orchestral Songs) are superior to that of Pierrot, which was made at the Academy of Arts and Letters, and that of the Chamber Symphony, which was recorded at the Recital Hall of SUNY Purchase. by Blair Sanderson 

SCHOENBERG : Chamber Symphony Nº 2; Die glückliche Hand; Wind Quintet, Op. 26 (2008) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

As seemingly random collections of music by Arnold Schoenberg go, this disc by Robert Craft seems at first to be the most random of all. Once Stravinsky's amanuensis and currently a conductor dedicated to the classics of modernist music, Craft has combined on a single program Schoenberg's lushly tonal Chamber Symphony, his agonizingly atonal Die glückeliche Hand, and his bracingly dodecaphonic Wind Quintet. For some composers, such extremes might provoke aesthetic whiplash, but in Schoenberg's case it's business as usual. While he might switch harmonic languages and rhetorical styles from work to work, Schoenberg's compositional personality remains essentially the same. In this set of polished and affectionate performances, Craft creates not a random collection of music but a coherent portrait of the composer as a passionately inspired craftsman. With the skillful Philharmonia Orchestra at his fingertips, Craft turns in a smoothly refined and warmly emotional performance of the Second Chamber Symphony that makes the work sound like late Brahms at his most majestic. With the expressive bass Mark Beesley and the distinctive Simon Joly Chorale, Craft's Die glückeliche Hand is urgent and explosive, but always tightly controlled. And with the virtuoso New York Woodwind Quintet, Craft's Wind Quintet sounds as exciting, cogent, and masterful as Beethoven's "Eroica." Though not for everyone, listeners who enjoy Schoenberg will embrace this disc. by James Leonard 

SCHOENBERG : Concerto for String Quartet; Lied der Waldtaube; The Book of the Hanging Gardens (2004) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Robert Craft is a true believer in the music of Schoenberg. He has been conducting it for more than 50 years and he has been recording it for nearly that long. Aging listeners may recall Craft's pioneering Columbia recordings. Younger listeners may recall his unfinished series of recording for Koch. This disc is the second in Craft's most recent series of Schoenberg recordings for Naxos. It features the cheerful and lighthearted Concerto for string quartet and orchestra, one of Schoenberg's least-known and least-characteristic works, in a bright and ebullient performance by the Fred Sherry String Quartet and the New York Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble. Following that is a funny and funky performance of Schoenberg's Suite for piano by Christopher Oldfather. The rest of the disc is devoted to Schoenberg's music for mezzo soprano sung by Jennifer Lane, a strangely sensual Book of the Hanging Gardens, and a darkly tragic Lied der Waldtaube. As a bonus track, Craft has included a six-and-a-half minute conversation with Arnold Schoenberg, a lovely exchange between the aged composer and his young fan. The sound throughout is clear and crisp, except, of course, for the 1949 conversation, which is close and a bit fuzzy but all the more evocative for that. Anyone who loves Schoenberg's music would love this disc. by James Leonard