Camille Saint-Saëns - Music for Violin and Orchestra

 2000; 8 tracks
Jean-Jacques Kantorow / Tapiola Sinfonietta In an effort to invite some much-needed culture back to my blog, here is Jean-Jacques Kantorow leading the Tapiola Sinfonietta in Camille Saint-Saëns' First Violin Concerto and other works for violin and orchestra.

01 Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 20, I. Allegro
02 Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 20, II. Andante espressivo
03 Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 20, III. Tempo I
04 Introduction et rondo capriccioso in A minor, Op. 28 for violin & orchestra
05 Romance in C major, Op. 48, for violin & orchestra
06 Havanaise in E major, Op. 83, for violin & piano (or orchestra)
07 Sarabande Op. 93, No. 1, for string orchestra
Solo violin: Tero Latvala
08 Morceau de concert in G major, Op. 62, for violin & orchestra

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Kalevi Aho - Symphony No. 3 / Songs & Dances of Death (Mussorgsky)

 2003; 8 tracks
Osmo Vänskä / Lahti Symphony Orchestra
Jaakko Kausisto, violin
Matti Salminen, bass  Kalevi Aho is a Finnish composer who studied under the great Einojuhani Rautavaara and composed his Symphony No. 3 for violin and orchestra between 1971 and 1973. Songs & Dances of Death is a song cycle by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, but here Kalevi Aho has orchestrated it into 4 songs for voice and piano. I thank Cliff Skoog for bringing the work of this composer to my attention.

01 Symphony No. 3 (Sinfonia Concertante), I. Andante

02 Symphony No. 3 (Sinfonia Concertante), II. Prestissimo
03 Symphony No. 3 (Sinfonia Concertante), III. Lento
04 Symphony No. 3 (Sinfonia Concertante), IV. Presto
05 Songs & Dances of Death, I. Cradle Song
06 Songs & Dances of Death, II. Serenade
07 Songs & Dances of Death, III. Trepak
08 Songs & Dances of Death, IV. The Field Marshal


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Edvard Grieg - Cello Concerto & 8 Songs for Cello and Orchestra

2001; 11 tracks
Vernon Handley / London Philharmonic Orchestra
Raphael Wallfisch, cellist

01 Sonata for cello & piano in A Minor, Op 36, I. Allegro Agitato (1883)
02 Sonata for cello & piano in A Minor, Op 36, II. Andante molto tranquillo
03 Sonata for cello & piano in A Minor, Op 36, III. Introduzione - Allegro
04 Elegiac Melodies, Op. 34, No. 1, The Last Spring
05 Elegiac Melodies, Op. 34, No. 2, The Wounded Heart
06 Peer Gynt Suite No. 2 for orchestra, Op 55, No. 4, Solvieg's Song
07 Peer Gynt Suite No. 2 for orchestra, Op 55, No. 1, Ingrid's Lament
08 Melodies for string orchestra, Op 53, No. 1, The first meeting
09 Melodies for string orchestra, Op 53, No. 2, Norwegian
10 Melodies of the Heart for voice & piano, Op. 5, No. 3, Jeg elsker Dig (I Love but Thee)
11 Lyric Pieces for piano, Book 3, Op. 43: No. 6, To Spring

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Felix Mendelssohn - Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 / Violin Concerto in E minor

 2002; 9 tracks
Eugene Ormandy / Philadelphia Orchestra
Rudolf Serkin, pianist
Isaac Stern, violinist  Felix Mendelssohn was a German composer of classical music during the Romantic period. I'll admit I am not very familiar with him or many of his works, but I still very much appreciate these three pieces.

This is one of the greatest recordings of Mendelssohn's two piano concertos, the first of which being quite nice and the second slightly simplistic, and the violin concerto which continues to be performed at a highly frequent rate.

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Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No. 5 in D minor & Ballet Suite No. 5 from The Bolt

1989; 12 tracks
Neeme Järvi / Scottish National Orchestra

The young Dmitri Shostakovich was very much the revolutionary who wanted his music to serve the socialist state. "I am a Soviet composer, and I see our epoch as something heroic," he wrote, later adding "I consider that every artist who isolates himself from the world is doomed." He came to maturity during that artistically fruitful and highly active period in Russia immediately after the death of Lenin. A career as a concert pianist looked a strong possibility, for his graduation recital in 1923 was a sensation. But it was his First Symphony, written at the age of 19, while he was a pupil of Maximilian Steinbnerg at the Leningrad Conservatoire, that gave him an international reputation. It was quickly taken up by Bruno Walter, Stokowsky, and Toscanini among others. Two further symphonies followed before the end of the twenties, both at first enormously popular in the USSR. The second, his October Symphony, written for the tenth anniversary of The Revolution when he was only 21, was simultaneously premiered in four Russian cities. Such works exemplify his youthful revolutionary fervour, their technique coloured by his aptitude for writing for the popular media of the stage and the screen, into which he put his considerable energies up to about the age of 35. The latter include his opera The Nose, the ballets The Age of Gold and The Bolt, music for pioneering plays and films, and, at the age of 27, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

However, the opera was to be the young composer's undoing, for in January 1936 Stalin attended a performance. The climate of the time strongly advised a concept of 'Socialist Realism,' and the work was immediately condemned in and editorial in Pravda, as was his ballet Bright Stream. It was a time of danger for the composer, and he suppressed his Fourth Symphony after rehearsals had started and responded with his Fifth to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Revolution, with its now well-known tag 'A Soviet Artist's Reply To Just Criticism.'

Shostakovich's Fifth was first performed in Leningrad on November 21, 1927, and it was received with tremendous enthusiasm. Shostakovich's friend, the cellist and conductor Rostropovich, has suggested that it was only the forty-minute ovation that greeted the first performance that saved Shostakovich from the same fate as his mentor, the celebrated producer Meyerhold, who disappeared.

How should we see Shostakovich's Fifth? Before its first performance in Moscow, the composer was quoted as defining it as a 'lyro-heroic symphony.'

"Its main idea is man's emotional experiences and all-conquering optimism. I wanted to show how, overcoming a series of tragic conflicts arising in the intense struggle which rages in one's soul, optimism is born as a world-outlook." He has also admitted that "any work of art contains autobiographical traits" and on another occasion added "the theme of my symphony is the making of a man."

The Ballet Suites 1 to 5 present a variety of movements from Shostakovich's youthful ballet, theatre and film scores, and the fifth of these comprises eight movements from his three-act ballet The Bolt, written in 1930-31 and first performed at the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre, Leningrad, on April 8, 1931. The setting is a Soviet factory: drunken workers are sacked and in revenge one tries to sabotage a lathe by persuading the operator to drop a bolt into the machine. At the last minute the machinist repents and the saboteur is arrested. The music is extremely vivid in the composer's headlong rhythmic poster pantomine style, satirizing the bourgeois.

Since Shostakovich's death it has become clear that he put into his music sentiments that in any other art would have resulted in direct opposition of the Soviet State.

Your business is rejoicing.

Alan Hovhaness - Mysterious Mountain / And God Created Great Whales

1994; 8 tracks
Gerard Schwarz / Seattle Symphony

There are places in the imagination where journeys unfold, where serenity and truth reside. In these places, the spirit responds to softly beckoning institutions, which in turn become pathways to summits of peace and profundity. And along the pathways, exquisite details vibrate with color, ephemeral and fragmented, the mindscape fertile and enigmatic. Alan Hovhaness is just such a traveler, a seeker of that which is spiritual and true, and his vehicle is music.

Alan Hovhaness' 2nd Symphony, Mysterious Mountain (1955), is just such a place, imaginary. It is of no importance that the title was added later and that it does not describe a particular place. One can still journey there, and by a path of one's own choosing. Of an early performance of the symphony, critic Claudia Cassidy wrote in the Chicago Tribune:

"It seems to remind everyone of something... and it reminds me of the Alhambra. I don't expect you to take the same journey, but there it is for me in its rich textures, its formalized designs, its serenity of scrolls and arabesques, its sudden sounds - harp sounds - of water spilling with a glint of the metallic into a hidden pool."

Even if the particular journey is open to interpretation, the composer's intention is clear: to create an aural impression steeped in his own spiritual philosophy. Namely, that "Mountains are symbols, like pyramids, of man's attempt to know God. Mountains are symbolic meeting places between the mundane and spiritual worlds. To some, the Mysterious Mountain may be the phantom peak, unmeasured, thought to be higher than Everest, as seen from great distance by fliers in Tibet. To some it may be the solitary mountain, the tower of strength over a countryside - Fujiyama, Ararat, Monadnock, Shasta or Grand Teton."

That imaginary place where the "mundane and spiritual worlds" meet is the logical quest of an artist such as Hovhaness. Early in his eclectic education he developed a passion for the mysticism of sound, which was first fed by exposure to Armenian and Indian cultures, and later by those of Japan and China.

Also included in this recording is Prayer of Saint Gregory, a simple, homophonic string chorale supporting a plaintive trumpet solo. Prelude and Quadruple Fugue is an example of Hovhaness' compositional style, the most prevalent of which being the contrapuntal techniques of the Baroque. If portions of Mysterious Mountain evoke Renaissance choral writing, the "Alleluia" of Alleluia and Fugue (1941) does so even more. Both modal and imitative, the piece seems to intone the syllables of the title, and the composer giving testimony to his faith.

And God Created Great Whales (1970) is unique among the compositions on this disc. It is, in fact, less "composed," even at times aleatoric. Players are instructed to "continue repetition, rapidly and not together in free non-rhythm chaos" for a given period of time; and later, "very wild and powerful!" From the din, a pentatonic melody emerges, preparing the way for four recorded songs of the great humpback whale. (For musical purposes, the third song has been slowed down to lower the pitch, but the low pitch of the fourth remains at actual speed.) The result is a hauntingly portentous depiction of earth as it emerges from its primordial chaos. The composer writes: "Free rhythmless vibrational passages, each string player playing independently, suggest waves in a vast ocean sky. Undersea mountains rise and fall in horns, trombones and tuba. Music of whales also rises and falls like mountain ranges. Song of whale emerges like a giant mythical sea bird. man does not exist, has not yet been born in the solemn oneness of Nature."

There is a center to everything that exists.

Gustav Holst - The Planets

1973; 7 tracks
Leonard Bernstein / New York Philharmonic
Born in Cheltenham, England, on September 21, 1874 (the autumnal equinox and the first day of the ancient Egyptian New Year), Gustav Holst was a Virgo (The Hermit; an Earth Sign) and possessed of a decided propensity to Idealism and Truth. Young Holst neither drank nor smoked. He was a strict vegetarian, often subsisting on dried nuts. He was completely single-minded about everything. Naïve and idealistic, he abhorred profanity, never lost his temper, and was shy and solitary. He was a Mystic and obscurantist, more at ease in the silence of the library than the drawing room. He became immersed in the Hindu epics and learned Sanskrit in order to read them in their original texts. He would always maintain his belief in "Dharma" - one's natural path in life. 

For Holst, the search for Wisdom became more important than the search for Beauty. Holst surrendered completely to involvement: When he worked, he overworked, and his delicate healthy offered little reserve capacity. Invariably, he was forced to recuperate from nervous and physical exhaustion. Understandably, for an Englishman, he adored warm climates and, whenever time and fortune would permit, he traveled to the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean. He once decided to go to Algeria, to recuperate by riding his bicycle in the desert. This absurdity is matched only by the fact that he actually did so.

Even in old age, Holst pursued the course of gathering information on everything. He read incessantly. Simple events became highly significant to him. In 1934, at the age of 60, he died: The cause, bleeding ulcers. His most valued possessions were Beethoven's tuning fork and his master key to St. Paul's music school. He was surrounded by the countless books he indiscriminately devoured: Jane Austen and Leon Trotsky lay side by side.

--

His mother was a piano teacher, and his father was determined that Gustav become a musician. So he studied. By the age of 18, his impact upon was limited to appointment as a village organist. By 20, his first major compositions were already performed. Encouraged, he applied for a scholarship at the Royal College of Music. He tested eight successive times before he finally succeeded. Frequently, he was unable to even hold a pen: His hand became so crippled from neuritis that he devised a special pen nip, fitted to his finger, so that he could notate his compositions. In 1903, he began teaching music, eventually becoming music director at Morley College and at St. Paul's Girl's School - the only positions that he truly loved and that he held until his death. Students loved him.

By 1908, he had already experimented with two operas based upon the Hindu writings that so fascinated him. He became a fairly prolific composer, who preferred writing for the voice - thus, he left considerable choral music, operas and songs. He achieved slow but steady recognition, and, with this increasing fame, came relative financial stability. He also became well-regarded as a conductor. However, aside from a small coterie of friends and well-wishers, Holst's reputation grew without creating any real general enthusiasm. But them, he was very, very susprivious of too much recognition. When people asked for his autograph, he would hand them a typed slip of paper that stated that he didn't give autographs.

Interested in eternity, Holst studied astrology and learned to cast horoscopes. He also studied astronomy, and learned computation of light-years in order to understand the Space-Time continuum. His composition The Planets became the most popular and enduring example of his mystical mindplay. Listening to the relentless, threatening, mecahincal march that opens "Mars, The Bringer of War," audiences were sure this was Holst's personal statement about World War I. (After all, the horror was so fresh.) But Holst never heard a machine gun. In fact, he had finished the sketch for "Mars" just before the war - in 1914. A friend gifted him with a semi-private performance of the work, on September 28, 1918, by the London Symphony Orchestra. The effect upon the small audience was intense - and in the halls, during the playing of "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity," char-women were said to have set aside their scrubbing to dance with each other.

The Planets requires large orchestral forces, and its wordless chorus adds further dimension. It made Holst famous, and, by 1921, he was internationally known. The work is cast into seven musical sections. Each is a self-contained tone poem. While not exactly elaborate program music, each section does convey an easy means for dreaming along somewhat prescribed paths. The titles are Holst's own.

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Dmitri Shostakovich - 15 Symphonies + 15 String Quartets

 Recorded: 1965-1975
Released: 2006; 11 discs
Kirill Kondrashin / Moscow Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra
Russian State Choral Choir

"This is visceral stuff (e.g., nos 4, 8 and 11), so far removed from the polished interpretations of the more recent 'sophisticated' recorded cycles by various Western orchestras and their conductors, like Haitink, Jansons, and Jarvi. Even Rostropovich suffers, if only along the fringes, from too much sophistication. All offer their own qualities - but not that primeval, gut-wrenching, uniquely Russian sound, not European, but perhaps from somewhere on the Asian steppes.

Shostakovich composed with the sound of the Russian orchestras of his day - and here you get that sound. It is raw, with the woodwinds, brass and percussion, prominent, not always steady, sometimes ugly, most often hitting you where it really counts.

Here you have a collection of one of the most brilliant symphonists of the Twentieth Century, unadulterated, and disturbing. Play it loud."

This boxset features Shostakovich's Symphonies 1-15, October (Symphonic poem, Op. 131), The Sun Shines on Our Motherland (Cantata, Op. 90), The Execution of Stepan Razin (Poem, Op. 119), and the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 2, Op. 129 in C-sharp minor.


Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
Disc 4
Disc 5
Disc 6
Disc 7
Disc 8
Disc 9
Disc 11  1998; 6 discs
Fitzwilliam String Quartet

I have posted the first 13 quartets done by the Borodin Quartet some time in the past, but these recordings have a grim totality about them, particularly the 8th and 15th Quartet. String Quartets, formed originally by the great Austrian composer Joseph Haydn, can be just as immensely powerful as unbearably intimate. This medium often holds some of the strongest music of a composer, i.e. those of Bartók, Haydn, and, of course, Shostakovich.

"The Fitzwilliam Quartet is English by birth but shows a lot of Russian soul in these works, which were recorded in consultation with the composer. Their technique is flawless, their immersion in the music total, their interaction with one another and with the music spontaneous and intense. Priced competitively with the Borodin Quartet, they do not have any added attraction to match the Piano Quintet in that set, but this close-up stereo recording is significantly better. Highlights of the set include the relaxed, folk-flavored No. 1; the tense, autobiographical No. 8, which recalls the terrors of World War II, quotes a lot of Shostakovich's earlier works, and mourns for the "victims of fascism and war"; the contrasts of quiet beauty and fierce intensity in No. 10; and the bold structure of No. 15, Shostakovich's last quartet, in which he looks at death - steadily and without blinking."


Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
Disc 4
Disc 5
Disc 6

Dmitri Shostakovich - Piano Concertos & Rodion Shchedrin - Piano Concerto No. 2

2004; 10 tracks
Andrew Litton / Glasgow BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Marc-André Hamelin, pianist

Here are some interesting notes about the composer that I agree with (for the most part):

"Dmitri Shostakovich was the last of the great composers who could be called both traditionalist and modern, and the first of the Russian composers who emerged because of, rather than despite, the Soviet regime. Unlike his compatriots Prokofiev and Stravinsky, both educated in Tsarist Russia, Shostakovich worked entirely under the influence of the communist government, and he struggled all his career with his genuine wish to create art for the state and the state's inability to accept any art it did not understand."

And on the second piano concerto:

"Shostakovich wrote his second Piano Concerto in 1957 as a birthday gift for his 19-year-old son Maxim, a pianist. The piece is full of a light-hearted energy that may owe as much to the composer's relief at the demise of Stalin as to his cheerful wishes for his son.

Both the first and third Allegro movements have a similar structure, each contrasting bright, jaunty tunes against a sort of military tattoo complete with snare drum. The first movement contains fiery lines as well, in an ominous theme of octaves marching up and down the keyboard, and at the broad, dramatic moment when the full orchestra triumphantly roars the main melody.

The second movement, Andante, could easily be mistaken for a composition by Rachmaninoff in its soulful sound. Only strings, piano, and a single horn are heard exchanging tender, lyrical lines, the right hand piano part singing a plangent tune above slow arpeggios in the left. There are no fireworks, only the sort of longing melody one associates with Russian composers of an earlier, more romantic era.

The piano immediately segues into another quick-stepping movement with the second Allegro, this one quite rollicking in tone. There are several sections of rippling scales and arpeggios which, according to Shostakovich, were actually quotes from the well-known finger exercises of Hanon; including them in the concerto, the composer said, was the only way he could force his son to practice them!"

I am a huge fan of Shostakovich's two Piano Concertos, the second of which being perhaps the most marvelous piece of music in the world of sound. The first is much less straightforward than the second, and as such I have found it a little hard to become totally engaged in... it is entirely wonderful, still. I hope I can play these some day :) Aside from the two concertos, this release also features the Piano Concerto No. 2 by none too well known Soviet composer Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin. It sounds much like the music of Shostakovich, if not a little less spastic.

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Johannes Brahms - The Piano Concertos

2006; 2 discs
Riccardo Chailly / Gewandhaus Orchestra
Nelson Freire, pianist

I love the Claudio Arrau / Bernard Haitink recording of these phenomonal works for piano + orcehstra, but Freire / Chailly create such a precise and irridescent rendition (recorded live, too) that it is often acclaimed as one of the greatest recordings of Brahms' Concertos of all time.

The Second Piano Concerto is the product of Brahms' more mature years and one of the most powerfully moving pieces of music you will ever hear, but his First was written before he was 30, a near 22 year gap between the two works.

"... an ardent live version of these works with the legendary Brasilian Nelson Freire and the even more legendary 250 year old central european Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig (Mendelsohn was one of its first Kapellmeisters!) under the baton of its new conductor Riccardo Chailly: an invaluable coupling.

This is pure, vintage Brahms, especially in the hands of Freire and Chailly. The transparency of Freire's performance along with Chailly evoking the response from the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, especially with the dark, earthy sound of the strings, makes this performance so superlative that it seems that one is hearing it for the first time."

Disc 1
Disc 2

Arthur Honegger - Symphonies 1-5 + Pacific 231

2004; 2 discs
Michel Plasson / Orchestre du Capital du Toulouse

Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, born in France, and member of Les Six. His style is similar to that of Milhaud's and Poulenc's, certainly, but there's an odd edge found here in his symphonies, particularly the first. This might have to do with the natural primitism underground artists and those dabbling in Dadaism might have found appealing. Les Six was a group of composers based in France who sought to fight against impressionism and, at times, art itself. This has prompted some to take the composers as Dadaist, or of the same artistic standpoints a Dadaist (Dadaists were avant-garde artists during the first world war who produced art that was... not art). But I cannot really judge this. Honegger's overall brash and manly sound contrasts darkly with the airiness of his contemporaries, I think, which makes me wonder what the purposes of these men truly were. Apparently the six were terribly different in thought, but shared their love of music. It is completely rational to consider these men as simply avant-garde composers who enjoyed cubist and surrealist art, working against the artistic structures of the time to create an entirely new approach to music. Satie and his "furniture music" is one example... "Art that hides art." They were influenced by literary figures such as Jean Cocteau and Ornella Volta, as well as the great artistic minds of the time, most notably Pablo Picasso.

According to his site, Arthur Honegger's music "is characterised by a great sense of architecture which allows him to mix all the different languages and musical techniques of his era. His music serves a humanist concept that is completly in phase with the major questions of the twentieth century." That explains his music perfectly - a great sense of architecture. Honegger loved trains, the suite Pacific 231 being about a train in particular. It's interesting how how many early 20th century composers were so fascinated with trains and the industrial revolution.

I think this quote nicely illustrates the apotheosis of Honegger's musical aesthetic:

"I do not worship the fair, or the music-hall, but chamber music and symphony music for its essence of solemness and austerity. I place such importance in the architecture of music that I would never want to see it sacrificed for reasons of literary or pictorial order. I have a tendency (maybe a little exaggerated) to look for the polyphonic complexity. I am not trying to return to a harmonious simplicity, like some anti-impressionist musicians. On the contrary, I think that we should use the harmonic material created by the school of thought that preceeded us, but in a different way, as a base for figure and rythym."


Disc 1
Disc 2

Sergei Rachmaninoff - The Bells, Symphonic Dances, The Isle of the Dead

2001; 15 tracks
Valeri Polyansky / Russian State Symphony Orchestra

These links contain some of the lesser-known distinct Russian pieces by Rachmaninoff starting with the Scherzo, Rachmaninoff's first orchestral work, and finishing with his last, the Symphonic Dances. Also included is the overwhelmingly magnificent choral symphony The Bells.

The Scherzo (1887 or 1888) was written while Rachmaninoff was still a student. It is his first surviving orchestral work which has a rather light-hearted tone and not yet the typical Rachmaninoff sound. The next pieces for orchestra, Prince Rostislav (1891) and The Rock (1893) begin to show the composer's skill for writing program music and incorporating tone painting which would culminate in The Isle of the Dead (1990).

He wrote his most famous symphonic poem, The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29, in 1907 when living in Dresden. It is the music is Rachmaninoff all over - mysterious, beautifully and most effectively orchestrated, melodious and sombre. It's just all beautiful - nothing more amazing than another. I don't know how else to describe it.

Part 1
Part 2

Sergei Prokofiev - Alexander Nevsky / Lieutenant Kijé Suite

1996; 12 tracks
Jean-Claude Casadesus; Lille National Orchestra

I love Prokofiev, but these two works are possibly the most intense and terrifyingly thrilling pieces of music he ever composed. They are... in a way... the most true and pure nationalistic pieces one could find in Soviet Russia, and perhaps even today. This album also features a new dimension to Prokofiev's complex array of composing styles - film music. Here:


The Alexander Nevsky cantata for mezzo-soprano, chorus & orchestra, Op. 78, performed by the Latvija Choir Academy, with Ewa Podles as the mezzo-soprano.

The Lieutenant Kijé Suite suite for orchestra, Op. 60, performed by the Lille National Orchestra under the baton of Jean-Claude Casadesus.


Alexander Nevsky was a hero in the 1200's who defeated the Swedish army and later won out against a large army of Germans. A film was made by Sergei Eisenstein as propaganda for an impending conflict between Russia and Germany, and Prokofiev became the composer of the music. After Russia and Germany settled their affairs, Prokofiev wrote a cantata from the film music for the concert stage. The work begins with a slow, cold, and icy introduction leading into the Russians singing about Nevsky's win over Sweden. The scene continues to the German invaders singing/chanting in Latin as they pillage. The fourth movement is a call of arms for Russia with a cheerful and imaginative folk-like hymn. The Battle on the Ice is the crux of the work, overlapping the German's latin theme with the Russian theme. Prokofiev also graphically depicts the approaching armies musically, all of which erupts in joyous celebration at the victory. Following the battle is a heartfelt alto solo of a peasant woman looking for the man (or men) she was engaged to marry. Of course, the whole work ends in a rousing Russian chorale. The music is varied and imaginative, (very Prokofiev), and is also seemingly steeped in the Russian folk idiom when the time is right. A dramatic and historically interesting work.

The Lieutenant Kijé Suite, another film score, is generally recognized as the one of the softest, lightest, and most ebullient of Prokofiev's works. It is very lively, engaging, and... Casadesus is a master at getting around these mammoth Russian scores.

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Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 10

Leonard Bernstein / Chicago Symphony Orchestra
1989

This is my favorite Shostakovich score, ever, (especially the second movement). Dmitri Shostakovich wrote this fantastic symphony at the age of 19. He was going to graduate from the esteemed Leningrad Conservatory, leaving behind his long years of studying under the amazing Glazunov (and others), and composed this, his First Symphony, as a graduation piece. Indeed, it is a very youthful and vibrant piece that shows all the compositional spark of a rising genius - the true Modern Russian composer hero. But now that I think about it, it seems like this spark was quenched by the Soviet government and never again did Shostakovich create a piece so whimsical and truly of himself. Always the yurodivy, or "holy fool," Shostakovich must have realized that it was in his best interest to bow down to Stalin and compose pieces that were socially acceptable. This is why I love the First Symphony so much. It is what Shostakovich could have been if Stalin had not been in power... it is the true genius of the composer that struggled to find his way out for the rest of his life...

Don't get me wrong, I think everything Shostakovich ever wrote is, in it's own way, a masterpiece. I just percieve this "graduation piece" as one of his finest works, in terms of the man behind the music. He looked a lot like Harry Potter back then, didn't he?

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Sergei Rachmaninoff - The 4 Piano Concertos

Stephen Hough, piano
Andrew Litton & the Dallas Symphony Orchestra

This is a fairly nice recording of the concertos, although I often sense that the strings overpower Hough's under-par piano playing. Abbey Simon's recording with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra / Leonard Slatkin is still my immediate go-to for these majestic works for piano & orchestra, and it most likely always will be.

I'm posting this because I know someone out there will enjoy Hough's interpretation(s), I'm sure. I would like to see Hough try to play what was written for at least a few consecutive measures without adding unnecessary personal touches more often. That would probably make for a nicer, more accurate recording... but I don't want to be rude, for he did a pretty nice job, and this isn't completely garbage, so I will end here.

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