The Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt came to San Francisco in 1985, following a decade with the Dresden Staatskapelle. Although Blomstedt lacked a marketable outgoing personality, he was in the right place at the right time. A contract was signed with Decca, and here are many of the memorable results, recorded between 1988 and 1995.  Blomstedt brought the central European repertoire back to the orchestra, and the set includes Beethoven, Bruckner, Mahler and Brahms. These discs reveal a clear, lithe orchestral sound. SFS was light on its feet compared to its rival in Chicago, and in many ways better suited to recording.  Blomstedt’s performances are not eccentric, but neither are they dull. Lively versions of Mendelssohn’s Scotch and Italian symphonies are here, and a terrific selection of Hindemith. He excelled in Scandinavian repertoire, so we have the complete Peer Gynt, Symphonies 2 and 3 from his excellent Nielsen set, and two delightful symphonies by the under-appreciated Berwald. From his Sibelius survey we get the First and Seventh Symphonies, plus Tapiola. (Many of these well-filled discs last over 80 minutes.) Rarities include works by Brahms for choir and orchestra, coupled with the Alto Rhapsody meltingly sung by Jard van Nes. Sound quality…

In a career that’s lasted more than half a century, Pepe Romero has proven himself to be an important part of the classical guitar’s 20th-century revival. With a prodigious, flamenco-based technique, his intense and raw performances are celebrated here in a generous 11CD box set, covering the greater part of the Spanish guitar repertoire.  If you’re looking for the less Spanish-influenced music that was to appear in the guitar repertoire in the 1960s and 70s (Britten’s Nocturnal, perhaps?), then this definitely isn’t the place. A solid five CDs here are devoted to the guitar repertoire from Spain, but then again Romero’s at his very best in repertoire that’s written in a modern, yet lyrical style. He particularly shines here in performances of the music of Joaquín Rodrigo and Federico Moreno-Torroba, and it’s refreshing that it’s not only these composers’ big hits that are included. Of especial note is Rodrigo’s Invocación y Danza, perhaps his greatest composition. It’s written in an entirely different style to his sunny concertos, and is instead a dark and almost destructively powerful rumination on the music of fellow Spaniard Manuel de Falla. Romero’s performance here is stirring stuff indeed, showing the guitar in its best light. Other…

Mendelssohn’s six string quartets don’t get the airplay they deserve, being overshadowed by Beethoven and Schubert’s. There are plenty of recordings out there, but few to rival this new double disc from Berlin’s Artemis Quartet, which has established itself as a leader among the new generation of ensembles. Formed 18 years ago, they have built a strong following wherever they’ve played – including tours here with Musica Viva. Natalia Prischepenko left last year and this is our first chance to hear the Artemis with their new leader, Latvian violinist Vineta Sareika. I can tell you that this stunningly good band – Gregor Sigl, violin, Friedemann Weigle, viola, and Eckart Runge, cello – has lost nothing in the transition. Their authority and musicality are intact and they still have that chemistry that makes them so special. They’ve chosen works from three periods of Mendelssohn’s short career. The Op 13, his second quartet, was written in 1827 when he was 18 and is a memorial to Beethoven, being inspired by the great Op 135 “muss es sein? (must it be?)”. Mendelssohn’s third quartet, is the composer at his sunniest and its blue skies first movement makes the perfect opening. The final quartet is a grief-stricken…

Prokofiev’s rarely performed Third Symphony (Mackerras performed it with the Sydney Symphony in 1977) is the symphonic equivalent of Almodóvar’s Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown. I enjoyed it more than I expected to.  Based on ideas from his opera The Fiery Angel, about religious hysteria, it’s nowhere near as maniacal as the Second Symphony but the frenzy is still just beneath the surface. It’s a tour de force the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra carry off with aplomb under their Ukrainian chief Kirill Karabits, illustrating the galvanic effect he’s having in that haven of gentility on England’s South Coast.  The Seventh Symphony (Prokofiev’s swansong) Karabits describes as “tragic”. I think his conducting is more convincing than his commentary, as the work was composed for young audiences! It’s cool, enigmatic, almost elegant in parts, “late night” Prokofiev, if you like, occupying the same sound world as Cinderella. His reading is certainly darker than either André Previn’s 1970s LSO one, or Nicolai Malko’s pioneering Philharmonia recording made a few years after the composer’s death in 1953. Karabits solves the “problem” of the alternative endings by recording both: the original was a subdued “leave taking” but the ever vigilant “authorities” demanded something…

It wasn’t until the 1940s when émigré composers from Central Europe began working in the UK and Hollywood, that film music came of age. Top of the heap, alongside Korngold, was the Hungarian, Miklós Rózsa. The oriental element that assisted the exotic flavour in his music, comes from his Magyar heritage. It came naturally to him (as it did his colleagues, Bartók and Kodály) and didn’t have to be concocted.  The Jungle Book and The Thief of Bagdad both benefit from this influence. These scores for Alexander Korda set him on the road to fortune, especially when war broke out in 1939 and Korda decided to finish The Thief of Bagdad in Hollywood. Rózsa never went back. Sahara was made for David O. Selznick during a time when the composer was freelancing and deals with a tank chase across the Sahara. The late Christopher Palmer made this arrangement of the score. Rózsa’s music for Ben Hur is generally regarded as his magnum opus; the lavish and hugely impressive score developed a life of its own shortly after the film was released in 1959. Rumba Gamba has been making some excellent recordings in recent years. Although well played, this recording is…

The youthful conductor István Kertész had worked mainly in provincial Hungary when he made his first recording for Decca in 1961, but his reputation was rising rapidly. Everyone responded to the freshness of his music making. His musical memory was acute: he was reputed to learn scores for the first time on the plane on his way to rehearsal. He was booked to do Elgar’s First Symphony for his recording debut with the London Symphony Orchestra, but on the strength of his success in a concert with Dvorák’s Eighth, the plans changed. Eventually he recorded all of Dvorák’s symphonies, and much else, with the LSO. Kertész would have cemented his international standing but for the intervention of fate: he drowned in the Mediterranean while on holiday in 1973, at the age of 43. The recordings with the London Symphony form the bulk of his legacy, and many of the best are included here. Dvorák is represented by the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, some tone poems and the Requiem. A great recording of Bartók’s dark and gloomy opera Bluebeard’s Castle with Christa Ludwig and Walter Berry is also here (sung in Hungarian). One of his most exciting early recordings was of…

It’s always a burning question. When the performer walks back on stage, what encore will she play? Something slow and meditative, like Bach, or maybe flashy Paganini at breakneck speed? Encore pieces are a revered repertory, which according to Hilary Hahn were “shaped by the performers who preceded us”. So, this stellar violin virtuoso has asked a different question: what should today’s encores sound like? Her answer came in an ambitious project: commissioning 26 composers to write encore pieces, plus holding an open competition to find a 27th. The result is a ripper, two-disc compilation with one of the most profoundly contrasting arrays of compositional style and language you could imagine. You’ll find older, more established writers, like Finnish master Einojuhani Rautavaara, with newer voices thrown into the mix. Each piece explores a different sound world, and posits a unique idea of what an encore should do. Some works are slow, lyrical and open, others fast, dissonant, and impossibly demanding when it comes to technique and flair. Everyone will have a favourite, but Israeli composer Avner Dorman’s Memory Games is an outright thrill to listen to.  Hahn’s performance is stunning in every encore. She is often lauded for her rich tone…

Kent Nagano’s ongoing Beethoven recording project is one of the most underrated cycles in the current catalogue and this latest release of Symphonies Nos 1 and 7 again proves the point. As with the previous symphonies (Nos 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9), this ‘Departure – Utopia’ (each installment bears a literary title) has all the dynamic contrasts and tempo changes that one would expect from a project that aims to reveal Beethoven the Revolutionary. But unlike so many other Beethoven re-interpreters who accentuate dynamic contrasts and tempo changes, Nagano never lapses into affectation or sensationalism. Instead, he gets his Montreal Orchestra up on its toes, like a middleweight ducking and weaving while unleashing rat-a-tat volleys that rarely miss. Take the finale of No 1, for instance, which starts so hesitantly that you think it’s a mistake, before that blisteringly quick tempo of the main theme suddenly takes off with such precision of articulation that you have to marvel that somehow it’s completely virtuosic without ever drawing obvious attention to that fact. The reason is that there’s deep thought behind it all, the intellectual rigour never weighing it down but only serving to heighten the musical assurance – the sure-footedness…

Another dose of what I’ve come to regard as high altitude kitsch, with Strauss marking time until the next good idea. Ho hum! Richard Strauss’s most grandiose, final tone poem, An Alpine Symphony, celebrates its centenary this year.  The Saito Kinen Orchestra, founded by Seiji Ozawa, is a Japanese  equivalent of Abbado’s Lucerne Festival Orchestra, or for that matter, the Australian World Orchestra, drawing Japanese players from the world’s most prestigious ensembles. Daniel Harding and his forces enter a crowded field, up against Previn, Welser-Möst, Thielemann and, naturally Karajan. Harding’s orchestra plays well, although the strings lack the last ounce of sheen. Woodwind and brass are distinguished (although the great burst of 12 horns representing the first rays of the sun always reminds me of Caro mio ben). Also, I found the very opening a little lacking in mystery and tension. The incidents, which take place during the hike are also well handled – these climbers are granite-jawed blue-eyed Aryans, not day-trippers in sensible shoes worrying about whether they’ve remembered to pack the thermos. The glacier episode exudes a real sense of danger. The ending is well handled, not drawn out too agonizingly (it’s not Mahler Nine).   Mehta indulges…

Although the German pianist Wilhelm Kempff had embarked on a celebrated concert and recording career by the late 1920s, his gifts would not be appreciated until after WWII and the dawn of the LP, recording for both Decca and Deutsche Gramophon, sticking to central Teutonic repertoire ranging from Bach and Beethoven (he recorded two celebrated cycles for DG) to Romantics like Schubert and Schumann. Kempff was a pianist who focused on the score at hand rather than presenting a more individualistic approach – as per many of his discographic contemporaries. These two generously filled discs focus on Brahms’ solo works, which show the influence of Schumann. Here are performances which sing, yet are content let his melancholic and darker edge shine through. These are straightforward interpretations in a selection presenting the finest of Brahms’ compositions for the keyboard – ranging from the early evocative Ballades Op. 10, wherein the mature Brahmsian style is already firmly in place. We get a pair of performances of the Two Rhapsodies Op. 79 and some of the late Intermezzi with their Romantic air of heartfelt anguish. It might be noted here that the Decca recordings were met with some critical reservation upon their initial…

Back in 2102, Austrian baritone Florian Boesch and pianist Malcolm Martineau gave us a searingly intense Winterreise. Hot on its heels comes Wilhelm Müller’s prequel, Die schöne Müllerin, and anyone expecting a gentle ramble beside a chattering brook had better look elsewhere.  Once again, Boesch and Martineau demonstrate how deeply one can peer into dark waters with an interpretation that’s mercurial, febrile and ecstatic by turns. The setting off is full of jauntiness – this miller is determined to find romance, come what may. Boesch wields his light baritone to great effect, toying with words and notes. Martineau’s outburst into Halt!, is the first sign that all is not well – this young man is likely to crash and burn – and the way Boesch twists the phrase “the darling girl wishes everyone goodnight” in Am Feierabend (when clearly she is meant to except the miller from her farewells) proves it. It’s a true partnership as each takes turns to play the subtext, whether musical or literary. Listen to Martineau’s staggering left hand in Ungeduld against stabbing quavers in the right – I’ve never heard it so unhinged – the music says what the words hint at. In other places…

Goldner and Lane turn in fine performances and provide a refreshing change from the standard classics.