Auner Quartet: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, String Quartet No. 2 in a, Op. 13

The musical form I had the most commercial success in (as a classical-music record producer and label owner), was the string quartet. Granted, my remarkably successful string-quartet recordings consisted of quartet arrangements of sacred and traditional Christmas music. But those recordings are a lot more “classical” in character than “crossover” in character. In other words, no Frosty and no Rudolph. My three original JMR Arturo Delmoni & Friends Rejoice! A String Quartet Christmas CDs have been reissued by Steinway & Sons Recordings as a 3-CD set.

Whatever happens to me from here on out, evidence of my devotion to the string-quartet form will live on. That’s because I am the dedicatee of Morten Lauridsen’s (to-date) sole work in that genre, a transcription for string quartet of his chamber-choir chanson “Contre Qui, Rose.” “Contre Qui, Rose” is one of Lauridsen’s settings of Rainer Maria Rilke’s French-language poems. Lauridsen chose among the Rilke poems that mentioned roses for his 1993 cycle Les Chansons des Roses. The story continues after the jump link. Continue Reading →

Dorian Komanoff Bandy and Paul Cienniwa: Telemann, Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord

Dorian Komanoff Bandy and Paul Cienniwa:
G.P. Telemann: Frankfurt (1715) Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord
CD Whaling City Sound Balaena Chamber Series wcs 108
Downloads (24-bit/96kHz stereo AIFF, ALAC, FLAC, and WAV) available from HDTracks.
Streaming available from Tidal. Total time 80:04.

Recorded at WGBH Studios, Boston, Massachusetts, June 16-17 2017. Malachai Bandy, producer; Antonio Oliart, engineer.

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) was a friend of J.S. Bach’s, and Godfather to Bach’s son C.P.E.; Telemann also knew Handel. In his own time, Telemann was frequently compared to both composers. That is all the more impressive, given that Telemann, unlike Bach, did not come from a family of musicians. Telemann was another one of those law students or lawyers who gave that career up to write music (that list includes Schumann, Sibelius, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky), and therefore, he was largely self-taught.

Telemann was extremely well respected in his own time. His prodigious productivity resulted in a list of works longer than Bach’s or Vivaldi’s. The 20th-c. music humorist Peter Schickele (stage name “P.D.Q. Bach”) made fun of Telemann’s great body of work by making the top prize for an (imaginary) classical-radio-station phone-in giveaway “The Complete Works of Telemann, on Convenient 45-rpm Records.” I found that to be rather funny, back when I was in college.

For information on this delightful recording and some sound samples, please click on the jump link: Continue Reading →

Fedor Rudin: Paganini Caprice in A minor, Op. 1, No. 5

Congratulations to Fedor Rudin! The Vienna State Opera has appointed him to fill one of their vacant co-concertmaster positions. I am tempted to say “Even better” that in parallel with that, he will be on probation for two years as an (I assume co-) concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic. (So, yes, I have a slight bias in favor of symphonic music.) But being a concertmaster of one of the world’s great opera companies is not small potatoes; and come to think of it, neither is being a concertmaster of one of the world’s great ballet companies (as is Arturo Delmoni, of the New York City Ballet).

Readers with long memories may recall that I published a guest editorial taking the Indianapolis Violin Competition to task for giving prizes to violinists who “played like competition winners.” Mr. Rudin’s selections by one of the world’s top opera companies and by one of the world’s greatest symphony orchestras makes me feel validated that I published an opinion piece that singled him out as someone who was unfairly denied advancement to the Final round.

So here we have a video clip from four years ago of Mr. Rudin playing Paganini’s legendarily difficult fifth Caprice, with a degree of smoothness I find rather mind-boggling. Interesting cultural note: Paganini’s fifth Caprice is beloved of “shred” guitarists such as Yngwie Malmsteen.

After the jump there are images from a public-domain score of the sheet music for Paganini’s Caprice No. 5. Continue Reading →