WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln - Casella: Symphony No. 3, Op. 63 & Italia, Op. 11 (2009)

As in years past, all of our top ten CDs received a 10/10 rating from both the English and French-language sites (and from anyone else with the taste and discernment to agree with us). A few words about our choices:

2009 was a "Haydn Year," and we have two selections of particular merit: Zhu Xiao Mei's marvelous disc of piano sonatas on Mirare, and the Auryn Quartet's Op. 17 string quartets for Tacet. This set deserves special mention, as the complete cycle is shaping up to be far and away the finest yet recorded. If you thought that the great Haydn quartets started with Op. 20, then you must hear this release.

Three discs highlight the astoundingly fine work still being done in period performances of Baroque music: Suzuki's joyous set of Bach Brandenburg Concertos (and Orchestral Suites) on BIS, and Richard Egarr's stunning new release of Handel Organ Concertos Op. 7, surely the finest recordings of those works yet captured on disc. Finally, as CT.com's Bob Levine said in his original review: "Sacrificium," Cecilia Bartoli's collection of castrato "greatest hits" may not be authentic as regards the sex of the singer, and the artwork may be grotesque, but there's no doubt about it--this woman has balls. She blasts her way through an imaginative and largely unknown selection of arias firing off more notes per second, and at a higher level of histrionic intensity, then you'll ever believe possible. A must-hear collection.

No "best of the year" collection would be complete without a special Mahler symphony disc, and in Ivan Fischer's Mahler 4th on Channel Classics we have one of the very greatest interpretation of that work for many a year. In the "interesting but unknown" repertoire department, try Alfredo Casella's serious and moving Sinfonia per orchestra (actually his Third Symphony) on CPO. Marin Alsop's magnificent recording of Bernstein's "Mass" for Naxos actually outclasses the composer's own version, and triumphantly proves the work's independent viability once and for all.

Finally, on a more intimate level, PentaTone released an astonishingly fine Schubert "Trout" Quintet, while Gerald Finley's elegant and perfectly sung collection of Ravel songs for Hyperion certainly qualifies as one of the outstanding Lieder recitals of this or any other year. -- ClassicsToday.com, Dave Hurwitz, December 2009

With the large but unavoidable exception of that visionary and unpredictable maverick Malipiero, Alfredo Casella (1882-1947) was probably the foremost Italian composer of the last century who most ideally embodied Martucci's anti-verismo aspirations for his national music. And, among Casella's numerous concertante and miscellaneous orchestral works, this third and last of his three symphonies, dated 1939-40, commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony under Frederick Stock and then acclaimed throughout Europe during the 1940s, represents the pinnacle of his mastery of instrumental writing, both in form and inspiration. In fact, this highly significant first recording of one of the most serious-minded and exalted symphonies of the mid 20th century should mark a long-overdue rediscovery of the supreme importance of Casella.

Its three-quarter-hour span encompasses a far-ranging musical universe: an opening Allegro mosso, dominated by a majestic, large-souled main idea that not only contains the seeds of many of the whole work's subsidiary themes but also makes a striking and unforgettable reappearance at the finale's peroration. The Andante movement announces a serenely sad, suspended lyric tune whose emotionally fraught progress is rudely interrupted by a militaristic interlude, the minatory tone of which anticipates the near-demonic two-part Scherzo minore and Scherzo maggiore. This vast structure comes to resolution in a tumultuous Rondo where a populist celebratory frenzy is overshadowed by ominous undertones quickly dispatched by a brief, summary dismissal. Together with his final work, the Missa pro pace of 1947, this symphony is as good as early-modernist Italian music gets, though this writer has heard an air-check of the Second Symphony and finds that also well worth reviving on disc.

Written 30 years before the symphony and helping to establish Casella as a young composer of moment, the frequently recorded Italia, subtitled "rhapsody for full orchestra," consists of a patriotic farrago of folk tunes that this listener must confess to having long considered a rather schlocky concoction. But conductor Alun Francis here pulls off an astonishing interpretation which underlines the work's dramatic intensity and authenticity in a manner never before encountered on disc, thus redeeming the whole score.

But the Third Symphony, a noble, humanistic example of mid-century neo-Classicism, infused with Casella's early admiration for Stravinsky and the French school, is the main attraction here, as sympathetically and authoritatively laid out by Francis and his Cologne collaborators. On many different grounds, this release is as recommendable as possible. -- Fanfare, Paul A. Snook, Jan-Feb 2010