Brahms Symphony No.4 and Larghetto for Orchestra by the Scottish composer James MacMillan

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

REFERENCE RECORDINGS has released a hybrid SACD featuring two recordings by the Pittsburg Symphony Orchestra dating back a couple of years, one of Johannes Brahms Symphony No.4, opus 98 and in the same SACD one of the Larghetto for Orchestra by the Scottish composer James MacMillan. Manfred Honneck conducts and contributes the extensive liner notes. Dirk Sobotka is the producer. Sound/Mirror engineered the album.

After Maestro Honneck’s extensively researched notes accompanying the recording I have little to add in the area of musicological insights. This is the last of Brahms four symphonies – a large work that ranks among his best creations: a fine example of the kind of pure music at which the Austrian master excelled at age 51, when the work premiered, emotionally charged and yet lacking any sort of underlying narrative or program, a mature work by a steadfast classicist, perfectly structured, impeccably orchestrated, melodically inventive, neither breaking any rules nor re-inventing the wheel.

Manfred Honneck elicits a powerful performance from the Pittsburgh ensemble in both works, one balancing attention to dynamic details, attentive to balance, elegant to a fault.

James MacMillan’s Larghetto for Orchestra is one of those contemporary compositions that does not stint on melody – a plaintive, elegiac, cantabile one given mostly to the Pittsburgh superb string section until brass and percussion erupt one third of the way only to retreat and reappear once more. MacMillan’s unabashedly tonal work, unbeknownst to me before this recording, is unquestionably deserving of recognition.

The REFERENCE RECORDINGS SACD is available as both hard copy and download from Reference Recordings

Rafael de Acha     ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”