George Szell's Prokofiev Fifth is a swift, exciting performance that offers predictably razor-sharp orchestral execution. The recording, though, which dates from the late 1950s, is shallow in the bass, and relegates the percussion to another county--a real problem in the crashing, tam-tam led climaxes to the first and third movements. The Bartók, with much better sonics, is without question one of the finest versions ever recorded, or at least it would have been were it not for the whopping cut that Szell makes in the finale. This also necessitates a bit of recomposition in order to make the join work, and after four superbly played and sensitively conducted preceding movements, Szell's mangling (which really does sound clumsy) comes as something of a shock. I believe Szell's importance as a conductor outweighs the perversity of this one decision, but each listener will have to decide this individually. Both works are, in any case, two major entries in the Szell discography, and can be recommended accordingly to his many fans.

--David Hurwitz - Classicstoday

These performances are stunning, among the finest from Riccardo Muti's Philadelphia career. Seldom has "The Death of Tybalt" from Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet Suite No. 1 had such raw excitement and virtuosity, and the great balcony scene is gorgeous. "Montagues and Capulets" also has a crushing power that we never seem to hear in performances of the complete ballet. Suite No. 1 is offered complete, while No. 2 is missing a couple of numbers, including the charming item simply called "Dance" (the Dance of the Girls with Lilies isn't such a loss). Respighi's Pines of Rome makes an odd coupling, but it's similarly magnificently played. Oddly enough, the early digital Prokofiev, despite a touch of glare on top, has more body and presence than the Respighi, which turns cloudy at the climaxes, with cymbals notably off-mike. Still, these sonic reservations don't detract from the quality or audibility of the music-making.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This 1990 Prokofiev Fifth probably is the most successful of the handful of recordings Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra made for Philips. Having already demonstrated their flair for Prokofiev in the Romeo & Juliet suites for EMI, Muti and the Philadelphians offer an impressive rendition of the symphony, with stunning playing throughout. The orchestra made an earlier recording with Ormandy, whose keen conducting yielded a somewhat more incisive reading, but Muti has the advantage of Philips' modern recording, which presents the orchestra in full, spacious sound with wide dynamics (the tremendous close of the first movement and the grinding climax of the Adagio are powerfully reproduced). Muti and the orchestra also bring all of their virtuoso resources to bear on The Meeting of the Volga and the Don, an occasional work in the same state-sanctioned festive style that Shostakovich often turned to in his "public" pieces. If you missed this release the first time around, go to Arkivmusic.com and fetch a copy for yourself. You won't be disappointed.

--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

Hi fellows. Günther Wand, a famous conductor for his great performances on Bruckner symphonies, was recognized late in life, when the most important orchestras ask him to conduct them. But in his past, he was one of the top leading conductors on 20th century and contemporary music, as we can see in the Günther Wand Edition on Profil. Enjoy!

Wand insisted on something like eight rehearsals for every performance, so nothing sounds slapdash or hurriedly considered. The amount of detail impresses as well as the amount of forethought with each score. The music sounds as if it has become part of these players, a spontaneous expression that paradoxically comes only after a great amount of work. Steve Schwartz - Classical.net

Parody has always been one of Maxwell Davies’s central gifts, and if the producer of the next Hollywood blockbuster is looking for a composer, or if Richard Clayderman needs an arranger or Forest Lawn someone to provide tasteful mortuary music they need look no further. Nor need they fear being raucously sent up: there is as much wry affection as derision here. Sir Peter is also startlingly good at evoking sensational lighting effects: the fountain at Caesar’s Palace, bathed in violet radiance, is almost visible; there is poetry to his description of the lights of Las Vegas seen from the desert at night.

The only problem with this likeable and funny jeu d’esprit is that it lasts less than a quarter of an hour, and many of Maxwell Davies’s admirers will already have the remaining 58 minutes of music on this CD. Those who don’t will find it an entertaining (and sensibly priced) anthology of his lighter pieces, all of them played with the same gusto as the new one, and as cleanly recorded."
- Michael Oliver, Gramophone

Hi again. I saw there were other BBC Music Magazine cover cds uploaded here. These ones include complete works in live or studio performances by BBC SO or BBC regional orchestras, in quite good performances. I really like some of them, and not only for the performances. Their sound is great too, due to St David's Hall warm and nice acoustics. Enjoy!

Maxwell Davies's Fifth Symphony is his shortest yet, and his most accessible: it has fine tunes, powerful rhythmic impetus and grandeur of scale. It is also in some ways his most ambiguous. The accompanying notes suggest three ways of 'reading' it: as a fusion of the Beethovenian (stability/ instability) and Sibelian (slow growth from within) symphonic principles, as a mosaic of 34 'moments' that combine and interlock into larger structures, and as a single movement in two contrasting but linked halves. So far I've found the last the most useful: near the middle of the symphony, after a powerful climax, there is a still centre of hushed and very beautiful lyrical string writing. On second hearing you realize that there are kindred passages throughout the work, more frequent in the latter half, where they often punctuate music of striding vigour. It is a question of types of music rather than conventional 'subjects', and we can observe those types forming, growing and changing in a two-part structure that makes satisfying sense despite the fact that it is all development, with no 'recapitulation'. It is indeed a masterly postSibelian single movement, with moments of craggy splendour and driving energy at just the points where Sibelius would have put them. The sym phony's immediate impact is very powerful, but already at a second hearing it grows wonderfully. I seem to have been using the word 'masterpiece' quite a lot recently to describe Maxwell Davies's symphonies, but I've never been so confident of it as in this case.

A substantial but rarely heard Maxwell Davies score gets a welcome reissue

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies composed this large-scale ballet score in a mere six months. The music is not as intricately intense as in the cycle of symphonies which he had recently embarked on, and sounds in places more like a distant cousin of The Rite of Spring than of the Strauss opera. But Salome has an expansive confidence in its handling of a large orchestra, and there's a relish for the more grotesque aspects of the subject which reflect Davies's wealth of experience in works of music theatre concerned with violence and madness.
This recording was made some weeks before the ballet's first performance by the Fleming Flindt Circus Company in Copenhagen, and Janos Fürst and his players do wonders in keeping the tricky score on the rails. It shows its age, especially in the rather unflattering string sound, and there are some small cuts in the published version of Scene 4. But until a new recording comes along, this one is a valuable reminder of one of the composer's most substantial and rarely heard works. Arnold Whitall - Gramophone - 2004