Steve Schwartz:

>Ghedini, on the other hand, is practically off the radar.  He's better
>known as Berio's teacher than for his own music.  I'd heard only one
>other piece, for wind quintet, before these two string concerti.

There's an excellent Koch-Schwann CD (3-1782-2) with 3 cello/orch
concertante works that's of a piece with this recording: showing a
composer with, as you said, something very much his own to convey.  It
also fits in with likening his music to that by Hindemith and Vivaldi,
in that (at least as I read you) the reluctance to be flashy doesn't
entail a lack of expressivity.

I recently acquired an obscure (Nuova Era) CD with Victor de Sabata cond.
the NYPhilharmonic Orchestra in Ravel (Bolero, Valse and Ma mere, suite)
and Ghedini's Marinaresca e Baccanale.  I think it's taken from some
stage work, maybe an opera; I'm not sure it's in the same field as these
concertos, though the jury's still out.  A nice pairing of composers,
though.

>I've been a fan of Mela Tenenbaum's for many years - as far as I'm
>concerned, a musican of formidable intelligence and fire.  She's always
>worth listening to - whether in violin monuments like the Beethoven
>concerto or the Bach solo violin music, modern music off the beaten track
>(like Ghedini and Klebanov), or even a Kreislerian encore.  Kapp has
>served her as a very sympathetic accompanist.  It's as true of this CD
>as of all their others.

I'm a big fan of Kapp's conducting of Frank Martin's Petite Symphonie
Concertante (Essay CD-1014) -- for the welcome prominence given to the
harpsichordist and the rough and near-reckless, unfussy approach to this
work.  It may stem partly from Essay's engineering, which falls well
short of Lyrita levels or Hyperion-like heights, yet it's long been a
favourite version.

One that I much prefer, say, to the detailed but a little too clean touch
of Mathias Bamert -- whose Martin is of course in its own way admirable.

Bert Bailey