(++++) RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY

Smetana: Má Vlast—Vltava; From Bohemia’s Fields and Forests; The Bartered Bride—Overture; Wallenstein’s Camp; String Quartet No. 1, “From My Life.” NBC Symphony Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by George Szell. Ariadne. $18.99.

Leopold Mozart: Concerto for Two Horns and Strings; Friedrich Witt: Concerto No. 3  for Two Horns and Orchestra; Franz Anton Hoffmeister: Concerto No. 3 for Two Horns and Orchestra; František Xaver Pokorný: Concerto for Two Horns and Orchestra. Jacek Muzyk and Daniel Kerdelewicz, horns; Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta. Naxos. $19.99.

Handel’s Organ Banquet. Daniel Yearsley, organ. False Azure Records. $20.

     The earliest recordings by George Szell are now almost totally unknown, and his rather uneven relationship with the music of Smetana is also unfamiliar. So the Ariadne release featuring Szell conducting Smetana with two American orchestras during World War II is doubly welcome. In fact, it is triply welcome, since it includes not only some familiar Smetana music but also the world première performance and recording of Szell’s orchestration of Smetana’s largely autobiographical String Quartet No. 1 (1876). It is interesting that Szell undertook the orchestral arrangement of this highly personal work – showing in the process his firm command of orchestral forces and his considerable sensitivity to the nuances of the music – even though he was not an especially dedicated advocate of Smetana’s music in general: for example, he never conducted a performance of the entire six-tone-poem cycle Má Vlast. He did, however, perform and make recordings of portions of Smetana’s masterwork, and this release offers a chance to hear Szell’s handling of Vltava (recorded in 1941 with the NBC Symphony) and From Bohemia’s Fields and Forests (recorded in 1945 with the Boston Symphony). These live performances, which were done for radio airplay, are very well paced and quite attentive to detail, to the extent that can be shown through the elegant remasterings by Lani Spahr – which, however, can do nothing about the less-than-forgiving sound quality of the notorious Studio 8-H, where NBC Symphony recordings were made for many years. Nevertheless, Szell’s interpretations glow with sincerity and are emotive in ways that his performances in later years sometimes were not. In addition, the overture to The Bartered Bride crackles with gaiety here, while Wallenstein’s Camp is suitably atmospheric and variegated in its different largely self-contained sections. As for the quartet arrangement, it is in many ways the gem of this recording: the work itself is deeply personal, reflecting Smetana’s many travails that culminated in his becoming completely deaf in 1874 – two years before he wrote this work, whose finale in part reflects the ringing in his ears that the composer experienced before losing his hearing. Szell’s sensitivity to the mood of this quartet is complete, his performance showing how thoroughly he understands the material from both a musical standpoint and a human one. Sometimes considered rather cold in his later conducting, Szell here shows warmth and emotional engagement that point to a stronger bond between the Hungarian conductor (born György Endre Szél) and the Bohemian composer than has previously been apparent.

     It is the music itself that is very little known on a new Naxos CD featuring concertos for two trumpets from the mid-to-late 18^th century. All four works here are unfamiliar, and the one by Franz Anton Hoffmeister is a world première recording. The pieces are scarcely profound, but they are uniformly pleasant, engaging and nicely structured to take advantage of the expressive capabilities of the horn, which was just becoming a virtuoso instrument in this time period. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s horn concertos – which stretch the capabilities of the instrument in its pre-valved form – are a high point of horn music of the period, but his father’s two-horn concerto (written in 1752, four years before Wolfgang’s birth) is an interesting signpost for horn playing that is not at the level that was still to come but that still requires the soloists to exhibit more than a little dexterity, especially when the concluding “La Caccia” movement calls for using the horn in its traditional hunting-call mode. The concerto by Hoffmeister (1754-1812) was written later (1783) and is on a much larger scale than Leopold Mozart’s: it is twice as long, with a first movement lengthier than the entirety of the L. Mozart concerto. The broad concept of the first movement gives the horns plenty of opportunities to mingle with each other as well as the ensemble, and the writing is pleasantly idiomatic: the whole concerto lies quite well on the solo instruments. The middle movement, designated “Romance,” is the shortest, and it is a small gem in its warm but never overdone lyricism. Even later than Hoffmeister’s work is the one by Friedrich Witt (1770-1836): this concerto dates to 1797. Witt was born the same year as Beethoven and wrote this concerto six years after Wolfgang Mozart’s death, and while it does not have the grand scope of Hoffmeister’s concerto, it has greater expressive intent, with a stronger sense of emotional connection in the first movement and considerable warmth in the second. The finale lightens the mood considerably while highlighting the dual horns’ intermingled sound. As for the concerto by František Xaver Pokorný (1729-1794), its date is unknown, but its straightforward presentation and comparatively modest demands on the soloists place it closer to the world of Leopold Mozart than to that of Hoffmeister and Witt. Pokorný’s concerto is a work of pleasantry rather than profundity, its themes mostly gentle and its overall scale modest, although its finale certainly requires some acrobatics by the soloists. Jacek Muzyk and Daniel Kerdelewicz handle all the concertos with sensitivity and a fine sense of the necessary interplay between their parts, and JoAnn Falletta leads the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra with style and enthusiasm throughout. Even when using valved horns and modern orchestra tuning, these concertos are impressive in their virtuoso demands as well as the elegant balance they all show between the soloists and the ensemble. This recording offers a most welcome chance to hear music that scarcely deserves the oblivion to which it has been consigned for the past two centuries.

     Much of Handel’s music has also gone unremarked for a considerable time, despite the enormous popularity of a small number of his works (Messiah, Music for the Royal Fireworks, Water Music, etc.). It happens that Handel was well-known as a virtuoso organist, and wrote half a dozen organ concertos as interludes for oratorios – the first pieces of this type ever created, which deserve much more frequent performances than they receive. But if those concertos are comparatively unknown, the rest of Handel’s output of music for organ is totally unfamiliar. And there is not much of it. What then is an organist who wants to perform Handel to do? David Yearsley’s answer, heard on a fascinating False Azure Records recording, is to pull together a whole passel of Handelian works in organ arrangements, and play them on a thoroughly modern instrument (dating to 2010) that is far larger than anything Handel himself would have known or played. Listeners who get into the spirit of this project will have a wonderful time listening to this CD, which makes no pretense to authenticity and as a result can be enjoyed entirely for what it is rather than for professing to be something it is not. The very first track on the disc, combining a bit of Messiah with a little of the Suite in E Minor, HWV 429, showcases Yearsley’s approach effectively: he looks for Handelian material that lies well on the organ (or can be made to lie well there) and that makes some amount of musical sense even though it was not written for this instrument or this approach. Think of this as a pleasant repurposing of Handel: everything on the disc sounds good (thanks to Yearsley’s well-chosen registrations as well as to Handel’s underlying music); and in this admittedly rather outré context, following that opening track with ones presenting music from Theodora, the Passacaille HWV 399, a Chandos Anthem, Rinaldo, the Trio Sonata Op. 5 No. 6, the Concerto Op. 4 No. 1, and the concluding “Amen” from Messiah results in a delectable listening experience. For an encore (a kind of “dessert,” given the title of the CD), Yearsley includes a short “Hallelujah” improvisation that seems entirely fitting in this context – although it is thoroughly outside the context in which Handel placed the material. Handel’s music tends to be taken very seriously, deservedly so, but this disc shows that it is possible to approach it more lightly than usual, if not exactly lightheartedly. The CD is an unusual one that manages not only to please the ear but also to engage the mind by shining a light onto Handel’s work in unexpected ways.