Bocklin Suite

"Mention of Reger's name in 'informed' circles is likely to produce a conditioned reflex: 'Fugue!' In his day he was the central figure of the 'Back to Bach' movement, but he was also a romantic who relished all the expressive potential of the enormous post-Wagnerian orchestra. Chandos exploits the open spaces of the Concertgebouw, forsaking some healthy transparency for an extra spatial dimension; a more sumptuous glow.
With Järvi's instinct for pacing in late romantic music, and his great orchestra's evident delight in the copious riches of the discovery, for the Hiller Variations, this disc is very tempting.
Anyone who warms to Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia will immediately respond to the 'Hermit playing the violin', the first of the four Böcklin tone-poems; Debussy's 'Jeux de vagues' from La mer was obviously in Reger's mind for the second poem 'At play in the waves'; and the 'Isle of the dead' is Reger's no less doom- and gloom-laden response to the painting that so captured Rachmaninov's imagination. The final painting, 'Bacchanal', was described as a Munich beer festival in Roman costume - an entirely fitting description for Reger's setting of it!"