- Bernstein
- Felicia Montealegre
- Luigi Ricci
- Ireland: Epic March
- Sibelius: Four Legends
- Philippe Musard
- Colin Richmond
- Vivian Anthony
November 2021 New Releases
Browse a large selection of new recordings
Below is our list of new releases, mostly of albums becoming available during November 2021.
Our regular writers should have received an email about this list, and have been asked to choose which items they would like to review by 12:00 UCT/GMT on Thursday 4 November 2021. If your album is chosen for review, we will request a review copy from you, your label or its UK distributor.
The list is large and has been prepared quickly. Apologies for any omissions, or if the information is not up to our usual standards. Please let us know if you find any mistakes.
Extra information about some new releases can also be found here.
7 MOUNTAIN RECORDS
15 October 2021
Canto
Oerknal Ensemble
Music by Lewis Nielson (born 1950)
Oerknal has recently released its second album, 'Canto', featuring music by American composer Lewis Nielson. The centerpiece of the album is a 35-minute contemporary oratorio entitled 'Cilice' (featuring the Damask Vocal Quartet). Its central theme is that of sin and atonement, and Nielson sets texts from a dizzying array of sources, including the Book of Psalms, Dante’s Inferno, and poetry by Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Goethe, to name a few. The album is rounded off by two works based on poetry by the Salvadoran writer Roque Dalton, 'crisis of conscience' and 'You Choose'. Oerknal is a collective of international musicians based in The Netherlands united by a passion for new creative experiences and the belief that music should be presented in a direct, visceral manner. Oerknal has performed in various podia and festivals in The Netherlands including Bimhuis (Amsterdam), Gaudeamus Music Week (Utrecht), Soundsofmusic (Groningen) and Korzo Theater (Den Haag), in addition to international residencies at festivals such as the Delian Academy for New Music (Greece) and DAM Festival (Kosovo). Since their founding in 2013 Oerknal has commissioned works from numerous composers and has engaged in cross-disciplinary collaborations aimed at exploring unique artistic overlaps and different models of concert presentation.
ANALEKTA
27 September 2021
A Piano Around the World: Port of call: Curaçao: Wim Statius Muller: Antillean Dances
Louise Bessette, piano
AN29845
Wim Statius Muller, who came to be known as 'the Chopin of Curaçao', spent just over 30 years in various security and counter-espionage organizations! Although for the most part WimStatius Muller’s music is based on folk dance rhythms, it is neverthelessgarbed in the fineattire of concert music, with the waltzes and otherdance tunes. The extraordinary musician Louise Bessetteoffers on this new album all 22 pieces from the Antillean Dances collection and gives these dances the 'royal treatment', offering precise and exceptionally clear performances.
ARTALINNA
26 November 2021
Prokofiev I
Marcos Madrigal, piano
ATL-A028
Cuban pianist Marcos Madrigal plunges into the protean universe of Sergei Prokofiev. Two Sonatas, the well-known Seventh and the more discreet Fifth, frame the sumptuous collection of Visions Fugitives. Throughout this recital, Marcos Madrigal demonstrates his scrupulous respect for the score.
26 November 2021
America I
Vestard Shimkus, piano
ATL-A031
Following two albums dedicated to two icons of Russian music (Rachmaninoff and Scriabin) the Latvian pianist Vestard Shimkus crosses the Atlantic to immerse himself in American modernism, spanning a century of musical creation, illuminating this imaginary escapade through a hugely diverse choice of aesthetics - from Carter (Intermittences, Caténaires) to Crumb (Processional) by way of Glass (Mad Rush) and Griffes (Sonata). Don’t miss this bold, intoxicating journey. An absolute must for all music lovers of today. The composers whose work is featured on this album are united by something more than their country of origin. They have all studied in Europe at some point. There isn’t the influence of jazz, so typical in American music. Each piece is serious and stylistically uniform – without eclectic or entertainment elements. In other words, it is a collection of American music that the listener perhaps did not expect. This recording was made in just one day at St. John the Evangelist in Oxford on 6th September 2018.
26 November 2021
Severin von Eckardstein – Schumann, Chopin, Tchaikovsky & Dupont
ATL-A032
A formidable interpreter of the works of Robert Schumann, the German pianist Severin von Eckardstein here offers an intense version of rare narrative force of one of the most complex cycles of the 19th century, the Davidsbündlertänze Op. 6. This dazzling kaleidoscope of moods is coupled with works by Chopin, Tchaikovsky and the lesser-known Gabriel Dupont, all of particularly passionate resonance. Great musical moments that confirm Severin von Eckardstein’s status as one of the most poetic musicians in the world of the piano.
BANDCAMP
31 October 2021
Nervus Vagus
Gintas K
'Nervus vagus' is an electroacoustic music work that consists of stretched granular motives during the entire piece. They are mixed with voices and stories told by people of different ages and gender. Stories blossom out of humorous fairytales told by 5 years' child, stories about death, narrations of mindfulness, stories about consequences of WW2, deportation during Stalin regime and life in Siberia. Voices along with granules become twitching sonic tissues as neurons connect each other, as Nervus Vagus (wandering), which surrounds and connects entire human body. Gintas Kraptavičius, a Lithuanian sound artist and composer living and working in Lithuania, has been a part of the Lithuanian experimental music scene since 1994. Nowadays Gintas is working in the field of digital experimental and electroacoustic music, making music for films and sound installations. His compositions are based on granular synthesis, live electronics, hard digital computer music and small melodies.
23 September 2021
Roger Doyle: Finnegans Wake - Suite of Affections
Roger Doyle is working on a project called Finnegans Wake - Suite of Affections, where he's asking various actors to speak and record extracts that he has chosen from James Joyce's work, to which he is now composing music. Doyle has been delving into this work since his late twenties and mostly thrown back, but there are pages in his view that light up world literature like flares, only to be lost again in the darkness soon after. He has chosen about fourteen pieces, thirteen with music so far, performed by Aidan Gillen, Barry McGovern, Caitríona O'Leary, Derbhle Crotty, Thibaud Empey - boy singer, Isobel Mahon and Morgan Crowley - sung and spoken.
BIDDULPH RECORDINGS
5 November 2021
Brahms
Violin Concerto
Oscar Shumsky, Philharmonia Hungarica, Uri Segal
85007-2
Oscar Shumsky has been hailed as one of the greatest violinist of the 20th century. Having recorded the Beethoven Violin Concerto, the complete solo sonatas and partitas by Bach, and the complete Mozart violin sonatas, this release of the Brahms Violin Concerto is the remaining violin masterpiece to complete Shumsky’s extensive discography. Although the violinist recorded a LP of extracts from the concerto for Music Appreciation Records, a complete performance of the work by Shumsky has never been available until now. Made in 1984 with the Philharmonia Hungarica with Uri Segal conducting, this digital recording had remained forgotten for over 40 years. Finally, with permission from the family, Biddulph Recordings is proud to be able to release this magnificent performance of one of the greatest violin masterworks to the general public.
BIS
5 November 2021
Johannes Brahms: Piano Sonata No 3; Chaconne (Bach); Four Ballades
Alexandre Kantorow, piano
BIS2600 (1 SACD)
In 2019, when Alexandre Kantorow, at the age of 22, became the first French pianist to win the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky competition, his programme included no less than three works by Johannes Brahms. Two of these, Piano Sonata No. 2 and the Rhapsody in B minor, he went on to record for release on his previous, highly praised recital disc, which was awarded distinctions such as Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice, Diapason d’Or, and Choc de Classica. The Brahms interpretations won Kantorow particular praise – the Guardian (UK) described them as ‘magisterial’ while the website ResMusica placed his sonata ‘among the great reference recordings of the piece – if not the modern one.’There is much to look forward to, then, when Kantorow releases an all-Brahms album with a playing time of no less than 85 minutes. He opens with music by a composer of a similar age as himself: Brahms wrote the Four Ballades in 1854 while only 21 years old, taking up a fashionable genre introduced by Chopin as late as 1840. The set is followed by the even earlier Sonata No. 3 in E minor which forms the centre of the programme. The sonata is of almost symphonic dimensions and it was indeed, along with its predecessors, famously described as a disguised symphony by no one less than Robert Schumann. To bring this stormy, impassioned album to a close, Kantorow has chosen a later, and contrasting work: With a lifelong admiration for Bach, Brahms in 1879 made a piano arrangement, for the left hand alone, of the iconic Chaconne from Partita No. 2 for solo violin –a composition that Brahms himself described as ‘a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful impressions’.
5 November 2021
Crossroads: American Violin Sonatas by Previn, Schemmer, Gay
Aleksey Semenenko, Artem Belogurov
BIS2545 (1 SACD)
On this transatlantic disc, three American composers born during the first half of the last century rub shoulders with two young musicians from Eastern Europe. A member of the BBC New Generation Artists scheme, the violinist Aleksey Semenenko first met the pianist Artem Belogurov at the Stolyarsky Special Music School in Odessa at an early age. Even if their individual careers have taken to different parts of the world, the two still perform together whenever possible, and here they present three sonatas. Of the composers, the best-known is André Previn who composed his Violin Sonata No. 2 in 2011 for Anne-Sophie Mutter. An improvisatory spirit permeates the work which is in three movements with the markings Joyous, Desolate and Brilliant. Tony Schemmer and Paul Gay are both based in the Boston area and share a background in which jazz and classical genres merge. This is reflected in their sonatas, composed in the 1980s and here appearing on disc for the first time.
29 October 2021
Beethoven: String Quartets, Op. 18 Nos. 1-3
Chiaroscuro Quartet
BIS2488 (1 SACD)
For a string player, Beethoven’s 16 quartets are of an importance similar to that of his sonatas to a pianist, or his symphonies to a conductor. As a body they form the culmination of all the chamber music composed before them, and to this day they remain a benchmark for every composer of string quartets. The Chiaroscuro Quartet begin their cycle of these works at the same place as Beethoven did, with the Op. 18 set which occupied him intensively for the best part of two years (1798 – 1800). The effort he put into these quartets was surely due to the fact that he had much to live up to – they would be measured against those of Haydn and Mozart, who had raised the genre to a supreme vehicle for ‘learned’ taste and subtle, civilized musical discourse. Beethoven was clearly determined that the six Op. 18 quartets should present the widest possible overview of his art. Of the three works included on this first volume, No. 1 in F major is the most imposing in scale and the widest in expressive range. In comparison, the second quartet, in G major, is more urbane and light-hearted, recreating the spirit of an eighteenth-century comedy of manners à la Haydn. The most lyrical of the set is Quartet No. 3 in D major, which despite its numbering was probably the first quartet that Beethoven completed.
29 October 2021
Béla Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra
Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra / Susanna Mälkki
BIS2378 (1 SACD)
On two highly praised discs, Susanna Mälkki and her players in the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra have released recordings of Béla Bartók’s three scores for the stage – The Miraculous Mandarin, The Wooden Prince and Bluebeard’s Castle, all written before 1918. The team now takes on two of his late orchestral masterpieces. Composed in 1936 for the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is one of the purest examples of Bartók’s mature style, with its synthesis of folk music, classicism and modernism. One immediately striking feature is the unusual instrumentation: two string orchestras seated on opposite sides of the stage, with percussion and keyboard instruments in the middle and towards the back. In 1940, during the Second World War, Bartók emigrated to the U.S.A., where he initially found it difficult to compose. In 1943 he received a prestigious commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, however, and in less than eight weeks he composed the Concerto for Orchestra. In it he worked with contrasts between different sections of the orchestra, and the soloistic treatment of these groupings was his reason for calling the work a concerto rather than a symphony.
29 October 2021
Schubert Octet in F, D 803
Wigmore Soloists: Isabelle van Keulen, Benjamin Gilmore, Timothy Ridout, Kristina Blaumane, Tim Gibbs, Michael Collins, Robin O’Neill, Alberto Menéndez Escribano
BIS2597 (1 SACD)
Formed in 2020, Wigmore Soloists is a chamber ensemble made up of a roster of outstanding musicians, led by Isabelle van Keulen and Michael Collins. An associate ensemble of the iconic London concert venue Wigmore Hall, it is the first one to be given the honour of using the name. The core line-up of string quintet, wind quintet and piano makes it possible to perform a wide and varied repertoire, and for its first recording the ensemble has chosen one of the larger works in the chamber music literature, in terms of duration as well as the forces involved. Franz Schubert modelled his Octet in F major on Beethoven’s Septet, a work which during the 24 years since its composition had proven extremely popular in Vienna. Schubert therefore copied Beethoven’s instrumentation (with the addition of a second violin) as well as his general plan of six movements. The Octet is however almost half as long again as the Septet, perhaps a consequence of Schubert wanting to ‘pave the way towards a grand symphony’ by writing it. Like Beethoven – and Mozart in his serenades – Schubert strikes a perfect balance between entertainment and sophistication, while also including plenty of opportunities for the players – especially the first violinist and clarinettist –to show off their virtuosity.
29 October 2021
Oceano – chamber music by Sebastian Fagerlund
Meta4 string quartet, Christoffer Sundqvist, clarinet, Paavali Jumppanen, piano, Hervé Joulain, horn
BIS2324 (1 SACD)
It is primarily for his large-scale orchestral works that Sebastian Fagerlund (b. 1972) has attracted attention, but throughout his career he has also composed chamber music. In his production, orchestral and chamber music have a fruitful relationship in which a chamber work may contain the germ of ideas that then appear in a new form in an orchestral score. One example of this is Fuel – a set of six miniatures from 2010 – which grows out of the same basic material as Ignite, a work for large orchestra completed in the same year, although they differ greatly in scale and in character. Common to the two genres is also Fagerlund’s firm grasp of the capabilities of the instruments he is writing for. Some of Finland’s leading instrumentalists join forces on the present album, with French horn player Hervé Joulain making an appearance in Transient Light, which is dedicated to him. The six works were composed between 2007 and 2013 and are all for different constellations and of varying dimensions – from a brief duo in one movement (Scherzic) to a quartet in six (Verso l’interno). But there are also common features that recur throughout the programme; for example machine-like textures against which material with longer lines is reflected, and influences from other genres such as traditional music from the Middle East or rock. These do not appear as direct stylistic loans, however, but rather as elements embedded in Fagerlund’s own music.
29 October 2021
Anton Edvard Pratté: Grand Concert for harp and orchestra; Theme and Variations on a Swedish folk tune; Souvenir de Norvège for solo harp
Delphine Constantin-Reznik, harp, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra / Daniela Musca
BIS2570 (1 SACD)
It was when Delphine Constantin-Reznik took up the post as harpist in the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra that she first came across the name Anton Pratté, well-known in his lifetime as a harpist and composer. Her research into the music and activities of this forgotten master has now resulted in the very first recording of any of his numerous compositions for the harp. Anton Edvard Pratté was born in Bohemia into a family that ran a touring puppet theatre. He came to Sweden as an adolescent, and soon made a name for himself, performing music of his own as well as by others. Pratté gave concerts across Sweden, as well as in Norway and Finland, and in the 1840s even went on an extensive tour of Europe, performing in Berlin (where members of the Prussian royal family were in the audience), Vienna and Prague. But much of his life was spent in the area around Norrköping where he taught the daughters of wealthy landowners and for a while conducted the local orchestra society –the forerunner of the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra heard in the Grand Concert which opens the present disc. This is followed by two works for solo harp, both making use of traditional tunes from Sweden and Norway respectively.
29 October 2021
Memento mori - Remember you must die
Klingzeug Barockensemble
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Henry Purcell, Johann Schop, Giacomo Antonio Perti, Pietro Locatelli, Johann Pachelbel
BIS2566 (1 SACD)
The phrase memento mori has its origins in classical antiquity, but the injunction to remember one’s own mortality has been a feature of different cultures and religions throughout the ages; just as death is universal, so is our need to adjust to this fact, and to consider our lives with it in mind. The arts are, and have been, an important means in helping us to do so, which is why the laments gathered on this album speak to us all. The Austrian ensemble klingzeug has gathered examples from some 500 years – from the Planh (‘plaint’) by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, a Provençal troubadour of the early 13th century, to Locatelli’s Sinfonia funebre. Two of the most famous of all musical laments have also found their way onto the disc, albeit not in the form we normally hear them; transferred to a violin Dido’s Lament has become a song without words, while Dowland’s Lachrimae is heard in one of the many arrangements made of it, here by the German composer Johann Schop.
BLUE GRIFFIN RECORDING
12 November 2021
The Sound and the Fury - works for violin and piano by Dvorak, Grieg and Janacek
Shea-Kim duo
BGR593
All of the works on The Sound and the Fury - Dvorak's Mazurek Op 49 B 89, Grieg's Sonata for piano and violin No 3, and Janacek's Sonata for violin and piano - are infused with folk melodies from each of the composers' home countries, and allow both instrumentalists to display their virtuosity. Dvorak was inspired by Pablo Sarasate's the incredible technique, and dedicated the Mazurek to him, which has become a favorite concert showpiece. Grieg's third violin sonata stands out as one of his few works in the German Romantic style, and much larger in scale than his other sonatas. The piece was one of the composer's favorite works, and he often performed the piano part himself when the opportunity arose. Janacek composed his only violin sonata on the eve of World War I. The composer later wrote that he 'could just about hear the sound of steel clashing in [his] troubled head.' Yerin Kim and Brendan Shea wrote in the liner notes of the album that these selections reflect their personalities. 'Between the deep, majestic fjords of Edvard Grieg, the emotional turbulence of Leos Janacek, and the joy and love of Antonin Dvorak, we found a program that reflects the full spectrum we see in ourselves, and our stories.'
BR KLASSIK
5 November 2021
David Reichelt: Tatort – Dreams
Amy Park, Elena Soltan, Muenchner Rundfunkorchester, Andreas Kowalewitz, Ulf Schirmer
900338
For the Munich TATORT episode 'Dreams, the 87th criminal case for police commissioners Ivo Batic (Miroslav Nemec) and Franz Leitmayr (Udo Wachtveitl), directed by Boris Kunz ('Hindafing'), the orchestral film music was commissioned from the Munich composer David Reichelt (*1986), who has already won the German Film Music Award twice. The music was recorded by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Andreas Kowalewitz (in the TV film itself, of course, we see principal conductor Ivan Repušić at the helm of the orchestra). BR-KLASSIK is now releasing the soundtrack.
5 November 2021
Mariss Jansons: The Edition
Various artists
900200 (68 CDs + bonus DVD)
Mariss Jansons was one of the most important conductors of our time, revered and celebrated worldwide. „The Edition' documents Jansons’ era as Chief Conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus, from 2003 to 2019. These live recordings from Munich, Tokyo, Vienna, New York, Waldsassen and the Vatican enable listeners to experience musical highlights that are as moving as they are exciting. The 57 CDs, 11 SACDs and 2 DVDs cover a remarkably diverse repertoire, ranging from symphonic music and large choral works to opera. The Edition' comprises works by 42 composers, and includes complete cycles of symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler. The accompanying book enhances the musical impressions, with fascinating texts and numerous photos.The rehearsal recordings of the maestro and his orchestra, on three CDs, are of particular value because they provide a fascinating insight into that trusting, artistic symbiosis that developed over many years of making music together – and led to all the wonderful and outstanding concerts that so delighted audiences.
BRILLIANT CLASSICS
1 December 2021
Scriabin: Complete Piano Music
Dmitri Alexeev piano
95913 (8 CDs)
New recordings of the complete Scriabin (1872-1915) piano works are rare, and rightly so, only the greatest have the insight, abilities and guts to explore the cosmic and metaphysic world of these 20th century masterworks. Dmitri Alexeev is such an artist: equipped with a formidable technique he immerses himself in the hyper individualistic style of the eccentric Russian, delving deeply, to get to the bottom of such pieces like the “Black Mass” sonata, or its spiritual opposite, the “White Mass” sonata. This 8-CD set presents a fascinating journey, starting from the romantic, Chopin-inspired early works, towards the later works, written in the unique “Scriabinesque” atonal language, inspired by his theosophical ideas, and megalomaniac metaphysics. Includes the complete Sonatas, Preludes, Mazurkas, Studies, Poèmes and other short pieces.
1 December 2021
Beethoven: Triple Concerto; Piano Concerto No 0
Trio RoVerde, Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen
96483
Beethoven’s Triple Concerto Op.56 for piano, violin, cello and orchestra was unique in the musical literature, and he knew it: he proudly wrote to his publisher that the combination of a piano trio with an orchestra was entirely new. But the innovations go beyond the combination of concertante instruments, extending as well to the importance accorded the orchestra, elevated to the status of an equal, symphonic protagonist alongside the three solo parts alone, in all possible pairings and as a threesome. This was new, and the audience was indeed perplexed when the work was first performed in Vienna in May 1804. There is no indication that the concerto was performed a second time during Beethoven’s lifetime. The Piano Concerto in E-flat “Number Zero” (WoO 4) is a work rarely performed and therefore practically unknown to the wider public. Written by Beethoven in 1784, at the tender age of 14, it comes down to us as an unsigned 32-page manuscript with the author’s corrections: the solo piano part and the piano reduction of the orchestra parts are completely preserved, but the orchestral score itself has been lost. This manuscript was discovered in 1890 in the archives of the Artaria Foundation and was transferred to the Berlin State Library. It was published that same year by Breitkopf und Härtel. Beethoven researcher Willy Hess later restored the orchestral parts on the basis of the preserved material. The first outing of this careful, accurate work was given in 1934 by the pianist Walter Frey in Oslo (first part only), and the complete reconstruction was performed in 1968 at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. Despite being one of Beethoven’s most “youthful” compositions, which are generally written in the style of classical composers of the late 18th century, it already contains a number of original features characteristic of the composer’s work. Still, the whole work is steeped in youthful enthusiasm and optimism. In the absence of original cadenzas, which are not extant, Litvintseva created her own, guided by her knowledge, performing experience and, of course, the Concerto’s style.
1 December 2021
Asioli: Cello Sonata, Piano Sonatas
Francesco Galligioni, cello; Jolanda Violante, fortepiano
95908
Bonifazio Asioli (1769–1832) is perhaps best known for being appointed the first director of the Milan Conservatory by Eugène de Beauharnais, viceroy of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, but Asioli augmented his teaching role with composition, writing a series of instrumental and vocal pieces and educational works. Prior to taking up his post in Milan the young composer worked in Piedmont and Veneto as a private music teacher to the aristocracy, and in their salons he met various foreigners on tours of Italy and was exposed to musical tastes from the rest of Europe. His early musical output reveals a composer attentive and receptive to the sophisticated international musical production he encountered in cosmopolitan centres such as Venice. His work draws notably on C.P.E. Bach’s Empfindsamer stil, which Asioli employed expertly to express the refined and shifting aesthetics of the Mediterranean. The Cello Sonata dates from 1786, during that pre-Milan period when Asioli divided his time between Venice and Turin. The Piano Sonatas Op.8 were published in London by Robert Birchall in the final years of the 18th century at the behest of the tenor Chevalier La Cainea, who was well known for his performance of one of Asioli’s several successful vocal works, the opera Pigmalione (1796).
1 December 2021
Goedicke: Music for Violin & Piano
Francesco Parrino, violin; Michele Pentrella, piano
95973
A Russian musician, born in 1877 and a cousin of Medtner, Goedicke’s ephemeral fame was almost completely eclipsed in the Soviet era. He was neither rebel enough to attract the attention of the Western intellectual world, nor ambitious enough to carve out a career within the regime’s apparatus.
Having completed his conservatory studies, in 1900 he competed as both composer and pianist in the third Rubinstein Competition in Vienna, winning the composition prize with his Konzertstück for piano and orchestra. Medtner, who also took part in the competition, recalls in his Memoirs that the prize for best pianist was given to the Belgian Emile Bosquet – whom he considered inferior to both himself and Goedicke – because the jury had developed a hostile attitude towards Russian pianists and did not want to bestow two prizes on Goedicke. In fact, Goedicke won in the composers’ category with the Violin Sonata Op.10, as well. That Violin Sonata, composed in 1899 (but published in 1901 by Jurgenson), is dedicated to Jan Hřímalý, a Czech violinist and fellow- professor of Goedicke’s at the Moscow Conservatory. The sonata’s nickname, “Vesennjaja” (spring), is a clear reference to Rachmaninov’s song “Spring Waters” Op.14/11, which is quoted at the beginning of the first and the end of the final movement of Goedicke’s sonata. But even greater than the influence of Rachmaninov is that of German Romanticism. While Op 10 is a youthful work, the Violin Sonata Op.83, composed between 1948 and 1953 (but published only posthumously in 1972), is a clear rebuttal of Tikhon Khrennikov’s notorious anti- formalist attacks (on Shostakovich and Prokofiev, among others) from a composer shielded behind decades of academic tenure. The sonata reaches far into the past, even to early Beethoven, with a construction so formally impeccable as to seem almost provocatively anachronistic. On the other hand, the 10 Pieces Op 80 (“of average difficulty, in first position”), also dating from 1948, are wholly different. Effectively combining pleasant melody and the evocation of childhood, they fit with dignity in a line stretching from Schumann’s to Tchaikovsky’s Albums for the Young, shedding light on Goedicke’s prolific didactic side.
1 December 2021
Frescobaldi: Complete Unpublished Works for Harpsichord & Organ
Roberto Loreggian, organ and harpsichord
96154 (6 CDs)
Many first recordings of toccatas, canzonas, correntes and much more by the Italian keyboard master whose free, declamatory style and mastery of keyboard technique set him apart from his contemporaries in 17th- century Italy and made him a prime influence on J.S. Bach. Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) was the organist at St. Peter's in Rome for a good part of his life. His music is important for historical reasons but, more than that, it has a special quality of gentle gravity beneath the lively rhythms and sudden shifts of harmony. The greater part of Frescobaldi’s output was written for keyboard instruments – unusually for the time – and Roberto Loreggian has already established himself as the leading current exponent of this music by recording a complete set of the published works for Brilliant Classics (15CDs, 94111). A decade on from the release of this much praised, definitive edition, Loreggian has returned to Frescobaldi and gathered up many much less well-known pieces to be found in manuscript collections across Europe. In some cases these are alternative or earlier versions of published works. One hallmark of the Frescobaldi style is its restlessness, or appetite for change which speaks to our age even more than his own. Even within the established form of a given genre such as a toccata, Frescobaldi bends and stretches the rhetoric, leaps forward in harmony and holds back the phrase with a sophistication worthy of ancient rhetoricians such as Cicero. It follows naturally that these pieces were created in a method of continual transformation. While following the course of his compositional style invites the listener on a journey of more than academic interest, the appeal of this set resides no less in the sheer fertility of invention on offer. Frescobaldi always encouraged his performers to play with spontaneous freedom, a kind of liberated intensity, which requires complete immersion in the style and the world of this music to pull off successfully.
1 December 2021
Saint-Saëns: Complete Music for Organ
Michele Savino
96219 (4 CDs)
The most complete collection ever issued of Saint-Saëns’s organ music: a newly recorded centenary tribute to the grand old man of 19th-century music, who rubbed shoulders with and aroused the admiration of colleagues from Berlioz to Ravel. While himself no conventional kind of Christian believer, Saint-Saëns worked as a church organist for much of his prodigiously long life and career. While still a teenager he won the premier prix for organ at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1857, at the age of 22, he was appointed as titular organist to the church of the Madeleine in Paris, where he remained until 1877; it was there that Liszt heard him improvising and hailed him as the greatest organist in the world. His output for the organ is no less subtly German-accented than much of his orchestral music, influenced by Schumann and Mendelssohn as well as disciplined by his comprehensive study of Bach and Beethoven as a child. While publically maintaining an attitude of scepticism towards Wagner, he nonetheless wrote with a chromatic intensity which finds a natural home in the incense-soaked world of pieces such as the Elévation et Communion and the E major Offertoire. Other reflective works include a trio of Rhapsodies on Breton themes, Op 8, which invite comparison with similar folksong- based organ pieces by Vaughan Williams. Saint-Saëns understood how to exploit the full spectrum of tonal colours available on the instruments designed by the greatest organ builder of his age, Aristide Cavaillé- Coll, and even the apparently abstract designs of his many Preludes and Fugues invite the kind of swirling mists and brilliant sunshine evoked by Michele Savino on this newly recorded collection. The composer’s gifts as a colourist on the organ reach the summit of their expression in a collection of Seven Improvisations which, like much else here, deserves to be better known. Born in Italy in 1978, now working principally in Germany, Michele Savino has recorded this collection on two German instruments: CD2 on the Forster and Andrews organ at the church of St John the Baptist, Forchheim, and the remainder on the Welte organ at the Church of Saint Boniface in the Westphalian town of Emmendingen. This release marks his debut on Brilliant Classics.
1 December 2021
Mackenzie, Amphlett, Farjeon, Bowen: The Pied Piper of Hamelin and other Melodramas
Jed Wentz, recitation; Artem Belogurov, piano and dulcitone
96245
The melodrama, a genre combining recitation with music, flourished with particular vigour at the dawn of the 20th century. By that time, it had outgrown its original 18th-century form: no longer simply alternating between music and speech, late 19th- century melodramas (and their descendants) mainly consisted of texts declaimed over a nearly continuous and elaborate musical accompaniment. To avoid being overwhelmed by the accompaniment and yet remain declamation as opposed to singing, the vocal part requires a particular style and great skill, as described by composer Stanley Hawley in an essay titled Recitation-music (1912): “Any colloquial quality of voice is undesirable, and is strongly to be condemned; something more than mere speaking is required for success. The natural conversational tones of the voice do not blend with the pianoforte, for a thin speaking voice has not sufficient body of its own to afford support to a musical accompaniment, and moreover, cannot impart strength of rhythm to the poem. [...] The quality of the voice required is that golden mean between speaking and singing, which does not possess the monotony of a chant nor the affectation of what is best described as ‘sing-song’, but that sympathetic tone that can be coloured by the soul; for the tone expresses feeling, words define it.” Wentz and Belogurov have taken Hawley’s advice to heart, searching out in the melodrama a dual art that merges words with music in the hope of revealing just how moving the genre can be, why it was so popular, and how it may be revived today.
1 December 2021
Ten Holt: Canto Ostinato - 2 Piano Version
Jeroen van Veen, Sandra van Veen
96432 (3 CDs)
A new recording of the Dutch minimalist classic made by two of its most experienced champions. Canto Ostinato is the work that defines the legacy of the composer Simeon ten Holt, who died in 2012 at the age of 89. There are 106 sections of repeating five-beat patterns whose patterned, repetitive but gradually evolving repetition produce a mesmerising effect on the listener – a dance-like sense of even unevenness – akin to masterpieces from the US minimalist school such as Steve Reich’s Music for 16 Musicians and Philip Glass’s Music in 12 Parts. However, the sections need not be repeated literally, and the performers can vary the dynamics, the manner of playing (legato vs staccato, for example), and the octave in which the material is played. Ten Holt completed Canto Ostinato in 1979 for an instrumentation of three pianos and electronic organ, but the cycle has proved itself adaptable to several different combinations of keyboard instruments, and these versions were brought together by Jeroen van Veen on a compendium produced by Brilliant Classics in 2014. ‘Canto Ostinato XL’ (9453) included this two-piano scoring as well as versions for prepared pianos, organ and marimbas, but Jeroen and Sandra van Veen have re-recorded it in 2021; the fourth version they have produced, which brings together all the varieties of arrangement and articulation developed through the course of concert performances given across the world. ‘Tonality after the death of tonality’, Ten Holt described the language of Canto Ostinato, and Jeroen van Veen compares its style to the music of Chopin: tranquil, immersive, melancholic and romantic. He worked closely with the composer over many years and can justly be regarded as the most authoritative living performer of his music.
1 December 2021
Shand: Guitar Music
Alberto la Rocca, guitar
96435 (3 CDs)
The first ever album dedicated to the music of Ernest Shand, including several first recordings. According to the guitarist Alberto La Rocca, Ernest Shand can be considered ‘one of the greatest composers for the guitar of all time’. Born into a musical family in Hull in 1868, Shand firstly learnt the rudiments of the instrument from his father before coming under the instruction of Catharina Pratten, a German guitarist who had performed as a child with Regondi and later with Gounod and Tárrega. She later married the English flautist Robert Sidney Pratten, settled in the UK and became known as ‘Madame Sidney Pratten’, and as one of the most celebrated guitar virtuosos of her day. Shand quickly proved himself to be her most talented pupil, and Pratten declared that his compositions far surpassed her own. During his lifetime Shand was widely recognized as the greatest English classical guitarist and composer, but his music fell into obscurity soon after his death in 1924. His surviving output of 220 works reveals a guitar composer of great originality and charm who had a gift for spinning infectious melodies. Many of these pieces were originally composed for Shand to perform himself on tours which took him afar as Australia. He retired from performance in 1897, however, after being assualted at a concert in Nottingham by a Russian audience-member who had taken exception to a patriotic song. Thereafter he concentrated on composition, and his later music inflects his essentially Romantic style with bold modulations, modal writing and hints of the Impressionism that would become hallmarks of the revolution in guitar music wrought some decades later by Villa- Lobos above all. The sentimental melodies and colourful harmonies of Shand's music impart a unique Victorian flavour which often seems to echo the sing-along anthems and nostalgia of English music halls. There is an instant, repeatable charm to the gently swaying rhythm of the Prélude et Impromptu; a teasing and memorable melancholy to the melody of the Morceau lyrique No 2; and a no less catchy wistfulness to the Légende which has survived on the fringes of the repertoire as probably his best known work.
1 December 2021
Nocturne: Music for Harp
Alessia Luise, harp
Beethoven, Czerny, Field, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy
96498
A meticulous, focused search for sound informs the selection of pieces on this recital, a voyage through 19th-century European music, in the vehicle of the nocturne, along the route of harp transcriptions. In these works, the composers capture night as a sliver of time, evoking the intimate and introspective side of the Romantic spirit. Night is also a metaphor for transformation, from darkness to light, for transcription from one musical instrument to another. For this ‘reduction of a big thought to a practical instrument’, as Ferruccio Busoni put it in 1913, the harp was a popular choice, particularly in the late 19th century, when the instrument’s repertoire was augmented by a number of excellent transcriptions and reductions by renowned harp teachers and performers. Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata provides the ideal starting point for a sonic journey through the light and dark of the Romantic spirit. Czerny’s short arabesques, Der Abend und die Nacht, continue the theme of twilight and night-time fantasy. Irishman John Field did not invent the nocturne, but he was responsible for the ‘crystallisation of an idiom’ that, a generation later, Chopin would take to new heights. The second movement of Brahms’s Piano Sonata No.3 evokes a nocturne, but on a larger scale. In the score is an epigraph with several verses by the poet C.O. Sternau hinting at a night- time embrace between two lovers. Debussy’s Clair de lune envelops the listener in a night freed from traditional formal structures, providing a brief escape from the 18th-century style of the preceding movements. His Nocturne in D flat, on the other hand, transports us back to Romanticism, its mysterious bass octaves and tender arpeggios leading to a melody of expansive, Chopinesque lyricism, which stands out above the changes in harmonic colour. With its pure, abstract sonority the concise Les Soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon presents night as verging on silence: the deafening quiet of a cold winter evening during World War One, when the anguish of the present is mixed with gratitude for a shipment of fuel, expressed in Debussy’s gift of the manuscript (rediscovered in 2001) to the coal merchant Monsieur Tronquin.
CANTALOUPE MUSIC
29 October 2021
Michael Harrison: Seven Sacred Names
Michael Harrison, Roomful of Teeth, Ina Filip, Ashley Bathgate, Tim Fain, Caleb Burhans, Ritvik Yaparpalvi
CA21157
"Created by pianist and composer Michael Harrison, Seven Sacred Names is meant as a companion album to the book Nature’s Hidden Dimension by author, astrophysicist and modern Sufi mystic W.H.S. Gebel. The Seven Sacred Names, according to the mystical cosmology of Sufism, tell the story of '...an awakening primal Self,' as Gebel writes in the album’s liner notes.Taken together, Harrison’s seven pieces (with the prologue and epilogue of 'Kalim' comprising two distinct movements) foster a listening environment that is ethereal, meditative and at times almost tentative, but also rife with the anticipation and promise of glimpsing hidden truths about ourselves. Featuring a diverse range of artists that includes the Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, vocalist Ina Filip, cellist Ashley Bathgate, violinists Tim Fain and Caleb Burhans, tabla percussionist Ritvik Yaparpalvi and Harrison himself on piano, the recording moves hypnotically through a subtle but ever-changing suite of tranquil moods and colors — with each stage defining a sacred or exalted state meant to inspire awareness, self-knowledge and self-expression. 'I wanted to show how beautiful simple harmonies can be, especially in just intonation,' Harrison says. 'I also wanted to invite listeners and musicians to start perceiving just intonation as an infinite harmonic system encompassing limitless possibilities.' "
CAPPELLA RECORDS
19 November 2021
Benedict Sheehan: Vespers
The Saint Tikhon Choir
Inspired by Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, Sheehan’s unique musical and linguistic expression expands the genre. He adorns full-length Psalms and hymns with a deep understanding of beauty, faith, and humanity. Vespers also features virtuosic vocal concertos, including the first for basso profundo in English. Engage with this music that projects a vision of hope and light for all. Sheehan’s Vespers is the third of four planned releases on Cappella Records produced by Blanton Alspaugh and the engineering team at Soundmirror. Soundmirror’s outstanding orchestral, solo, opera, and chamber recordings have earned many nominations and awards, with releases on every major classical label.
CAPRICCIO
5 November 2021
Mieczysław Weinberg
Die Passagierin (The Passenger)
Dshamilja Kaiser, Nadja Stefanoff, Will Hartmann, Markus Butter, Chor der Opera Graz, Grazer Philharmoniker / Roland Kluttig
C5455 (2 CDs)
‘I simply cannot stop enthusing about Weinberg’s The Passenger. I’ve heard it three times now, studied the score, and every time I understand more of the beauty and greatness of this music. It is a work of consummate form and style and its subject extremely relevant.’ – Dmitri Shostakovich. In 1960, Lisa – formerly a guard at Auschwitz and now the wife of a West German diplomat – is on an ocean liner bound to Brazil. She thinks she recognises in another passenger a woman named Martha, a Polish prisoner under her direct jurisdiction. Through a series of flashbacks across two acts, eight scenes and one epilogue, the audience witnesses the final reckoning between two women as they attempt to escape their pasts. The Passenger premiered in 2010 at the Bregenz Festival. With this new production by Oper Graz composer Mieczysław Weinberg’s powerful Holocaust drama continues to gain international recognition.
5 November 2021
Bruckner: Symphony No 8 (1890 Version)
Bruckner Orchester Linz / Markus Poschner
C8081
This Complete Versions Edition includes all versions published or to be published under the auspices of the Austrian National Library in the Neue Anton Bruckner Gesamtausgabe (New Anton Bruckner Collected Works Edition). Anton Bruckner burst out of the confines of the cathedral using that most secular of musical forms, the symphony. The creator of some of the 19th century’s greatest orchestral music, Bruckner cut a singular figure among his contemporaries. This new complete Bruckner Symphonies edition from Capriccio reassesses these enduringly enigmatic and complex works. Presented by the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and featuring all 19 available versions, the cycle is scheduled for completion in 2024, Bruckner’s 200th birthday. The second release, of Symphony No. 8 (1890 version) is performed by Bruckner Orchestra Linz conducted by Markus Poschner.
CARL DAVIS COLLECTION
5 November 2021
Buster Keaton – The Carl Davis Soundtracks
Thames Silents Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of London, Czech National Symphony, Czech National Symphony Orchestra, Carl Davis
CDC033 (2 CDs)
My first contact with Buster Keaton’s films was in the late 1970s, preparing for the Thames Television series Hollywood. It was in the context of a comparative study of silent film comedy – ranging from The Keystone Cops through to Keaton, Harold Lloyd to Charlie Chaplin’s first recorded score City Lights in 1930. All three began their careers in live theatre, Chaplin in the Music-halls of London, Keaton and Lloyd touring the United States. Working with live music was an intrinsic part of their act and remained so for all of their film careers. It was important that I understood their different characters: Charlie - the tramp, the total outsider, Lloyd – your average contemporary man and Keaton – the ‘Great Stone Face', concealing his thoughts behind an inscrutable mask. All their individual characteristics had to be placed in the context of the plot of the film, be it historical or modern. The latter was more frequently used by Keaton. His subjects ranged from the Stone Age to the American Civil War of the 1860s, as well as the present day, meaning the 1920s.
CEDILLE RECORDS
15 October 2021
Beethoven Complete String Quartets - Volume 2, The Middle Quartets
Dover Quartet
CDR 90000 206 (3 CDs)
The Dover Quartet, 'the young American string quartet of the moment' (The New Yorker) unveils the second installment in its critically acclaimed Beethoven quartet cycle on Cedille Records. The Dover’s three-disc set of Beethoven’s 'Middle Quartets' includes the three Op. 59 'Razumovsky' Quartets, infused with Russian folk tunes; the graceful 'Harp,' Op. 74, named for its plucked string figures; and the intense Op. 95 'Serioso,' a forward-looking experiment that Beethoven originally intended 'for a small circle of connoisseurs.' The Dover Quartet’s first Beethoven release, a traversal of the Op. 18 quartets, has garnered international praise.
CHAMPS HILL RECORDS
19 November 2021
Carl Loewe
The Other Erlking: Songs and Ballads of Carl Loewe
Nicholas Mogg, Jâms Coleman
CHRCD165
Nicholas Mogg and Jâms Coleman explore the remarkable versatility of Carl Loewe in a new release for Champs Hill Records. The Other Erlking sheds a deserved light on Loewe’s less well-known songs and astonishingly arresting ballads, and is the first Loewe album recorded by UK performers. Many of Loewe's ballads form part of the regular Lieder repertoire, but less known and equally deserving are the lyrical Lieder of Frauenliebe, and settings of such poems as ‘Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh’’ and ‘Der du von dem Himmel bist’ which rival those versions by Schubert, Schumann and others. Loewe has been referred to as ‘the north German Schubert’, a description apparently given to him by Prince Albert in London in 1847. The album takes its name from comparisons with Schubert’s Erlkönig, which Mogg and Coleman performed together in concert: 'We have introduced many audiences to Loewe using a comparison with Schubert’s Erlkönig. While Schubert’s setting is without doubt exhilarating, we were struck by the way Loewe conjured different moods through his choice of colour. It is our hope that this album will show the remarkable versatility of Loewe and encourage exploration of his less well-known works.'
COL LEGNO
3 December 2021
Axis Mundi
Hélène Pereira, prepared piano + electroacoustics
CL3 1CD 15010
A fine selection of contemporary works for extended piano (prepared piano and/or with electro acoustics). Interweaving gestures, the body stretches continuously between earth and sky, the primitive power of vibrations and the refinement of sound, the intuition of raw material and the invisible of ether. Changing your perception to find a balance is to seek within yourself the constant movement that remains motionless at its core - the point where time and eternity are one. Here, it is music that offers a double face that is inseparable from humanity, unfolding between memory and becoming between tribal ritualization in homage to the earth and the silence of prayer like an arrow thrown towards the sky, vertical axis of a world which seeks its song.
CONVIVIUM RECORDS
5 November 2021
Peter Warlock Songbook
Luci Briginshaw, Eleanor Meynell
CR062
'This very welcome collection of Warlock’s songs, many of them rarely performed or recorded, showcases the breadth of his extraordinarily diverse oeuvre. Soprano Luci Briginshaw and pianist Eleanor Meynell here offer insightful, sensitive and highly accomplished performances.' - Michael Graves, Chairman, Peter Warlock Society.
DACAPO RECORDS
29 October 2021
Ib Glindemann: Concertos
Per Morten Bye, Robert Holmsted, Odense Symphony Orchestra / Giordano Bellincampi
6.220665 (1 SACD)
Jazz and swing undoubtedly weighed the most in Ib Glindemann's creative life, and few others meant more to big-band and jazz music in Denmark from the 1950s onwards than he. It seems, however, that Denmark's well-known jazz orchestra leader, trumpeter and composer had a classical side. This release is the first to feature a fully classical Glindemann programme: two sublime instrumental concertos and an impressive medley of his film music celebrating his distinctive flair for writing happy, undemanding, festive and effective music.
DANACORD
29 October 2021
The Thomas Jensen Legacy, Volume 4
Carl Nielsen, Herman D. Koppel, Vagn Holmboe, Svend Erik Tarp, Poul Schierbeck
Orchestra of Det Kongelige Kapel, Copenhagen Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra / Thomas Jensen
DACOCD914 (2 CDs)
"Both in his native Denmark and around the world, Thomas Jensen became known for his uniquely authoritative interpretations of Carl Nielsen’s music. His postwar Decca and HMV studio recordings of the first two symphonies are inflected with unrivalled sweep and passion. They are coupled here with previously unpublished broadcasts of music by four Danish composers from the generation after Nielsen, including the brooding Largo which set the scene for Carl Th. Dreyer’s cinematic masterpiece, Ordet (The Word)."
DB PRODUCTIONS
5 November 2021
The Leygraf Archives, Vol 2: The Romantic Leygraf
Hans Leygraf, piano
DBCD201
This is the 2nd volume in the archive series with legendary Swedish pianist Hans Leygraf (1920-2011 ). Leygraf was known worldwide for his meticulous work with classicists Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. On this album he shows his skills in previously never released radio recordings of mazurkas by Frederic Chopin (1969), fantasy pieces by Robert Schumann (1993), and intermezzi by Johannes Brahms (1971 ). A must for all Leygraf fans!
DELOS
5 November 2021
Zamora plays Bach
J S Bach: Inventions, Sinfonias, Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue
Paulina Zamora, piano
DE3568
Bach’s famous and beloved Inventions and Sinfonias continue to captivate listeners, students and teachers today as they have throughout the generations. They are delightful discoveries playable by students of various ages and various stages of pianistic development, and provide an inexhaustible source of new ideas. Bach’s melodies sing, dance, and interact with each other and provide a path to understanding counterpoint, and specifically one of Bach’s favored forms, the fugue. These sparkling classics benefit from Paulina Zamora’s tender interpretations, as does the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. This is the third Delos album for the Chilean-American pianist.
29 October 2021
Jonah Kim: Approaching Autumn
Zoltan Kodaly, Mark Abel, Edvard Grieg
Jonah Kim, Robert Koenig
DE3585
"Jonah Kim, one of America’s finest young cellists, steps out in this wide-ranging program, joined — in two of the three works — by esteemed collaborative pianist Robert Koenig. Kim begins the program with a Mount Everest for cellists, the Sonata for Solo Cello by Zoltan Kodaly. Inspired by the legacy of his teacher, Janos Starker*, Kim has had a lifelong affection for the work, and delivers a thrilling performance. The album’s title work, Approaching Autumn, is an atmospheric and adventurous duo in onemovement. Kim and Koenig weave their way poetically through Mark Abel’s enchanting creation, in its premiere recording. The final offering is Edvard Grieg’s beloved 19th century masterpiece, the Sonata for Cello and Piano. Kim and Koenig do full justice to a work that has attracted such luminaries as Pablo Casals and Artur Rubinstein, as well as Mstislav Rostropovich and Sviatoslav Richter, to perform it live."
DELPHIAN RECORDS
29 October 2021
Pyrotechnia - Fire + Fury from 18th Century Italy
Bojan Cicic, The Ilyria Consort
DCD34249
29 October 2021
Robert Fayrfax (1464-1521): Music for Tudor Kings & Queens
Ensemble Pro Victoria / Toby Ward
DCD34265
In that golden age of British choral music half a millennium ago, when polyphonic voices soared in the vaulting of the great late-Gothic churches and chapels that seemed to have been built for them to fill, one composer was in especial favour with the royal family: Robert Fayrfax. A newly reconstructed movement from a mass for the private wedding of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, later treasured in darker times by the recusant gentry for its Catholic associations, sits here alongside exuberant masterpieces from the Eton Choirbook and, in intimate contrast, Fayrfax’s seven surviving courtly songs, brought together on a single recording for the first time. An exciting new signing for Delphian, Ensemble Pro Victoria’s young professionals bring both freshness and individuality to Fayrfax’s music in the five hundredth anniversary week of his death.
29 October 2021
The Myth of Venice - 16th-Century Music for Cornetto & Keyboards
Gawain Glenton, Silas Wollston
DCD34261
29 October 2021
Lliam Paterson: Say It To the Still World
Sean Shibe, The Choir of King's College London / Joseph Fort
DCD34246 (Delphian Records)
29 October 2021
Song
The Hermes Experiment
DCD34274 (Delphian Records)
DIGRESSIONE MUSIC
12 November 2021
Pasqua
Salvatore Pappagallo, Alfredo Fiorentini, Silvestro Sabatelli
Banda Città di Fasano “Ignazio Ciaia” / Silvestro Sabatelli
DIGR117
Born in Molfetta (Italy) on June 21, 1931, don Salvatore has undertaken the priestly life uniting it deeply to the musical one. Together with the ecclesial experience of assistant FUCI (Italian Catholic University Federation) in the post-conciliar years and that of director of the Schola Cantorum of the Pontifical Regional Seminary of Molfetta, he built his musical training with the masters Armando Renzi (composition), Nicola Samale (conducting), Michele Marvulli (piano), Marcel Couraud (perfecting choral conducting), Luigi Celeghin (organ). He has taught at the Conservatories 'E.R. Duni' in Matera and 'N. Piccinni' in Bari; he has been at the head of the Choir and Orchestra 'J. Salepico', an institution born within the Association and Popular School 'A. Dvorak' of which he was founder and president until his death. He has been Maestro di Cappella of the Cathedral Chapter of Molfetta.
12 November 2021
Raccolto a Sud - Donato Fumarosa
Chiara Liuzzi, Donato Fumarola, Nicola Puntillo
DIGR118
The struggle of dialects for being acknowledged the proper dignity as languages with a literature of their own has been a long one involving many aspects, and yet it seems forgotten by the many who still consider it an important issue in relation to several aspects: the one regarding one’s own identity, but also social, cultural and political aspects. With this in mind and after a long quest for the sources of his own music, Donato Fumarola, an Apulian pianist and composer, started collecting and putting into music the materials of his research concerning the most significant Apulian vernacular poets using their Bari dialect. Chiara Liuzzi is the performer turning the words into sounds, echoes, songs, thanks to the alchemy of a universal meta-language, hidden here and there in the old Apulian dialect with its sounds and colours, evoking ancestral worlds. The travel mate along this journey is Nicola Puntillo with his bass clarinet to pave the road and suggest new paths.
12 November 2021
EOS
Paolo Messa
Antologia condivisa
DIGR119
Coming into contact with Paolo Messa's musical production inevitably implies being put in touch not so much with the composer as with the man. For him, writing is the intuition of an instant, the still image of a memory, the emotion of listening, the suggestion of a text. In a continuous cross-reference to extra-musical elements, Messa matures in sound his own daily experience as a man among men. Not that a scrupulous introspective technical research or a solo production are less appreciable, but that's how he is: he doesn't compose for himself, nor for some academic recognition, but he has a clear mission to be for others. This discographic production does not only collect an anthology of his work; if on one hand it marks the dawn of his compositional path, on the other hand it preserves the experience of an entire day made of such precious encounters that they become metaphysical matter during the night. This is the reason for EOS - Anthologia condivisa. In his debut album, Paolo Messa wanted to have with him his lifelong friends, his most esteemed colleagues, the students to whom he patiently dedicates his work as a teacher.
12 November 2021
Antonio Gidiuli - il maestro dimenticato
Banda Città di Fasano 'Ignazio Ciaia' / Silvestro Sabatelli
DIGR120
Ten years after the death of Don Salvatore Pappagallo, which occurred on 17 June 2011, this label wanted to dedicate the recording of two of his great works, Easter and The Beatitudes, transcribed for band by Maestro Silvestro Sabatelli, along with two others, A mio Padre by Alfredo Fiorentini and Il Trombettista by Sabatelli himself. A tribute to the band tradition and to the tradition of the funeral march that Don Salvatore was able to interpret with the depth of popular culture and Christian religiosity. Born in Molfetta on 21 June 1931, don Salvatore undertook the priestly life uniting it deeply with the musical one. Together with the ecclesial experience of assistant FUCI (Italian Catholic University Federation) in the post-conciliar years and that of director of the Schola Cantorum of the Pontifical Regional Seminary of Molfetta, he built his musical training with the masters Armando Renzi (composition), Nicola Samale (conducting), Michele Marvulli (piano), Marcel Couraud (perfecting choral conducting), Luigi Celeghin (organ). He has taught at the Conservatories 'E.R. Duni' in Matera and 'N. Piccinni' in Bari; he has been at the head of the Choir and Orchestra 'J. Salepico', an institution born within the Association and Popular School 'A. Dvorak' of which he was founder and president until his death. He has been Maestro di Cappella of the Cathedral Chapter of Molfetta.
12 November 2021
La scuola di Pasquale Iannone al Barletta Piano Festival
Various Artists
DIGR110 (3 CDs)
This 3-CD set proposes an unexpected and compelling itinerary. It contains recordings of fifteen students of the same teacher, Pasquale Iannone, who belong to different generations united by the same school: in the absence of more imaginative definitions, let's call it the 'Apulian piano school'. That it is a real school is demonstrated both by the extraordinary concentration of talents, initially formed in Bari and then radiated towards the nearby didactic poles, and by the excellent results achieved by masters and students over the years. It is quite easy to trace the origins of this school: the catalyst was Nino Rota (Milan, 1911 - Rome, 1979), the protagonist of the transformation of the Liceo musicale of the Apulian capital into the conservatory 'Niccolò Piccinni', of which he was the director from 1950 to 1976. Together with other teachers, Michele Marvulli (Altamura, 1929) and Marisa Somma (Bari, 1941), he made numerous talents grow and mature, between the rigor of study and the daily relationship with music.
DIVINE ART
21 November 2021
Metamorphoses - Songs by Rachmaninov, Nocturnes by Claude Debussy
Alfonso Soldano, piano
DDA25215
"Alfonso Soldano is professor of piano performance at the Giordano Conservatory in Foggia, Italy, following similar posts at Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome and in Trani. He was a favorite student of Ciccolini and is renowned for his virtuosity. He was awarded the International Gold Medal for ‘Best Italian Artist’ in 2013 and has won many other competitions, and is also a busy writer and transcriber. His previous recordings for Divine Art, of the music of Rachmaninov, Bortkiewicz and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, received glowing reviews. He has performed and given masterclasses all around Italy, and in Germany, Switzerland and Romania, and post-Covid is planning a wider international concert schedule, hoping to tour the USA. His Rachmaninov is especially magical. He has transcribed 15 of the composer’s romantic songs for solo piano in three books of ‘Romances’ which he performs here with works by Debussy which Soldano has also transcribed. The album is a glorious, sumptuous immersion in late Romantic and Impressionist music which will appeal equally to classical experts and the wider general public. It is a collection of sheer beauty."
12 November 2021
Edward Cowie: Bird Portraits
Peter Sheppard Skærved, violin; Roderick Chadwick, piano
MSV28619
Edward Cowie is one of the most individual and notable voices in contemporary music and considered by many to be the greatest living composer directly inspired by the natural world. He has worked for over 40 years writing music in response to landscapes and the voices of creatures. In this new cycle of 24 ‘sonic portraits’ of different British birds from 4 distinctive habitats, Cowie has drawn even closer to composing music that not so much imitates nature, but that – after much study and extensive field-work - has led to new music with highly original treatments of the relationships between the bird singers and where and how they sing. This album will be followed in early 2022 by a companion (music for flute and piano) featuring birds of Australia entitled ‘Where Song was Born’. This is a major addition of importance to the contemporary chamber repertoire and will benefit from the success and glowing reviews of previous Cowie albums. Peter Sheppard Skærved and Roderick Chadwick are at the highest level of musical achievement and are champions of the best contemporary composers, while Skaerved is also renowned as a musical historian and writer. His continuing series of ‘The Great Violins’ recordings and other early music for the instrument are testament to his enormous depth of knowledge and the innate musicality which also inspires the magical performances on ‘Bird Portraits’."
DOREMI LEGENDARY TREASURES
5 November 2021
Chopin, Prokofiev, Kodaly Cello Sonatas
Edmund Kurtz, cello; Artur Balsam, piano
DHR-8109
Prokofiev: Sonata for Cello and Piano in C, Op 119; Chopin: Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor, Op 65; Kodály: Sonata for solo Cello Op 8, Recorded c1949/50
5 November 2021
Julian Bream Live – A tribute, Vol 3
Julian Bream, Peter Pears
Wenzel Joseph Thomas Kohaut, Fernando Sor, Mauro Giuliani, Richard Rodney Bennett, Benjamin Britten, Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Schubert
DHR-8155
Doremi is proud to release the third in its series of releases of brilliant, never before released live performances by Julian Bream. The first two volumes included concerts from Aldeburgh Festivals between 1958 and 1965. The present issue, Volume 3, continues with a recital from the 1969 edition with works by Wenzel Joseph Thomas Kohaut, Fernando Sor, Mauro Giuliani, Benjamin Britten, Richard Rodney Bennett and Johann Sebastian Bach, and a Franz Schubert Minuet & Trio from the 1977 Autumn Aldeburgh Chamber Festival.
5 November 2021
Brahms, Shostakovich Concertos performed live
Oleg Kagan, Natalia Gutman, The State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Yevgeni Svetlanov, Alexander Lazariev
DHR-8120
Brahms: Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra in A minor, Op 102: Oleg Kagan, violin; Natalia Gutman, cello; The State Symphony Orchestra of the USSR / Yevgeni Svetlanov - Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto, Canada, 12 October 1986; Shostakovich: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No 1 in Eb, Op 107: Natalia Gutman, cello; Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra / Alexander Lazariev - Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 26 January 1980. All items - first time on CD.
5 November 2021
Isaac Stern, Live, Vol 10
Bartok, Berg, Brahms, Schubert, Ferguson, Beethoven
Isaac Stern, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Myra Hess, John Pritchard, Ernest Ansermet
DHR-8153/4 (2 CDs)
Bartok: Violin Concerto No 2, Sz 112: Lucerne Festival Orchestra / Ernest Ansermet - Live performance, 18 August 1956; Berg: Violin Concerto 'To the Memory of an Angel' (1935) - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / John Pritchard - Live performance, 14th Edinburgh International Festival, 1960; Recital of 28 August 1960 - The 14th Edinburgh International Festival, Usher Hall; Brahms: Sonata for Violin & Piano No 2 in A, Op 100; Schubert: Sonatina for Violin & Piano No 1 in G minor, Op 137 No 1, D 384; Ferguson: Sonata for Violin & Piano No 2, Op 10; Beethoven: Sonata for Violin & Piano No 10 in G, Op 96 - With Myra Hess, piano
DYNAMIC
12 November 2021
Donizetti: Belisario
Various Artists
CDS7907 (2 CDs)
Donizetti's three-act tragic opera Belisario was a resounding success in its day, driven by its composer’s superlative theatrical instinct and his skilful interweaving of intense tragic narrative and emotional pathos. Belisario is betrayed by his wife Antonina, who falsely accuses him of high treason. Belisario is blinded and exiled, with proof of his innocence coming too late, and is mortally wounded during a final military victory. This production was performed and recorded without an audience in Bergamo during the Covid-19 lockdown in November 2020 – a moving performance reflecting a spirit of defiance amidst ruin and darkness.
12 November 2021
The Spirit of Harmony: Works for Harp and Percussion
Avalokite Duo
CDS7917
The Avalokite Duo possess a unique sound due to the changing timbres of its countless percussion instruments, combined with the characteristic sounds of the harp. This programme joins their album The Spirit of Sound (CDS7804), and is the result of this duo’s challenge to contemporary composers to make use of their virtuoso skill in making new sonic discoveries. This expansion of the duo’s repertoire ranges from the playful brilliance of Silvia Bianchera’s Apagù to the poignant introspectiveness of Maria Grazia Armaleo’s Preludio and Tanghetto. Middle Eastern experiences can be heard in Annie Fontana’s Appunti di Viaggio, while Angelo Bruzzese’s Capriccio reveals subtle echoes, in this album of distinctive premiere recordings.
12 November 2021
The Art of Arrangement: Mozart & Beethoven – Quartets for Piano and Strings KV 452 & Op. 16
Leonardo Miucci, Alea Ensemble
CDS7919
Both of these quartets are transcriptions of quintets for winds and piano by their respective composers but the links that bind them go much deeper. In the year after Mozart’s death, Beethoven began the draft of a work for the unusual instrumental ensemble of four wind instruments and piano. He was inspired by the similar work by Mozart, which had largely emancipated winds from their role in Harmoniemusik, employing them instead in the sophisticated ambience of chamber music. In this performance, following Beethoven’s own practice, the cadenzas in his quartet are improvised. ‘After The Young Beethoven, this second recording project completes the quartets for strings and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven. As in the previous programme, the link between the worlds of Mozart and Beethoven is clear and, in some aspects even more pronounced. In this case, the Quartet for Strings and Piano KV 452 represented an important reference point for the creation of the Quartet Op. 16, and it was such an important source of inspiration that we decided to put them together and highlight their evident and numerous elements of continuity, despite some relevant differences.’ – Leonardo Miucci
FARAO CLASSICS
5 November 2021
Jacques Ibert
Kammermusik
Ensemble arabesques, Philipp Pointner
B108105
In 2017, the Ensemble arabesques began realising its idea of devoting albums to composers with a special predilection for woodwind instruments. The series was launched with the highly successful CD Gustav Holst Kammermusik. This was followed in 2019 by works of Francis Poulenc. For the third album, Jacques Ibert was an obvious choice. As with Holst, the particular charm of Ibert's works derives from the various combinations of woodwind and brass instruments, strings and harp that he uses.
FORWIND
18 November 2021
Inner Fires
Snowdrops:
Christine Ott, ondes martenot, piano, gong
Mathieu Gabry, piano, keyboards, tubular bells
and featuring Richard Knox, electric guitar
FWD32
France based chamber duo Snowdrops returns with its final release of 2021. Arguably the duo's most adventurous and experimental release to date, ‘Inner Fires’ features four tracks of Ondes Martenot, piano, synths and tubular bells with Richard Knox (A-Sun Amissa) featuring on electric guitar on the closing track. Inner Fires comes at the end of a prolific year where Christine Ott and Mathieu Gabry released some captivating music, whether through their personal projects (‘Time to Die’, Gizeh), or common side-project (‘Theodore Wild Ride’, Icarus & Consouling Sounds). The new Snowdrops opus comes a year after the highly acclaimed ‘Volutes’ (Injazero), indexed in the 10 best contemporary albums of 2020 for The Guardian newspaper. Sitting in the crosshairs of modern classical, experimental electronics and contemporary composition, ‘Inner Fires’ develops the progressive dimension already sketched in ‘Volutes’, based more on improvisation and interpretation than on an overly produced approach. The album is nevertheless a detailed, textured and highly evocative work where the interaction between the performers on a wide range of instruments creates a unique musical material. The first two pieces give pride of place to the Ondes Martenot, which has previously brought Christine Ott to a wider audience, whether through her regular collaborations with Yann Tiersen or Tindersticks, or in the classical field as a renowned performer of works by Olivier Messiaen or Arthur Honegger. They are in turn lyrical in the opening piece “Elevation” and darker and more experimental on “Egopolis”; but it is the piano that remains the central point of the sound architecture of Inner Fires. However the duo thwart pianistic codes, by intermingling the grand Steinway with a cheap digital piano, creating a duality and a confusing game of transparency, a dystopian universe.
FS RECORDS
5 November 2021
November Journeys: Works for brass ensemble by Paul Drayton and George Lloyd
Abbey Brass, Paul Drayton, Tony Hindley
FSR201
Abbey Brass presents a varied programme exploring a range of rarely heard British music for brass ensembles of various sizes. These range from the usual quintet of two trumpets, french horn, trombone and tuba, to the very unusual thirteen-piece ensemble called for in George Lloyd's Symphony No. 10, subtitled November Journeys. This expansive and virtuosic work is presented here in its first recording for some 30 years.
GENUIN CLASSICS
5 November 2021
Minutes from the Centuries: Works by Gastoldi, Schubert, Rheinberger, Sting et al.
Octavians, Heiko Knopf, René Lachmann, Matthias Mäurer, Clemens Risse, Christian Gaida, Martin Kleekamp, Andreas Jäckel, Johannes Schleußner, Jakob Rendenbach
GEN21755
Jewels from five centuries' aptly describes this collection, featuring small pieces of great music, that the a cappella group Octavians presents on their new GENUIN album: canzones, motets, folk songs, and pop songs to which the winners of the 2017 A Cappella Contest Leipzig give their own unique coloring. The spectrum ranges from an old Spanish hymn of praise to motherly love to lieder by Franz Schubert and celebrated songs of our time by Paul Simon and Sting. The charm exuded by the internationally successful gentlemen is fully the match of their vocal skills: a uniform sound, infectious groove, and sparkling clean intonation are the hallmarks of the Octavians – truly a 'deluxe boy band'!
5 November 2021
Beethoven / Liszt: Symphony No. 9
Olha Chipak, Oleksiy Kushnir, Francisco Manuel Anguas Rodriguez
GEN21766
The Piano Duo Chipak-Kushnir presents a GENUIN album featuring Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, in the version for two pianos by Franz Liszt. They are joined by Francisco Manuel Anguas Rodriguez with Beethoven's original timpani part. In this work Beethoven demolished all previously-known symphonic conventions, and Liszt in his version unerringly conveys the symphony’s pioneering quality, its darkness, but also its exultation. Like his other Beethoven transcriptions, the 'Ninth' is less an arrangement than an artistic re-creation. In this recording the three musicians offer us a listening experience that casts new light on the piece’s symphonic structures and dynamic excitement.
5 November 2021
Treasures from the Detmold Archives: On the 75th anniversary of the Detmold University of Music
GEN21761 (4 CDs)
For the 75th anniversary of the Detmold University of Music, Genuin is presenting a collection of lovingly restored recordings from the 1970s and 80s. As we gradually leaf through the booklet and listen through the four discs, we are treated to a veritable cornucopia: highly personal recordings by great musicians who played a significant role in shaping not only the history of the Detmold Institute, but also that of German post-war music history. The deeply stirring interpretations include works by Reger, Schoenberg, Brahms, and Beethoven, performed by Tibor Varga, André Navarra, Helmut Winschermann and many others.
GILLIAN PERRY
15 October 2021
Lost Children
198002276988
American composer Gillian Rae Perry’s new album Lost Children utilizes contemporary and avant-garde classical music techniques to tell the fairytale-esque story of five children being stolen away by mysterious shadows. Originally written for dance and film, Lost Children takes the listener on a harrowing journey through the subconscious.
GRAMOLA
29 October 2021
Somar Ajalyaqin
Contemplations
Anna Volovitch, Christoph Croisé, Heinz-Peter Linshalm, Santos String Quartet
99202
Syrian-Emirati composer Somar Ajalyaqin (born 1978) started his relationship with the arts at an early age in his hometown Damascus. After having studied both poetry and painting, he began his musical journey on his mother’s advice, as she advocated a holistic approach to artistic expression. This debut album with Anna Volovitch, piano, Christoph Croisé, cello, Heinz-Peter Linshalm, clarinet and the Santos String Quartet features a collection of compositions in varied styles and instrumentation: from the Five Piano Pieces with playful titles such as The Cat and the Wool Ball, Capriccio Andalucía or The Butterfly and the Flame, to the Sonata for Cello and Piano and the Fantasy for E-flat Clarinet and Piano 'The Cricket in the Mirror', a wide spectrum of sound and expression is represented here. The intensely touching String Quartet 'Wuhan Oblivion', the composer’s most recent work, paints not only a picture of our eerie streets, abandoned during lockdown, but mostly a picture of our inner lives as we fight to overcome this paradoxal moment of communal loneliness.
29 October 2021
Versinkende Sonne
Zemlinsky, Wellesz, Webern, Kreisler
Auner Quartet
99220
'May you yet see dawn after this long night!' These words by Stefan Zweig, written in exile in his Farewell letter are the motto for this recording of the Auner Quartet, presenting string quartets by Alexander Zemlinsky (Opus 4 from 1896), Egon Wellesz (his 5th string quartet from the year 1943, by the subtitle 'In memoriam' which refers to the lost years) and by Anton Webern ('Langsamer Satz' from 1905), which are all references to Vienna at the turn of the century. Almost as an encore, Auner Quartet follows up with 'Syncopation' by Fritz Kreisler from the 1920s, which spans an arc to the United States, where Kreisler enjoyed enormous populari-ty and where the stylistic elements originated that had conquered the dance halls of Central Europe before they were banned in Germany and Austria during the darkest years of the 20th century – along with the music of Zemlinsky, Wellesz, Webern, Kreisler and so many others.
29 October 2021
La Nuit étoilée
Hector Berlioz, Augusta Holmes
Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Orchestre Pasdeloup, Wolfgang Doerner
99247
Celebrating the 160th anniversary of its founding, the Parisian Orchestre Pasdeloup dedicates its new album to two composers who were greatly appreciated by the orchestra's founder Jules Pasdeloup: Hector Berlioz with his orchestral song cycle 'Les Nuits d’été' and the cantata 'Cléopâtre', and Augusta Holmès (1847–1903), one of only a few female composers who were regularly perfor-med during their lifetime, with her Symphonic Interlude 'La Nuit et l’Amour'. The popular French mezzo soprano Stephanie d'Oustrac is collaborating with conductor Wolfgang Doerner, who has been a partner of Orchestre Pasdeloup for more than 30 years.
29 October 2021
Divinerinnen: Tanz’ von innen
Divinerinnen
99255
Viennese dance music and Wienerlied was referred to as Schrammelmusik ever since the work of the brothers Johann and Josef Schrammel and enjoyed great popularity at the Heurigenlokal (Viennese wine taverns) as well as in the palaces and saloons of Viennese aristocracy. The debut CD of the young Austrian women’s ensemble Divinerinnen presents varied sonic impressions of tra-ditional dance sketches interwoven with additional musical characteristics of Viennese entertainment culture. With a focus on variety in their instrumentation, the ensemble’s repertoire ranges from hidden treasures from the archive to the rarely played, all the way to compositions by contemporaries. The sound worlds produced by the instrumental cast with violins, contraguitar, clarinet, Viennese button accordion, viola and cello gives expression to the group’s intention to break established norms and listening habits.
29 October 2021
Eine Anthologie – Alois J Hochstrasser
Grazer Concertchor und Pannonische Philharmonie / Alois J Hochstrasser
99257 (12 CDs)
The Interpannon Concert Society presents this box of live recordings from what are now 50 years of concert activity of the concert and choral association, which was founded in the fall of 1971 by Alois J. Hochstrasser as the 'Graz Concert Choir'. The present anthology contains vocal and instrumental masterpieces that range from the baroque via the First Viennese School and the romantic period all the way to the modernist era. Symphonies and concertos are included, as are recordings of oratorios, masses, operas, and musicals. The recordings largely stem from concerts given at Graz’s historic Stefanien Hall, at the Internationale Sommerphilharmonie Leoben Festival, and the Pentecost Concerts Weiz, but also from charity concerts in Feldbach and Vorau (both in Styria). Additionally, complete recordings of Haydn’s Creation, Beethovens’ Ninth and Bruckner’s 7th Symphony are included.
29 October 2021
Mozart
The Piano Trios
Wiener Mozart-Trio
99252 (2 CDs)
The 6 Piano Trios of W. A. Mozart, which were composed in the years 1776, 1786 and 1788, already show the increasing emanci-pation of the string instruments – while in the first work (1776) the keyboard instrument still predominates, and the two strings take on a more accompanying role, even though in some cases a distinctive one, the relationship between the instruments developed in the five works of the 1780s lead to an approximate equality. The peculiarity of this new recording is that for the first time the auto-graphs, some of which have only recently become available, have been taken into account, which has brought about some chan-ges compared to the previously printed sheet music editions, especially in the area of phrasing and articulation, and thus, the Vienna Mozart-Trio presents an authentic complete recording for the first time with this 2-CD set.
GRAND PIANO
12 November 2021
Alfons Szczerbiński
Complete Piano Works, Vol 1
Giorgio Koukl
GP876
Alfons Szczerbiński was born at a time of upheaval in Europe during the second half of the 19th century. A prominent Polish talent in the Romantic mould, Szczerbiński was profoundly influenced by the harmonic models of Bach, Haydn and Mozart. His surviving music is mostly written for the piano but many of his compositions were either lost during the First World War or destroyed by the composer himself. Heard here in their world première recordings, the Chansons sans paroles are Romantic miniatures that possess rich melodic elegance and marvellous phrasal beauty, sometimes redolent of Mendelssohn, Chopin or Liszt.
12 November 2021
Karl Fiorini
In the midst of things - Piano and Chamber Music
Charlene Farrugia, Dimitri Ashkenazy, Rebecca Raimondi, Stefan Kropfitsch
GP880
Maltese composer Karl Fiorini is a European without frontiers – the compositions in this album reflect his early detachment from a Mediterranean identity towards a more varied and intense sound world. Trio Lamina features elements of Bartók’s ‘night music’ in its complex sub-sections, whereas Fiorini’s two piano studies, which predate his move to Paris, already exude a Gallic ambience. Influenced by North African folk music, the Piano Trio expands his global reach, and the Piano Sonata, a gritty virtuoso concert piece, shifts geographical influence towards Eastern Europe to powerful effect. All of these world première recordings were recorded in the presence of the composer.
12 November 2021
Hélène de Montgeroult
Complete Piano Sonatas
Nicolas Horvath
GP885-86 (2 CDs)
Hélène Antoinette Marie de Nervo de Montgeroult (1764–1836) was a student of Clementi in Paris. She survived the French Revolution – during which, as an aristocrat, her life was in grave danger – to become a celebrated pianist, composer and author of a famous piano method. Her compositional language in these nine sonatas is wide and includes Italianate models as well as elements that reflect the influence of Haydn and Mozart, with chromatic and surprising harmonies, contrasts of register, chorale-like nobility and brilliantly athletic finales. Featuring several world première recordings, these sonatas represent a major contribution to the French repertoire of the late Classical and early Romantic periods. The Monaco born, France based, pianist Nicolas Horvath is Grand Piano’s most versatile artist. His 17 albums for the label span repertoire from the classical period and until today. Nicolas has received numerous awards, including First Prize at the Scriabin and the Luigi Nono International Competitions, and is noted for concerts of unusual length, sometimes lasting over twelve hours, such as the overnight performance of the complete piano music of Erik Satie at the Paris Philharmonie before a cumulative audience of 14,000 people. His latest project brings to life forgotten masterpieces by French female composers, including world premiere recordings of piano sonatas by Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy and Helene De Montgeroult. Nicolas is a Steinway Artist.
HÄNSSLER CLASSIC
29 October 2021
Johannes Brahms
Sonatas for Violin and Piano
Denis Goldfeld, Sofja Gülbadamova
HC20050
The chamber works presented on this recording Scherzo for Violin and Piano in C minor (1853 WoO 2), Sonata No 1 in G major Op 78 (1878/79), Sonata No 2 in A major Op 100 (1886) and Sonata No 3 in D minor Op 108 (1886-1888) originated over nearly the whole life as a composer of Johannes Brahms. Denis Goldfeld was born to a family of musicians in Ufa (former USSR, now the Russian Federation). He is an internationally acclaimed artist of profound lyricism, intuitive musicality and stunning virtuosity. Praised by the international press for his distinctive sound, deep-rooted, versatile, mature interpretation and exceptional technical skills, his performances are distinguished by artistic independence and individuality.Sofja Gulbadamova, prizewinner of many international competitions in USA, Spain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria and Belgium, is being highly acclaimed for her poetic interpretations, 'striking musicality as well as astonishingly varied shaping palette.
29 October 2021
Paganiniana: Works for Violin
Niccolò Paganini, Josef Slavík, Heinrich Ernst, Nathan Milstein, Alfred Schnittke, Fritz Kreisler, Eugene Ysaye, Jan Kubelik
Pavel Sporcl
HC20069
Pavel Sporcl explains: 'Paganini was the best - a magician of the violin. Violin technique and the way we play today are largely due to Paganini.' Paganini's influence continues with Josef Slavfk's Caprice, in what is a world premiere recording, In his day, the Bohemian violinist (1806-1833) was often com pared to Paganini. The only serious contender to the virtuoso crown in Paganini's lifetime was Heinrich Ernst (1814-1865), with his variations on Last Rose of Summer. Nathan Milstein (1904-1992) was one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. As a tribute to Paganini he wrote his Paganiniana. These variations include the theme of the 24th Caprice, and from the other caprices, too. Sporcl plays his own variations on 'Where is my horneland?', a theme composed in 1834, which became the Czech national anthem in 1918. Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) is the most modern composer included, with his tribute, A Paganini. The only non-violinist here, he wrote many great works for violin. Of all the violinists here, Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962) was the least virtuosic. His Recitative and Scherzo, which he dedicated to violinist Eugene Ysaye, makes a lovely encore in the Romantic style. Finally, by way of bonus, Sporcl plays the cadenza for Paganini's Viol in Concerto in D majar, written by Jan Kubelfk (1880-1940).
29 October 2021
Tränen der Musen, Tears of the Muses
Igor Stravinsky, Roglit Ishay, Jörg Widmann, Dana Barak, Béla Bartók
Nitzan Bartana, Dana Barak, Roglit Ishay
HC21017
Exile, migration, expulsion and extinction, all of that is part of the 20th-century history of Europe. Music in spite of all – that is the principle common to our whole musical programme. Igor Strawinsky (1882-1971): Suite from L’Histoire du Soldat for Clarinet, Violin and Piano (1918) Roglit Ishay (born 1965): Poema for Violin, Clarinet and Piano – first recording, Jörg Widmann (born 1973): Tränen der Musen for Clarinet, Violin and Piano (1993/1996), Dana Barak (born 1987): Suita Zeira (Petite Suite) – first recording; Béla Bartók (1881-1945): Contrasts for Violin, Clarinet and Piano (1938). Nitzan Bartana was born in Jerusalem in 1989. She was given her first violin lessons at the age of five. With effect from 2018, Nitzan Bartana is deputy leader of the Basel Symphony Orchestra. She has been a member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim since 2008. The Israeli clarinettist Dana Barak has, alongside the classical repertoire, specialized in the performance practice of modern music; she plays with Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt and the Ensemble Phoenix in Basel. The Israeli pianist Roglit Ishay makes guest appearances as soloist, is a member of the Israel Piano Trio and was a member of the Dresden Piano Trio.
29 October 2021
Bach / Escaich
The Art of Fugue
Eloise Bella Kohn
HC21049 (2 CDs)
The Fugue is the most complex of all musical forms, a genuine demonstration of prowess in composition. Johann Sebastian Bach's The Art of Fugue demonstrates him striving to defend this outdated form. The overall concept of the collection is unique: from a single D minor theme, Bach develops twenty fugues and canons. Composed towards the end of his life, when Bach was between so and 60 years old, this cycle of fugues can be regarded as his artistic legacy. The last fugue (Contrapunctus 14) is particularly celebrated because Bach used the Note-Letter symbolism to write his name B-A-C-H as the letters matching the notes of the third theme, as an architect would do by engraving his name on the stone of his building. Bach was not able to finish this complex fugue any more. Kohn: 'This recording offered me an opportunity to commission from Thierry Escaich, my former teacher, a new completion of this last unfinished fugue. There is a remarkable similarity between the respective musical activities of Thierry Escaich and Bach. Escai ch is not only renowned as a virtuoso organist and improviser but also as one of the most sought-after composers internationally. Furthermore, he teaches composition at the Conservatoire de Paris with a focus on fugues.
29 October 2021
The Queen of Instruments: Selected Baroque Organ Works, Vol 1
Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Handel, Johann Michael Bach, Krebs, Pachelbel, Charpentier, Purcell, Couperin, Clérambault, Handd, Grigny, Buxtehude, Gronau
Kay Johannsen, Bine Katrine Bryndorf, Andrea Marcon, Martin Lücker, Franz Haselböck, Roman Krasnowski, Karl Richter, André Pagenel, Giesbert Schneider, Bedrich Janacek, Franz Keßler, Marlies Schrön, Bernhard Römer
HC21050 (6 CDs)
The history of the organ stretches back to the ancient world. Until medieval times organ instruments have been considered as secular and were used to accompany songs and dances. Around 600-700 years ago the first organs appeared in churches, probably used for supporting and accompanyingliturgical chants. In the 16th and 17th century organ building started a sudden high-speed development. New materials, many stops, smooth-running tracker actions and a capable and stable wind supply opened new horizons. For the first time organs could tonally fill large church rooms, accompany the congregational singing and made virtuoso artistic playing possible. Many famous composers started writing sophisticated works of music for organ. This box is dedicated to this great time. CD 1+2: Contains a selection of compositions for organ by Johann Sebastian Bach. CD 3: Organ chorals by Johann Michael Bach, a distantly related contemporary of J.S.Bach andfather of his first wife Maria Barbara. CD 4: Four organ concertos with chamber orchestra by George Frederick Handel CD 5: A selection of works by German, French and English composers of the baroque era (J.L. Krebs, J. Pachelbel, Charpentier, Purcell, Couperin, Clérambault, J.N. Hanff, N. de Grigny, Handel) CD 6: The grandmasters of the North German school, Dietrich Buxtehude and Daniel Magnus Gronau.
HERESY RECORDS
12 November
Strange Wonders - The Wexford Carols Vol II
Caitríona O’Leary, Seth Lakeman, John Smith, Clara Sanabras, Stile Antico, Alison Balsom, Olov Johansson, Simone Collavecchi, Mel Mercier, Ethan Johns, Deirdre O’Leary and John Hearne
Strange Wonders, The Wexford Carols Vol. II, is the highly anticipated follow up to the hugely successful album The Wexford Carols. It features another 11 carols from the tradition that focus on the spiritual and mystical aspects of the Christmas story – Gabriel’s visitation to Mary, the humble stable, the meeting of Herod and the Magi, the Fall (of Lucifer and of Adam), the Mystery of God as Man – as well as less familiar aspects of this narrative including carols to the saints whose feast days fall within the 12 days of Christmas (24th December – 6th January). These includes carols for St. Stephen, St. John, St. Sylvester and the Holy Innocents. For Strange Wonders, The Wexford Carols Vol. II singer/arranger Caitríona O’Leary and producer Ethan Johns have adopted an intimate interpretation of these remarkable and moving carols that marries early music, folk music and classical styles, bringing together an ensemble of luminaries that include Seth Lakeman (voice, viola), Clara Sanabras (voice, baroque guitar), John Smith (voice, guitar), Stile Antico (Choir), Alison Balsom (trumpet), Olov Johannson (nyckelharapa), Simone Collavechi (lute & renaissance guitar), Deirdre O’Leary (bass clarinet), Mel Mercier (percussion), and John Hearne (bassoon).
HYPERION RECORDS
29 October 2021
Felix & Fanny Mendelssohn String Quartets
Takács Quartet
CDA68330
Felix’s impassioned F minor quartet was the fiercely personal response to his sister’s death in 1847, only a few months before his own. The Takács Quartet frames it with equally committed accounts of a much earlier work, and Fanny’s own important contribution to the genre.
29 October 2021
Frédéric Chopin: Nocturnes
Stephen Hough, piano
CDA68351/2 (2 CDs)
‘Some of the finest operatic arias ever written’ is Stephen Hough’s brilliant characterization of the Nocturnes, one which holds the key to his intensely lyrical interpretations of these most perfect of bel canto masterworks.
1 November 2021
Josquin's legacy
The Gesualdo Six / Owain Park
CDA68379
With Josquin's legacy, Owain Park and The Gesualdo Six bid farewell to the composer's quincentenary year. This is typically imaginative programming from the group; a selection of motets bringing together Josquin with his contemporaries, with luminous performances to match. Josquin’s sublime, brief tribute to the memory of Ockeghem—‘Nymphes des bois’—is the emotional core of a programme which explores Josquin’s own influence on some of the great names of his time.
IBS CLASSICAL
29 October 2021
Tantalo – The Baroque Origins of Bel Canto
L’Armonia Degli Affetti
IBS132021
Imitar col canto chi parla' ('imitating in song one who speaks'): that ideal, expressed by Jacopo Peri in the preface to his setting of Euridice, heralded a veritable revolution in vocal music, beginning with the experiments, towards the end of the sixteenth century, of the Florentine Camerata – a group of intellectuals and musicians led by Count Giovanni de’ Bardi, who aimed to revive the glorious art of ancient Greek tragedy. According to written accounts, the latter was sung, or spoken, in such a way that the words, while remaining intelligible at all times, were emotionally heightened. The members of the Camerata wished thus to break with the polyphonic madrigal tradition of the Renaissance and turn to accompanied monody, recitar cantando, thereby returning to the pre-eminence of the word as the means of conveying human emotions, with the music, henceforth subordinate to speech, serving to magnify and amplify it.
29 October 2021
Gustavo Díaz-Jerez
Metaludios II (For Piano Books IV & V)
Gustavo Díaz-Jerez
IBS172021
These two new books of metaludios, which continue the three already recorded on a CD released in 2018, explore new sound territories through the piano. Science is once again the main pillar underlying the compositional process of these twelve new pieces. Multiple scientific disciplines serve as generators of musical raw material: biology (L-system, Mice music), psychoacoustics (Eigengrau), astronomy (Boötes void, Cassini’s dream), artificial intelligence and machine learning (Hidden states), as well as pure mathematics (Belphegor’s prime). As in the previous three books, Gustavo Díaz-Jerez have also found inspiration in mythological figures (Melussyne, Stribog), and have paid tribute to artists I admire (Omaggio a Carlo Gesualdo, La spiral del viento, Pavana triste). Many of the metaludios use electronics and inside-the-piano extended techniques, not as mere effects but as a necessary and integrating part of the musical discourse. It is important to Gustavo, as performer as well as composer, that the pianistic writing is as comfortable and ergonomic as possible, but without distorting the original idea or sacrificing brilliant and virtuosic writing. Since the composition of the first metaludios, back in 2013, Díaz-Jerez demonstrates that the sound possibilities of the piano have only one limit: our own imagination.
29 October 2021
Maitena – Basque Opera
Miren Urbieta-VEGA, Mikeldi Atxalandabaso, Marifé Nogales, José Manuel Diaz, Fernando Latorre, Javier Tomé, Estíbaliz Sánchez, Alberto Abete, Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa, Sociedad Coral de Bilbao, Iker Sánchez Silva
Charles Colin
IBS152021 (2 CDs)
Maitena (1909) was a further step towards achieving the ideal of Basque opera linked to that of its own lyric theatre. For the critic and musicographer Francisco Gascue: 'Colin has written a score that is as far from Wagnerian complications as it is from orchestral poverty; it is accessible without being poor or rudimentary. Colin has shown the same exquisite taste in the handling of the orchestra as in the choice of melodies'. He also singles out the duet between Domingo and Maitena at the beginning of Act I, the tenor and baritone duet that follows, the quartet in Scene VI, the melody sung by Chaadiñ at the beginning of Act II, Batista’s couplets and for its effect and simplicity the Angelus scene. He ends by noting the appropriate treatment of the chorus. The action tells the story of the rich farmer Piarres Landaburu, Maitena’s father, and his intention to marry her off to Ganich, a young man from a good family, rather than to an unfortunate pelotari named Domingo. Maitena, contrary to her father, marries Domingo and goes to America in search of a new life. After being widowed in Buenos Aires, she returns to her father’s home where she finds only repudiation. Maitena moves away, but her father welcomes her back into his home, favouring her marriage to Ganich and thus returning the family to live together again.
ICA CLASSICS
29 October 2021
Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms
Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Nikolaus Harnoncourt
ICAC 5161 (4 CDs)
This set is a testament to a remarkable collaboration between the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016) and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) and its release this year marks the Orchestra’s 40th anniversary. These recordings also trace the relationship between Harnoncourt and the Styriarte Festival which started in 1987 and lasted for over 30 years. The COE became Harnoncourt’s orchestra of choice for the classics played on modern instruments. He had been the pioneer of the exploration of period-appropriate style from the early 1950s with the Concentus Musicus Wien, and followed this by exploring how modern instruments could respond in the classics by adapting to the style without having to change the instruments they were playing. Harnoncourt wanted the players to take risks and perhaps fail rather than play safe. In rehearsal, he often told the performers that great music was always on the edge of catastrophe! The set offers remarkable examples of Harnoncourt’s fresh insights into his core repertoire – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms. All these recordings are ‘live’ performances, beautifully recorded producing an extra degree of spontaneity and atmosphere compared to studio recordings. WPR Recordings.
LINUS ENTERTAINMENT
12 November 2021
Canadiana
Canadian Brass
270596
On Canadiana, Canadian Brass celebrates the popular Canadian artists that the group loves to listen to, and has impressed them through their career. Canadiana includes songs by Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Drake, H E R, Shawn Mendes, Rush, Bruce Cockburn, Deadmau5, k d lang, and Lara Fabian. 'While we were busy practicing our repertoire and honing our craft, we were also listening to these incredible songs as they were released. We now have the incredible opportunity to play these songs ourselves. This recording project gave us a chance to explore the music generated by the great artists that have been around us throughout our performing career.'
LSO LIVE
1 November 2021
Leonard Bernstein: Candide
Anne Sofie von Otter, Jane Archibald, Leonardo Capalbo, Thomas Allen, London Symphony Orchestra / Marin Alsop
LSO0834-D
With lyrical contributions from acerbic writers Richard Wilbur, John Latouche, Lillian Hellman, and a young Stephen Sondheim, 'Candide' marries raucous humour with the extraordinary genius of Leonard Bernstein.
MELODIYA
12 November 2021
Mariss Jansons: The Last Concert in Moscow
Alexander Tchaikovsky
Yuri Bashmet, Ksenia Bashmet, Boris Berezovsky, Daria Tchaikovskaya, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Yurlov Capella Choir / Mariss Jansons
MELCD 1002662
Melodiya releases a digitally remastered broadcast of the Mariss Jansons concert with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra that took place on March 29, 2016, at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall. With that concert, the musicians were congratulating Alexander Tchaikovsky on his 70th birthday. The outstanding maestro conducted the Concerto for viola, piano and orchestra Etudes in Simple Tones and the Concerto for two pianos and orchestra, Symphony No. 4 for choir, orchestra and solo viola, and pieces for orchestra – Elegie in Memoriam Tikhon Khrennikov and Valse, performed by the soloists Yuri Bashmet, Boris Berezovsky, Ksenia Bashmet, and Daria Tchaikovskaya.
12 November 2021
Daniel Kogan – The Perils of Love
Karol Szymanowski, Franz Schubert, Arnold Schönberg
Daniel Kogan, Oleg Khudyakov, Feodor Beznosikov, Andrei Usov, Pavel Romanenko, Sergey Antonov, Mikhail Kalashnikov
MELCD 1002664
Melodiya releases the first CD of violinist Daniel Kogan, the junior representative of the famous musical dynasty. Daniel Kogan, a prize-winner of the Long-Thibaud International Competition in Paris, has recorded an unusual program combining chamber works by Franz Schubert, Karol Szymanowski and Arnold Schoenberg. The grandson of Leonid Kogan and Elizaveta Gilels, a graduate of the Central Music School and the Moscow Conservatory, Daniel Kogan attracted attention after the 2006 International Karol Lipiński Violin Competition in Poland and the 2017 Yampolsky International Competition in Moscow. Critics note the depth and seriousness of his performance, as well as the young musician’s romantic spirituality, delicate taste and sense of style that are inherent in the Russian violin tradition.
12 November 2021
Nastasia Khrushcheva
Normal Music
Nastasia Khrushcheva, Stanislav Malyshev, Olga Kalinova, OpensoundOrchestra, Alyona Zinovieva, Ivan Naborshchikov, Pavel Romanenko, Stanislav Malyshev
MELCD 1002666
Melodiya has released the first album of Nastasia Khrushcheva, a contemporary composer, pianist and philosopher from St Petersburg. The Book of Grieg and Joy, Trio in Memory of a Non-Great Artist, Russian Dead-Ends 3 – the provocatively titled works are performed by the composer and OpensoundOrchestra. What is metamodernism? According to Nastasia Khrushcheva, the author of the book Metamodernism in Music and Around It (2020), this is a kind of 'ideology of normality' that has come to replace the madness of the 20th century in the 21st century. 'In the artistic ‘universe’ described by her, shards of high romantic culture and memes from the web, nostalgia for the ‘lost paradise’ and the pleasure of new-made sentimental beauty organically coexist,' musicologist Sergei Uvarov writes.
MIRARE
26 November 2021
Vladigerov: Impressions
Etsuko Hirose, piano
MIR600
Pancho Vladigerov (1899-1978) was considered to be one of the greatest piano teachers in his country in the 20th century, which his pupil, Alexis Weissenberg, testified in an interview, ‘The basis of my piano playing is what you might call Vladigerov-style. Pancho Vladigerov knows the piano perfectly. He is my teacher, to whom I owe everything – please note ! – everything.
NAXOS
26 November 2021
Florence Beatrice Price (1887–1953): Symphony No 3 in C minor
The Mississippi River
Ethiopia’s Shadow in America
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra John Jeter
8.559897
Florence Price was one of the most versatile and accomplished American musicians of her generation whose unstoppable creativity and earliest successes were set against the backdrop of 1930s economic depression. The Third Symphony expresses aspects of Price’s cultural heritage in a symphonic framework. Avoiding direct references to existing folk songs and dances, it creates highly distinctive African spiritual moods and uses the syncopated rhythms of the Juba in its jazzy third movement. This world premiere recording of Ethiopia’s Shadow in America traces the American experience of enslaved Africans, while The Mississippi River suite quotes several famous spirituals, capturing the struggles of Black migration across the United States.
26 November 2021
Elgar, Bridge Cello Concertos
Gabriel Schwabe, cello; ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra / Christopher Ward
8.574320
These two masterpieces are shadowed by the events of the First World War. Elgar’s Cello Concerto, an intensely poignant, reflective and individual musical statement, has enjoyed unflagging popularity among musicians and listeners for over a hundred years. By contrast, Frank Bridge’s Oration (Concerto elegiaco) remained unperformed for decades after its early hearings. Yet it shares spiritual affinities with Elgar’s work and serves as a funeral address of huge solemnity and narrative power in its outcry against the futility of war. Gabriel Schwabe has established himself among the leading cellists of his generation. He is a laureate of numerous national and international competitions, including the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann and the Concours Rostropovich in Paris. In 2009 he won the prestigious Pierre Fournier Award in London. As a soloist, he has worked with orchestras such as the Philharmonia Orchestra, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlinthe Malmö and Norrköping Symphony Orchestras and Royal Northern Sinfonia with conductors including Marek Janowski, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Dennis Russell Davies, Cornelius Meister, Marc Soustrot, Lars Vogt and Michael Sanderling.
26 November 2021
Hindemith: Symphony ‘Mathis der Maler’; Nusch-Nuschi-Tänze; Sancta Susanna
Ausrine Stundyte, soprano; Annette Schönmüller, mezzo-soprano; Renée Morloc, contralto; Caroline Baas and Enzo Brumm, speakers; Wiener Singakademie; ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra / Marin Alsop
8.574283
Paul Hindemith’s life was dominated by the events of the two world wars. In 1917, his discovery of contemporary Expressionist poetry and drama transformed him from a talented student to Germany’s leading new composer. His one-act operas Sancta Susanna and Das Nusch-Nuschi date from this period. Sancta Susanna – Hindemith’s first masterpiece – combines religious and erotic symbolism into an eerie narrative that was shocking for its time, whereas the dance suite from Das Nusch-Nuschi emphasises the plot’s origin as a Burmese comedy. The three symphonic movements from the opera Mathis der Maler refer to the three panels of the Isenheim Altarpiece by Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald, but also graphically reflect Hindemith’s own artistic struggles in Nazi Germany.
26 November 2021
William Bolcom: Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano; Suite No 2 for Solo Violin
Steven Gross, horn; Philip Ficsor, violin; Constantine Finehouse, piano
8.579102
William Bolcom (born 1938) is one of America’s most senior and internationally acclaimed composers. Commissioned to expand upon the under-represented horn trio repertoire, Bolcom has written a modern counterpart to Brahms’ Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano, Op 40, in which he incorporates multiple styles into a substantial composition. The Suite No 2 for Solo Violin is by turns frenzied, melancholic and light-hearted. Bolcom states, 'Both works are performed beautifully and well recorded. Bravi tutti!'
26 November 2021
Eric Coates: British Light Music, Vol 3
London Suite; The Merrymakers; London Again Suite; Cinderella; The Selfish Giant; Calling All Workers; The Dambusters March
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra / Adrian Leaper
8.555178
With orchestral works at the core of his output, the supreme melodic gift that distinguishes the music of Eric Coates (1886–1957) earned him a reputation as the ‘uncrowned king of light music’. It was the London Suite that made Coates a household name, with the Cockney exuberance of its third movement, Knightsbridge, capturing the nation’s imagination as a BBC theme tune, as did the rousing march Calling All Workers. Cinderella and The Selfish Giant were inspired by his son’s bedtime stories, the latter absorbing the jazzy dance rhythms of the day. The Dambusters March was one of Coates’ last pieces, and remains one of the most iconic movie themes ever written.
26 November 2021
Hans Pfitzner: Complete Lieder, Vol 4
Vier Lieder nach Texten von Heinrich Heine; Ständchen; Untreu und Trost
Uwe Schenker-Primus, baritone; Klaus Simon, piano
8.573082
The foundations of the Romantic musical idiom of Hans Pfitzner (1869–1949) can be found in his earliest compositions. Almost all of the songs in this programme date from Pfitzner’s school and student days, with the young composer tapping into a particularly rich vein of creativity. From rediscovered manuscripts such as the surprisingly assured Ständchen to the earliest settings of his favourite lyric poet, Joseph von Eichendorff, these songs display all of the intimacy and atmosphere that would make Pfitzner a key figure of early 20th-century music.
26 November 2021
Franz Liszt: Complete Piano Music, Vol 59 - Schubert Transcriptions - Three Marches; Hungarian Melodies
Dominic Cheli, piano
8.574172
As a boy during the years 1822–23, Franz Liszt (1811–1886) studied in Vienna with Czerny and Salieri, at the same time as Schubert was winning his reputation as a leading composer in the city. Many years later Liszt did much to introduce Schubert’s music to a wider audience, not least through his prodigious transcriptions. In the case of the Three Marches and Mélodies hongroises, Liszt selected music originally written for piano duet, but in Soirées de Vienne, a set of nine pieces of which some were to remain prominent in Liszt’s concert repertoire, he fashioned a sequence of truly memorable valse-caprices.
26 November 2021
Gioachino Rossini: Complete Piano Music; Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age)
Alessandro Marangoni, piano
8.501306 (13 CDs)
Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) drew a line under his hugely successful operatic career at the age of 37 and wrote little until his final years in Paris, where he became renowned for his musical salons. For these he wrote numerous short piano pieces which he jokingly called Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age): sometimes experimental miniatures that can raise a smile or touch the heart, blurring boundaries between the irreverent and the serious. Rossini’s publisher Antonio Pacini considered the composer’s late works as his most illustrious period: ‘what he composes daily is a series of masterpieces that seems as though it will never end.’ Including songs and fascinating novelties, this acclaimed complete edition contains a myriad of rarities and numerous world premiere recordings. Alessandro Marangoni burst onto the international concert stage in 2007 when he won the prestigious ‘Amici di Milano’ International Prize for the Music. As a noted advocate of Italian music, he has recorded more than 20 albums comprising of Rossini’s Péchés de vieillesse, Clementi’s Gradus ad Parnassum, and Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Piano Concertos with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Mogrelia, as well as Liszt’s Via Crucis with the Ars Cantica Choir, conducted by Marco Berrini, all on the Naxos label.
12 November 2021
Kevin Puts: Silent Night - Opera in two acts - libretto by Mark Campbell
Karin Wolverton, soprano; Miles Mykkanen, Christian Sanders and Stephen Martin, tenors; Edward Parks, Andrew Wilkowske, Joshua Jeremiah, Christian Thurston, Charles H Eaton and Troy Cook, baritones; Minnesota Opera Chorus and Orchestra / Courtney Lewis
8.669050-51 (2 CDs)
Kevin Puts (born 1972) is one of America’s most exciting and important composers. His first opera, Silent Night, with a libretto by Mark Campbell, was commissioned by Minnesota Opera. It premiered in 2011 and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. A work of profound and sweeping emotional power, it has since entered the modern operatic repertoire with remarkable speed, enjoying worldwide performances. The opera is based on Christian Carion’s screenplay for the 2005 French war film Joyeux Noël, and its fictionalised subject is the series of Christmas truces on the Western Front in 1914.
12 November 2021
Ian Krouse: Symphony No 5 ‘A Journey Towards Peace’; Fanfare for the Heroes of the Korean War; Symphonies of Strings Nos 1 and 2
Michael Dean, bass-baritone; Jens Lindemann, trumpet; UCLA Brass Quintet; Seocho Philharmonia / Jong Hoon Bae
8.559907
Underscoring the very special relationship between the United States and the Republic of Korea, the 2017 version of the Symphony No 5 by Ian Krouse (born 1956) performed on this recording with a South Korean orchestra commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Korean War. At the heart of the second movement of this expressively powerful and wide-ranging work Krouse mingles three famous American melodies with the popular Korean tune Arirang. The two Symphonies of Strings show why he is so distinctive a composer: one is scored for strings but without violins and the other is a brilliantly inventive ‘geometrical’ exploration of La Follia.
12 November 2021
Gabriel Pierné: Ramuntcho; Cydalise et le Chèvre-pied - Suites
Orchestre National de Lille / Darrell Ang
8.573609
Composer, conductor and organist Gabriel Pierné (1863–1937) wrote in a wide variety of genres, from operas to pieces for solo piano. His orchestral music for the stage shows the utmost refinement and clarity as well as wit and charm in the finest French tradition. His colourful and evocative score for Ramuntcho is rich in Basque flavour with zortzico dance rhythms and village dances, all beautifully textured. Set in the 18th century, the ballet Cydalise et le Chèvre-pied reveals the full range of his inventive scoring, which remains chamber music- like in its finesse.
12 November 2021
Alexander Scriabin, Rued Langgaard: Towards the Flame - Eccentric Piano Works
Gustav Piekut, piano
8.574312
Both Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915) and Rued Langgaard (1893–1952) believed that through their music they could pave the way for a spiritual revolution. The piano offered a perfect and very intimate medium for their highly personal harmonic and expressive vocabularies. Scriabin drew on daemonic associations in his Piano Sonata No. 9 to liberate the old tonal system, whereas Langgaard explored his youthful fascination with Catholicism in music of fanaticism and ecstasy. Langgaard’s The Flame Chambers and Scriabin’s Vers la flamme are feverish musical twins that exemplify both composers’ explosive intensity.
12 November 2021
Xiaogang Ye: The Road to the Republic (Cantata); Cantonese Suite
Liping Zhang, soprano; Guang Yang, mezzo-soprano; Yijie Shi, tenor; Chenye Yuan, baritone; China National Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; Beijing Philharmonic Choir / Jia Lu; Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz / Franck Ollu
8.579089
Xiaogang Ye (born 1955) is regarded as one of China’s leading contemporary composers, having been awarded a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2013 China Arts Award, and a Distinguished Alumni citation from the Eastman School of Music in 2011. The Road to the Republic commemorates the centenary of the 1911 Revolution with classic and modern poetry, blending historical narrative with Ye’s typically fluent musical style to create an epic and heroic symphonic work. The Cantonese Suite orchestrates original folk music from Ye’s native region, the composer responding deeply to its poignant and beautiful essence.
12 November 2021
Isaac Albéniz: Four-Hand Piano Music
Dúo Van Duá
8.574347
The distinctive musical vocabulary of Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909), with its sensual harmonies, rich melodic lines and characteristic rhythmic figures, has ensured lasting popularity, not least in his music for the piano. This album of four-hand piano music reveals the composer’s love of Spain’s regional music traditions, whether in the glittering sweep of the Suite española No 1 or in the Rapsodia española where a hypnotic dreamscape meets dramatic outbursts. Two movements from Iberia – one of which is a rarely encountered arrangement by the great Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha – reveal a daring modernity that aligns Albéniz with Debussy and Ravel.
12 November 2021
Batucada - South American Guitar Music
Graham Anthony Devine, guitar
8.574337
This recital offers a kaleidoscopic array of styles unified by South America’s national instrument, the guitar. Titans of Latin American music such as Piazzolla and Barrios Mangoré are represented, but so too are distinctive composers less well known outside of their own countries. Genres such as milonga, Venezuelan waltz and choro are featured, in music suffused with lyric melancholy and vivacious, biting rhythms. ‘His musicianship is unimpeachable, his fleet technique is world-class’ wrote American Record Guide of Graham Anthony Devine (8.554195).
12 November 2021
Leroy Anderson: Complete Orchestral Works
BBC Concert Orchestra / Leonard Slatkin
8.505259 (5 CDs)
Leroy Anderson (1908–1975) occupies a unique place in American music. Rigorously trained in the classical tradition, Anderson wrote tunes that topped the pop charts, making compositions such as Sleigh Ride and The Typewriter world famous. Anderson was a meticulous craftsman who could seemingly compose marvelous tunes at will, and he has been praised by composer John Williams as ‘one of the great American masters of light orchestral music’. This first set of Anderson’s orchestral music includes several previously unpublished pieces made available by the Anderson family, with world premiere recordings included among many familiar and not-so familiar titles.
11 November 2021
Aachener Walzer
Tchaikovsky and Parfenov Orchestral Works
Ioana Cristina Goicea, violin; André Parfenov, piano; Sinfonieorchester Aachen / Christopher Ward
8.551457
Tchaikovsky stayed in Aachen for six weeks in 1887, during which time he orchestrated his Mozartiana. He also left behind sixteen bars of music from his diary, and the Aachener Walzer is André Parfenov’s completion of this otherwise unknown mini-waltz. Further works by Parfenov include a Violin Concerto on the subject of war, peace and human symbiosis, and a reflection on the life of a remarkable avant-garde painter in his Malevich Suite. Completing the framework for this recording is Tchaikovsky’s orchestral suite Mozartiana, which spotlights Mozart’s little-known smaller pieces to charming effect.
11 November 2021
Jeux de Création
Caplet, Debussy, Fauré, Gordon, Hoffmann, Ravel
Anne-Sophie Bertrand, harp; L’Ensemble Ondine
8.551444
This recording is a tribute to the chromatic harp, which, with its rich colours and theatrical effects, was perfectly tuned to the impressionist and art nouveau atmosphere of the turn of the 20th century. Geoffrey Gordon’s Jeux de Création is inspired by music from the 1920s, using both traditional and extended techniques, drawing on themes by Milhaud and Debussy to portray the past and present. Reflecting this aesthetic, the other works in this programme include the artistry of Ravel and Fauré, the quasi-orchestral effects of Debussy’s Danses, and Caplet’s sensuous and spectacular Divertissements.
11 November 2021
20th Century Music for Flute and Guitar - Bartók; Castelnuovo-Tedesco; Piazzolla; Shankar; Takemitsu
Britta Jacobs, flute; Irene Kalisvaart, guitar
8.551453
This album of 20th-century masterpieces for flute and guitar features works composed especially for this combination of instruments plus arrangements of works by Bartók and Ravi Shankar. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Sonatine for Flute and Guitar is considered to be one of the finest compositions for this combination of instruments, contrasting joyfulness with poignant melodies. The warm sound of the alto flute is given expressive range in Takemitsu’s Toward the Sea, while Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango takes us on a journey from the form’s beginnings in the brothels of Buenos Aires, to its acceptance as one of the most loved musical art forms of the 20th century.
NEUMA
19 November 2021
daniel pesca: promontory
Daniel Pesca, piano
Aaron Travers, Alison Yun-Fei Jiang, Daniel Pesca, Augusta Read Thomas
Neuma 147
17 September 2021
richard carr: over the ridge
Laura Lutzke, violin 1; Ravenna Lipchik, violin 2; Caleb Burhans, viola; Clarice Jensen, cello; Richard Carr, violin (tracks 2-4, 7, 12)
Neuma 146
PIANO CLASSICS
1 December 2021
Schumann: Piano Music
Yuan Sheng, piano
PCL10195 (2 CDs)
Five major piano cycles of early Romanticism, newly recorded by a major exponent of historically informed keyboard playing. Acclaimed as China’s ‘premier interpreter of Bach’ by International Piano Magazine, the Chinese pianist Yuan Sheng has gained international recognition through his performances in the US and China, among many other countries. The New York Times praised Sheng’s performances of Bach as ‘models of clarity, balance and proportion’. His discography on Piano Classics includes several of the composer’s major cycles such as the Goldberg Variations (PCL0042) and Partitas (PCL10126) which have won critical acclaim for their agile rhythms and sensitive touch, informed by a profound understanding of the music’s origins for harpsichord and the expressive potential of its transfer to the modern piano, which he now passes on to students as a professor of piano at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. This depth of study and beauty of sound, informed by intensive study with Rosalyn Tureck, also mark out his newly recorded interpretations of five major piano cycles by Robert Schumann, who along with Chopin did more than any other composer to expand the horizons of the piano in the early decades of the 19th century and position it as the supreme articulation of a Romantic composer’s ambition in the hands of a single performer. Thus the present album makes an essential complement to Yuan Sheng’s extensive collection of Chopin’s work (including the Ballades, Impromptus, Preludes and 20 Nocturnes: PCL0049) issued by Piano Classics in 2013. While Sheng’s Chopin was recorded on an 1845, he returns to a modern Steinway for this Schumann without sacrificing the freedom of expression and lightness of touch which marked out the previous album. From the Davidsbündlertänze of 1837 through to the Waldszenen of 1849, the collection surveys the peaks of Schumann’s piano writing with a concentration on the composer’s gift for distilling a mood within a miniature. This mood-painting reaches its height in the seventh movement of Waldszenen which became an avatar of Romanticism, ‘Der Vogel als Prophet’, connecting worlds as seemingly distant as Rameau and Messiaen.
1 December 2021
Thalberg: L'Art du Chant Appliqué au Piano Vol 1
Alessandro Commellato, piano
PCL10242
The first fortepiano recording of a collection belatedly gaining recognition beyond pianophile circles as a major keyboard cycle of late Romanticism. Thalberg has a reputation as the only pianist who made Liszt feel nervous, but he also won praise from Mendelssohn for the fidelity of his approach to the letter and the spirit of a score. He gathered four volumes of operatic and song transcriptions under the umbrella of L’art du chant appliqué au piano, with the first two volumes published in 1853 and followed a decade later by Volumes 3 and 4. While it opens with the Quartet from Bellini’s I Puritani, Thalberg’s selection of original material ranges far and wide beyond masterpieces of bel canto. There is a haunting transformation of a duet once attributed to the Neapolitan composer Stradella; a straightforward but affectionate transcription of Adelaide, the song by Beethoven that became his most popular piece of vocal music during the 19th century; as well as a much more elaborate fantasia on a number from the incidental music composed by Carl Maria von Weber for the Spanish drama Preciosa. There are some quintessentially Romantic-era walls of sound in the first two volumes of the collection, such as Thalberg’s version of the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem, but the limpid textures and uncluttered singing lines of L’art du chant mark a salutary contrast with the cascades and thunderbolts of the hyper-virtuoso repertoire. In this regard, the lighter touch of the fortepiano is well suited to the ideals of vocal expression, transferred to the keyboard, enshrined in Thalberg’s collection. Roberto Commellato’s new version therefore brings something new to the work’s selective but distinguished discography. He has already established himself in his native Italy as a leading exponent of historically informed keyboard performance. This reputation is reflected in his Brilliant Classics discography of fortepiano albums of music by Beethoven (the complete early variations, 95245), concertos by Hummel (94338 and 95894) and cello sonatas by Beethoven’s contemporary and diarist Ferdinand Ries (95206).
PROFIL
29 October 2021
Anton Bruckner
Symphony No 1
Staatskapelle Dresden / Christian Thielemann
PH18083
Revised Linz version (1877), Live recording of the Staatskapelle Dresden's 1st symphony concert of the season in the Semperoper on September 1, 2017. The premiere of the 1st Symphony took place at May 9, 1868, in the Redoutensaal in Linz, with the augmented opera orchestra conducted by the composer. The Dresden Royal Musical Chapel played the work for the first time on March 14, 1911, under the direction of its Kapellmeister Hermann Kutzschbach. Christian Thielemann’s engagement with the symphonic work of Anton Bruckner takes him in this recording to the composer’s early years. The carefree mood of the First Symphony’s last movement prompted the mature Bruckner to comment: 'Never was I so bold and cheeky again.' Since the 2012/2013 season Christian Thielemann has been Principal Conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden. In addition to his current position in Dresden, Thielemann has been Artistic Director of the Salzburg Easter Festival since 2013, where the Staatskapelle is resident orchestra. Founded by Prince Elector Moritz von Sachsen in 1548, the Staatskapelle Dresden is one of the oldest orchestras in the world and thus steeped in tradition.
29 October 2021
Cantabile
August de Boeck, Martin Grabert, Giovanni Bolzoni, Reinhold Glière, Robert Schumann, Bill Douglas
Arisa Kobayashi, Katsuya Watanabe
PH20042
August de Boeck (1865-1937) was a Belgian composer and organist. His music is characterized by traditional harmony; especially Boeck’s chamber music with oboe is notable for its tender lyricism and pastoral atmosphere. Martin Grabert (1868-1951) served as organist at various churches in Berlin. The Sonata op. 52 for oboe and piano is very much in the manner of the (late) Romantic era. It contains few if any features of Modernism, and is notable for its wonderful melodic lines. Giovanni Bolzoni (1841-1919) was an Italien violinist, composer, conductor and teacher. His Fantasia presents an alternation of soft notes and expressive phases with lively and stirring moments. Reinhold Glière (1875-1956), was born in Kiev. The 2 Pieces for Oboe and Piano presented here display strongly late-Romantic features. The Chanson, like the Andante, could be described as two lyrical scenes. Robert Schumann (1810-1856) composed his Opus 70 in just 4 days, originally scored for horn and piano. The Adagio displays richly poetic and lyrical characteristics in contrast to the agitated, lively Allegro. Bill Douglas (born 1944) is a Canadian composer, pianist and bassoonist. He composed his Sonata for Oboe and Piano in 2004. It is influenced by Jazz, West African rhythms and by British Isles folk music.
QUARTZ
29 October 2021
J S Bach Organ Works
Elena Privalova
QTZ2144
As a young man in 1706 Bach famously walked 280 miles to Lübeck to see Buxtehude playing the organ. One of his sons, C P E Bach, wrote in Bach’s obituary: 'At a certain moment here in Arnstadt he had so strong an urge to hear as many good organists as he could that he set out for Lübeck, on foot, in order to hear the famous organist of St Mary’s, Dietrich Buxtehude.' Bach’s devotion to the organ, and his desire to excel on it, is without question but whereas much of his output was written with a specific purpose or occasion in mind, the toccatas and fugues are less easily categorised. Almost all of them date from Bach’s Weimar years (1708-1717), when he had the most opportunities to play the organ, although he may have revised them in Leipzig (after 1723). Their elaborate nature belies the fact that Bach had to be careful about showing off: in 1705, while temporarily in Leipzig, he had been censured for an over-long organ prelude before Communion and in 1706 he had attracted the ire of the Arnstadt authorities by confusing the congregation with complicated chorale accompaniments.
29 October 2021
Nikolay Medvedev
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Nikolai Medtner, Pyotr Tchaikovsky
QTZ2143
From Robert Matthew Walker’s notes for this debut disc of Nikolay Medvedev: Interviewed by Musical America in 1921, Rachmaninoff was asked: 'would you agree that the heart should be the composer’s guide through the labyrinths of accepted forms?' 'Yes', he replied, 'the heart above all. Of course, the head must aid in the building of great musical structures, but by itself the head is impotent. If a composer is devoid of heart or hasn’t his heart in the right place, it is impossible for him to conceal his deficiency. This explains why Russian music is so superlatively great; it speaks so directly to the heart. That is what gives it its vital beauty, its universality of appeal, and thus all great art is universal and national in character—it were better to say local instead of national—at one and the same moment.'
RAUMKLANG
29 October 2021
Age of Passion, Lachrimæ-Tango for viols & bandoneon
John Dowland, Astor Piazzolla
Ensemble Art d′Echo
RK4101
On this CD, viola da gamba and bandoneon meet each other: the seventeenth and twentieth centuries alternately tell their tales, each in its very own language and form, to ultimately communicate directly with one another in the musical language of the twentyfirst century, and to open new dimensions in a contemporary composition. Full of color and multifaceted opulence, openness and diversity, the Age of Passion shows in a beguilingly sensual way how convincingly, despite all the differences, the various musical languages mesh when it has to do with the age-old human issue: passion.
REFERENCE RECORDINGS
19 November 2021
Lowell Liebermann: Frankenstein
San Francisco Ballet Orchestra / Martin West
RR-148
Frankenstein was recorded during live ballet performances at War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco by RR’s engineering team, comprised of GRAMMY®-winning engineer and Technical Director Keith O Johnson, and multi engineer Sean Martin. The album was produced by the team Marina A Ledin and Victor Ledin. The producers state, 'The live audience, the special effects, beautiful sets and incredible dancers allowed us to document an "event" rather than simply recording a musical score. The composer, Lowell Liebermann was with us at all of the performances, the orchestral musicians were collaborative throughout, and, of course, Martin West worked tirelessly with us at the performances as well as in the editing and mastering of the final resulting release.' This is the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra’s fifth release with Reference Recordings.
RETROSPECTIVE
5 November 2021
James P Johnson: Carolina Shout
RTS4388 (2 CDs)
James Price Johnson was the greatest pianist of the Harlem ‘stride’ school, a style he virtually invented. His early playing had an almost orchestral approach to the keyboard, showing ragtime, blues and classical influences within a muscular, percussive ‘stride’ sound. He taught Fats Waller and influenced Duke Ellington; in fact, he is only equalled by Earl Hines and Art Tatum as the supreme pianist in jazz history. Retrospective’s Carolina Shout (the title of his most famous piano composition) offers a rounded portrait on two well-filled CDs of the 'Father of Stride Piano', from examples of his piano rolls and pre-electrical recordings through to a late outing with Sidney Bechet in 1949, September Song. There are 17 scintillating solos from Snowy Morning Blues to his magnificent Liza of 1945. He is a sensitive accompanist to Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters among others. There are half a dozen wonderful trios and quartets, including those with clarinettists Omer Simeon and Rod Cless. Then a full score of great band items features a host of top jazz names, among them Henry 'Red' Allen, Vic Dickenson, Edmond Hall and Max Kaminsky. Johnson was also a fine composer, writing no fewer than 23 of the numbers on Carolina Shout. These include such familiar hits as The Charleston, If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight and Old-Fashioned Love. In fact, the whole exuberant collection vividly demonstrates that James P. Johnson’s pivotal role in jazz history is joyfully beyond question.
SIGNUM CLASSICS
1 November 2021
Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello
Concerti & Sinphonie Op 1 Libro Primo
La Serenissima / Adrian Chandler
SIGCD693
The music of Brescianello shows a strong debt to Vivaldi, but with more than a hint of the Germanic thoroughness he would have encountered during his long tenure as Oberkapellmeister of the Württemberg court during the middle of the eighteenth century. His surviving output is of an exceedingly high quality, as this new album makes abundantly clear.
1 November 2021
Christmas Carols with The King's Singers
SIGCD683
Twenty-five tracks covering everything from contemporary choral gems and folk songs through to well-loved carols, all liberally coated in that special King's Singers magic.
1 November 2021
An Elizabethan Christmas
Fretwork; Helen Charlston, mezzo-soprano
SIGCD680
A collection of works by William Byrd, Anthony Holborne, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Weelkes and Martin Peerson such as might have been heard in the newly Protestant England of Elizabeth I.
1 November 2021
Alexander Chapman Campbell: For the love of life & other works
Alexander Chapman Campbell, piano; Hannah Rarity, soprano; Gordon Bragg, violin; Brian Schiele, viola; Su-a Lee, cello; Rick Standley, double bass
SIGCD660
Described by Classic FM as 'refreshingly original', Alexander Chapman Campbell's music has become known for its striking beauty and originality. Here the composer's piano is joined by voice and four string players.
SOLO MUSICA
29 October 2021
Mozart made in Salzburg
Rafael Fingerlos, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Leopold Hager
SM377
A special, connecting and autobiographical element for this recording is the beautiful city of Salzburg, a place steeped in legend and music history, which became the hometown of all those involved in the production - from the composer to the conductor, the soloist to the orchestra musicians and the orchestra director - at least for an important period of their lives; in the actual as well as in the artistic sense. In addition to well-known repertoire, Rafael Fingerlos' recording also offers delightful trouvailles such as the rarely performed aria of Allazim from Zaide 'Nur mutig mein Herze! ', the little concert aria Un bacio di mano and even a veritable world premiere recording: the so rarely performed and extremely Mozartian-daredevil cabaletta of the Conte Aria, comprising fourteen (!) high Gs, which Mozart composed especially for the Conte singer in the Viennese Figaro premiere. Beautiful, virtuosic, wild and spectacular. The following applies to this recording: less is more. Less editing, always opting for natural and musical phrasing. And the aim is always to achieve a sound that is as close as possible to the live experience and that can also be reproduced in concert at any time. As authentic and above all as natural as possible.
29 October 2021
Spring Night
Lena Belkina, Natalia Sidorenko
Piotr Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninov
SM381
For Russian musicians, the romances of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov have always been a test of their artistic maturity. The very name of the genre carries a great many shades of meaning in Russian, denoting what at times are very varied forms of musical utterance. The vocal chamber works by these two composers exhibit the vast range in artistic expression of their creators. You listen to a recording by the young musicians Lena Belkina and Natalia Sidorenko. It is significant that the mezzo-soprano Lena Belkina - for whom Russian, with its awkward intonation, is a mother tongue – lives and works in Austria, Germany, Italy and France. This has given her an awareness that romances by great Russian composers are part of a worldwide musical heritage. There are several themes running through the romances on this disc. Spring: from tender green leaves that have barely sprouted to luxuriant blooms of flowering lilac, rushing streams and the burble of the nightingale’s song. Night: descending on us with its unexpected warmth, sometimes stifling, sometimes melancholy, giving rise even in the midst of a storm to cradle songs, serenades and dreams of a happy life, which often dissipate on awakening. Love: past and future, lamented and desired, ‘familiar to everyone and eternally new’, as one of the romances puts it.
SOMM RECORDINGS
12 November 2021
Haydn: Piano Sonatas, Volume IV
Leon McCawley, piano
SOMMCD 0643
Six Sonatas spanning the years 1766-80 are featured: the earliest the miniature First Sonata in G major, the latest the E flat major Sonata No.51, while Robert Matthew-Walker’s fascinating booklet note charts how deftly Haydn balanced the expectations of others and his own creative ambition. Composed with the enhanced voice of the then newly available fortepiano in mind, sibling Sonatas Nos.48 (C major) and 49 (C sharp minor) maintain a winning Classical poise even as one surprise after another see Haydn pushing the sonata form in new and unexpected directions.
17 September 2021
Lockdown Blues
Peter Dickinson, piano
SOMMCD 0644
A collection of appealing piano miniatures compiled and performed by Peter Dickinson to chase all your cares away. Lockdown Blues includes soothing masterpieces by Erik Satie (Trois Gnossiennes, Trois Gymnopédies), Francis Poulenc (Bal fantôme, Pastourelle) and Edward MacDowell (To a Wild Rose), alongside Eugene Goossens’ melancholic Lament for a Departed Doll and Samuel Barber’s valedictory Canzonetta. There is whimsy in George Gershwin’s Three-Quarter Blues (familiar to British audiences as the theme to radio and television’s After Henry) and Who Cares? from the musical Of Thee I Sing. Of interest are 12 iconic jazz tunes by Duke Ellington. Heard here in their original sheet-music versions, they are pure Ellington, the product of a sophisticated composer. Among featured classic songs are Solitude, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, Mood Indigo and It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got That Swing). In his introduction, renowned broadcaster and writer Humphrey Burton describes Lockdown Blues as ‘a delightful hour of discovery’, hailing the Ellington selections as ‘a real find that will surely be much anthologised long after Lockdown has been forgotten’. The disc is completed by three pieces by Dickinson – the titular Lockdown Blues, Freda’s Blues and Blue Rose, a take on MacDowell’s To a Wild Rose – together with Constant Lambert’s Elegiac Blues, Lennox Berkeley’s Prelude VI and John Cage’s Satie-influenced In a Landscape. Peter Dickinson’s career as a pianist has largely been in recitals, broadcasts and recordings with his sister, mezzo Meriel Dickinson, and he has worked with many other performers. Dickinson’s Paraphrase II is included on Nathan Williamson’s 20th-century British piano music collection, Colour and Light (SOMMCD 0196) and was praised by the British Music Society as ‘a Theme with six hugely contrasting variations exploring the outer edges of tonality in a brilliant, structurally refined way’.
STERLING RECORDS
5 November 2021
Great Classical Piano Experiences
Maria Kihlgren plays Scarlatti, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Reger, Debussy, Ravel, Falla, Albeniz, Schoeck, Honegger, Papandopulo, de Frumerie, Stenhammar, Grieg, Nielsen and Sibelius
CDX 5001 (4 CDs)
The pianist Maria Kihlgren studied at Göteborgs Musikhögskola and at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna gaining her diploma in 1979. She has performed in Sweden and several European countries, the USA and South America. n recent years she has also devoted herself to recordings. Her CD:s, with solo music for piano on the Sterling label, have been internationally acclaimed. All of them have a specific theme, with cover pictures by her father, the painter Carl Speglitz.
STRADIVARIUS
12 November 2021
Luca N Stradivari
Il Re Pazzo
Luca N Stradivari, Luca Fanfoni, Quartetto Bazzini
STR37175
Luca N Stradivari (born 1993) is a composer and pianist of his own music. After he graduated at the University of Nottingham, he started to hold composition seminars and concerts in China since 2018. His music was published by the publishing Dutch house of contemporary classical music DoNeMus (Documentatiecentrum Nederlandse Muziek).
12 November 2021
Ceci n’est pas une flûte
Laura Faoro, Massimo Marchi
STR37205
Ceci n’est pas une flûte is a Magritte-like calembour, representing the desire, with this CD, to propose a synaesthetic listening experience within a game of sound mirages, illusions and allu-sions. We pursued this intriguing goal from the project’s conception, starting from the idea that a CD recording implies the added value of being a sort of music microscopy, by using a rich and accurate miking together with a fine sound processing, where both the electronic tracks and the ambience itself could be treated as chamber music partners of the flute. The recording session was meant to deliver the composition with a surgical rendition that would have been impossible in a live performance, within an aesthetical frame that is not an end in itself but wants to deliver the polysemy of the contemporary language at its best, where nothing is ever as it seems. In fact, while deconstructing every convention about music, the fantasy of contemporary composers throughout the last century has taken over the sound of the flute, giving it a brand new creative and syncretic power. Breaking the chronological limits and reconnecting the timeline extremities, the flute is once again a magic stick recovering a shamanic allure from the dawn of time, now steeped in the expressive and technological possibilities of modern times.
SWEDISH SOCIETY
5 November 2021
Poesis
Örjan Fahlström
Norrbotten Big Band, Erik Westberg Ensemble, Örjan Fahlström, Erik Westberg
SCD1181
This work is based on texts that in various ways have a connection with the northern part of Scandinavia. In my composing, metaphors are always of major importance, but especially so when I was working on Poesis. The texts are a catalyst and the very driving force in the artistic creative process and a fundamental element in all sections of the work. My intention has been to give form to the musical narrative by means of the choir and the human voice from the perspective of the jazz orchestra´s immense musical power. The music moves between the soft and subtle appeal and free improvisation, letting the orchestra´s all-embracing mass of sound occasionally break out into contradictory rhetoric. Poesis was composed in 2017 on commission by the Norrbotten Big Band, the Bohuslan Big Band and the Swedish Arts Council. In this work Erik Westberg has refined the music through his inimitable ability to navigate between subtle choral sonorities and a mature artistic interaction in the context of jazz. It is with considerable modesty, and at the same time elation, that I present this musical work together with Erik Westberg, the Norrbotten Big Band and the Erik Westberg Vocal Ensemble.
TACTUS
5 November 2021
La leggenda di Vittore e Corona - nei codici del medioevo
InUnum ensemble, Caterina Chiarcos, Elena Modena, Anna Passarini, Ilario Gregoletto
TC 220002
The recording of 'La Leggenda di Vittore e Corona' focuses on the musical-liturgical repertoire that the ancient Venetian medieval tradition named after the two proto-martyrs. The source (Antifonario Marciano, Archivio di Stato di Venezia, 14th century) sings in the form of the minor liturgy of the Vespers the different moments of the Passio involving Vittore until he joined Corona in the martyrdom, reaching eternal glory. Far from representing only a local cult, the legend of Vittore and Corona is fully part of the history of Christianity and, in particular, of the defenseless yet determined struggle for the freedom of faith, thought and conscience. The style between the Gregorian and the Aquileian rite of the Marcian vespers (first performance in modern times) is very well accompanied by that of the polyphonic pieces taken from European codes of the same period, underlining the salient moments of the legend; the original alternation of the voices and medieval instruments between concordant monody and polyphonic dialogue connotes the performance of the InUnum Ensemble enhancing the narrative.
5 November 2021
Raffaele Bellafronte
Guitar Works 2021
Davide Di Ienno, Mario Stefano Pietrodarchi, Filippo Lattanzi, Tiziano Palladino, Luca Marziali
TC 960204
After the first Guitar Works (Tactus TC 960203) album, the production dedicated to the guitar by composer Raffaele Bellafronte continues on this new CD by exploring new paths, from the phonic point of view combining the six strings to classical and less usual instruments, and through the writing where the author refers to both classical and popular forms. In this world premiere recording, Davide Di Ienno's guitar plays the role of soloist in two tracks, then confronting himself in chamber dialogues with the bandoneon, violin, marimba and mandolin in a series of compositions that actively contribute to this challenge that throughout the twentieth century left us a lot of precious music.
5 November 2021
Domenico Paradisi
Sonate per clavicembalo, 1754
Marco Molaschi
TC 701690 (2 CDs)
The repertoire included in this recording by Marco Molaschi represents an important evidence in the panorama of harpsichord music of the eighteenth century. It was precisely as a harpsichord and singing teacher that Paradisi met his success in London, where he moved after his studies in his native Naples. Charles Burney - an important historian of English music - called him 'the great master of the harpsichord'. The sonatas in the collection - dedicated to King George II of England - were published in 1754, precisely in the composer’s London period and contributed significantly to affirming his fame as a virtuoso and composer of keyboard music.
TALISMAN
1 December 2021
David Yardley: The Lost Codex of Avalon
This unique album features some of Australia's finest musicians from The Song Company, the Sydney Chamber Choir, instrumentalists Pastance and percussionist Jess Ciampa, also featuring a guest contribution by renowned medieval organist, Cristina Alís Raurich. It conjures the idea of lost music of the mythic isle of Avalon, from Arthurian legend. It journeys through long-forgotten medieval sacred and secular texts, whose music from their own time has not survived, including three lost medieval Christmas carols. It also includes musical settings of evocative contemporary poetry, including by award-winning poet Anne Casey. For David Yardley, music is not the warm blanket, the quiet cows in the meadow. Nor is it arcane sophistry, braying from the ivory tower. It is the mythic sword of flames. It is the mournful tolling bell, the impenetrable blackness of the blasted abyss. It is soaring cold peaks and the mystical Elven vale. It is lightning and sulphur, elation and sorrow, dark emerald and dungeon stone.
TOCCATA CLASSICS
5 November 2021
Georg Philipp Telemann
Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, Vol 7
Bergen Barokk
TOCC 0182
This is the seventh CD in the first complete recording of the 72 cantatas in Georg Philipp Telemann’s collection Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, published in Hamburg in 1726 – the first complete set of cantatas for the liturgical year to appear in print. The cantatas are designated for voice, an obligato instrument (recorder, violin, transverse flute or oboe) and basso continuo, and generally take the form of two da capo arias with an intervening recitative. Although intended for worship, both public and private, Telemann’s cantatas are a masterly blend of tunefulness with skilled counterpoint and vocal and instrumental virtuosity.
5 November 2021
Henri Hardouin
Complete Four-Part a cappella Masses, Vol 2
St Martin’s Chamber Choir / Timothy J Krueger
TOCC 0423
Henri Hardouin (1727–1808) was a chorister in Rheims Cathedral, rising swiftly through the ranks to become maître de chapelle – until the French Revolution disbanded religious establishments. As a priest he was in potential danger and seems to have gone into hiding until, in 1794, the death of Robespierre allowed him to resume his duties. Hardouin’s six four-part masses, published in 1772, are unusual for their time in being acappella, and they enjoyed wide circulation in pre-Revolutionary France. Since then they have been roundly neglected – an omission this first complete recording intends to rectify.
5 November 2021
Richard Flury
Die helle Nacht - opera in two acts
Julia Sophie Wagner, Stephanie Bühlmann, Magnus Vigilius, Eric Stoklossa, Daniel Ochoa, Oğulcan Yılmaz, Gärtnerplatz Kammerchor, Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, Paul Mann
TOCC 0580
Die helle Nacht (‘The Bright Night‘), the second opera by the Swiss composer Richard Flury (1896–1967), enjoyed only a single radio broadcast in 1935, the year of its completion, and then remained unheard until this recording. It is revealed as a passionate mixture of sexual jealousy, obsession and murderous revenge, until love and reason ultimately prevail. Flury responded with some of his most ardent music, poised between the late Romanticism of Richard Strauss and occasional more modernist touches that reveal an admiration for Alban Berg – with a further link to Vienna in Flury’s fondness for waltz rhythms.
5 November 2021
William Beaton Moonie
Chamber and Instrumental Music, Vol 1: Music for Solo Piano
Christopher Guild
TOCC 0602
The music of the Edinburgh composer William Beaton Moonie (1883–1961) is as good as unknown. This first ever album devoted to his piano music reveals a figure downstream from Schumann, Brahms and Grieg, writing in a conservative Romantic idiom coloured by echoes of the folk-music of his native Scotland. Many of these pieces, indeed, are concerned to evoke images of the Scottish countryside or suggest aspects of Scottish history.
TOCCATA NEXT
29 October 2021
Marc Migó, Joan Manén
Catalan Concertinos and Fantasías
Daniel Blanch, Sergi Pacheco, Kalina Macuta, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Volodymyr Sirenko
TOCN 0010
Most of the works by the two Catalan composers heard here – Joan Manén and Marc Migó – use material from their folk tradition, making the music fresh, immediate and direct, rather in the manner of Manuel de Falla. But there is also a loose connection with Vienna: Manén’s Violin ‘Concertino’ – an unusually modest label for a full-scale concerto – is something of a cousin to the Korngold Concerto; and Migó’s poignant Epitafi a Hans Rott was written in memory of a short-lived Austrian composer who was a close friend of Mahler.
29 October 2021
Three Centuries of Russian Viola Sonatas
Revol Bunin, Mikhail Glinka, Vissarion Shebalin, Ivan Sokolov
Basil Vendryes, William David
TOCN 0014
The Russian viola sonata is a rare bird, not least because the instrument itself was frowned upon by the Soviet authorities, and as a result Russian music for the viola has a rather patchy history. It begins in earnest in 1931, when the 1825 Sonata by Mikhail Glinka, ‘the father of Russian music’, was reconstructed from his sketches by Vadim Borisovsky, ‘the father of the Russian viola’. Thereafter, musicians and composers worked together to expand the repertoire. The relationship between the composer Revol Bunin and the violist Rudolf Barshai resulted in a sonata of 1955 which deserves wider currency. Although half a century apart, the Shebalin and Sokolov sonatas have something unusual in common: both were created as part of a tryptich, alongside sonatas for violin and cello. All four composers knew how to make the viola sing – though this lyricism is often animated by moments of drama and excitement.
VISION OF SOUND
5 November 2021
Simon Vincent: Stirfry
Colin Brady, Dave Pullin, Simon Vincent
VOSCD-006
This is a very special release indeed on Vision Of Sound Records. STIRFRY (1993-1996) was an experimental electro/acoustic trio based in Norwich that constantly challenged many of the accepted rules and boundaries of free, improvised music-making at that time by way of its openness to sampling, melody and rhythm just as much as more experimental approaches to sound. It featured Colin Brady (percussion), Dave Pullin (soprano and sopranino saxophones) and Simon Vincent (piano, synthesizer and live electronics), and in its brief yet intense history surprised audiences at some of the UK's leading improvised music events in Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, London and of course Norwich itself. This studio recording made in 1995 allows the listener a unique and focused window into the pacing, energy and above all detail of just some of the vast canvas of STIRFRY's soundworld. Audiences may already have been aware of both Dave Pullin's and my experimental output, however many would not have heard Colin Brady in this context as often as they should have, and all three of us were delighted to have had the chance not only to listen once more to these recordings at the beginning of this year, but also to decide that we should like to make them available.
WERGO
29 October 2021
Matthias Krüger
ain’t nuthin’ but fairy dust
Ensemble Ascolta, Ensemble BRuCH, WDR Sinfonieorchester, Ensemble Inverspace, Nicholas Kok, Elena Schwarz
WER 64352
On his portrait recording Matthias Krüger searches for truth and identity. In his works, musical and non-musical elements and quotations fuse into a steady stream. This results in a seemingly never ending musical network of associations. The composer refers likewise to classical music, old philosophy and pop culture. According to booklet author Bastian Zimmermann: 'In Krüger’s music, nothing is safe from becoming the beginning or the end of a musical idea'.
Posted 2 November 2021 by Keith Bramich
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