News from around the world

October 2022 New Releases

Browse a selection of new recordings

 

Here is our list of new releases, as of 1 October 2022, ordered by release date.

Our regular writers will receive an email about this list, and will be asked to choose which items they would like to review. If you have submitted details of an album and it is chosen for review, we will request a review copy from you, your label or its UK distributor.

The list 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.

Unless otherwise specified, each item is a single CD.

Extra information about some new releases can also be found here.

 

2 DECEMBER 2022

Harriet Adie: Christmastide
Harriet Adie, harp
MPR (Mike Purton Recording) MPR113
Release: 2 December 2022
British classical harpist and composer Harriet Adie plays her own unique compositions of traditional carols. Christmastide is a collection of traditional Christmas carols which Adie has arranged for solo pedal harp.


18 NOVEMBER 2022

La Notte: Concertos & Pastorales for Christmas Night
Bojan Čičić (violin) / Illyria Consort
Delphian Records DCD34278
Release: 18 November 2022
Bojan Čičić - the man whose fingers never rest - brings us a feast of 17th-century musical styles from Catholic Europe - a time when the introduction of 'rustic' effects into instrumental music changed the sound of Christmas forever. Brimming with joy and energy, the Illyria Consort's unusual combination of instruments in this recording bring to mind the vivid theatricality of shepherds and their milieu. With a number of premiere recordings - including Vivaldi's Concerto 'Il riposo per il santissimo Natale' in a new reconstructed version - we hope it's a refreshing instrumental Christmas album that listeners will reach for every year.

No Choice But Love: Songs of the LGBTQ+ Community
Eric Ferring, tenor; Madeline Slettedahl, piano
Lexicon Classics
Release: 18 November 2022
A double album highlighting diverse LGBTQIA+ stories with works by Ben Moore, Manuel de Falla, Jake Heggie, Francis Poulenc, Ethel Smyth, Jennifer Higdon, Willie Alexander III, Mari Esabel Valverde, Benjamin Britten and Ricky Ian Gordon. The two-CD length album seeks to highlight diverse LGBTQIA+ voices and perspectives, through revelatory performances of important songs by some of today's leading composers, including the world premiere recording of Ben Moore's Love Remained in a new version for tenor, and the commissioned title work, No Choice but Love; Manuel de Falla's Preludios and Oración de las madres que tienen a sus hijos en brazos; Jake Heggie's Friendly Persuasions; Poulenc's Tel jour, telle nuit; Ethel Smyth's On the Road; Jennifer Higdon's Lilacs; the world premiere recordings of Willie Alexander III's Sure On This Shining Night and Mari Esabel Valverde's To digte af Tove Ditlevsen; Benjamin Britten's Canticle I; and Ricky Ian Gordon's Prayer and Joy. Ferring performs a recital of these works at his alma mater, Drake University, as part of their acclaimed Jordan Concert Series on 14 October 2022. Ferring expresses, 'As members of that community, Madeline and I wanted to pay homage to the beautiful, difficult history of the LGBT+ community within the classical music world by featuring the many talented living and passed LGBT+ composers. We believe that music is a means of expression, an alternative lens through which to interpret reality, and a healing force. We know that we must use our voices to be advocates for those whose voices are ignored or can't be heard. We as artists must utilize our gifts to be catalysts for change, empowering our networks, and inspiring them to do what they never thought possible.'

Music for Lady Louise - Blow, Purcell, Lully, Locke
Ensemble Leviathan / Lucile Tessier
harmonia mundi HMN916119
Release: 18 November 2022
Louise de Penancoët de Keroualle (Lady Louise), a spy in the pay of Louis XIV, was the mistress of Charles II. Charged with keeping England under the influence of the Sun King, she forged close links between musicians on either side of the Channel. These political intentions generated a repertory as rich and brilliant as it was expressive. It is a genuine rediscovery that we owe to Ensemble Leviathan and Lucile Tessier.

Schubert: Schwanengesang
Andrè Schuen, Daniel Heide
Deutsche Grammophon 00028948633135
Release: 18 November 2022
After receiving huge praise for his debut album on Deutsche Grammophon, baritone Andrè Schuen continues his Schubert journey. Schubert's enigmatic final collection of songs, Schwanengesang, is the subject of Andrè Schuen and his longstanding accompanist Daniel Heide's second release for DG. Schuen calls Schwanengesang 'my greatest love among the Schubert lieder. Especially the Heine settings; they move me the most!'  His admiration for the cycle dates back to a time before he had even become a professional singer: 'It's one of the first lied compositions I got to know. I remember a recording with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau that I played over and over again.'

Beethoven - Schumann - Franck
Renaud Capuçon, violin; Martha Argerich, piano
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 18 November 2022
Pianist Martha Argerich joined violinist Renaud Capuçon on stage for a recital at the Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival in April 2022, and their extraordinary rapport was evident in a performance dedicated to their friend and pianist colleague, Nicholas Angelich, who had passed away just days earlier. Having first met over thirty years ago, when he was a young violinist and she was already a legendary pianist, Capuçon and Argerich are now a well-established duo. They know one another so well that, whenever they go out on stage, 'there is no fear', says Capuçon. 'It's as if we just hold hands and leap.' Captured live, their program included three major works for violin and piano, all in the key of A: Schumann's Sonata No 1 Op 105, Beethoven's Sonata No 9 Op 47, 'Kreutzer' and Franck's Sonata.

 

11 NOVEMBER 2022

Matthew Kaner: Chamber Music
Mark Simpson, Guy Johnston, Benjamin Baker & Daniel Lebhardt, Goldfield Ensemble
Delphian Records DCD34231
Release: 11 November 2022
Storytelling and making – craft and narrative, and the ways in which they are both enabled and complicated by the presence of music – lie at the heart of Matthew Kaner's compositional world, as revealed on this debut album devoted to his work. Extended solo works for basset clarinet and for cello are presented by stellar soloists Mark Simpson and Guy Johnson respectively. Violin-and-piano duo Benjamin Baker and Daniel Lebhardt, fresh from their triumphant Delphian debut '1942': Prokofiev – Copland – Poulenc, are joined by cellist Matthias Balzat in Kaner's evocative and playful Piano Trio, while clarinettist Kate Romano leads the Goldfield Ensemble in a nocturnal diptych for clarinet quintet.

Venables, Howells: Requiem
Choir of Merton College, Oxford / Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia / Benjamin Nicholas
Delphian Records DCD34252
Release: 11 November 2022
Conductor Benjamin Nicholas draws parallels between the familiar English choral sound of Howells and that of contemporary composer Ian Venables. Venables' Requiem has already been warmly received by critics in a 2020 recording with just organ accompaniment. Now, Nicholas and his Merton College choir present it in an orchestrated version made specially for this recording. The Howells items here are also premiere recordings: new instrumental accompaniments to two of his Four Anthems, in arrangements by Howells scholars Howard Eckdahl and Jonathan Clinch, illuminate and intensify his rich choral writing like back-lighting on a stained-glass window, and they are complemented by the first recording of Howells' original orchestration of The House of the Mind – a chance to hear one of his major underperformed works, introspective yet dramatic.

Between Light & Shadows
Isiah Rizzo
Azul Music AMDA1785
Release: 11 November 2022
Presenting a style that adopts simple and minimalist performances, the Brazilian composer and pianist reaches his second album with original instrumental music.

Stravinsky: Orchestral Works - Symphony in C; Symphony in Three Movements; Divertimento; Circus Polka; Greeting Prelude
BBC Philharmonic / Andrew Davis
Chandos Records CHSA 5315
Release: 11 November 2022
Andrew Davis directs the BBC Philharmonic in this all-Stravinsky programme, in which the Symphony in C and Symphony in Three Movements feature alongside the Divertimento, Greeting Prelude, and Circus Polka.

My Nirvana
Redi Hasa, cello
Decca Records 4802788
Release: 11 November 2022
Cellist Redi Hasa reworks the music of the great band who inspired him. When Tirana heard Nirvana, the country was suffering the consequences of civil war. The mighty magnet of 'Nevermind' pulled out all the good iron from the ruins of a regime that had been banning Western music for half a century. Many years have passed since then, and now Redi comes up playing 'his' Nirvana, turning their barbed wire melodies into a majestically human sound.

Johannes Brahms: Complete Liebeslieder Walzer, Op 52 & 65; Hungarian Dances
RIAS Kammerchor Berlin / Justin Doyle, Angela Gassenhuber & Philip Mayers, piano
harmonia mundi HMM902616
Release: 11 November 2022
In these love songs in waltz style for chorus or solo voices accompanied by piano four hands, Brahms freely indulged his taste for Viennese folk music. The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin instils a wonderful inner life in these musical landscapes, sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, punctuated here by a selection from the Hungarian Dances – also eminently popular in their inspiration.

Peter Gregson
Quartets: One – Four
Deutsche Grammophon 500083 (2 CDs)
Release: 11 November 2022
This deluxe release follows the success of Peter Gregson's Quartets 1 & 2 and features the newly released Quartets 3 & 4 from the renowned composer and cellist.

Eventless Plot - Memory Loss
Moving Furniture Records MFRC006
Release: 11 November 2022
With Memory Loss we welcome the Greek contemporary band Eventless Plot to the contemporary series. On this album they present work inspired by how music can help people struggling with Alzheimer's disease in retrieving memories, but also create new ones.

Frans de Waard & Martijn Comes - Equal Weights
Moving Furniture Records MFR102
Release: 11 November 2022
Equal Weights is the second release by Frans de Waard & Martijn Comes. Despite the exquisite corpse approach, the duo created a strong cohesive work. The CD comes in a beautiful designed art book from the hand of Dutch artist Bas Mantel.

Matthew Locke: The Little Consort
Fretwork
Signum Records SIGCD728
Release: 11 November 2022
The viol consort Fretwork return for the second instalment of their cycle of works by the English Baroque composer Matthew Locke. He was born 400 years ago in 1622, and whilst he is often ranked as one of England's finest composers, Locke's music remains neglected. But in Fretwork's series of recordings his forceful musical personality and luxuriant technique shine through. Accompanying Fretwork on continuo are David Miller (archlute and theorbo) and Silas Wollston (harpsichord). The cover of the album bears an inscription in the walls by the choir stall of Exeter Cathedral, thought to have been carved by the composer during his time as a member of the choir there.

Forza Azzurri! Music by Dall'Abaco, Brescianello, Sammartini, Vivaldi and Zavateri
La Serenissima / Adrian Chandler
Signum Records SIGCD705
Release: 11 November 2022
Looking at the dearth of Italian Baroque instrumental music on record today, one could be forgiven for thinking that Vivaldi faced little competition during his lifetime. But in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Many other composers fulfilled the demands of the regional courts and churches throughout Italy. On this disc, early-music ensemble La Serenissima perform works by Lorenzo Gaetano Zavateri, Giuseppe Sammartini, Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco and Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello, alongside works by Vivaldi.

 

4 NOVEMBER 2022

Hélène de Montgeroult (1764-1836)
31 études from the Cours complet pour l'enseignement du fortepiano
Clare Hammond, piano
BIS Records BIS 2603
Release: 4 November 2022
Clare Hammond releases her sixth disc for BIS Records with études by visionary composer Hélène de Montgeroult (1764-1836). Eight years younger than Mozart, Montgeroult pioneered a Romantic style that was decades ahead of her time. She was renowned as one of the greatest improvisers in Europe and has been described as 'the missing link between Mozart and Chopin'. Neglected because of her gender, it is only recently that her music has been revived. Born into an aristocratic family, Montgeroult fled France during the Revolution and was involved with exiled political factions in the UK. On her return, she joined a diplomatic envoy to Naples, to be abducted by Austrian soldiers en route and imprisoned. She regained her freedom, but was then put on trial by the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror. Montgeroult only managed to avoid execution by improvising a set of variations on the Marseillaise that moved the judges to tears. Montgeroult wrote these études between 1788 and 1812, initially for her pupil Johann Baptist Cramer. Remarkably, they anticipate stylistic advances we associate more closely with the music of Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, and even Brahms. One of the first composers to appreciate the artistic potential of the étude, Montgeroult paved the way for the proliferation of concert études by the Romantic generation. Clare says 'when I first encountered these études I was astounded. Not only are they of similar quality to music by Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann, they are stylistically so advanced as to call into question where the 'classical' and 'romantic' periods fall. I could not believe that she had written such superb and prescient music and yet I had never heard of her.'

Mozart: Duos for Violin and Viola, K 423-424; Pleyel: Three Grand Duets for Violin and Viola Op 69 No 1, 2 and 3
Claudio Cruz, Emmanuele Baldini
Azul Music AMDA1781
Release: 4 November 2022
Two of the greatest artists of the Brazilian classical music scene, in prodigious interpretations of pieces written for violin and viola.

Poulenc: Orchestral Works
BBC Concert Orchestra / Bramwell Tovey
Chandos Records
Release: 4 November 2022
Bramwell Tovey and the BBC Concert Orchestra revel in the charm, wit, and humour of some of Poulenc's finest orchestral pieces. Sadly, this proved to be Bramwell Tovey's final recording, and the album is dedicated to his memory.

Rachmaninov Symphony No 2 arranged for two pianos
Simon Callaghan and Hiroaki Takenouchi
Nimbus Records NI8110
Release: 4 November 2022
'There is a tradition of composers arranging their own music for two pianos  (Rachmaninoff did a lot), however he seems not to have arranged this particular Symphony Op 27 for two pianos! As it's such great music, we decided to do it ourselves.' - Hiro Takenouchi and Simon Callaghan

Schumann: Symphonies Nos 1-4
Staatskapelle Berlin / Daniel Barenboim
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 4 November 2022
A couple of years after Daniel Barenboim's successful complete Brahms Symphonies with the Staatskapelle Berlin, he now presents a live recording of the four Schumann Symphonies with this orchestra recorded live in concerts in Berlin's world-famous Philharmonie and in the Staatsoper. The 2-CD and Blu-ray audio set is the only new release from Barenboim around his 80th birthday.

BACH: The Art of Life (Deluxe Edition)
Daniil Trifonov
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 4 November 2022
Daniil Trifonov's latest album, BACH: The Art of Life, explores the scientific, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of Johann Sebastian Bach's cosmos. This Deluxe Edition includes the 2-CD BACH: The Art of Life plus an exclusive Blu-ray recorded live at the legendary Berlin Philharmonie recital in October 2021.

Claude Debussy: La Mer, Première Suite d'Orchestre
Les Siècles / François-Xavier Roth
harmonia mundi HMM905369
Release: 4 November 2022
La Mer is one of Debussy's most universally admired orchestral works. By contrast, his Première Suite pour orchestre was lost for more than a century, and came as a complete discovery in 2013 when Les Siècles made the world premiere recording, played on instruments of the period. Now here is a brand-new remastering.

Haydn: Piano Works Volumes 1 & 2
Peter Donohoe
Signum Records SIGCD726
Release: 4 November 2022
Since his success as joint winner of the 1982 International Tchaikovsky Competition, Peter Donohoe has gained international renown as one of the foremost pianists of our time. His musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique have won widespread critical acclaim.

Walton: String Quartet in A minor and Shostakovich: String Quartet No 3 in F, Op 73
Albion Quartet
Signum Records SIGCD727
Release: 4 November 2022
The concept of this album is to juxtapose two string quartets written in the same year in the immediate aftermath of war (1946) by composers inhabiting two entirely different social and political worlds: Walton in Britain and Shostakovich in the Soviet Union. Formed in 2016, the Albion Quartet comprises four of the UK's best young string players. Recent engagements include performances at the Louvre, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Hay Festival in the UK.

 


1 NOVEMBER 2022

Bogdanović: Complete 48 Seasonal Preludes
Angelo Marchese, guitar
Brilliant Classics 96244 (2 CDs)
Release: 1 November 2022
The Italian guitarist Angelo Marchese introduced the music of the Serbian-US composer Dušan Bogdanović to the Brilliant Classics catalogue in 2015 with an album of sonatas, bagatelles, studies and dances (95194). His second recording dedicated to Bogdanović concentrates on a single collection, the 48 Seasonal Preludes which gradually took shape over several years as a fusion of classical, jazz, and ethnic styles. Born in Belgrade in 1955, long resident in the US, the guitarist-composer Dušan Bogdanović studied with Ginastera, among others, and has been commissioned by leading guitarists and major performing arts groups across the US. He has held teaching positions at conservatoires in Belgrade, San Francisco and presently Geneva, performed with both classical and jazz ensembles and made many albums both of his own music and that of his contemporaries. Structured in four sets of twelve, one set for each season, the 48 Seasonal Preludes explore a middle ground between improvisation and composition. The preludes influenced by blues include the Autumn Prelude No.4, written in memory of the guitarist Roland Dyens, and Winter Prelude No.9, after Charlie Mingus's Goodbye Pork Pie Hat. Autumn Preludes No.3 and No.9 are in a fusion style reminiscent of Weather Report. The folk music of Bogdanović's Balkan homelands surfaces in other preludes, but so does Japanese modal harmony, and the language of Satie, Debussy, Rodrigo and Scriabin, whether in direct quotation or in homage to their musical worlds. Spring Prelude No.8 is a fugue based on the theme of the Art of Fugue by J. S. Bach. There's even a reference to Monty Norman's James Bond theme buried within the collection. According to Guitar magazine, Angelo Marchese is 'a profound performer of supreme technical mastery.' He has immersed himself in Bogdanović's musical world in order to add this compelling volume to the ever-expanding Brilliant Classics library of guitar music.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Greeting Cards
Cristiano Porqueddu, guitar
Brilliant Classics 96051 (2 CDs)
Release: 1 November 2022
Between 1953 and 1967, Mario Castelnuovo- Tedesco (1895–1968) wrote 53 works for various instrumental ensembles that were collected together as Opus 170 and given the title Greeting Cards. Castelnuovo-Tedesco described them as 'alphabetic pieces': he derived their musical themes derived from ascending and descending chromatic scales, in which each note is combined with a letter of the alphabet. On this new album, Cristiano Porqueddu plays the 21 Greeting Cards composed for the guitar. They are small, unexpected homages that Castelnuovo-Tedesco liked to give his friends, to musicians who played his works, to his pupils and occasionally also to people who were not musicians. He later declared them to be minor works, but each of them is filled with affection, regardless of the professional status of the subject. In this imaginary gallery there are thus portrayals of legendary musicians such as Jascha Heifetz and Andrés Segovia alongside several of his students, including André Previn, Christopher Parkening and Eugene Robin Escovado. Castelnuovo-Tedesco made each Greeting Card a vivid portrait of the dedicatee, usually by combining rhythms and atmospheres that reflected nationality, as with the Tonadilla sul nome di Andrés Segovia or the Canción venezolana sul nome di Alirio Díaz. However, there are also more abstract references, such as the Rondel on the name of Siegfried Behrend (No.6) or evocations generated by the name itself: the Fantasia sul nome di Henry e Ronald Purcell (No.38), for instance, or the Volo d'Angeli sul nome di Angelo Gilardino (No.47). What they all have in common is a depth of feeling that transcends their superficial status as 'occasional' pieces. The Sardinian guitarist Cristiano Porqueddu has become known as a major interpreter of modern guitar music, not least thanks to his extensive catalogue of recordings on Brilliant Classics. This includes his own music – solo and concertos – as well as albums dedicated to his teacher Angelo Gilardino and wide-ranging collections of works by European and American composers, many of which were composed especially for him.

J S Bach: Partitas BWV 825-830
Wolfgang Rübsam, lute-harpsichord
Brilliant Classics 96464 (2 CDs)
Release: 1 November 2022
Playwright Luise Gottsched, née Kulmus, in 1732 wrote a letter to her future husband, the writer Johann Christoph Gottsched: 'The keyboard pieces sent over by Bach... are as difficult as they are beautiful. Even after playing them ten times, they still seem new to me.' A few years later polymath and Bach's former pupil Lorenz Christoph Mizler offered the following advice regarding these Clavier-Übung I partitas: 'Anyone who has difficulties with keyboard fingering will find it difficult to learn the keyboard pieces written by the famous Mr Bach in Leipzig'. The name Sinfonia for the first movement in the Partita in C minor is redolent of opening cantata movements and the dotted rhythm of a French overture. The Grave adagio however, is not followed by the fugal fast section you would expect here. This approach was carried out more consistently and stylistically in the Partita in D major, although there the fast section approaches the form of a concerto. Instead, the Grave adagio of the Partita in C minor is followed by a sonata-like movement with an arabesque effect in the upper voice, followed by a lively fugato. As a result, the piece appears in three parts. In contrast, the opening Fantasia in the Partita in A minor is more akin to an invention, showing similarities with the opening section of the second English Suite of the same key. Moreover, since the 17th century, the distinction between the terms 'Praeludium' and 'Praeambulum' was insignificant. Yet Bach's delicately sculpted Praeludium in the B flat major Partita, is stylistically very different from the concerto-like Praeambulum of the Partita in G major. Lastly, the Toccata in the Partita in E minor offers rhapsodic-improvisatory sections framing a fugue after the style of Froberg, whose works for keyboard instruments must have been known to Bach. The original dance movement went through a functional transformation to become a character work of sorts; in this way, Bach made one of the first contributions to this later extremely popular style of keyboard music. Wolfgang Rübsam, an experienced and internationally renowned Bach interpreter, contrived to record all the Partitas on the lute- harpsichord. This was inspired by an estate inventory of 1750, which shows Bach owned at least two lute-harpsichords. The suggestion proved to be especially fortunate and is still a rarity among today's publications. For the Partita movements written in the 'style luthé', such as the Allemande of the Partita in B flat major, the lute-harpsichord is perfect. The poetic tone of the creation from Keith Hill's studio, sonorous and noble in the lower registers and brilliant in the higher registers, enters into an almost perfect synthesis with Rübsam's rhetorically sensitive playing, which is characterised by great ornamental and improvisational ingenuity. The selected temperament of Vallotti, with its tuning system approaching pure thirds, does the rest.

Bartolomeo Campagnoli: 41 Caprices for Viola Op 22, arranged for Viola & Piano by
Carl Albert Tottmann
Marco Misciagna, Marco Ciannella
Brilliant Classics 96551 (2 CDs)
Release: 1 November 2022
The considerable fame that Bartolomeo Campagnoli (1751–1827) achieved during his own lifetime was largely due to his contribution to violin studies. The 41 Caprices he wrote for viola and the 7 Divertimenti for solo violin are still in use today. Campagnoli's career as a concert performer began in Rome in 1775, continuing in a long tour of the courts of the capital cities of Europe. In 1797 he was made concert director and first violin at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, a post that he held until 1818, although he also maintained his contacts with the most advanced and influential cultural centres of Europe. He thus enjoyed a florid exchange with some of the most famous teachers and Nevertheless, there is an unmistakably composers of the time, in particular with Cherubini and Kreutzer. The idea that 'true expression depends on the sound, intonation, movement, taste and aplomb of the measure' was a constant tenet with Campagnoli, as was his insistence on the need to understand clearly the character of each piece in order to appreciate to the full the composer's intentions. All this required respect for the exact point in which embellishments have to be added (without exceeding), because: 'nothing is more beautiful and moving than what is simple'. Karl Albert Tottmann (1837–1917) was a German musician and composer. Leaving the Leipzig Conservatory, he entered as first violin of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and in 1868 he was named director of the Vieux Théâtre Orchestra, remaining in this role until the end of 1872. Campagnoli's 41 Caprices for viola were published in Leipzig around 1815, with Tottmann later adding a piano accompaniment. Capriccio No.17, a theme with variations in E minor, is the most musical and consistent of the collection and is particularly suitable for a performance as a concert piece; an alternative piano accompaniment for this caprice was later created and published by Grażyna Bacewicz. The 41 Caprices are the most important and well-known compositions by Campagnoli and one of the most important collections of violistic teaching. The studies deal with a wide category of technical issues for the left hand and for the bow, covering the problems of the solo, chamber and orchestral repertoire of the time, to the point of being defined as the 'Kreutzer-Fiorillo' of the viola. In studies Nos. 19 and 20 we find scales and arpeggios, in No.7 the slurred staccato. Octaves and other intervals, string jumps and arpeggios characterise Nos. 16, 17, 37; and the thirds and sixths are dealt with in Study No.2. The study of the cantabile is also very important, and in numerous caprices the rapid and technical part is preceded by a slow introduction which involves much legato and double chords (Nos. 1, 2, 24, 34). Many of the caprices end on the dominant, and this allows in many cases an immediate harmonic connection between one capriccio and the next.

Franco Margola: Music for Violin, Piano & Orchestra
Davide Alogna, violin; Costantino Catena, piano; Orchestra sinfonica di Milano / Pietro Borgonovo
Brilliant Classics 96652
Release: 1 November 2022
Franco Margola (1908–1992) had an unwavering and authentic love for the violin, lasting throughout his career and artistic development. This recording showcases the versatility of the Brescian composer and the evolution of his musical thought over his lifetime. Often resisting the fashions of his time, the composer balanced tradition and modernism. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Margola became intolerant of harsh and violent sounds and so preferred writing more relaxing pieces. Kinderkonzert No.2 is a work for violin and orchestra (1954). In the first movement, the writing is fluid and melodious. Only during the cadenza does the atmosphere become more serious, and the lightness that characterised the entire movement is only rediscovered with the return of the full orchestra. The next movement, Sostenuto, has a dreamlike character that comes to life in the central section with dance-style music. In the final Allegro, the soloist's part is characterised by brilliant virtuosic writing which fits well into the articulated orchestral texture. Almost thirty years later, Margola wrote Concerto dell'alba for violin and string orchestra (1982). Intended to be the third of the Kinderkonzert, Concerto dell'alba sounds free from any form of modernism and cerebralism. Nevertheless, the composer uses a modern idiom with wisdom and discretion which creates a spontaneous musical eloquence and cantabile sound. A vigorous Rondò with lively popular tunes concludes the Concerto. The composer proposed a decidedly neoclassical writing style in Variazioni sopra un tema giocoso (1965), placing well calibrated sounds within a formal structure. Also neoclassical, Sonata in D (1931) is the first of a series of five violin sonatas and reveals the composer's technical mastery. In the first movement, two themes are alternated: one serious, and the other dreamy, seemingly floating on the arpeggiated piano accompaniment. In 1960, the Doppio concerto for violin, piano and string orchestra was published. Once again, Margola refused to follow contemporary musical fashions, instead following his own nature in the search for an expressive and spontaneous language. The three tempos that make up the Doppio concerto follow each other seamlessly and show us a cleverly devised composition where the romantic musical idiom is updated in the light of the experiences of the new century.

Haydn: The 7 Last Words of Christ on the Cross
Rafael Ruibérriz de Torres, flute; La Spagna
Brilliant Classics 96659
Release: 1 November 2022
This is the first recording of a hitherto unknown 1840 arrangement of Haydn's sublime devotional cycle. After Haydn composed The Seven Last Words for chamber orchestra as a devotional accompaniment to the Good Friday liturgy at Cadiz Cathedral in 1786, several other arrangements were made during his lifetime, by himself and others, all of them familiar to us now: as an oratorio with soloists and chorus, and in string quartet and solo keyboard transcriptions. The cycle continued to attract arrangers after Haydn's death. In the course of researching them, the flautist Rafael Ruibérriz de Torres turned up a manuscript by Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, who transcribed it for flute and string quartet in 1840 – perhaps as a compositional exercise at the behest of his teacher, Ramon Carnicer, who had recently produced a flute quintet of his own. In any case, Barbieri's arrangement presents a Romantic-era conception of Haydn's work in which the flute part acquires the same importance as the other instruments, lending colour and brilliance to the quartet parts. At points the flute line plays in unison with one or other of the strings (almost throughout Sonata II, for example), but elsewhere his melodic and contrapuntal contributions are woven into the fabric of Haydn's score with masterly technique and no small measure of creative inspiration. As a composer, conductor, writer and entrepreneur, Barbieri later occupied a central role in Spanish musical culture during the 19th century. However, there is no record of a performance of his version of The Seven Last Words, which was revived by the performers here before they made this recording – perhaps the first musicians ever to play the score. As a novel perspective on the work it will attract the interest of Haydn enthusiasts everywhere. The album also forms a sequel of sorts to the Brilliant Classics recording of Boccherini's Flute Quintets (96074) made by Rafael Ruibérriz de Torres and La Spagna.

Máximo Diego Pujol: Cuatro Argentinas
George Tossikian, guitar
Brilliant Classics 96703
Release: 1 November 2022
In Buenos Aires, a place where tango was constantly floating in the air, Máximo Diego Pujol (b.1957) honed his performance skills playing in night clubs whilst studying the great traditional tango composers. Pujol has consistently strived to fuse traditional Argentine tango and formal academic concepts. This musical quest stems from a thorough, almost obsessive, study of the works of Heitor Villa- Lobos and Leo Brouwer, who revolutionised guitar music by incorporating the instrument and its particular musical vocabulary in their own works. Today Pujol's compositions are performed and recorded throughout the world. Variaciones sobre un tema de Atahualpa Yupanqui is based on a film theme by Yupanqui, possibly the most influential Argentine folk musician of the 20th century. The film, based on a book also by Yupanqui, is set in the Andes Mountains. The music therefore took inspiration from the vidala, an old folk music genre of the Argentine Northwest, which is an essential element in the festive and sacred rites of Andean communities. Pujol wrote five variations on the theme, involving rhythmic, harmonic and stylistic changes. Elegía por la muerte de un tanguero is a three-part work for guitar dedicated to Astor Piazzolla. Pujol is a great admirer of Piazzolla, and it is notable that they both enjoy blending scholarly and popular music. In the three parts – Confuseta, En melancolía and Epílogo – the rhythmic parts contrast strikingly with the beautiful lyrical passages. The composer finishes the work using a quote from Astor Piazzolla's La muerte del ángel, saluting the great Maestro. Sonatina won Pujol many prestigious prizes, despite being one of his first compositions. A three-part work, it is characterized by rhythmic vitality and virtuosic energy as well as elegant melodies, and its conspicuous use of Argentinian dance forms. Suite del Plata No.1 brings together musical pieces from the area known as 'La Cuenca del Plata', an extensive region around the Río de la Plata. The piece begins with an atmospheric Prelude in A minor, followed by an urban and romantic Tango and then a nostalgic Milonga. The fourth part, Murga, is a form of popular music performed in Montevideo, Uruguay and in Panama and Argentina. A Candombe, an energetic dance of Uruguayan origin, closes the work. In Pujol's work, traditional tango and folk forms such as milonga, candombe and vals are just as present as classical forms like preludes and études, because Pujol strives for a fusion of traditional Argentine music with formal academic concepts. Máximo Diego Pujol's guitar music is the expression of a universal lyricism, feeding on eternal feelings like melancholy, nostalgia, sensuality, passion, anger and love.

Arias for Anna Renzi the First Opera Diva - Monteverdi, Cesti, Laurenzi
Roberta Invernizzi, soprano; Ensemble Sezione Aurea
Brilliant Classics 96716
Release: 1 November 2022
A homage from one superb Italian soprano to her forebear, the first 'opera diva'. As the most celebrated singer in Venice during the 1640s, Anna Renzi created roles in operas by the great dramatists of the day including Ottavia in L'incoronazione di Poppea. As outlined by the booklet's detailed essay on Renzi's life and career, her career was not very long but dazzling. It centred round the many Venetian theatres and prestigious tours that took her to Florence, Genoa and Innsbruck: from 1640, when she made her debut in Rome, her home city, in an opera written by her alleged teacher Filiberto Laurenzi staged at the French embassy in Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, to 1657 in Le fortune di Rodope e Damira, set to music by Pietro Andrea Ziani, at Teatro Sant'Aponal in Venice. Roberta Invernizzi begins her recital with 'Disprezzata regina' L'incoronazione di Poppea and follows it with two arias from Cesti's lesser- known Argia of 1655, hardly less dazzling in the brilliance of its vocal line. O cara libertà is a standalone aria from a collection by a composer two generations after Monteverdi, Filiberto Laurenzi (1618-after 1651), and Invernizzi ends the album on a high with three arias from his little-known drama La Finta Savia. Between the vocal selections, Ensemble Sezione Aurea insert instrumental interludes by Venetian contemporaries such as Rossi, Cima and Frescobaldi. The album as a whole adds up to a compelling portrait of Renzi, demonstrating her particular gift for bringing characters to vivid life on stage, and also a showcase for the vocal and dramatic talents of Roberta Invernizzi, who has taken lead roles in early operas under early-music luminaries including Alan Curtis, Rinaldo Alessandrini and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. The booklet also includes full sung texts and English translations.

Alfredo d'Ambrosio: Complete Music for Violin & Piano
Gran Duo Italiano: Mauro Tortorelli, violin; Angela Meluso, piano
Brilliant Classics 96727
Release: 1 November 2022
Charming salon miniatures by a Neapolitan master of the musical postcard. Alfredo d'Ambrosio (1871-1914) was born in Naples and perhaps became a student of Marco Enrico Bossi, but he made his career around the turn of the last century once he moved to France. As the composer of small- and large-scale works for the violin that were premiered and performed by virtuoso soloists of the day, published internationally and appealing in different forms to both amateur and professional musicians, D'Ambrosio enjoyed a measure of fame that seems rapidly to have waned after his death, at the early age of 43. The present album has the field to itself (for now) in attempting a complementary survey of D'Ambrosio's work as a salon musician. D'Ambrosio wrote a violin concerto, premiered in Berlin, and an opera, first heard in Nice in 1903, but his slender claim to fame rests on the album leaves recorded here, in which he records his friendship and esteem for distinguished colleagues. Aside from his publisher Decourcelle and his daughter Suzanne, D'Ambrosio pays tribute to the friendship of fellow violinists such as August Wilhelmj, Jacques Thibaud and Jan Kubelík. Then there is a trio of fellow violinist-composers, the best known of whom is Vittorio Monti (author of the Csardas which remains popular encore fare). There are elegies, canzonettas, ariettas, serenatas and romanzas, most of them just a minute or two in length, all written to be enjoyed equally by the musicians, the dedicatee and by their audience. They are revived here with native flair by the Gran Duo Italiano, who have made a series of acclaimed albums for Brilliant Classics, including the sonatas of Saint-Saens and the music of other lesser-known late- Romantic Italian contemporaries such as Santoliquido and Scalero.

Clementi: Piano Sonatas & Preludes
Ilia Kim, piano
Piano Classics PCL10254
Release: 1 November 2022
Ilia Kim's second volume of Clementi for Piano Classics juxtaposes a quartet of musical 'trifles' with a trio of adventurous mid- period sonatas. In Ilia Kim's new recital, Clementi comes across in all his remarkable individuality. She opens with the F sharp minor Sonata Op.25 No.5: a work stirred by strong passions, far from the polite, elegant and superficial manner with which Clementi is sometimes associated, reaching a powerful climax in its Lento e patetico slow movement. By contrast, the D major Sonata Op.25 No.6 is a work of Haydnesque high spirits and uncomplicated good humour, in which the chromatic harmony lending such pathos to Op.25 No.5 takes on an air of mischief. The Sonata Op.37 No.2 was published in 1798, and belongs to the period of his maturity. The first movement is symphonic in scale and reminiscent of Haydn. The second is clearly inspired by Handel, while the lively finale is a like a dazzling finale to a comic opera. The sonata embodies and reconciles different styles, even within the first movement, where the first theme in the symphonic style alternates with the counterpoint of the second theme and the brilliant piano style of the connections and developments. Korean born, Italian resident Ilia Kim performs across Europe and the Far East, specializing in thematically linked programmes of Romantic repertoire. Her experience as a fortepianist also informs her playing of Classical-era repertoire on the piano such as these Clementi recordings for Piano Classics.

Moscheles: Etudes Op 70
Michele Bolla, fortepiano
Piano Classics PCL10231
Release: 1 November 2022
As stringent a critic of his fellow composers as he was of himself, Mendelssohn wrote in unusually effusive terms about the Etudes Op.70 when Moscheles sent them to him in 1829. 'Your splendid Etudes are the best pieces of music that I have heard for a long time, as instructive and useful for the musician as they are gratifying for the listener. Might you be prepared to publish a third volume? You would be rendering a service to all music lovers.' The Op.70 Etudes have attracted previous recordings, complete and in part, but they are presented here for the first time on instruments of the composer's time – an 1844 Erard and a modern copy of an 1819 Graf model – thus releasing and intensifying the colour and playfulness of works which transcend their didactic origins. Some of the technical and tonal innovations in these studies represented a creative stimulus for composers including Schumann, Liszt and Chopin. Schumann dedicated his ambitious Sonata Op.14 to Moscheles, and believed that the Op.70 Etudes made his friend one of the greatest composers of piano music of the age. Surely the greatest piano teacher of his age – perhaps the greatest ever – Chopin religiously used the Op.70 Etudes for instruction as a kind of New Testament to set alongside Bach and Beethoven. Moreover, they clearly made a considerable impact on his own Etudes, Op.10 and Op.25. No.23 of Moscheles's set is the only explicitly programmatic one, cast as 'a battle among demons', but there is no shortage of immediate drama and theatre throughout the set, especially in the hands of Michele Bolla.

 

28 OCTOBER 2022

Tudor Music Afterlives
Ensemble Pro Victoria / Toby Ward
Delphian Records DCD34295
Release: 28 October 2022
Following the freshness and vigour of their quincentenary portrait celebration of Robert Fayrfax, Ensemble Pro Victoria's second Delphian album brings a similar boldness of approach to a wider-ranging collection, charting some rarely explored territory from a time of great religious, societal and musical change. Broken fragments of huge pre-Reformation works, preserved only in lute tablature; the first reconstruction and recording of some of the earliest Anglican psalm settings ever written; French chansons and motets once popular in England; improvisatory organ verses within Lady Mass movements by Ludford; and an English-texted version of a much-loved Tallis anthem that shows it in a quite different light: these forgotten 'afterlives' of earlier Tudor music help build a much more complete picture of music in sixteenth-century England.

In the stillness: Christmas music from Merton
The Girl Choristers and Lower Voices of Merton College, Oxford / Benjamin Nicholas
Delphian Records DCD34262
Release: 28 October 2022
In the stillness of a midnight stable, a babe is born … In the stillness of an Oxford chapel on a winter's afternoon, a girl's voice sings. The newest star in Oxford's – and Delphian's – choral firmament, the girl choristers of Merton College have been singing services under the directorship of Benjamin Nicholas for less than five years: in their debut album recording, supported by the lower voices of the Chapel Choir, they tell once more in music from across the centuries the timeless Christmas story of light, hope and joy for a troubled world.

Handel: Theodora
Lisette Oropesa, Joyce DiDonato, Michael Spyres, John Chest, Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian  Il Pomo d'Oro / Maxim Emelyanychev
Warner Classics/Erato
Release: 28 October 2022
This recording of Handel's masterpiece Theodora features a truly star-studded cast, with Lisette Oropesa in the title role; Joyce DiDonato as Irene; Michael Spyres as Septimius; John Chest as Valens; and Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian as Didymus. Following great critical acclaim for recent performances in Europe and DiDonato's performance at the Royal Opera House earlier this year, this new version of the dramatic oratorio is accompanied by Il Pomo d'Oro orchestra and choir and conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev.

Paris
Félicien Brut, Julie Fuchs, Edgar Moreau, Thibaut Garcia, E. Macarez, V. Dedienne, Adam Laloum, Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine / Pierre Dumoussaud
Warner Classics/Erato
Release: 28 October 2022
Paris is the first album on Warner Classics & Erato by French accordionist Félicien Brut, who specialises in traditional accordion music and classical repertoire. The programme includes three new works written by contemporary composers (Fabien Waksman, Karol Beffa, and Thibault Perrine), Parisian songs such as 'J'ai deux amours', and pieces by composers who chose to live and work in Paris, including Piazzolla, Stravinsky, Rossini, and Chopin. Accompanied by Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine conducted by Pierre Dumoussaud, this album features star guest soloists including Lucienne Renaudin Vary, Thibaut Garcia, Edgar Moreau, Julie Fuchs, and more.

Schubert: Works for Solo Piano Vol 6
Barry Douglas, piano
Chandos Records CHAN 20253
Release: 28 October 2022
This latest instalment of Barry Douglas' acclaimed Schubert series is built around the A minor Sonata, D 845. The album is completed with the Four Impromptus, D 935 and Liszt's transcription of Schubert's 'Ave Maria'.

Rachmaninoff: Symphony No 3, Isle of the Dead, Vocalise
Sinfonia of London / John Wilson
Chandos Records CHSA 5297
Release: 28 October 2022
John Wilson and Sinfonia of London display their peerless ensemble playing in this reading of Rachmaninoff's Third Symphony, alongside The Isle of the Dead and Rachmaninoff's own orchestral version of the 'Vocalise'.

Legrand (re)imagined
Various artists
Decca France
Release: 28 October 2022
Michel Legrand broke down the barriers between jazz, symphonic music, musical comedy, and popular music. A musical legend and three-time Oscar winner, Legrand left a prolific body of work with themes that have taken hold in the collective memory for several decades. Legrand (re)imagined is an elegant and contemporary tribute to the late prolific composer Michel Legrand by the world's finest composers and pianists.

Arvo Pärt: Stabat Mater
Kurzak, Alagna, Scholl, Morphing Chamber Orchestra / Tomasz Wabnic
Aparté AP277
Release: 28 October 2022
Aparté is proud to release an album dedicated to the music of Arvo Pärt featuiring Stabat Mater plus vocal & instrumental works with a star-studded line-up of Aleksandra Kurzak, Andreas Scholl and Roberto Alagna. The album features some of Pärt's most beloved pieces performed by the Vienna-based Morphing Chamber Orchestra and Artistic Director Tomasz Wabnic. Released worldwide on 28 October 2022, the album's focal point is the world premiere recording of Pärt's vocal masterpiece Stabat Mater, here presented in a new version for three solo voices and string orchestra. The distinct voices of three of today's greatest operatic voices – Aleksandra Kurzak, soprano; Andreas Scholl, countertenor; and Roberto Alagna, tenor – come together to create a new rendition of this piece about pain and consolation. This is the first time that the three stars have recorded the music of Pärt.  Countertenor Andreas Scholl has also recorded four solo pieces for the album: My Heart's in the Highlands, Vater Unser, Es sang vor langen Jahren and Ein Wallfahrtslied. The album includes three of Pärt's finest instrumental works: Spiegel im Spiegel (possibly Pärt's most loved and widely performed piece) for viola and piano, Summa for string orchestra, and Fratres presented here in a version for string orchestra and percussion.

Julian Brink: Utility Music
Sono Luminus SLE-70027
Release: 28 October 2022
Sono Luminus will release Utility Music, the debut album of South African, Los Angeles-based composer Julian Brink, on October 28, 2022. Utility Music features pieces composed by Brink and recorded by some of today's leading instrumentalists. Much of the music on the album began as parts of a film score that Brink was writing. The film went unfinished but Brink revisited the music in 2020 during the pandemic, reworking it, re-recording it, and reimagining it until it took form as this new standalone album. The album features performances by several distinguished musicians, with the heart of the music being the string trio of Moldovan violin virtuoso Dan-Iulian Druțac; Nick Revel, violist of the Grammy-nominated PUBLIQuartet; and Joe Zeitlin who was the lead cellist on Mica Levi's Oscar-nominated score for Pablo Lorraín's Jackie.  Sono Luminus CEO Collin Rae says, 'Julain's music hit me hard the moment I started listening, I KNEW this beautiful album was one I wanted Sono Luminus to represent. I also knew this was going to be just the beginning of our collaborations!' The title Utility Music is a reference to both the German phrase 'gebrauchsmusik' ––  music that was written not for its own sake but for a specific event or purpose –– as well as the expedient nature of the recording process. Performers being recorded individually is common practice in popular music but less so in the world of classical music. Utility Music was self-recorded during the summer of 2020 by Brink and the featured musicians – Matt Demerritt (woodwinds), Tyler Neidermayer (clarinet), Meredith Moore (horn), Joe Auckland (trumpet), Juliane Gralle (brass), Hanna Rabe (harp), Max Gaertner (vibraphone/percussion), Dan-Iulian Druțac (violin), Nick Revel (viola), Joe Zeitlin (cello), and Gabe Noel (bass) – in bedroom studios in Los Angeles, New York, London, Frankfurt, and Hamburg. In Brink's second bedroom in his West Hollywood apartment, he had only a few hours of quiet each day to record, between the dying down of street noise and the insects in the evening. Grammy-winning mix engineer Brian Losch was tasked with achieving the illusion of a group of musicians, performing together in a single space. The additional instrumentation heard on the album was largely improvised on instruments, toy instruments and non-instruments alike. Inspired as much by John Cage and indeterminate music, as by an abundance of free time and the joy of experimenting with microphones, Utility Music is, at its core, an experiment in organizing sound. Born in Johannesburg in 1989, Julian Brink first picked up his mother's guitar at the age of ten and grew up playing in rock bands. He discovered a love of contemporary classical music through the films of Paolo Sorrentino and Paul Thomas Anderson. Hearing Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will be Blood, in particular, was what led him to pursue composition. Although he didn't learn to read music until he was 19, while studying guitar at undergraduate level, he went on to complete a master's degree in film scoring through Berklee College of Music and relocated to California in 2015. Brink works in film music and lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actress Maddie Hasson. His composer credits include the original scores for Amir Motlagh's Three Worlds (2018) and No Longer Suitable for Use (2021), directed by Julian Joslin and produced by Sam Rockwell, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was featured in The New Yorker's The Screening Room.

Robert Schumann: Symphony No 1 'Spring' and Symphony No 2 (re-orchestrated by Gustav Mahler)
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop
Naxos 8574429
Release: 28 October 2022
Robert Schumann's symphonies are deservedly popular, the undeniable quality of their music transcending any doubts about their original orchestration. Today's historically informed performances have brought us closer to Schumann's original conception, but Mahler's subtle re-orchestrations were made in the light of instrumental developments and the increase in size of the typical symphony orchestra towards the beginning of the 20th century, and as a result are still of great benefit today. Robert Schumann's works lie at the centre of German Romanticism, with an essentially lyrical style that reflects his quintessential place among the great German composers. From 1840 Schumann switched from writing, primarily, piano music and Lieder, to writing orchestral music, with the joyful First Symphony written in just four days, and the uplifting tone of the Second Symphony a remarkable triumph over depression and illness. But the effectiveness of Schumann's orchestration in his symphonies has been the cause of much debate. Gustav Mahler's re-orchestrations from the early 1900s provide models of tasteful modification that are suited to the larger orchestras of today.

Anthony Hedges: Kingston Sketches; Four Breton Sketches; Cantilena; Heigham Sound; Scenes from Humber; Four Miniature Dances – British Light Music, Vol 12
RTÉ Sinfonietta / Anthony Hedges
Naxos 8574324
Release: 28 October 2022
Anthony Hedges was a popular and versatile composer with some 300 broadcasts to his name in Britain and abroad. He wrote prolifically in a variety of genres, often in response to commissions, from music for massed children's choirs and youth orchestras to operas and chamber music. His scenic imagination and atmospheric tone pictures are full of warmth and colour, such as can be found in the Four Breton Sketches and Scenes from the Humber, which captures the spirit of the city of Hull, where he spent many years teaching. The delightful Heigham Sound shows his vivacity and compositional élan.

Meyerbeer: Overtures and Stage Music; Der Fischer und das Milchmädchen; Der Admiral; Wirt und Gast
Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice / Dario Salvi
Naxos 8574316
Release: 28 October 2022
Meyerbeer was a precocious composer and this album traces some of his very earliest works. Der Fischer und das Milchmädchen was his first stage work, a charming rural vignette that contains all the essential features of a ballet-divertissement couched in writing that enchantingly evokes the 18th century. Collaborating with his teacher, the Abbé Georg Vogler, Meyerbeer composed Der Admiral in 1811. The following year saw Wirt und Gast with the vivid Oriental exoticism of its Janissary music, while Romilda e Constanza, his first italian opera, shows his complete assimilation of Rossinian models. These are mostly previously unrecorded works. The score used in Wirt und Gast is the original conducting score which contains small pencil corrections made by Meyerbeer's fellow pupil, Weber, who conducted the work.

Ferdinand Ries: Complete Piano Sonatas and Sonatinas
Susan Kagan, Vassily Primakov
Naxos 8506043 (6 CDs)
Release: 28 October 2022
Ferdinand Ries was a friend and pupil of Beethoven and was praised by Robert Schumann for his 'remarkable originality'. He was also one of the great piano virtuosos of his age and perfectly placed to compose works for his instrument that honour the Classical tradition of Haydn and Mozart while foreshadowing the Romanticism of Schubert and Chopin. In Susan Kagan, an acknowledged authority on the composer, these works have found an interpreter of sympathy and eloquence who brings the composer's fluency, poignancy and drama fully to life.

Robert Xavier Rodriguez, Lou Harrison, Kati Agócs: Works for Violin and Percussion Orchestra
Nicholas Kitchen, violin Members of the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble / Frank Epstein
Naxos 8574212
Release: 28 October 2022
The unique instrumentation of the three works in this album was pioneered by the innovative Lou Harrison, whose 1959 concerto encapsulates his culturally wide-ranging aesthetic. More conventional instruments work alongside calibrated extras such as wash tubs and flowerpots in a work of colour, languorous elegance and kinetic energy. The companion works were composed in its honour: Robert Xavier Rodríguez's Xochiquetzal evokes the ancient Mayan world in imaginary folk music to form a synthesis of time periods and cultures, while the economical serenity of Kati Agócs' concerto also includes bitonal effects and zesty syncopation. The New England Percussion Ensemble was founded by Frank Epstein in 1968 and is rapidly approaching its 55th anniversary They have recorded two albums of American percussion music for Naxos.

Great Composers in Words and Music - Chopin
Lucy Scott, Davinia Caddy, various
Naxos 8578367
Release: 28 October 2022
Polish by birth, Fryderyk Chopin made his name in post-Revolutionary Paris and is often depicted as the archetypal Romantic artist – blessed with extraordinary talent but consumed by the flame of genius, tormented by intense and tempestuous relationships and doomed to an early death. But how much of this story is based on fact? This account of Chopin's life and times separates myth and reality. Illustrated with numerous musical examples, the narrative takes us from his youthful beginnings as 'a second Mozart' to the darkness and light of his life and the brilliance of his work.

Espen Berg: The Trondheim Concert
Naxos NXN Recordings NXN2011 (2 CDs)
Release: 28 October 2022
Five years after releasing his second solo album, Acres of Blue, Espen Berg decided to present a fully improvised piano concert in a live recording. This one-taker is a culmination of years of development, reflection and research. The music, created in the moment, reflects his emotions in a profound way, and every time he plays, it's different. Every second of music is unique, and it feels like an endless resource, both musically and spiritually. The Trondheim Concert was recorded at Dokkhuset.

La Harpe á Paris – Harp Concertos - Mozart, Debussy, Boiëldieu, Saint-Saëns
Margit-Anna Süss, Berliner Symphoniker, Karl-Heinz Schütz, Hansjörg Schellenberger
Campanella Musica C130212
Release: 28 October 2022
Paris - the city of so many dreams and promises - has its own special ring in the ears of harpists. In hardly any other place in the world has the harp been played so much, had so many compositions written for it and been so popular. It is no coincidence that all the great works for harp on this CD were written in Paris - for that is its home town. Margit-Anna Süss has a busy international career as a soloist, chamber musician and a teacher. A new recording of Debussy's Danses sacrée et profane for harp and strings, in which she was closely involved, is about to be released by G. Henle Verlag in autumn 2022. An innovation is that her arrangement of the harp part returns to the original score for the first time. Karl-Heinz Schütz is Solo Flute of Wiener Philharmoniker and in the same position at the Wiener Staatsoper, having held the same position with the Stuttgarter Philharmoniker for four years, and with the Wiener Symphoniker from 2005 to 2011. For more than five decades, the Berliner Symphoniker has been an integral part of Berlin's musical and cultural life, and has enriched the German orchestra landscape. Alongside his career as a soloist, he has also, for many years, been much in demand all over the world as a conductor. From 2012 to 2022 he was chief conductor of the Okayama Philharmonic Orchestra and is currently chief conductor of the Berlin Symphonic. He is also a guest conductor with the Camerata Salzburg, the Spanish national orchestra, the Deutsche Radio-Philharmonie Saarbrücken-Kaiserslautern and other world-class orchestras. In May 2022, he was on the podium with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra at its truly historic concert in Dubai. In 2018, Professor Hansjörg Schellenberger received the prestigious Verdienstkreuz am Bande der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Josef Novotny & Peter Herbert: prolifics
Col Legno COL15017
Release: 28 October 2022
Over the years, the paths of Peter Herbert and Josef Novotny crossed countless times. And each time there was a silent agreement in the interplay, as if two 'inner metronomes' are synchronized with each other wirelessly and wordlessly. This assumption had to be checked – after all, at some point, you want to be sure. In this unique project, Josef Novotny and Peter Herbert shows that virtuosity does not only consist in playing many notes as possible in a short time, but that accuracy is crucial for bringing things to a point. In other words: precision in free improvisation.

Mehr oder weniger Lametta ('More or less tinsel')
GoldMund, Anna Veit
Solo Musica SM388
Release: 28 October 2022
Another Christmas record? God knows there are enough of them on the already confusing market of sentimentalities, curiosities and new acoustic interpretations of the end-of-year spectacle. Or are there? Well, more or less. But one has been missing so far! It's the melange that tastes good to us, and it's the weighing of the different spices that we have concocted into our own Christmas ornaments and now hang on what could more or less be a tree. With something on it that could be more or less tinsel. With presents under the tree that can't be clearly reduced to a single wish list either because, dear Christ Child, you have so many possibilities! And so do we, more or less! Six musicians in a symphony orchestra and a singer in musical entertainment theatre are at home, but you don't want to stay at home permanently and exclusively. So they go wander off into more distant genres or stick to their last. Or at least seven different ones. And write seven different wish lists. And condense them into one in which each individual is reflected.

Schubert: Piano Sonatas D 537, 568 & 664
Paul Lewis
harmonia mundi HMM902690
Release: 28 October 2022
Paul Lewis completes his exploration of Schubert's sonatas, begun almost twenty years ago, with three early masterpieces. The Sonatas D 537 and D 568 display the daring and freshness of their youthful creator, while with D 664, dazzling in its artless charm, he already opens a window towards new musical horizons.

Rachmaninov Vespers and Complete All-night Vigil
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir / Paul Hillier
harmonia mundi HMM937504
Release: 28 October 2022
With his masterly Vespers, composed for a cappella choir in 1915, Rachmaninov immerses the listener in a musical universe of sublime profundity and interiority. This work, inspired by the ancient church modes, is one of the finest jewels of the Russian Orthodox liturgy. Paul Hillier presents a deeply moving interpretation,subtly attentive to both its spirituality and its rich polyphony.

Claudio Monteverdi: Vespro di Natale / Christmas Vespers
La Cetra Barockorchester Basel, La Cetra Vocalensemble Basel / Andrea Marcon
Deutsche Grammophon 028948629770
Release: 28 October 2022
La Cetra's credo is to serve one purpose: to make 'Early Music' accessible to today's audiences through fresh, gripping and contemporary interpretations. The Vespro veneziano that Andrea Marcon has assembled for this new recording is inspired by the resplendent sounds of the music that was performed at the great Christmas Vespers in St. Mark's in the presence of the foremost dignitaries of La Serenissima and a large audience of aristocrats and visitors from across Europe.

 

27 OCTOBER 2022

Nick Revel: Dream Collider
Sapphire Records Sapphire_NR_DC
Release: 27 October 2022
violist and composer Nick Revel, a founding member of the PUBLIQuartet, releases his second album, Dream Collider, on Sapphire Records. With styles leaning heavily on both pop-inspired electronic music and ambient-style film music, Revel leads the listener on a journey that questions the traditional sound of the viola. Revel describes his process of writing, producing, and creating this album during the pandemic, 'Born of my own emotional darkness and a yearning for joy during the height of the pandemic, this album provides a sonic fantasy of new worlds, a reprieve from suffering, and visions of realities beyond what is currently possible on Earth.' Dream Collider is comprised of 13 tracks, many of which accompanied by music videos that provide more context for Revel's experimental sounds including, Launch Pad, Contact, and Use Headphones, an ASMR-inspired meta-creation for the Founders ensemble. His piece, The Fear, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall in 2019 for young musicians of all playing levels. Many of the tracks featured are also high-profile competition-winning pieces, including Time Capsule, winner of the Catalyst Quartet's 2021 CQ Minute Emerging Composer's Competition and his FlyTrap was recently the winner of fivebyfive ensemble's 2020 call for scores. Additionally, Revel's piece Father and Daughter, a re-scoring of Michael Dudok de Wit's 2000 animated film, won the 2021 Red Jasper Competition shortlist.

 

21 OCTOBER 2022

Music from & Inspired by the Motion Picture TÁR – Featuring New Works by Icelandic Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 21 October 2022
Deutsche Grammophon presents Hildur Guðnadóttir's exciting new film project – a groundbreaking concept album for the much-anticipated TÁR, which premiered yesterday at the Venice Film Festival. The recording features music from and inspired by the movie, including a series of stunning new tracks by Guðnadóttir, as well as extracts from major works by Elgar and Mahler. The concept album complements the film by presenting completed, real-life versions of the music on which we see the fictional protagonist working. The aim of the album is to reveal something of the rehearsal and recording process of orchestral music-making. Written and directed by three-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker Todd Field, and starring two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, TÁR tells the story of high-powered composer-conductor Lydia Tár. Blanchett immersed herself in every aspect of her character's life and can be seen – and heard on the DG album – conducting rehearsals of a Mahler symphony with extraordinary skill. The film will open in U.S theaters on 7 October 2022 and worldwide in January/February 2023. The concept album will be released by Deutsche Grammophon digitally and on CD on 21 October 2022, with a vinyl edition following on 24 February 2023.

Cinema
Alexandre Tharaud, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilla/Antonio Pappano
Warner Classics/Erato
Release: 21 October 2022
Alexandre Tharaud's relationship with film music runs deep and wide. On this double album, the French pianist delves into 50 celebrated film scores by 19 composers including Michel Legrand, John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Francis Lai, Marvin Hamlisch, Nino Rota and Philip Glass. Spanning more than six decades of movie history, among the memorable titles featured are Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (Amélie), Otto e mezzo (8½), E.T., La La Land, Schindler's List, The Godfather, Star Wars, The Hours and High Heels. The movie magic is reinforced by Tharaud's starry partners on the album: Antonio Pappano conducts the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, whilst singers Vanessa Paradis, Camélia Jordana and Sabine Devieilhe, clarinettist Michel Portal and violinist Nemanja Radulović all make guest appearances. Tharaud says: 'This album pays tribute to [those composers] with a selection of pieces for piano and orchestra and for piano solo, most in their original versions, creating a sound-world every bit as thrilling without the motion picture.'

Amoroso
Fabiola Amorim, viola
Azul Music AMDA1777
Release: 21 October 2022
Debut album by the Brazilian-Canadian violist, featuring selected works by Brazilian composers.

Remede de Fortune - Guillaume de Machaut, Jehan de Lescurel, Debra Nagy
Blue Heron, Les Délices, Owen McIntosh, Jason McStoots, Debra Nagy, Martin Near, Scott Metcalfe, Charles Weaver
Blue Heron BHCD1012
Release: 21 October 2022
A feast of poetry, song, and visual art animated by a surprisingly Zen-like philosophy, Guillaume de Machaut's Remede de Fortune tells the tale of a woebegone lover who is counseled by Lady Hope on how to be happy and persevere in the face of the ups and downs dished out by Fortune and her Wheel. Machaut was at once the greatest poet and composer of 14th-century Europe, and the Remede is a narrative poem or dit, around 4000 lines long, with interpolated lyrics set to music. This live recording of a concert production of the Remede—a collaboration between two outstanding American ensembles, Blue Heron and Les Délices—includes all seven musical items from the Remede as well as a selection of other motets, songs, and dances, which take the place of the narration, express the emotions and thoughts of the Lover, and convey Hope's teachings in lyric form. Four singers are joined by a delightful ensemble of medieval instruments (recorder, douçaine, fiddle, lute, harp, hurdy-gurdy, and percussion) in performances which are both spirited and deeply informed by the study of historical performance practices. The CD booklet contains complete texts and translations, an interspersed synopsis of the story, and numerous full-color reproductions of the pictures that grace the lavishly illustrated first manuscript copy of the Remede, prepared c. 1350 under Machaut's supervision.

Giovanni Battista Sammartini: Six Viennese Sonatas for violin and b c
Oinos Baroque Trio
Dynamic CDS7959
Release: 21 October 2022
Giovanni Battista Sammartini attained a leading role in Milan's music scene in the 18th century, his career extending from the height of the Baroque era to the Classical worlds of Mozart and Haydn by his death in 1775. Appearing here in world premiere recordings, these works appear to belong to Sammartini's early period, including a four-movement example that recollects archaic church sonata form. Full of fascinating stylistic quirks, these sonatas reflect the refined taste for nuance found in the Milanese musician's finest chamber works, with an easy melodic flow that expresses a mood for stylistic change. Further information inlcudes the Instruments specific details: Baroque violin: Roberto Collini, copy of Amati, Harpsichord: Carlo Mascheroni, copy of Vater 1720 - La=415, Fortepiano: Carlo Mascheroni, copy of Nanette Streicher - La=430, Baroque cello: Daniel Wickström Stockholm 1811.

Claude Debussy: Préludes
George Lepauw
Orchid Classics ORC100205
Release: 21 October 2022
Franco-American pianist George Lepauw returns to Orchid Classics with the complete Preludes for piano by Claude Debussy. Lepauw has released several highly successful albums with Orchid, including Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. The ambition of those releases is matched by this recording of both books of Debussy's Preludes, which represent some of the most colourful, intricate and finely-nuanced piano music in the repertoire. As Lepauw explains in the album booklet: 'Each one of these preludes is a world unto itself and can easily stand alone. Listening to them individually or as part of the entire set is equally rewarding.' George Lepauw was named Chicagoan of the Year in 2012 by the Chicago Tribune for his visionary artistic leadership in music, art and film festival programming, and has been recognised by the New York Times for his 'singing tone' and by the Chicago Tribune as a 'prodigious pianist'.

Ralph Vaughan Williams Live, Vol 2 - Job; Thanksgiving for Victory; Serenade to Music - performances newly re-mastered
BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchestra / Adrian Boult
SOMM Recordings ARIADNE 5018
Release: 21 October 2022
SOMM Recordings' celebration of the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams' birth continues with Volume 2 of Vaughan Williams Live, featuring historic performances by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult in new, signature remasterings by Lani Spahr with authoritative booklet notes by Vaughan Williams' biographer Simon Heffer. Two works featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus include a 1945 BBC radio broadcast of the first performance of the wartime masterpiece Thanksgiving for Victory – with soprano Elsie Suddaby, organist George Thalben-Ball and Valentine Dyall as the speaker – and the rapturous Serenade to Music from the opening night of the BBC's Third Programme (now Radio 3) in 1946. First performed in 1938 in celebration of Henry Wood's jubilee as a conductor and originally composed for 16 solo singers, it appears here in its version for orchestra, chorus and four soloists Isobel Baillie (soprano), Astra Desmond (contralto), Beveridge White (tenor), and Harold Williams (baritone). Its dedicatee, Boult, conducts a performance of Job: A Masque for Dancing in 1946 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra before he made his four studio recordings of the work.

Dance! - Igor Stravinsky, Richard Birchall, Caroline Shaw, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Maurice Ravel
Minerva Piano Trio
SOMM Recordings SOMMCD 0658
Release: 21 October 2022
SOMM Recordings is thrilled to announce Dance!, the debut recording by the Minerva Piano Trio, featuring seminal pieces by Stravinsky and Ravel alongside new work by two British composers, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Richard Birchall, and Pulitzer Prize-winning American, Caroline Shaw. Dance! features two ballet pieces by Stravinsky and Ravel, the former's Pulcinella Suite arranged by the Minerva's Richard Birchall, the latter's Daphnis et Chloé heard in David Knott's arrangement of three scenes that, says the Trio's Annie Yim, illustrate 'the discovery of love: innocence, awakening, touch, and passion'. Both arrangements are receiving first recordings. Also making their debuts on disc are Birchall's own Contours, described by Caroline Potter in her informative booklet notes as exploring 'the notion and elastic meaning of its title in different ways', and, in Annie Yim's arrangement, Caroline Shaw's Gustave Le Gray. Rooted in a Chopin Mazurka, it eloquently mimics its artist namesake's facility for poetically layered voices and images. Completing the recital is Cheryl Frances-Hoad's My Fallen Angel. Inspired by a short story about the dour, deadening domesticity of married life by the poet Sylvia Plath, Potter likens both composer and piece to Olivier Messiaen, hailing the work's 'logic and appealing sound world of its own' and Frances-Hoad as 'a sound-colour synaesthete who associates specific colours with sounds'.

Fritz Kreisler: The Bell Telephone Hour Recordings, Vol 1 - concertos by Mozart, Viotti, Mendelssohn, Bruch & Brahms
Fritz Kreisler, violin; Bell Telephone Hour Orchestra / Donald Voorhees
Biddulph Recordings 85019-2
Release: 21 October 2022
This CD features broadcast recordings of Fritz Kreisler made on The Bell Telephone Hour from 1944-50. This initial volume is the first in a projected 3-CD series, and contains all the concerto movements that the great Austrian violinist performed on the radio. Movements from the Mozart Concerto No. 4, Mendelssohn and Brahms Concertos are included, but most significant are several items are new to the Kreisler discography. Among the items on this CD that Kreisler never recorded commercially are the first movement of Mozart's Concerto No. 3, the opening two movements of the Bruch Concerto No. 1, and the complete Viotti Concerto No. 22. All of these live performances of the great violinist come from pristine source material that has never before been released, and capture the beloved violinist in vivid sound.

Rimsky-Korsakov: The Five Thieves and the Secret in the Sack
Rufus Beck, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks / Yannick Nézet-Sèguin
BR Klassik 900197
Release: 21 October 2022
Together with narrator Rufus Beck, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin presents 'The Five Thieves and the Secret in the Sack'. Inspired by the Thousand and One Nights, it is a magical story about the power of friendship. Author Katharina Neuschaefer and illustrator Martin Fengel captivate their young audience with this exotic tale, set amid the vastness of the desert – and musically illustrated by the colourful sounds of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Scheherazade'.

Handel: Die Macht der Musik – The Power of Music by Jörg Handstein (In German)
Udo Wachtveitl, Bernhard Schir, Gert Heidenreich
BR Klassik 900911 (3 CDs)
Release: 21 October 2022
Handel's journey from Halle via Hamburg, Rome and Hanover to London is the story of an unprecedented ascent: from the auxiliary organist to the child of the High Aristocracy, from the courtly conductor to the free-lancing artist in the most exciting cultural metropolis of Europe. At the age of 26, he was a European celebrity, claiming to be a leading opera composer in the hard-fought music market of London, through his activities for the royal house and his church music, which also played a political role in the Anglican state religion: the king was the head of the church and The glorification of God served at the same time to represent its temporal power. The dramaturgically directed effect of Handel's mighty splendor could and cannot escape. In Jörg Handsteins audiobiography 'The Power of Music' in nine chapters and on a total of 3 CDs you can hear about the life of Handel, his most famous and most important compositions are heard, which are closely interwoven with the very exciting biography. The numerous musical examples are from well-known interpreters, choirs and orchestras - all of them important baroque specialists. A lively, music-rich portrait of Handel and his time - strictly according to the original sources, but always alive and narrated and inspired.

The Wonderful World of Nino Rota
David Sautter, guitar; Murat Cevik, flutes
EOS Guitar Edition EOS 234200-17
Release: 21 October 2022
Cinema enthusiasts all over the world will have no difficulty recalling some of the wonderfully circus-like melodies of Federico Fellini's films. The suggestive power of this music is irresistible, and made its composer Nino Rota (1911-1979) an instant classic. But Rota not only left his mark on the soundtrack of over one hundred and fifty films, he also left behind a multitude of other pieces: operas, symphonies, concertos for orchestra and various solo instruments, and chamber music - all of the highest quality. A never-ending wealth of ideas and deep emotionality can be regarded as the common denominator in Rota's highly individual work. The many Rota interpretations and arrangements are joined by a very special line-up in this recording. The musicians David Sautter (arrangements, guitar) and Murat Cevik (flute) have put together 23 little-known pieces and 'gutter hits'. Rota's compositions appear to only have been waiting for the congenial performance of these two instrumentalists: the feather-light, sparkling, sometimes darker playing of Murat's flute, and David's guitar, which sets the beat and suddenly starts swinging. The excerpts from the '15 preludi per Pianoforte' form the enchanting prelude - flute and guitar in dialogue, dancing on the high wire - followed by a musical bouquet in all its colourful facets until the concluding 'Notti di Cabiria'; here the duo casually lives out its jazz affinity and harmoniously rounds off the homage.

A Christmas Night - Classical and traditional favorites
harmonia mundi HMM334041 (digital/LP only)
Release: 21 October 2022
With selections ranging from Praetorius to Britten, plus all-time favourites by J.S. Bach (The Christmas Oratorio) and Handel (Messiah), this album brings together some of the most beautiful and justly famous musical settings of the Nativity story. Festive or intimate, exuberant or elegiac, these highlights from iconic recordings in harmonia mundi's voluminous catalogue are an ideal sampling of the Christmas magic across the centuries and styles!

Britten, Strauss & Lars Petter Hagen
Ensemble Allegria
LAWO Classics LWC1241
Release: 21 October 2022
With their 5th release on LAWO Classics, the energetic Norwegian Ensemble Allegria presents a combination of works by Britten, Hagen and Strauss that explore transformation through metamorphosis and variations. The profound respect that all three of these composers have for their predecessors is clearly audible in these interpretations performed by a large string ensemble without a conductor. All three of the composers featured on this album stand in debt to an older colleague. Benjamin Britten had a close association with his teacher Frank Bridge and reveals this through his Variations On a Theme by Frank Bridge Op 10. Richard Strauss explicitly cites Ludwig van Beethoven's Third Symphony in his Metamorphosen, and Lars Petter Hagen's composition entitled Strauss Fragments is in its turn based on this latter work. About his own music Lars Petter Hagen says: 'There are perhaps those who find in my music a nostalgic tendency, a feeling of lost time, things were better in the past, and so on. There is a certain truth to this, but I contend it's not the whole truth. I regard my own practice of composing as a basically optimistic project in which the core of my activity is about relations. I believe that music comes into being in relation to something, like an encounter, at times a confrontation, always in connection with people, the world, history.'

Mark Abel: Spectrum
Delos Records DE3592 (2 CDs)
Release: 21 October 2022
Two song cycles form the cornerstone of 'Spectrum', the new album of music by Mark Abel, which features some of the most outstanding voices on stage today: Hila Plitmann, Isabel Bayrakdarian, and Kindra Scharich. Trois Femmes du Cinema (Three Women of Cinema), set to texts by Abel himself, is performed by powerhouse soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and famed pianist Carol Rosenberger. Abel says his texts about cult figures Anne Wiazemsky, Pina Pellicer and Larisa Shepitko 'distill my feelings about their work and what I believe they were trying to convey as artists.' Renowned singers Hila Plitmann, soprano, and Kindra Scharich, mezzo-soprano, are featured in the emotive Two Scenes from 'The Book of Esther.' The composer refers to the piece as 'a slice of an opera in development.' Writes Abel in the booklet notes, 'The biblical heroine, an iconic figure in the cultural lore of Judaism, was an inspiration for Hila Plitmann when she was growing up in Israel.'  The two-disc set, rounded out by three chamber works and the short song cycle 1966, features pianist Dominic Cheli (2017 CAG winner), Pacific Symphony concertmaster Dennis Kim, Alexander String Quartet violist David Samuel, cellist Jonah Kim, horn player Jeff Garza, flutist Christy Kim and pianists Sean Kennard and Jeffrey LaDeur.

 

14 OCTOBER 2022

Nelson Freire: Memories
Decca Classics
Release: 14 October 2022
On 1 November 2021, Nelson Freire was taken before his time. One year later, Decca Classics remembers him with a new collection of unreleased recordings and rare radio broadcast tapes. This 2-CD collection features some of Freire's finest performances from a time when he rarely recorded commercially. 'Whatever repertoire Mr Freire turned to,' The New York Times said, 'he had a depth of tonal variety, a poetry of phrasing and a natural, almost joyous refinement'.

Beethoven/Stravinsky Violin Concertos
Vilde Frang
Warner Classics/Erato
Release: 14 October 2022
Vilde Frang presents her recording of the mighty Beethoven Violin Concerto, an epic, lyrical work which opens the way to the Romantic era. She pairs it with Stravinsky's compact violin concerto, composed more than a century after Beethoven's death – a work which pays spiky tribute to eighteenth-century models. 'Juxtaposing two contrasting pieces makes me see them in a new context and new light,' says Frang.  'I like the possibility of taking up two different concertos and making one articulate the other. It is almost as if they work mutually to strengthen our understanding of both of them, each clarifying, defining and amplifying the other'. The conductor is Pekka Kuusisto, himself an adventurous violinist, in his role as Artistic Best Friend of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

Schubert Lieder (arr for solo piano by Franz Liszt) and Impromptus
Tamayo Ikeda
Ulysses Arts UA220020
Release: 14 October 2022
Japanese pianist Tamayo Ikeda releases her album of Schubert Lieder in their virtuosic solo arragements by Franz Liszt, alongside Schubert's Impromptus D. 899, on 14 October 2022.  amayo Ikeda was born in Japan in 1971, and began playing piano aged three. She joined the Toho Gakuen institute 1986 and to completed her studies in France at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris, where she studied with Jacques Rouvier and chamber music with Régis Pasquier. She was awarded two first prizes  before joining the class of Pascal Devoyon.  Tamayo Ikeda is the beneficiary of a grant from the APEF and the Société Générale Bank, and has received valuable advice from leading artists such as Dimitri Bashkirov, Halina Czerny-Stefanska, Léon Fleisher and Maria Joao Pirès. She won Second Prize and the special Claude Debussy Award at the Yvonne Lefébure International competition (no first prize awarded), a special prize at the Porto InternationalCcompetition, and both First Prize and Casadesus Prize at the Francis Poulenc International Competition. Tamayo Ikeda has appeared at major European festivals, in South Africa, Russia, Indonesia, at New York's Carnegie Hall, and has performed on numerous television and radio programmes. Her discography includes works by Poulenc and Fauré (Arcobaleno), an album of Stockhausen Sonatas with clarinettist Jean-Philippe Vivier (Solstice), a previous Schubert album (Warner-Lontano) and, with violinist Gêrard Poulet, works by Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

Delius, Smyth: String Quartets
Villiers Quartet
Naxos 8574376
Release: 14 October 2022
This album is the first recording of the complete 1888 Delius String Quartet, following the quartet's previous Naxos release of the original 1916 Delius String Quartet (8.573586) where it was coupled with the Elgar Quartet. The String Quartet in E minor by Ethel Smyth, one of the most innovative and original figures in English music, has a masterful coherence and consistency. With eloquent writing for the viola in particular, it is both playful and reverential, and ends with a flourish – forthright, bold and uncompromising, like Smyth herself. Delius wrote the early String Quartet in 1888 but it was rejected for performance and he was later to reuse the Scherzo for his mature Quartet of 1916–19 (8.573586). In 2018 the score of the two opening movements of the 1888 Quartet, long assumed lost, reappeared at auction and have been edited and reunited with the final two in this premiere recording, which adds significantly to our understanding of Delius' early compositional directions. The Villiers Quartet is one of the most recognised quartets in the UK for the performance of British music, releasing acclaimed recordings of works by Elgar, Delius, Fricker, Alwyn, William Sterndale Bennett, David Matthews and Kuljit Bhamra, MBE. In 2020 the quartet gave the world premiere of the 1888 Delius String Quartet, featuring movements from original versions uncovered by Professor Daniel Grimley from Oxford University. The broad curiosity of the Villiers Quartet and its passion for teaching and performing have made the ensemble a valuable resource for students and audiences alike. Inspiration comes from the heart of the Villiers Quartet's philosophy: to believe in the art of string quartet.

Vaughan Williams: Five Mystical Songs and other British Choral Anthems
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Edward Elgar, John Cameron, Gustav Holst, Harold Drake, Herbert Howells, Samuel Sebastian Wesley, Charles Villiers Stanford, Patrick Hadley
Roderick Williams, Julia Smith, Elizabeth Limb, Rachel Limb, Kate Jurka, Martin Ford, Vasari Singers / Jeremy Backhouse
Naxos 8574416
Release: 14 October 2022
There never needs to be any excuse for recording the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, but his 150th birthday anniversary most certainly deserves marking. This wide-ranging mixture of popular and less familiar choral anthems from the British Isles is attractive enough, but it is also crowned by a fabulous recording in a new version with organ of the by no means over-exposed Five Mystical Songs that Vaughan Williams wrote for the Three Choirs Festival in 1911. This is indeed a programme that satisfies at every level. featuring Vaughan Williams' masterly and intensely personal Five Mystical Songs, this album reflects on the sources of inspiration of some of his sacred choral works, alongside gems of 19th- and early-20th-century English church music. Often setting the poetry of the King James Bible, the finely spun melodies and sensitivity to word-rhythm of composers from S S Wesley to Herbert Howells result in a uniquely British form of expression.

Josef Bohuslav Foerster: Symphony No. 1; Festive Overture; From Shakespeare
Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra / Marek Stilek
Naxos 8574336
Release: 14 October 2022
Josef Bohuslav Foerster was the successor to Dvořák as organist in Prague, a lifelong friend of Mahler, and a pivotal figure in Czech music, whose almost 200 compositions take in all the major genres. The three selected works here offer an overview of his orchestral music. Recalling several equally majestic pieces by Smetana, the arresting Festive Overture combines Czech flair with Viennese elegance, while From Shakespeare explores characterisation with warmth and resourceful orchestration. The early Symphony No. 1 in D minor offers a darkness-to-light trajectory suffused with rich mid-Romantic colours.

Johann Simon Mayr: L'accademia di musica ('The Academy of Music')
Andrés Jesús Gallucci, Filippo Morace, César Cortés, Eleonora Bellocci, Ricardo Seguel, Maria del Mar Humanes, Filippo Pina Castiglioni, Passionart Orchestra / Nicola Pascoli
Naxos 8660511
Release: 14 October 2022
Johann Simon Mayr was among the most successful composers prior to Rossini, and while he was long remembered as Donizetti's teacher his excellent music is now gaining the recognition it deserves. L'accademia di musica is a single-act farsa or comedy, its narrative a variation on the familiar situation of an elderly rich man trying to seduce and marry his young maid and the complications and intrigues that ensue, including 'play within a play' and a concert held as part of the opera. With its vaudeville finale and metaphorical touches, this opera simultaneously recalls eighteenth-century traditions and anticipates Rossini. This latest release from our ongoing and always popular recordings from Rossini in Wildbad sees a welcome return of the stylish Passionart Orchestra at this bel canto festival, with singers and instrumentalists brought together by the experienced baton of Nicola Pascoli to create a production of a virtually unknown opera that generated much acclaim.

Alexander Arutiunian, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Dmitry Shostakovich: Trumpet Concertos
Paul Merkelo, trumpet; Jae-Hyuck Cho, piano; Russian National Orchestra / Hans Graf
Naxos 8579117
Release: 14 October 2022
The trumpet has had many concertos written for it by composers from the Soviet era and beyond. Appealing in its unabashed melodies and colourfully nostalgic feel, Arutiunian's Trumpet Concerto became popular in the West, while Weinberg's emotive Trumpet Concerto in B flat major was summed up by Shostakovich as a 'symphony for trumpet and orchestra'. Shostakovich's own playful Concerto No. 1, Op. 35 is recorded here with Timofei Dokschizer's extended trumpet part, bringing it closer to the Baroque 'double concerto' model that the composer may initially have intended. The three works featured on this recording each has a connection with virtuoso trumpeter Timofei Dokshizer, who commissioned and premiered a succession of such pieces. A major attraction for this release is Paul Merkelo playing Shostakovich's extremely popular Piano Concerto No. 1 (which also features acclaimed pianist Jae-Hyuck Cho) in a version with archival cadenzas and ornamentation by Timofei Dokschizer.

Works for Guitar Sextet by Johann Sebastian Bach, Marco de Biasi, Gioachino Rossini, Atanas Ourkouzounov, Maurice Ravel, Tobias Krebs, Sergio Assad
Guitarra a Seis
Naxos 8551475
Release: 14 October 2022
With specially made instruments and a range that can emulate that of a whole orchestra, the acclaimed Guitarra a Seis bring us a colourful programme that includes works written specially for the ensemble. Opening with a real feast for the ears in Bach's lively Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, we further encounter the magical moods of Ravel's Ma mère l'Oye, a blend of Bulgarian folk and modern music from Atanas Ourkouzounov, Tobias Krebs' jazz-infused Suite Panamericana, and Sérgio Assad's humorous Juan Sebastian's Bar, which alludes to Bach and Beethoven but is Brazilian through and through. The guitar sextet Guitarra a Seis was founded in Zurich in 2012. The founder members include the three German guitarists Jens Stibal, Harald Stampa and Matthias Kläger as well as the Brazilian guitarist Edmauro de Oliveira. The Polish guitarist Adam Oleńczak joined in 2016, followed by the Swiss guitarist and composer Tobias Krebs in 2019. This is Guitarra a Seis' debut on the Naxos label, but this is an ensemble that has already established European renown in the guitar world and beyond for its innovative approach to performing and its imaginative programming of arrangements and original works, some of which have achieved wide exposure through a number of high-quality YouTube videos.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Egmont, Op 84 & Overture 'Zur Namensfeier', Op 115
August Zirner, Christina Landshamer, Muenchner Rundfunkorchester / John Fiore
BR Klassik 900340 (2 CDs)
Release: 14 October 2022
In this complete recording, Beethoven's incidental music to Goethe's 'Egmont', which includes the popular and well-known overture, can be experienced in its entirety. CD1 offers the complete version with declamation and music, while CD2 features only Beethoven's music. The box also includes a recording of Beethoven's overture 'Zur Namensfeier', Op. 115. In September 1809, the Vienna Hofburg Theatre commissioned Ludwig van Beethoven to create new incidental music for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 'Egmont'. The music itself makes it clear that this commission was close to Beethoven's heart - it far exceeds the level of incidental music common at that time. That applies not only to the compositional demands but also to the relationship of the music to the drama.

Martha Argerich Vol 8: Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Tokyo Recital 1976
Martha Argerich, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / Charles Dutoit / Vaclav Neumann
Doremi DHR-8181/2 (2 CDs)
Release: 14 October 2022
The eminent Martha Argerich is one of the most loved and admired classical pianists of all time. She quickly gained worldwide reputation for her exciting performances. This release is the eighth in DOREMI's special series of rare archival broadcasts featuring the artistry of the young Argerich from early in her spectacular career which spanned more than five decades.

Leon Fleisher Vol 4: Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Franck
Leon Fleisher, piano; New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester des Sudwestfunks, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra / Pierre Monteux / Ernest Bour / Henry Sopkin / Enrique Jorda / Ferenc Fricsay
Doremi DHR-8183/4 (2 CDs)
Release: 14 October 2022
Described by the New York Times in 1944 as 'One of the most remark­ably gifted of the younger generation of American keyboard artists' Leon Fleisher was born in San Francisco in 1928. In 1944, at age 16, he played the Brahms first Piano Concerto as soloist with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Pierre Monteux. In 1952 he won the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels. He played the Brahms and Beethoven Piano Concertos often and recorded them with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1964, he noticed that two fin­gers of his right hand were begin­ning to involuntarily curl up. He tried every therapy that existed then, but his solo career was eff ec­ti vely ended. He continued to teach, and conduct and in 1967 began to perform works for the left hand. In 1995 he succeeded to regain the use if his right hand and began performing and recording with two-hands. Leon Fleisher passed away in 2020 at age 92. DOREMI is proud to offer here a hitherto unreleased live recording of 16 years old Leon Fleisher playing Brahms Piano concerto No, 1 with the New York Philharmonic. Pierre Monteux conducting.

Carl Nielsen: Symphonies Nos 2 & 4
Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR / Roger Norrington
SWR Classic  SWR19120CD
Release: 14 October 2022
Among the early-20th century composers involved in the transition from romanticism to modernism, Carl Nielsen was particularly conspicuous for his originality which deviated from everything known and was perceived at the time as downright provocative. Today we see in Carl Nielsen's six symphonies – each strikingly different – consistent genre contributions of unique and outstanding importance. Yet Nielsen's international breakthrough only began in the 1950s and today his works are still far from being commonplace in our concert halls. The Symphony No. 4 was considered by the composer himself as one of his best works and it is one of the most performed. The Symphony No. 2 was inspired by paintings in a pub, showing grotesquely exaggerated depictions of the four 'characters' that were thought in medieval times to make up the human personality. Listeners shouldn't be surprised that there's a lot more humour at play here than is apparent in most other works.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Overtures
Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR / Roger Norrington
SWR Classic SWR19121CD
Release: 14 October 2022
This recording presents Ludwig van Beethoven's most important overtures composed for his stage works, which were few and far between yet cover a wide variety of styles: the three overtures for his only opera Leonore which was later known as Fidelio followed by the introductory music to the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus and by music for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play Egmont, which had previously been rather unsuccessful on stage but enjoyed greater popularity once Beethoven set it to music. The last piece is the Overture to Collin's tragedy Coriolan, written at a time when the drama was hardly performed anymore, and which therefore became a concert overture.

Legendary Conductors - Symphonic Masterpieces
Karl Böhm, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Carl Schuricht, Hans Knappertsbusch, Hans Rosbaud, Kurt Sanderling, Kirill Kondrashin, Leopold Stokowski, Carlos Kleiber, Roger Norrington, Michael Gielen, Georges Prêtre
SWR Classic SWR19432CD (10 CDs)
Release: 14 October 2022
In their long history the SWR Symphonic Orchestras (one covering the Southern part, the other the South-Western part of the federal state Baden-Württemberg) changed their names for quite a few times. In 2016 they merged and are known today as the SWR Symphonieorchester. Over all the years these orchestras have performed with many legendary conductors who either were in charge as chief conductors or occasionally invited as guest conductors. On this 10 CD boxed set the listeners will find twelve great names belonging to some of the greatest conductors of the twentieth century. Some, such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Leopold Stokowski, Hans Knappertsbusch, Karl Böhm, Kirill Kondrashin, Carlos Kleiber or Kurt Sanderling, appeared only sporadically on the podium of the two leading Baden-Württemberg orchestras. Others, such as Carl Schuricht or, of course, the chief conductors represented here, Hans Rosbaud and Michael Gielen (Baden-Baden), George Prêtre and Roger Norrington (Stuttgart), have left a mark on the respective orchestra in their collaboration. Included are symphonic masterpieces like Symphony No. 40 by Mozart, Beethoven's Pastorale, Variations on a Theme by Haydn by Brahms, Enigma Variations by Elgar and the music for the ballet Pulcinella by Stravinsky, to name but a few. The recordings comprehend the years 1955 to 2010.

The Violin in Modena - Giovanni Battista Vitali, Giuseppe Colombi, Anonymous
Peter Sheppard Skærved
Divine Art Athene ATH 23214
Release: 14 October 2022
As well as being internationally recognised as a leading interpreter of music new and old, Peter Sheppard Skærved is the only violinist to have performed on the personal violins of Viotti, Paganini, Joachim, Kreisler and Ole Bull. He is a renowned soloist, musicologist, writer, painter and educator at the Royal Academy, and in 2022 appointed as Honorary Professor at the Royal Northern College of Music. This album features perhaps some of the best (certainly best-known) works by the top two violin composers working in Modena, Italy, at the end of the 17th century. Vitali and Colombi were both quite prolific and produced pieces of wide variety of form, not whittled down to the standard 'dance suite' of the middle and late baroque. While the Vitali works have been recorded previously in a version for ensemble, this is the first recording of the pieces in their solo format – and the same applies to the Colombi and anonymous pieces. The album is a fine and fitting sequel to Skærved's previous solo recording 'Florish in the Key' (Athene ATH23211) which presented contemporaneous (late 17th century) solo violin music from London.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Russian Piano Music, Vol 15
Stefania Argentieri
Divine Art DDA 25157
Release: 14 October 2022
Stefania Argentieri is a young Italian pianist of consummate skill, necessary to give full expression to the piano music of Tchaikovsky, which remains strangely under-appreciated. She has won many awards and has performed at prestigious events in Europe and the USA. She teaches at the Giordano Conservatory in Foggia and is also working as a music editor. Stefania has made recordings with her chamber ensemble. This is her second solo album for Divine Art, following her well-received recording of Prokofiev released in 2020. This album showcases the spectrum of Tchaikovsky's art from the pastoral and gentle (extracts from 18 Pieces and The Seasons) to the noble and high-Romantic (the 'Grand Sonata') and at a time when modern Russia is blighted by its leaders' warmongering and aggression, a reminder that the Russian musical art of the past is still as instructive and valuable as ever.

James Cook: Liebestod Symphony
Helen Lacey, soprano; Paul McKenzie, piano
Divine Art Diversions DDV 24171
Release: 14 October 2022
James Cook was born in Wales in 1963. He composed three major symphonies in his twenties and after a brief spell studying composition at Oxford in 1994 turned to the writing of sacred vocal and choral music, much of which has been recorded for Divine Art/Diversions. In 2000 he began to concentrate on organ music and competed a cycle of nine organ symphonies. Looking to expand his horizons further he turned to opera in 2010; his first, 'Dorothy', was premiered in London in 2015. Since then he has produced several more including a cycle of four on Biblical themes. The Liebestod Symphony is a cycle of five songs originally scored for soprano and orchestra, here in piano arrangement. The first four songs are settings of poetry on the subject of Richard Wagner and the fifth a reference to the 'Liebestod' from Tristan und Isolde , a subject of great interest to the composer. The texts are by Cosima Wagner, A C Swinburne, Gabriele d'Annunzio, Sidney Lanier and John Janeway. This is a mid price 'mini-album' which follows the release in January 2022 of 'Davids Liebestod' – extracts from two operas by James Cook. Helen Lacey is a lyric soprano who recently graduated from the Royal Academy of Music where she was a member of the prestigious Academy Song Circle. Paul McKenzie is a specialist Repetiteur for several opera companies, and performs as orchestral pianist, accompanist and jazz pianist.

Edward Cowie: Streams and Particles
Peter Sheppard Skærved, violin; Mihailo Trandafilovski, violin; Hugh Millington, Saki Kato, Spectrum Guitar Quartet; Christopher Redgate, oboe
Divine Art Metier MSV 28612
Release: 14 October 2022
Edward Cowie is considered by many to be the greatest living composer directly inspired by the Natural World. His post-impressionist works, from the gigantic orchestral Leviathan (his first Proms commission) to his cycles of Bird Portraits and other chamber and instrumental pieces are drawing gasps of admiration from critics and audiences alike. This album focuses on Nature in the smallest sense - the subatomic building blocks of the Universe, and the conceptual realisation of mathematical structures in art by the great symbolic abstract artist Kandinsky. Three works for guitar(s) - solo, duo and quartet - are bookended by a violin duo and an oboe solo in a collection which once again demonstrates Cowie's genius and his place as one of today's most inspired and inventive composers – a place which is being confirmed by critics more and more with each new album. The performers are all leaders in their fields: Skærved and Trandafilovski are the two violinists with the Kreutzer Quartet as well as having varied successful careers as soloists, composers/arrangers and educators – with many Metier and Athene recordings to their names. Christopher Redgate is recognised as one of the world's foremost oboists specializing in new music (and the inventor of the Howarth-Redgate oboe) while Saki Kato and Hugh Millington are creating a fine reputation for their championing of contemporary guitar music. They are also recording music by Trandafilovsky for a new Métier release in November. Overall this recording reinforces the brilliance of Cowie's writing and shows his ability to create fine works for instruments he was not previously familiar with!

Iman: Album 1 - Schoenberg, Boulez, Webern, Amy
James W Iman, piano
Divine Art Metier MSV28627
Release: 14 October 2022
American pianist James W Iman specializes in music written since 1900 – and mostly, post-1945. His meticulous study of the scores and also the aesthetic concepts behind them allows him to find fresh approaches to well known works as well as an ability to present new music in a relatable and clearly authentic way. As The Cross-Eyed Pianist wrote, his performances give ' a very clear sense of his total commitment to this music and also how comfortable he fees in this repertoire. This attention to the detail of the music and its conception is particularly important in relation to the 20th century music of serialist and modernist schools which can be seen as purely mechanical without real artistic 'spirit'. This is the first of three recordings by Iman to be released by Metier and is a remastered re-issue of a disc from short-lived Belgian label ZeD (The other two albums are new, recorded in the summer of 2022) and focuses on two composers of the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg and Webern); one from the Darmstadt School (Boulez) and French composer Gilbert Amy, a contemporary follower of the serialist movement, and greatly inspired by Webern though writing on a larger scale. His Piano Sonata provides a fitting yet distinct counterpoint to the granitic Third Sonata of Boulez, and with strong contrast provided by the relatively early work by Schoenberg and the typically concise miniatures by Webern.

Castiglioni: Complete Piano Works, Vol 1
Aldo Orvieto
Grand Piano GP862
Release: 14 October 2022
Niccolò Castiglioni was one of the most singular figures on the Italian music scene of the latter half of the 20th century. Including world première recordings, Volume 1 of this complete edition reveals the exceptional quality of Castiglioni's early piano works, the cantabile solemnity found in his exploration of twelve-tone techniques, and the quest for simplicity in later pieces that include the Seconda sonatina discovered among the composer's papers after his death. The acclaimed pianist Aldo Orvieto has recorded and performed extensively throughout his career and is a specialist in Italian 20th-century repertoire.

Louise Farrenc: Complete Piano Works, Vol 1; Études
Maria Stratigou
Grand Piano GP912-13 (2 CDs)
Release: 14 October 2022
Louise Farrenc was one of the most respected pianists and composers in the 19th-century Parisian music scene, and her four sets of Études are her most important compositions for piano. Beautiful melodies and distinctiveness of character have made the Études, Op. 26 the most popular set, but all of these pieces are full of grace and charm alongside their didactic usefulness in their references to the styles both of Farrenc's musical ancestors and her contemporaries. The Greek pianist Maria Stratigou is one of Louise Farrenc's greatest exponents and makes her Grand Piano debut with these exquisite rarities.

Stephan Elmas: Complete Piano Works, Vol 1
Mikael Ayrapetyan
Grand Piano GP914
Release: 14 October 2022
Armenian pianist and composer Stephan Elmas was a child prodigy who met Franz Liszt and became closely acquainted with Rubinstein and Massenet. Elmas' life was darkened by illness and the tragedy of his homeland, but his music reflects the ease and facility of his technique, harking back to the Romanticism of Chopin, Liszt and Schumann, rather than the challenging times in which he lived, and with a quality of craftsmanship that gives his music a magnetic attractiveness. Mikael Ayrapetyan continues his acclaimed exploration of rediscovered Armenian piano repertoire with the first in this series of Elmas' complete works for piano.

Love and Let Die
Katharina Ruckgaber, Jan Philip Schulze
Solo Musica SM405
Release: 14 October 2022
Crime novels, films and TV series are all the rage these days. In the UK, sales of crime novels exceed those of romantic, fantasy or science fiction titles. Pre- and post-watershed television crime series such as 'Peaky Blinders', 'Line of Duty', 'Murder in Provence', NCIS and 'Better call Saul' often revolve around specific towns, cities or regions and run for several years, expanding on plot lines and drawing in numerous characters. It seems the eagerness to hunt the killer side-by-side with the detectives and a sort of collective desire to sit rigid with fear on our sofas and be subjected to all manner of horrors has taken hold of society. However, the fascination with the depths to which human beings can descend goes back much further; indeed it is part of our 'cultural heritage', so to speak. Just take a look at the history of literature and you will see it is packed with criminal deeds: the original sin in the Garden of Eden, fratricide in the Bible, and some while later in the antique world, murder and mayhem were the foundations of every Greek or Roman tragedy. This is happening amid – or despite – the daily menu of dramatic events served up on news programmes, the barbarous events taking place around the world, events of such stark reality that they surely leave crime thriller plots in the shade. Does that mean that anyone could become a murderer? Forensic psychiatrists have been investigating this question for years and have repeatedly reached the conclusion that no one is immune to committing an act of madness when fate has dealt them a dreadful blow. That is what happens to the female narrator on my new lieder album. Killing one's rival, a variation on the crime of passion committed in a conflict situation as a result of overwhelming jealousy, by losing control over one's negative character traits shines a light on a dark power that causes her to get carried away in a highly tense moment. And now she must live with what she has done, a crime that she is unable to reconcile with her conscience, a deed that makes her feel as if an alien part of her committed it. In the search for suitable pieces for my idea of a sophisticated, classical, and at the same time varied lieder recital, which aims on a second level to tell a new tale of (crime) fiction in a tight dramatic form, I went rummaging through the full and rich gamut of German-language lieder repertoire. In my detective work I came across both popular classics and some rarely heard gems. I would like to take a closer look at some of these works that I consider very special, and at their composers.

Talistrio - chamber works by Alfredo Casella, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Kôsçak Yamada
Solo Musica SM409
Release: 14 October 2022
Paul Klee's picture Ad marginem provides inspiration and context for the present programme and is a visual guide to performance for us as Talistrio: a radiant red circle in the middle, while around it - driven back to the margin - living creatures and abstract objects emerge. It is surely this mixture of melancholy and hope that links all the works listed below, be it Casella's neoclassical dance on the volcano from the early 20th century, Tchaikovsky's death and its shattering inspirational impulse upon the young Rachmaninoff, or the Japanese child scene at sunset. Amazement and admiration have attended Talistrio since its debut concert of 2012. The press credits the trio with 'great intensity and virtuosity', 'great differentiation of tone', and a 'spiritual penetration of the compositions followed through to the slightest detail'. Talistrio is the Augsburg piano trio that belongs to a new generation as an international ensemble. It was in 2011 that siblings Elisa and Wenzel Gummer joined cellist Takuro Okada to form a German-Japanese trio. Concert tours have since taken them from Bavaria to Holland, Switzerland and Japan. Talistrio sets great store by projects promoting exchange and understanding between the German and Japanese cultures.

Sancta Ovetensis - Joaquín Lázaro, Anonymous
Jone Martínez, Jorge Jiménez, Forma Antiqva / Aarón Zapico
Winter & Winter 9102832
Release: 14 October 2022
The Spanish baroque ensemble Forma Antiqva rescues forgotten masterpieces. The conductor and artistic director Aarón Zapico opens the musical treasury in the archives of Oviedo Cathedral and presents Spanish masterpieces of the 17th century to the world. Each individual work is a premiere recording, including six vocal pieces by Joaquín Lázaro (1746-1786) — the soprano Jone Martínez brings these love arias about the highest, divine love to life again — and two anonymous instrumental pieces and a violin concerto. Forma Antiqva, conducted by Aarón Zapico, is one of the most outstanding baroque ensembles in Spain. Zapico places special work on the discovery of Spanish baroque music. The maestro unearths gems and performs them with his ensemble as if the ink were still wet on 17th-century sheet music. Very exciting!

Heaven and Earth
Cappella Romana / John Michael Boyer
Cappella Records CR-424 (SACD)
Release: 14 October 2022
Cappella Records is pleased to announce the October 14, 2022, two-disc release of Heaven and Earth, with Cappella Romana's Associate Music Director John Michael Boyer leading the ensemble along with 45th Parallel Universe in John Tavener's masterpiece for choir and string trio, Ikon of Light. The release also features the world premiere of Heaven and Earth: A Song of Creation, a unique collaborative setting of the Creation Psalm (103 LXX) by six acclaimed Orthodox choral composers: Tikey Zes, Richard Toensing, GRAMMY® Award nominee Kurt Sander, Alexander Khalil, Matthew Arndt, and conductor John Michael Boyer. The Saint John of Damascus Society, which promotes new Orthodox choral music, commissioned Heaven and Earth for Cappella Romana in 2013 in honor of the 2012 Higgs boson discovery. Richard Barrett, Cappella Romana's Director of Publications, says in his extensive essay that Ikon of Light and Heaven and Earth are 'complementary musical compositions that focus on these parallel aspects of light—supernatural and natural—in Orthodox spirituality.' The two works offer a transcendent experience of musical beauty–one informed by Orthodox spirituality and influenced by the contours of Byzantine chant. Ikon of Light explores the inner, mystical illumination of the soul as described by the medieval mystic St. Symeon the New Theologian. Heaven and Earth weaves Renaissance counterpoint, Slavic harmony, Georgian polyphony, and more around a central Byzantine melodic line. The composers create a tapestry of shimmering harmonies that finds unity through diversity, underscoring the Creation Psalm's theme: 'How magnified are your works, O Lord. With wisdom have You made them all!' Cappella Romana features some of America's finest choral singers, many of whom are renowned specialists in historically-informed performance and Byzantine chant, singing in Greek and English. Heaven and Earth is the second of three planned 2022 releases on Cappella Records produced by multi-GRAMMY® Award winner Blanton Alspaugh and the engineering team at Soundmirror.

Johann Sebastian Bach: The Complete Works for Keyboard, Vol 7 'Orgelbüchlein'
Benjamin Alard, Ensemble Bergamasque, Maîtrise Notre Dame de Paris
harmonia mundi HMM902498.99
Release: 14 October 2022
With its forty-five chorale preludes, the Orgelbüchlein bears witness to a mastery of the art of improvisation on the organ, as the congregation heard it at the time before singing the hymn in its turn. It was a tempting experiment to revive this primary function: by collaborating with the combined forces of the Ensemble Vocal Bergamasque and the Maîtrise de Notre-Dame de Paris, Benjamin Alard gives the 'little organ book' its full significance and expressive power.

Sandman's Castle
Vincent Ho
Navona Records NV6462
Release: 14 October 2022
From natural scenes of beauty to mystical dreamscapes and vivid characters of villainy, a dynamic assortment of music awaits in Sandman's Castle from composer Vincent Ho. A compendium of uniquely-orchestrated and masterfully executed solo and duo works are brought to life from a roster of renowned performers: Vicky Chow, Susanne Ruberg-Gordon, Ben Reimer, Beth Root Sandvoss and Evelyn Glennie, who serves as a listener's guide on a mystical journey into the world of dreams in the albums titular track. Between explorations of uncharted territories with tam-tam and music boxes and thoughtful juxtapositions of the drumset with mainstays in classical music, Ho pulls out all of the stops with the renowned featured performers, and his dexterous compositional tool-kit throughout.

Re(Creation) - Russian Piano Sonatas - Scriabin, Medtner, Rachmaninov
Marko Stuparević, piano
Navona Records NV6423
Release: 14 October 2022
Re(Creation) from Navona Records and pianist Marko Stuparević is centered on the acts of creation and re-creation, observed through three piano sonatas of three Russian composers: all pianists, contemporaries, and representatives of some of the most notable works of 20th century Russian piano music. Performed by the award-winning pianist, each sonata is rich with advanced compositional techniques and the individual ideologies of their composers, crafted with cyclical forms representing the circle of life. The works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Scriabin, and Nikolai Medtner are on full display, born and immortalized into the never-ending life cycle they mirror.

Carl Nielsen: Symphonies Nos 4 & 5
Danish National Symphony Orchestra / Fabio Luisi
Deutsche Grammophon 00028948634750 (digital only)
Release: 14 October 2022
After six years of acclaimed live performances in Europe, USA and Asia, The Danish Symphony Orchestra and Fabio Luisi now present their special take on Carl Nielsen's symphonies on record for the first time. The first release in the series will feature the symphonies nos. 4 & 5. The Danish National Symphony Orchestra is internationally acclaimed for its interpretations of Carl Nielsen's music, cultivated through generations of musicians ever since the composer himself conducted the orchestra in the 1920s and 30s.

Dan Kurfirst: Arkinetics
Neuma Records Neuma 163
Release: 14 October 2022
There are many cultures that use repetitive, percussive music to induce meditative states. In cultures as diverse as those in Asia, the Middle East, and West Africa, the drum has been used to weave entrancing patterns that move the body and mind. Drummer/composer Dan Kurfirst has been studying the drums, rhythms, and their combined effects on the body and mind. His new recording, Arkinetics, provides a fascinating encapsulation of his study of global rhythms, free improvisation, and engaging production. The New York City-born and raised Kurfirst grew up playing drums, mainly interested in rock and hip-hop music. In his twenties, the young drummer discovered jazz and began his path through New York's Downtown improv community. Kurfirst's interests broadened into the study of world music, especially the percussive elements of Middle Eastern and West African music, including the adaptation of West African rhythms to the drum kit with master drummer royal hartigan. Kurfirst practices daily meditation, clearing his mind and allowing a deeper focus on matters he finds most important. Meditation led to a focus on musical compositions, whether they stem from a drum pattern, a bassline, or piano melody that Kurfirst could flesh out into a full piece. This was how many of the pieces on Arkinetics were born. Looking back to his fascination with hip-hop's ability to draw listeners in with the most basic of rhythmic information, Kurfirst made the rhythm section the center of his attention. Compositions began to flesh themselves out over periods of study and reflection. As a drummer first, Kurfirst began to approach the other instruments, especially the piano and bass, as other types of drums. He began to write parts for bass and piano to add other layers to his drum ensemble. The name Arkinetics combines the words architecture and kinetics. This refers directly to kinetic architecture, where there are moving parts within a larger structure that do not compromise the integrity of the overall structure. Musically, this speaks to the individual parts played by the musicians coming together in effort to make a full composition. To perform these functions in the music, Kurfirst brought in bassist Damon Banks and Alexis Marcelo on Fender Rhodes, both collaborators with Adam Rudolph. Drawn to the textures and colors of Indian classical music, Kurfirst invited tabla player Roshni Samlal to add another percussive dimension to the music. Finally, Kurfirst asked Downtown improv legend Daniel Carter to add his own highly thematic free improvisations into the mix. The overall sound of predetermined compositions with freely played improvisations bring the eclectically exploratory Miles Davis's electric bands to mind. Much of the beauty found in stimulating music is in its ability to blend simplicity and complexity into unique aural experience. Dan Kurfirst finds this balance on his brilliant new recording, Arkinetics.

Beethoven Complete String Quartets - Volume 3 - The Late Quartets
Dover Quartet
Cedille Records CDR 90000 215
Release: 14 October 2022
The celebrated Dover Quartet, the young, Grammy-nominated ensemble brimming with prestigious awards and residencies, concludes its critically acclaimed, three-volume Beethoven cycle with the composer's five monumental, revolutionary Late Quartets and imposing Grosse Fuge. The triple-CD release comprises Beethoven's very last compositions — remarkable and often daunting works that upended the concept of the string quartet. Many critics and scholars consider them the ultimate expression of Beethoven's artistry. At the same time, lyrical, songlike 'vocal' writing pervades the Late Quartets, delighting the same audiences who flocked to Rossini's operas. This is the Dover Quartet's fifth Cedille Records album, following Volumes 1 and 2 of their Beethoven cycle; Voices of Defiance, a recording of 20th-century works; and Tribute, an all-Mozart album that marked the ensemble's recording debut. Dover's The Schumann Quartets (Azica Records) received a 2021 Grammy Award nomination.

 

7 OCTOBER 2022

Beau Soir: Debussy | Poulenc | Ravel | Satie
Maciej Kułakowski (cello) / Jonathan Ware (piano)
Delphian Records DCD34277
Release: 7 October 2022
Acclaimed young cellist Maciej Kułakowski (Lutosławski International Cello Competition 2015, First Prize; Queen Elisabeth Competition 2017, Laureate) is partnered by pianist Jonathan Ware in an all-French recital programme that mingles the familiar with the reimagined. Elements of 'Spanish' style, blues and jazz, and the ironic humour of the Parisian café, encountered in sonatas by Debussy, Poulenc and Ravel (Kułakowski's cello rendering of the latter's second violin sonata), are echoed in a brace of shorter works that includes several further transcriptions: of three short pieces by Debussy and of Satie's Trois Gnossiennes.

Rossini: Messa di Gloria
Eleonora Buratto, Teresa Iervolino, Michael Spyres, Lawrence Brownlee, Carlo Lepore, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia / Antonio Pappano
Warner Classics/Erato
Release: 7 October 2022
Pappano, as Music Director of Rome's Chorus and Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, has built a notable discography of Rossini on Warner Classics: the epic opera Guillaume Tell, the Stabat mater, the Petite Messe Solenelle and an album of operatic overtures. Now, with the Messa di Gloria, he expands it with the only liturgical work that Rossini wrote before his retirement in 1829 when he was just 37 years old. More rarely heard than the monumental Stabat mater and the idiosyncratic Petite Messe Solenelle, the nine-movement Messa di Gloria requires five virtuosic vocal soloists. Here, three Italians – soprano Eleonora Buratto, mezzo-soprano Teresa Iervolino and bass Carlo Lepore – are joined by two Americans, Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres. Spyres describes the Messa di Gloria as 'some of the most difficult vocal writing Rossini ever penned. He really wanted to glorify the Church and the Word, showing the entire range of every single voice as he did so. It is truly bel canto at its height.'

Roots
Nemanja Redulovic, Double Sens
Warner Classics/Erato
Release: 7 October 2022
'The Serbian violin virtuoso has taken the classical music world by storm with his extraordinary playing and daring repertoire', said Classic FM of Nemanja Radulović. With Roots, his first Warner Classics album, Radulović draws on a diversity of cultures in a musical tour of the world. The album moves across musical sound worlds from countries around the globe, including China, Japan, India, France, Spain, Serbia, Romania, Israel, North Macedonia, and many more. The variety of pieces showcases different expressions and sounds, reflecting the multitude of potential timbral colours Nemanja discovered over the pandemic. Recorded in his homeland Serbia with his ensemble Double Sens, the album features solo contributions from vocalists Ksenija Milosević and Miloš Mihajlović, violinists Kristina Atanasova Radulović and Tijana Milošević, and guitarist Aleksandar Sedlar.

From Brazilian Northeast
Vladimir Rufino, violin
Azul Music AMDA1773
Release: 7 October 2022
Debut album by violinist Vladimir Rufino, featuring works by contemporary composers from the Brazilian state of Paraíba.

Shapeshifter: Music of Erwin Schulhoff
Delos DE 3566
Release: 7 October 2022
The powerful and amazingly varied music of Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff, whose art was suppressed by the Nazi regime and who died in captivity in 1942, is given stirring performances by brilliant young players from the Colburn School, Los Angeles' elite conservatory. James Conlon, world-renowned conductor and LA Opera music director, leads the RVC Ensemble in Schulhoff's Piano Concerto, Op. 43, with Dominic Cheli as soloist. Four other pieces — all strong and unique — complete the album's offerings, which span the years between 1923 and 1937; Cheli and violinist Adam Millstein are particularly outstanding contributors.  While Schulhoff's music has been gradually emerging from near-total obscurity in recent years, Shapeshifter is especially notable as the first album-length example of his works being taken up by American musicians of classical's ascendant 'next generation.' The breadth and athleticism that mark Schulhoff's output – which encompasses nearly every important trend in 20th century music – holds a special appeal for younger players and their audiences at a time when stylistic classifications are increasingly being kicked to the curb. The Shapeshifter project is intimately connected to the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices, which encourages greater awareness and more frequent performances of music by composers whose careers and lives were disrupted or ended during the years of the Nazi regime in Europe. The Recovered Voices initiative was established at the Colburn School in 2013. Founded in 1973, Delos has released more than 650 albums featuring top artists. A pioneer in digital recording, Delos is known as a label with a strong personality that attracts a host of major performers and has also garnered acclaim for the technical excellence of its recordings.

J S Bach: Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord
Andoni Mercero, violin; Alfonso Sebastián, harpsichord
Eudora Records EUDDR2205 (2 SACDs)
Release: 7 October 2022
Mercero and Sebastián expressively illustrate the large variety of moods contained within J S Bach's Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord on their new recording for Eudora Records.  Sometimes you stumble across a recording of repertoire that you know very well, yet it is performed by musicians you have never heard of before. This recording of Bach's Six Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1014-1019, is likely to be a pleasantly surprising example of that for many listeners. Violinist Andoni Mercero, former member of the Cuarteto Casals, creates a warm sound with silvery timbre, while harpsichord player Alfonso Sebastián skillfully brings ensemble playing to the harpsichord. The double album was recorded by Eudora Records' audiophile engineer Gonzalo Noqué, in the immersive acoustics of the San Miguel Church in Daroca (Zaragoza, Spain) in 2020. Johann Sebastian Bach came up with the innovative idea of writing a three-part counterpoint for the violin and the two hands of the harpsichord, which is why C.P.E. Bach referred to them as 'keyboard trios'. The instrumentation anticipates that of the Classical sonata for violin and piano, although traditional elements of the Baroque trio sonata can still be found in certain movements, or sections within movements, where the violinist and the harpsichordist's right hand act as a duo above the bass line. This, together with an astonishingly diverse use of texture, contrapuntal technique, instrumental sonority, atmosphere and allusion, makes the sonatas one of Bach's most richly varied collections. These six works have an enormous variety of characters and moods: from a sense of melancholy or despair (B minor) to pastoral and extrovert (A Major), from majesty and lament (E Major) to nostalgia and abandon (C minor), from great joy and restraint (G major) to intellectual abstraction and humour (F Minor). Listening to Andoni Mercero and Alfonso Sebastián perform the sonatas from this perspective reveals new and sometimes unexpected facets of Bach's writing.

Richard Flury: Der Schlimm-Heilige Vitalis, Opera in Five Acts
Toccata Classics TOCC 0632 (2 CDs)
Release: 7 October 2022
We've already released two of the four operas by the Swiss composer Richard Flury (1896–1967); the five-acter Der schlimm-heilige Vitalis (which can be translated roughly as 'Lustful Brother Vitalis') was the last of them. It was premiered in 1963, the year after its completion and then remained unheard until this recording. The plot, based on a novella published in 1872 by Flury's fellow Swiss, Gottfried Keller, sets jolly village life (supposedly in the Middle East, though the music doesn't go there) against religious intolerance and sexual politics in an unsettling blend of the sentimental and the cynical – although love, of course, triumphs in the end. This double album, recorded in Nuremberg earlier this year, continues our association with the Richard Flury-Stiftung in Biberist, near Solothurn in Switzerland – Flury's home turf. The principal soloists (there are no fewer than fifteen!) are Matthias Stier, tenor, as the monk Vitalis, Rebecca Nelsen, soprano, as Jole, the baritone Kay Stiefermann as her merchant father and Stephanie Bühlmann, soprano, as her maidservant, Marlene Gassner, contralto, as Jucunda, Markus Eiche, baritone, as a boisterous soldier, the bass Christian Tschelebiew as landlord of the local pub and the bass Tijl Faveyts in the two roles of abbot and night watchman; the Madrigal Choir of the Nuremberg University of Music (Alfons Brandl, chorus-master) and Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra are conducted by that Toccata stalwart Paul Mann, who also prepared the edition from which the recording was made.

Moritz Moszkowski: Complete Music for Solo Piano, Volume Two
Toccata Classics TOCC 0660
Release: 7 October 2022
Our three releases to date of the orchestral music and first of the piano music of Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1925) have proved surprisingly successful – all have had to be re-pressed. The surprise doesn't imply any doubt about the quality of the music – it's just that (to focus on Moszkowski's considerable quantity of piano music), only a single piece, 'Étincelles', made it into the repertoire, not least because Horowitz enjoyed playing it. The early works on this second installment in Ian Hobson's survey of Moszkowski's complete music for solo piano (TOCC 0660) reveal a debt to Mendelssohn and Schumann, but the effortless craftsmanship heard here already justifies a later remark of Paderewski's: 'After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano, and his writing embraces the whole gamut of piano technique'. Most of the pieces in the Six Pieces, Op. 15, and Five Pieces, Op. 18, are attractive salon miniatures, but the Three Piano Pieces in Dance Form, Op. 17, are extended Lisztian essays that showcase Moszkowski's mastery of the keyboard and his command of form. The 'Serenata' that opens Op 15 will give you an idea of the charm of this music.

Charles Roland Berry: Orchestral Music, Volume One
Toccata Classics TOCC 0512
Release: 7 October 2022
Charles Roland Berry, born in Boston, Mass., in 1957, studied in California with Peter Racine Fricker and Paul Creston before supporting himself in a variety of jobs in the music world. As a composer, he believes in writing music that audiences might like to hear and musicians enjoy playing; as a result, all three works here have the open-air, open-hearted, even naïve, quality of much American orchestral music, film scores in particular – the kind of 'Big Country' sound that one can hear in Copland, Grofe, Harris, Moross and other painters of the wide outdoors. TOCC 0512 presents the Olympic Mountains Overture and the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies – try the engaging and easy-going Scherzo of No. 5 to get an idea of Berry's soundworld. We offer you no fewer than three orchestras here, too, and in three countries: Joel Eric Suben conducted the Overture in Olomouc (in the Czech Republic – birthplace of Beethoven's amanuensis Anton Schindler, as it happens, and a stepping stone, in 1883, in Mahler's early career as a conductor), and Theodore Kuchar recorded No. 4 in Lublin, in Poland, and No. 5 in Lviv, in gallant Ukraine.

Bernhard Sekles: Lieder
Malte Müller, tenor; Werner Heinrich Schmitt, piano
Toccata Classics TOCC 0651
Release: 7 October 2022
Bernhard Sekles (1872–1934) was one of the leading figures in German music in the first decades of the twentieth century, prominent as composer, educator and administrator – although he has garnered more attention as Hindemith's teacher than for his own achievements. But he took some bold decisions: in 1928, for example, as director of the Hoch Conservatorium in Frankfurt, he established the first academic programme in jazz studies (anywhere – not just in Germany), an act of courage and conviction that unleashed furious attacks from the Nazi press. His late-Romantic music, banned during the Third Reich, has been virtually forgotten, although he composed in all major genres, including opera, orchestral works and chamber music. This first-ever album of his Lieder includes a major song-cycle, the freewheeling Aus dem Schi-King, published in 1907 and based on ancient Chinese poetry in adaptations by Friedrich Rückert, its moods ranging from the heroic to the comic.

Synergy - Telemann, Saint-Saëns, Doppler, Villa-Lobos, J S Bach, Mahler
Sharon Bezaly, Michala Petri, Michael Collins, Walter Auer, Bram van Sambeek, Swedish Chamber Orchestra / Thomas Dausgaard
BIS Records BIS2339 (SACD)
Release: 7 October 2022
On Synergy, flautist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends demonstrate that one plus one can be much greater than two. Featuring works that celebrate the coming together of like-minded musicians, this project is a reminder, after more than two years of a pandemic that has affected all of us, that true musical synergy can only be achieved 'face-to-face', rather than 'remotely'. With his Concerto for flute and recorder, Telemann not only creates a fusion of different musical styles of his time – namely Italian, German and French – but also shows a gift for borrowing elements from popular music. Saint-Saëns brings swirling colours and energy with a Tarentelle for flute, clarinet and orchestra that at times displays obsessive, even threatening undertones. From the same period, Doppler's Concerto for two flutes is not far from the world of opera, providing the two soloists with ample opportunity to shine like two singers in front of an orchestra. In addition to celebrating the synergy created between musicians, the last two works featured on this disc, Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 and Suite from the Orchestral Works, are telling examples of synergy between composers: it is as if Villa-Lobos and Mahler were shaking hands with Johann Sebastian Bach across distances of thousands of miles and hundreds of years.

Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstasy; Prometheus
Yevgeny Sudbin, piano; Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Lan Shui
BIS Records BIS2362 (SACD)
Release: 7 October 2022
One of the boldest and most radical composers of all time, Alexander Scriabin had a lifelong obsession with occult and mystical ideas. Initially under the influence of Chopin, Wagner and Liszt, his music later became more complex, taking on an expressive power which provoked extreme reactions from audiences – of adulation as well as repulsion. Not shying away from hyperbole, Scriabin once declared: 'I am the apotheosis of creation – I am the aim of all aims – I am the end of all ends.' The three works featured on this disc belong to Scriabin's final compositional period where the music seems to veer between voluptuous languor and striving energy. Composed back-to-back, the Poem of Ecstasy and the Fifth Piano Sonata are drenched in bitter-sweet harmonies and carefully constructed dissonances. The scores of both works make reference to the same poem – by Scriabin himself – which ends with the lines 'thus the universe resounds with the joyful cry: I AM!'. In his last symphonic poem, Prometheus — The Poem of Fire, Scriabin aims even higher. Here he expresses the evolution of the world from formless chaos, through the appearance of mankind, fertilized by the divine spark, towards spiritual liberation and ultimate transcendence. The unusually large orchestra and a wordless choir produces a kaleidoscope of contrasts, colours and sounds caught up in an ecstatic whirl.

Khachaturian: Piano Concerto; Concerto Rhapsody; Masquerade piano suite
Iyad Sughayer, piano; BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Andrew Litton
BIS Records BIS2586 (SACD)
Release: 7 October 2022
The expressive immediacy of Aram Khachaturian's music, with its sensuous melodic writing, vibrant orchestration and rhythmic drive, resulted in a popularity equalled by few composers of his generation. Composed in 1936, the Piano Concerto was the work that established Khachaturian's name. Cast in the customary three movements, it is scored for a sizable orchestra, with notable contributions from both side-drum and military drum in the percussion section. In the second movement there is also an extensive solo for a so-called 'flexatone'; it is often put forward that Khachaturian in fact intended the part to be played on the musical saw, as it is on the present recording. Thirty years after the Concerto, the composer returned to the genre with his Concerto-Rhapsody for piano and orchestra. This time the score offers prominent roles for the xylophone, marimba and vibraphone, which contribute towards making this one of the composer's most colourful works. The demanding solo parts are here performed by the young Jordanian-Palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer, with spirited support from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Andrew Litton. Sughayer made his acclaimed début as a recording artist with a disc of Khachaturian's piano works and sandwiched between the two works with orchestra he here presents the piano version of one of the composer's best loved pieces, the Masquerade Suite with its yearning opening Waltz and closing Galop.

Sinfoniettas - Poulenc, Prokofiev, Britten
Lahti Symphony Orchestra / Dima Slobodeniouk
BIS Records BIS2601 (SACD)
Release: 7 October 2022
The term sinfonietta is generally used to describe a work that is smaller in scale or lighter in approach than a standard symphony. It only came into common usage during the first half of the 20th century, which is when the three works included on this disc were in fact composed. Worth noting is also that Sergei Prokofiev and Benjamin Britten wrote their respective sinfoniettas while they were still in their teens – early attempts at multi-movement works for ensemble. Prokofiev revised his Sinfonietta twice, with the 1929 version recorded here, and later went on to become one of the great symphonists of his time. Britten chose a different path, with operas forming the most important part of his legacy. Perhaps symptomatically, his Sinfonietta – his Op. 1 – was initially composed for wind quintet and string quintet, a scoring which he later expanded into the version heard on the present recording. Like Britten, Francis Poulenc was not naturally inclined towards large-scale orchestral works, and his Sinfonietta is indeed his only symphonic piece. The most recent of the works on the disc, it is in a neo-classical vein with sparkling dance rhythms as well as lyrical moments. The three works are here performed by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk, a team which has released several highly acclaimed discs on BIS.

Bram van Sambeek - Bach on the Bassoon
BIS Records BIS2637 (SACD)
Release: 7 October 2022
Following a rock/metal album recorded with his band ORBI [BIS-2297], Bram van Sambeek returns with his own idea of a dance album. For it he has selected four works by Johann Sebastian Bach that consist mainly of typical baroque dances – but just as van Sambeek's metal album wasn't made for headbanging, Bach's dances weren't meant for dancing, but rather to be listened to. The disc opens with van Sambeek's own arrangement of the celebrated Partita in C minor for keyboard which he describes in his liner notes as one of his favourite works to listen to. The arrangement includes every note of the original keyboard part and is for no less than eight bassoons – all played by van Sambeek using multitrack recording technique. The idea for this came from having spent months in lockdown due to the pandemic: even though musicians were unable to play together, the urge to play actual harmonies persisted. Four movements from another keyboard work – the French Suite No. 5 – are also included on the disc, but as these are melodic rather than contrapuntal they have lent themselves to be arranged for a single voice. The remaining two works are the Flute Partita in A minor and Cello Suite No. 1, adding to an overall result which allows a new look on well-known works, with new nuances and colours.

Isang Yun: Violin Concerto III; Chamber Symphony I; Silla
Sueye Park, violin; Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra / Osmo Vänskä
BIS Records BIS2642 (SACD)
Release: 7 October 2022
At the end of a career spent between his native Korea and Germany, during which he produced works that span the musical traditions of both countries, Isang Yun expressed a wish to limit himself 'to what is substantial, in order to transmit more peace, more goodness, more purity and warmth into this world'. With Silla (1992) the composer pays tribute to the origins of Korean culture and philosophy, to the court music introduced from China, and to the period when Korea's political unity was established (676–935 AD). Describing its mood, Yun provided such keywords as 'nocturnal, festive … mirthful but also melancholy'. From the same year, Violin Concerto III was composed after a stay in hospital, and Yun once described it as a birthday present to himself. At the age of 75 he no longer felt the need to take contemporary currents, aesthetic trends or technical restraints into consideration. The work holds in store a wealth of musical occurrences that could perhaps be deciphered in the context of its composers own life, and is here performed by the young South Korean violinist Sueye Park. Closing the disc is Chamber Symphony No. 1 from 1987, a work in one movement but with three distinct sections. In it, Yun combines instruments that forge changing musical alliances while engaging in rivalry or complementing each other. The mood is evocative of an, at times, animated conversation.

Mahler: Symphony No 9
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks / Simon Rattle
BR Klassik 900205
Release: 7 October 2022
For the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the performances on 26 and 27 November 2021 in the Isarphilharmonie marked the beginning of a new chapter in its Mahler interpretation: with its designated new principal conductor Simon Rattle, the orchestra is now headed by a Mahler admirer every bit as ardent as his predecessors Jansons, Maazel and Kubelík. The musicians dedicated the benefit concert on 26 November to the memory of conductor Bernard Haitink, who died in October 2021 and was associated with the renowned orchestra for 61 years. The very long silence after the final chord was one of those 'goosebump moments' that one goes to concerts for – and for which music is made in the first place.

Joachim Raff: Choral Works (a cappella)
Basler Madrigalisten / Raphael Immoos
Capriccio C5501
Release: 7 October 2022
It was typical of Joachim Raff, sometime assistant and orchestrator for Franz Liszt, that he completed eleven symphonies but failed to get any of them performed. If those symphonies didn't quite establish themselves, then maybe his a capella choral music will. These works present Raff at his most diverse and imaginative best, proving him equally at home with sacred works and secular songs of awakening. The resultant musical style finds him drawing on the romantic vernacular of the time, whilst combining it with his very own take on the Cecilian Movement's revival of Renaissance polyphony in a way rivaled only decades later by Hans Pfitzner.

Engelbert Humperdinck: Der Blaue Vogel (The Blue Bird); Incidental Music after a Christmas Fairy Tale by Maurice Maeterlinck
Juri Tetzlaff, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / Steffen Tast
Capriccio C5506 (2 CDs)
Release: 7 October 2022
Maurice Maeterlinck completed his play The Blue Bird (L'Oiseau bleu) in 1908. Several of his previous works had proved popular as operatic subjects (Pelléas et Mélisande and Ariane et Barbe-Bleue) so it's no wonder that composers jumped at the opportunity to set his latest creation to music. French composer Albert Wolff based an opera on the story, which premiered at the New York Met but subsequently fell into oblivion. Prior to that, in 1912, Max Reinhardt adapted it as a Christmas play and staged a production in Berlin, inviting no less a person than Engelbert Humperdinck to write the incidental music for it. The music was never published, but Steffen Tast eventually located the score and salvaged it for us all to enjoy. A sweet story and newly discovered music by Humperdinck that's sweeter still? Truly a recipe for a fairy-tale ending!

William Byrd: Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets (1611)
The Sixteen, Fretwork / Harry Christophers
CORO COR16193 (2 CDs)
Release: 7 October 2022
The Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets of 1611 was William Byrd's final publication. And what a superbly fitting culmination to a lifetime of musical service it is! As well as being packed with variety and invention – including both sacred and secular music and using a range of forces from small trios to consorts to full choir – it is probably the happiest, most serene collection of music Byrd ever produced. Ahead of the 400th Anniversary of William Byrd's death in 2023, The Sixteen and Harry Christophers are joined by celebrated Viol Consort, Fretwork, for this new complete recording of the Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets of 1611.

Emilie Mayer: Symphonies Nos 3 & 7
NDR Radiophilharmonie / Jan Willem de Vriend
CPO 555511-2
Release: 7 October 2022
Emilie Mayer was one of the very few successful female composers of her time. The Mecklenburg-born composer was also referred to as the 'female Beethoven'. On our second symphony CD, Emilie Mayer opens up a new facet of her compositional spectrum by exhibiting classicistic tendencies: clear and transparent outlines, regular periods in the formation of themes, no formal experiments. The additional name 'Militair' refers to the use of piccolo, triangle, cymbals and bass drum in the final movement. All we know about her seventh symphony is that it was probably composed by 1856: it is fair to say that Emilie Mayer draws in this symphony the sum of her previous experience with the composition of symphonies: large-scale tension-building, such as she practiced in the opening movement of her second symphony, with the classicistically clear formal language that her third symphony exhibits. At the same time, the motivic integration is so dense that the boundaries between thematic and non-thematic formal sections become blurred. More masterpieces by one of the most important female representatives of 19th century Central European music.

Georg Wilhelm Rauchenecker: Symphony No 1 in F major; Orientalische Phantasie; Sinfonisches Tonwerk im Stil einer Ouvertüre
Sebastian Bohren, Sarastro Quartett, Musikkollegium Winterthur / Howard Griffiths
CPO 555416-2
Release: 7 October 2022
Although almost completely forgotten today, Georg Wilhelm Rauchenecker was an exceptionally versatile musician of European stature: as founder and conductor of the first professional orchestra of the city of Winterthur (1875), composer, ardent Wagnerian, city organist, music dealer and pedagogue, he left weighty and far-reaching traces in Germany, Switzerland and France. The two orchestral works presented on this CD were written for 'his' Winterthur City Orchestra (as the Musikkollegium Winterthur was called until 2000), while the Oriental Fantasy is an early work by the 21-year-old. Rauchenecker's symphonic debut seems in some ways to have been his artistic calling card: Few of his other works were performed as often, and the piece remained in the repertoire until at least 1932. Despite Rauchenecker's close contact with the works of the New German school and his personal acquaintance with Richard Wagner, this work shows the composer to be a preserver of the symphonic tradition. In a certain sense, the work speaks of a commitment to 'absolute music,' for programmatic allusions as well as explicitly coloristic instrumental effects are completely dispensed with. His technically extremely demanding Oriental Fantasy combines the virtuosic demands of a solo concerto with a rhapsodically free form, and was one of Rauchenecker's own showpieces as a violinist.

Eduard Náprávnik: Piano Quartet Op 42 in A minor; Violin Sonata Op 52 in G
Oliver Triendl, Nina Karmon, Diyang Mei, Justus Grimm
CPO 555405-2
Release: 7 October 2022
Originally from the Czech Republic, Eduard Nápravník is now inevitably associated with the rise of the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra of St. Petersburg, which he led for nearly half a century and elevated to a leading international orchestra. He thus left his mark on Russia's musical scene, both musically and in terms of cultural politics, and was also in demand as a composer. In view of this biography of Nápravník, nothing could be more obvious than for him to use the most diverse instruments of the symphony orchestra as models when composing, to project their sonorities onto other instruments as well. His Piano Quartet Op 42 also has an orchestral layout. Nápravník succeeds in capturing orchestral color and force even in the small instrumentation and unleashing it monumentally even in small chamber music halls. The Violin Sonata Op 52 is similarly conceived. Especially in the opening, Nápravník's orchestrally influenced thinking is again evident, as the piano forms a pure surface as a starting point, over which the violin delicately rises - here Nápravník uses burgeoning mock polyphony to create the impression of several melodic instruments. In the finale, Nápravník brings together the aforementioned core elements of his style to create a large-scale, playfully striking movement with an orchestral texture and ironclad cohesion despite a wide variety of themes. A masterfully crafted yet effective sweep.

Mogens Pedersøn: Pratum spirituale – Motets & Hymns
Weser-Renaissance Bremen / Manfred Cordes
CPO 555216-2
Release: 7 October 2022
Mogens Pedersøn was a pupil of Melchior Borchgrevinck, later royal kapellmeister, and in 1619 he became royal vice kapellmeister. His major work, Pratum Spirituale ('Spiritual Pasture'), was published in Copenhagen in 1620, containing 21 five-part hymns and a mass, three motets, and a number of responsories. The works directly reflect the church-musical requirements of the time, which made available in print some kind of offerings for ultimately all situations of Lutheran culture. In addition to the hymns that were part of the core liturgical program for the three feasts (Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost), there are Danish hymns, ten psalm hymns, and nine 'free' hymns, partly from the distinctly Danish hymn tradition, partly from Luther's closest repertoire. The stylistic world that Pedersøn reveals in 'Pratum Spirituale' is unquestionably only a very narrow segment of what this internationally experienced musician mastered: schooled between organ playing, Italian madrigal, Venetian double choir and English 'consort music'.

Henri Marteau: Complete Works for String Quartet, Vol 3 – String Quartet No 3 Op 17; Eight Lieder for Soprano & String Quartet, Op 10
Karine Deshayes, Isasi Quartet
CPO 555130-2
Release: 7 October 2022
In contrast to his first two quartets, the third quartet, which Marteau composed towards the end of the First World War, is of a completely different nature and presents itself as a strongly biographical work, to which Marteau wrote in 1918: 'My new String Quartet No. 3 was composed under the impression of the terrible events of which my wife was the innocent victim. There are sections of life, parts of the soul, which express themselves in this piece. The Scherzo is a Viennese mood piece, memories of the city in which we felt so comfortable and happy.' But he also processed in this largely melancholy quartet that he was no longer in demand or wanted as a violinist. The CD is supplemented with the 'Eight Songs with String Quartet Accompaniment', Op 10 speak, written in 1905. In these songs Marteau is far ahead of his time, because it is the first string quartet of its kind in which the human voice also has its say. Until then, the string quartet was considered the royal genre of pure, abstract and absolute music. Marteau is the first composer to establish completely new connections between the strings and the voice, which is quite fascinating and has not yet been properly appreciated by music history.

The Sword & The Lily: 15th-century polyphony for Judgement Day - Johannes Ockeghem, Johannes Regis, Johannes Martini, Antoine Brumel, Anonymous
Fount & Origin, James Tomlinson, James Tomlinson
Inventa Records INV1008
Release: 7 October 2022
In their debut album, early music ensemble Fount & Origin present a musical meditation on the Franco-Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden's altarpiece image of The Last Judgement at the End of time. This multi-panelled work survives as a monument of fifteenth-century art, relating in vivid detail and colour van der Weyden's dynamic and terrifying account of the world's final moments. The nine polyphonic settings recorded here were composed in Europe in the mid- to late-fifteenth century and include works by composers such as Johannes Ockeghem, Johannes Regis, Johannes Martini and Antoine Brumel, with each piece thematically tied to an element or figure in the painting.

Manuel Rodrigues Coelho
Flores de Musica, Volume 1
Sérgio Silva, organ
Inventa Records INV1009
Release: 7 October 2022
Flores de musica pera o instrumento de tecla & harpa, is the only known work of Portugese composer Manuel Rodrigues Coelho. Printed in Lisbon in 1620 and boasting more than five hundred pages, Coelho's Flores de musica is one of the largest music works printed in the seventeenth century. Celebrating the 400th anniversary of its original publication, a new edition in three volumes has been published with the research being used to inform this major new recording series. Organist Sérgio Silva performs on the 1762 Pascoal Caetano Oldovino organ of Elvas Cathedral, where Manuel Rodrigues Coelho started his musical studies and worked as an organist. Silva is joined by soprano Mariana Moldão and mezzo-soprano Maria de Fátima Nunes for the sung versos, which are accompanied on the smaller cabinet organ located near the chancel of the cathedral and built around the same time and by the same organ builder as the main instrument.

Thomas Adès: Märchentänze, Hotel Suite from Powder Her Face, Lieux retrouvé & Dawn
Pekka Kuusisto, Tomas Nuñez, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra / Nicholas Collon
Ondine ODE 1411-2
Release: 7 October 2022
In the Autumn of 2021, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra together with its new chief conductor, Nicholas Collon, arranged a Thomas Adès festival in Helsinki devoted to the world famous composer's music in addition to works by other composers chosen and conducted by Thomas Adès (b. 1971). One of the highlights of the festival's program was the world première of Märchentänze in its version for violin and orchestra performed by violinist Pekka Kuusisto, Adès' long-time artistic partner. This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra includes four recent and exciting orchestral works written by the composer between 2016 and 2021 in world première recordings.

Chopin: Complete Mazurkas, Vol 1
Peter Jablonski, piano
Ondine ODE 1412-2
Release: 7 October 2022
Internationally acclaimed Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski is known as a fervent champion of Polish music. In this album Jablonski returns to some of his dearest piano music – Chopin's Mazurkas. For Chopin, the Mazurkas became a deeply personal, intimate statement of his feelings as an émigré Polish composer living in Paris. From some of his very first compositions to his last, it is the only form that Chopin composed regularly throughout his life. Similarly, Chopin's Mazurkas have followed Peter Jablonski throughout his entire career as a pianist in nearly every solo recital.

Pawel Lukaszewski: Sacred Choral Works
State Choir Latvija / Maris Sirmais
Ondine ODE 1406-2
Release: 7 October 2022
Paweł Łukaszewski (born 1968) is possibly the most-performed contemporary composer from Poland. His spiritual choral works are performed by both professional and amateur choirs around the world. Paweł Łukaszewski's output has a significant position in Great Britain where his works are performed and premiered by renowned London and Cambridge choral ensembles. This new album by the award-winning State Choir Latvija under Māris Sirmais includes several world première recordings from the Polish master.

Handel: Judas Maccabaeus
Fritz Wunderlich, Ludwig Welter, Agnes Giebel, Naan Pöld, Julia Falk, Bavarian Radio Choir, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra / Rafael Kubleik
Orfeo C230072 (2 CDs)
Release: 7 October 2022
Re-release of sold-out C475992. In this recording of Judas Maccabaeus Rafael Kubelík relies, without ifs and buts, on the Handel Edition by the North German musical scholar Friedrich Chrysander that appeared in the second half of the 19th century and represents a monument of the scholarly musical historicism that probably could appear only in Germany and not in England, Handel's artistic home. Apart from the old-fashioned German translation, most astonishing is the drastic cuts that Chrysander made. This historical live recording from 1963 presents Fritz Wunderlich as Judas together with Agnes Giebel, Julia Falk, Naan Pöld and Ludwig Welter.

Hans Pfitzner: Das Christ-Elflein
Helen Donath, Janet Perry, Alexander Malta, Nikolaus Hillebrand, Paul Hansen, Claes H. Ahnsjö, Raimund Grumbach, Ferry Gruber, Bavarian Radio Choir, Munich Radio Orchestra, Alois Fink, Kurt Eichhorn
Orfeo C230082 (2 CDs)
Release: 7 October 2022
Re-release of sold-out C437992. To many contemporaries it might seem incomprehensible that Pfitzner had his poetic and musical masterpiece Palestrina followed by this slight fairy-tale opera, whose libretto could scarcely satisfy higher artistic demands. Pfitzner was captivated by the cosy sphere, reminiscent of old picture-books, of this typically German Christmas fable (in which also appear folklore figures like Knecht Ruprecht). The present recording is a production by the Bavarian Radio in which the original texts that Pfitzner placed between the individual numbers are replaced by a text by German journalist and literary writer Alois Fink. Sung and spoken in German language, the booklet contains a synopsis in English.

Christmas Concerto from Munich - Handel, Corelli, Mozart, Schröter, Stobäus, J S Bach, Eccard, Paulmichl, Thiel
Helen Donath, Regensburger Domspatzen, Munich Radio Orchestra / Kurt Eichhorn
Orfeo C230091
Release: 7 October 2022
Re-release of sold-out live recording from the series of Munich Sunday concerts 1988. Recorded here is something which normally is evanescent over the airwaves or in the Philharmonie am Gasteig: the pre-Christmas evening in the series of Munich Sunday concerts, featuring Helen Donath as one of the most distinguished lyric sopranos of her times, the boys' choir Regensburg Cathedral Sparrows and the Munich Radio Orchestra under the musical direction of Kurt Eichhorn.

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Op 10
Daniel Tong
Resonus Classics RES10307
Release: 7 October 2022
Beethoven's three sonatas of Op. 10 were published in September 1798 and were written with Beethoven the pianist as much to the forefront as Beethoven the composer. During this time, the young virtuoso was certainly as renowned as a pianist and improviser as he was a composer, and these three early sonatas contain the whole kaleidoscopic range of his youthful musical, emotional and pianistic language. Pianist Daniel Tong returns to Resonus with this period instrument recording, his first solo album for the label, performed on a fortepiano by Paul McNulty – a copy of an 1805 instrument by the celebrated 'Viennese School' maker, Anton Walter.

Brahms - Dvořák
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No 1; 8 Hungarian Dances; Antonin Dvořák: Symphony No 6
Bamberger Symphoniker / Jakub Hrůša
Tudor TUD1741 (2 SACDs)
Release: 7 October 2022
The Bamberger Symphoniker and Jakub Hrůša's cycle of the four Brahms symphonies and Dvořák's last four symphonies is the first recording to give an overview of their extraordinary universe and cast light on their musical affinity, in a vivid soundscape with a contemporary pulse.

Brahms - Dvořák
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No 2; Antonin Dvořák: Symphony No 7
Bamberger Symphoniker / Jakub Hrůša
Tudor TUD1742 (2 SACDs)
Release: 7 October 2022
The Bamberger Symphoniker and Jakub Hrůša's cycle of the four Brahms symphonies and Dvořák's last four symphonies is the first recording to give an overview of their extraordinary universe and cast light on their musical affinity, in a vivid soundscape with a contemporary pulse.

Una Bourne: Australian Recording Pioneer – HMV recordings 1914-1926
APR APR_6037 (2 CDs)
Release: 7 October 2022
Australia seems to have produced more than its fair share of pianists in the early days of recording, with Percy Grainger, William Murdoch and Eileen Joyce all being mainstays of the 78rpm catalogue. To their ranks we should add Una Bourne, signed to the most prestigious label of all – HMV, and a stalwart of the acoustic period of recording. Bourne had early success as a prodigy and travelled to Europe to study, but it was being asked to tour with Nellie Melba which established her career. Later, as well as playing as a soloist she played and recorded much chamber music. She excelled in what we might now call 'salon music' and character pieces, as can be seem from her recorded repertoire. Both Grieg and Chaminade were specialities. She favoured fast tempos and played with brilliance and charm in repertoire, much of which has now been neglected. In 1939 Bourne abandoned her international career and retired to teach in Australia. She has been all but forgotten and this is the first time almost any of her recordings have been reissued. They give a fascinating snapshot of musical taste and playing in the early 20th century, a time when classical music and popular were much closer bedfellows.

Södling Sessions
Ulrika Gunnarsson, Mia Marine, Tina Quartey
Caprice Records CAP21937
Release: 7 October 2022
A unique album of new interpretations of Swedish traditional folk music from the Carl Södling collection, by three of the country's most esteemed folk music performers.

Hammer, Nordkvist, Larson, Ljus och lykta
Ljus och lykta
Caprice Records CAP21938
Release: 7 October 2022
Newcomers Ljus och Lykta is a fresh breath of air in the Swedish music scene. Genre-wise, they straddle the border between folk music and the Swedish ballad tradition, and have great potential of reaching a wider audience. A versatile musical experience where love songs combine with chorales and mediaeval ballads, all performed virtuosically with polyphonic singing, fiddle and guitar.

Georg Philipp Telemann: 12 Fantasias for Solo Violin
Małgorzata Malke
CD Accord ACD297
Release: 7 October 2022
In her interpretation of Telemann's Fantasias, Małgorzata Malke takes her listeners on a journey to 18th-century Poland, a land which Telemann often visited, drawing inspiration from Polish folk music. 'In my interpretation of the 12 Fantasias, I decided to follow the path of Polish influences in Telemann's compositions, looking for traces of the composer's love for Polish music,' says Małgorzata Malke. 'What I found in the Fantasias, was much more than I had been looking for. Their phrases are truly moving, both the ones joyous in their expression, and those filled with nostalgic reflection. All this richness comes together to form a fascinating and beautiful story I would like to invite you to enjoy!' Could the Polish dances Telemann learned also have an influence on the 'Fantasias for solo violin', composed later? The answer to this question can be found in the latest CD from the catalog of the CD Accord recording label. The recordings were made at the Castle Museum in Pszczyna, the historic residence of the Promnitz family, for whom Telemann was the court composer. The fantasies resound with the sound of an original historical instrument - a violin by the French violin maker Claude Pierray from 1719. The album was released thanks to a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, with further support from the STOART and the Katowice City of Gardens Institution.

Trio MIT: Breezes from here and there
Andreas Schreiber, Orwa Saleh, Christoph Cech
Col Legno COL15016
Release: 7 October 2022
The debut album of the trio, 'Breezes from here and there' is a playfully capture of atmospheres and aims to capture the listener into the vastness of fantasy, like in the old traditions of storytelling. The musicians are aware that cultural appropriation has always been the creative root of music creation. Because of this understanding, Orwa Sale uses rock riffs in his pieces while Christoph Cech combines expanded chords with maqams. The result is music that shuns comparisons and generalities and is therefore open to any audience.

The Danish Star Conductor John Frandsen - Mozart, Brahms, Grieg, Schubert, J P E Hartmann, Gade, Høffding, Tarp, Riisager
The Royal Danish Orchestra, The State Broadcast Orchestra / John Frandsen
Dancord DACOCD940 (2 CDs)
Release: 7 October 2022
For three decades the principal conductor of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, John Frandsen also brought flexible tempi, broad phrasing and rich orchestral sonorities to concert repertoire. This newly remastered compilation brings together 1950s recordings made for Columbia, Odeon and Philips, including Danish classics such as Gade's Echoes of Ossian and an inspired account of Brahms's Fourth Symphony.

Isle of Dowland - John Dowland, Thomas Campion, John Danyel, Thomas Ford, Tobias Hume, Thomas Morley, Fancis Pilkington
Anna Zander, mezzo; Maria Lindal, violin; Keren Bruce Westerlund, gamba; Kark Nyhlin, lute
DB Productions DBCD205
Release: 7 October 2022
This intimate recording presents the colourful spectrum of music from the golden age of the English lutenist songwriters, coupled with instrumental interludes and variations. Violin, viol and lute all join in with the singer in inspired playfulness, for a fresh take on this sublime music. The musical arrangements are based on improvisational practices of the Elizabethan time, and performed by some of Sweden's foremost baroque musicians. Composers include John Dowland and his contemporaries, such as John Danyel and Thomas Campion.

Fantasie – Fantasiestücke for Clarinet and Piano - August Hendrik Winding, Johann Carl Eschmann, Robert Schumann, Niels Wilhelm Gade, Carl Reinecke
Georg Arzberger, clarinet; Julian Riem, piano
Farao Classics B108117
Release: 7 October 2022
The Fantasiestücke (Eng.: fantasy pieces) on this CD take listeners along on a journey into very different and individual musical worlds. All the works reflect the Romantic desire to over-come the limits of this world and plunge into unique microcosms. Schumann's Fantasiestücke, a standard work of the clarinet literature that at the time it was written was already a source of inspiration for some of the other pieces on this CD, takes centre stage on the recording. Gade is known to have greatly respected Schumann; in a letter written during a stay in Copenhagen, for example, Clara Schumann told Robert: 'Gade visited me today and went into raptures over you. He knows everything you have written and plays it all (as far as he can) himself.' So it is not at all far-fetched to see a direct connection to Schumann in Gade's Fantasiestücke. Reinecke, too, had a friendly relationship with Schumann and was a great champion of his works. Winding, who in his turn was a pupil of Reinecke and Gade, also contributed a work to this genre that has almost fallen into oblivion today although it was praised by his contemporaries. The charming Fantasiestücke by Eschmann, who can also be seen as belonging to Schumann's sphere, are heard even more rarely.

Mozart: Symphonies II  – Nos 1, 28 and 41
Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen / Johannes Klumpp
Genuin Classics GEN22783
Release: 7 October 2022
The series of Mozart symphonies, recorded by Johannes Klumpp with 'his' Folkwang Chamber Orchestra Essen at GENUIN, enters the second round. The tradition-steeped orchestra now juxtaposes the first and last symphonies of the Viennese composer of choice: Early and late works in direct comparison, the alpha and omega of Mozart's symphonic cycle, so to speak. The ensemble thus draws connections between works that lie 25 years apart. Its joy of playing and virtuosity brilliantly illuminate Mozart's innovative power and artistic mastery.

Glòria - Weinachtslieder aus Deutschland und aller West - Volume 3
Works by Max Reger, Eduard Ebel, Trond Kverno, Josep Ollé i Sabaté, traditional and many more
MDR-Rundfunkchor / Philipp Ahmann
Genuin Classics GEN22797
Release: 7 October 2022
Once again this year, the MDR Radio Choir is delighting us with a CD of Christmas carols: the elite vocal ensemble is continuing its successful series, showcasing carols from Germany and around the world. Popular and well-known titles as well as rarities are here to discover: We travel through Spain and Scandinavia, through Slavic countries, to the North American and Australian continents. 'Glory to God in the highest', from tender lullabies to magnificent angelic praise and heartwarming winter magic: Gloria in excelsis deo!

Jazzissimo - Alexander Rosenblatt, Astor Piazzolla, Dmitriy Varelas, Maurice Ravel, George Gershwin, Jascha Heifetz, Vladislav Cojocaru, Darius Milhaud
Matthias Well, Lilian Akopova
Genuin Classics GEN22792
Release: 7 October 2022
Straddling the fine line between so-called classical music and jazz is an award-winning duo on their new GENUIN CD. Violinist Matthias Well and pianist Lilian Akopova present syncopated, blue note-soaked sounds by Astor Piazzolla, Maurice Ravel, and George Gershwin, as well as two spectacular pieces of recent date: Alexander Rosenblatt's virtuosic Carmen Fantasy and Vladislav Cojocaru's at first melancholy, later groovy Kaleidoscope. Dedicated to Akopova and Well, it is recorded here for the first time. A CD full of creativity and colour, perfect for fighting the autumn blues.

Whispers of Tradition: (re)inventions for recorder by and after Bach, Volbers, Monteverdi, Palestrina, Sakellaridis, Purcell, Dieupart, Schein and Vivaldi
Max Volbers, recorder
Genuin Classics GEN22804
Release: 7 October 2022
Musicians in the Baroque period had to reinvent themselves time and again: their repertoire was not fixed; instead, they improvised, adapted, and transcribed - something that was not seen as theft but as a high virtue! Recorder player Max Volbers, the winner of the 2021 German Music Competition, revives this tradition on his solo debut CD with GENUIN: he gathers top-class musicians around him for the recording of his own arrangements, paraphrases, and pastiche of works by Bach, Monteverdi, and Vivaldi. Works that are partly familiar to us, but which we have never heard before, full of soul, inspired, and knowledgeably performed.

The Dürrenmatt Project
Andreas Pflüger, Marco Pérez Ramírez, David Sontòn Caflisch, Dominique Genessey-Rappo
Bénédicte Tauran, Simon Peguiron, Pablo Barragán, Orchestre Musique des Lumières, Facundo Agudín
IBS Classical IBS62022
Release: 7 October 2022
The Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt, whose birth centenary was in 2021, is the protagonist of the second instalment of the MUSIC & WORDS series proposed by Facundo Agudín and Musique des Lumières in collaboration with Ibs Classical. The ensemble, whose activity shines from the Swiss Jura, sought to pay tribute to the unfairly forgotten artist. The occasion of his centenary has seen his works return to bookshops in recent months and their reappraisal beyond the borders of his native country. The Dürrenmatt Project is the multifaceted tribute with which Facundo Agudín and Musique des Lumières want to vindicate the figure of a protean and committed artist: from Pflüger's thrilling tragicomedy Jedes Kunstwerk ist apokalyptisch - oder Bach und Dürrenmatt (Every work of art is apocalyptic - or Bach and Dürrenmatt) to the sardonic and imaginative score of The Minotaure by Genessey-Rappo, passing through the discourse between the atavistic and the experimental of Respiro (Breathe) by Pérez-Ramírez and the mystical and textural sonority of Stoff by Sontòn Caflisch. These four scores highlight Dürrenmatt as a writer and a visual artist; in short, one of the most authentic and respected thinkers of the 20th century.

Roberto Sierra: Piano Works – Etudes; Piezas Líricas; Album for the Young
Matthew Bengtson
IBS Classical IBS72022
Release: 7 October 2022
The Estudios rítmicos y sonoros (Studies in Rhythms and Sonorities) of Roberto Sierra, harken back to the grand virtuoso tradition of piano pieces by Chopin and Liszt. Without question, the Estudios continue to push the envelope of technical demands for the performer, as important Etude composers had always done in the past. They demand the utmost not only in a player's physical technique, courage, and sheer velocity, but also in their intellectual capacity. One must internalize the cross rhythms like a jazz drummer accurately enough to reveal the idealistic conception of the notation. The mysterious landscapes of the Piezas Líricas serve as a foil to the bustling excitement of the Estudios. The resonance and clarity of the acoustic in Auditorio Manuel de Falla offers the perfect ambience for these pieces, lending them the spiritual breadth they require. The inspiration of the Alhambra seems even to lend them a special aura of timelessness and mysticism. Album for the Young offers a striking contrast to both the turbo-charged virtuosity of the Estudios and the high-art sophistication of Piezas Líricas. The Album offers directness, charm, and even naïveté. The musical material represents scenes and ideas of childhood or family life, with folk-like simplicity. Unlike the well-known models, it is derived primarily from Latin-American musical elements.

Lewis Spratlan: Invasion – Music and Art for Ukraine
Nadia Shpachenko, Pat Posey, Aija Mattson-Jovel, Phil Keen, Yuri Inoo, Joti Rockwell, Anthony Parnther
Reference Recordings FR-749
Release: 7 October 2022
A new album of first recordings from Ukrainian-American pianist Nadia Shpachenko. As she watched in horror her home city of Kharkiv (and the rest of Ukraine) being destroyed and civilians being murdered every day, Shpachenko tried to come up with ways to express her feelings of utter despair and anger, as well as hope and resilience, through her music making. In addition to performing fundraising concerts featuring music by Ukrainian composers, she decided to put together a new album to support Ukraine humanitarian aid. Reference Recordings is proud to release this album, with 100% of proceeds benefiting Ukrainian people affected by the war. Shpachenko commissioned Ukrainian artists to create paintings/artworks to use in the album booklet, online and in-person galleries, and the accompanying music videos, as their responses to the music. Also featured are artworks made by children in Kharkiv, as their responses to the war. The key piece on the album, titled Invasion (for piano, alto saxophone, horn, trombone, timpani, snare drum, and mandolin) is Shpachenko's longtime collaborator Lewis Spratlan's response to this tragic war. It was composed for Shpachenko during the period of February 24-March 13, 2022. The rest of the album features World Premiere recordings of solo piano music also by Spratlan. These pieces reflect on the human experience, often finding solace and inspiration in nature and music of the past. Wonderer, a major piece that closes the album, connects in its character to the current experience of many Ukrainian people, especially those displaced by the war. The hero, searching through the unknown, overcoming pain, and reminiscing about things past, triumphs at the end.

1919 - Joseph Ryelandt, Paul Hindemith, Rebecca Clarke
Marion Leleu, viola; Bertrand Giraud, piano
Solo Musica SM410
Release: 7 October 2022
The year 1919: A point in time, European countries, a young woman, a young man and an elderly gentleman. This is the musical triptych that Marion Leleu and pianist Bertrand Giraud, who plays the wonderful grand piano Opus 102 by Stephen Paulello, have chosen for our CD. These three composers could scarcely be more different, whether in their social situation, their geographical background, or their psychological make-up. Nevertheless the three are linked by their inspiration and their powers of musical invention, which is what has fascinated Marion Leleu from the start of this project. Like the waves of the sea in her homeland of Brittany, their melodic phrases come and go, they grow, develop amazing power, finally burst apart or die away gently. Joseph Ryelandt's Sonata op. 73 enthralled her at once and she is very happy to be the first to record this work and bring out the score in a new edition together with Bertrand Giraud. This music deserves to be better known, and she hopes it will soon be part of the Romantic repertoire for the viola. The Sonata op.11/4 by Paul Hindemith is like a river or a journey, and although the playing time is not very long, you can feel like a marathon and remains a continuing challenge for the artists. The last work, the Sonata by Rebecca Clarke, is a necessary and moving call to offer her female successors greater visibility and freedom in the world of music. Marion Leleu: 'Playing this work is like a return to the source of your feelings as a musician.'

György Kurtág - Blumen die Menschen, nur Blumen ...
Alessandra Rombolà, flute; Benedetto Boccuzzi, piano; Håkon Thelin, contrabass; Paolo Leonardi, voice
Stradivarius STR37228
Release: 7 October 2022
In Kurtág's works for solo flute or in ensemble, we find all the characteristic features of his musical language: theatricality of the musical gesture, expressive value of the interval; connection with the word and its intonation; symmetrical writing through expansions and contractions of cells in the sound space, aphoristic and fragmentary writing; reworking and self-quotation. Moreover, these pieces show a humanistic approach, where music, while avoiding any consolatory intent, becomes memory, communication and sign of affection.

Solo Clarinet - Gaetano Donizetti, Gordon Jacob, Nino Rota, Agostino Gabucci, Harald Genzmer, Giacomo Miluccio, Ante Grgin, Michele Mangani, Nunzio Ortolano
Aldo Botta
Stradivarius STR37233
Release: 7 October 2022
On this CD, clarinetist Aldo Botta wanted to give his contribution in the popularisation of solo clarinet pieces. It is a tribute to international renowned artists as well as others lesser-known, who have composed little musical masterpieces from both past and present literature. Some of them are from our own time, artists who are currently working on astonishing musical productions as clarinetists, performers and teachers. Their compositions – here available for the listener – all have a single common characteristic, which is the desire to convey the love for a very noble instrument: the clarinet.

Stylus Phantasticus – The Hidden Writing - Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Johann Jacob Froberger, Marc'Antonio Cavazzoni, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Michelangelo Rossi
Irene De Ruvo, organ
Stradivarius STR37239
Release: 7 October 2022
Since its beginning, organ writing has been characterised by its imitation and contrapuntal style – the severity of the melodic lines managing to catch the distinctive element of the instrument, sound emission preventing perspective differentiation of different sound pianos. The organ was the instrument which helped an exceptionally artistic compositional style to thrive in music chapels in Italy, being the only musical instrument allowed in religious places. It was used both in accompaniment and in transposition to the instrument of motets and vocal masses, sometimes even to replace chants, habit which led to alternatim, alternation of instrument and voice, with a music balance where 'now the words are clear and now are lost' (Dante Alighieri, Purgatory, IX, 145). Although the organ repertoire was a slave to the sacred chanting, it very soon departed from it, producing music forms solely dedicated to the instrument performance - Ricercare, Tiento, Toccata, Intonazione, Praeludium, Praeambulum. The list of titles is so rich and it can translate equivalent writing forms, some closer to the imitation – contrapuntal style, some others closer to free invention, according to a style that is more similar to improvisation. The term stylus phantasticus refers to the latter, a music gesture of extreme elasticity and freedom in performance.

Francesco Giovannini, Bernardo Pasquini, Domenico Zipoli
Messa a Quattro Breve Concertata, 1762
Cappella Musicale di Santa Maria in Campitelli, Nicola Lamon, Luca Ambrosio, Stan Adams, Indiana Raffaelli, Ulrike Pranter, Vincenzo di Betta
Tactus TC 700703
Release: 7 October 2022
Since 2010 the Associazione La Cantoria has dedicated its energies to the rediscovery of unpublished musical compositions from Rome, transcribing, studying and performing these both live and recording them under the Tactus record label. This cd is dedicated to the musician, composer and organist Francesco Giovannini who was chapelmeister at the Church of Santa Maria in Portico in Campitelli in the 18th century, and whose works are conserved in the archives of the Order of the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God in Rome. The best way to understand and appreciate a liturgical musical composition is to savour it the very same context where it was born and for which it was conceived. This is what this CD intends to do; to allow us to live the sonorous experience of an ancient mass of the Roman rite. These late-Baroque compositions by Francesco Giovannini shine like precious gems set in an antique piece of jewellery made of Gregorian chant, readings, and orations where the organ is heard almost fleetingly in those moments when the sound of the voice and other instruments is superfluous or even prohibited.

Gioachino Rossini: Quartetti per flauto e archi
Nicola Guidetti, Alessandro Simoncini, Demetrio Comuzzi, Luca Simoncini
Tactus TC 791806
Release: 7 October 2022
Although now Rossini is remembered for his operatic production, his career had begun as a composer of chamber music. In 1804 the 12-year-old Gioachino was invited to spend the summer in the villa of his friend Agostino Triossi in Conventello. This rich landowner, who was an amateur double-bass player, was in the habit of organising concerts and musical gatherings: Rossini composed many instrumental pieces for him. The Sei Sonate a Quattro for two violins, cello and double-bass were composed for one of these occasions. As Rossini himself related, 'They are six horrible sonatas, composed by me during a holiday near Ravenna, in the house of my friend and patron Agostino Triossi, at a more than childish age, when I had not even had a single accompaniment lesson, and the whole thing was composed and copied in three days and performed dreadfully by Triossi, double-bass, Morini (his cousin) first violin, his brother, cello, and the second violin was me, who, to own the truth, was the least dreadful.' But we must not be misled by such a negative opinion; these sonatas, though elementary from a formal point of view, are genuine and quite inspired: the contrast between the brilliant passages and the lyrical/sentimental ones already reveals what a skilful opera composer Rossini was to become.

Enjott Schneider: Wood & Metal – Colors of Percussion
Nürnberger Symphoniker, David Christopher Panzl, Stefan Blum, Gabriel Venzago
Wergo WER 51282
Release: 7 October 2022
The new album of orchestral works by composer Enjott Schneider focuses on the materials wood and metal. Wood represents the organic world, it is alive. Created from solar energy, wood is the engine of our living ecosystem. Metal symbolizes the inorganic world and since the beginning of its use – made possible by the taming of fire – for progress, but also for the lifeless. The antagonistic worlds of wood and metal are depicted on this album in two very different percussion concertos. This was made possible by the enthusiastic participation of the two soloists. David Christopher Panzl constructed a unique setup containing everything from bullroarers to bells made of elm wood. Stefan Blum scavenged garbage dumps to collect scrap metal and created a full spectrum of modern percussion colors out of this 'scrap'. The outer movements of the concerto 'Secret of Trees' were inspired by two particular trees, the elm and the spruce. The middle movement consists of a series of miniatures symbolizing the three energy fields of all trees: roots, trunk, and foliage. 'Machine Worlds', the concerto for scrap metal, percussion and orchestra, is dedicated to the dialectic 'man – machine' as it appears in the movies 'Batman: Gotham City' or 'Metropolis' as well as in the visual arts – e.g. in the works by Duchamp, HR Giger up to Jean Tinguely and his machine sculptures. As a follow-up to Enjott Schneider's percussion concertos, both performers also recorded small solo works to present the rich variety of sounds offered by the unusual instrumental setups.

Walter Braunfels: String Quartets Nos 1-3
Minguet Quartett & Jens Peter Maintz
C-AVI AVI8553018
Release: 7 October 2022
A recording of the complete works for chamber music by Walter Braunfels - a highly influential musician and composer in the time between the two world wars in Germany,
specifically in the Cologne region. As Braunfels was half Jewish, he was removed from his academic posts including at the Musikhochschule Koln. His chamber music works for strings are a wide screen reflection of his thoughts and internal constraints during the last period of WWII and the new freedom.'Analysis obviously cannot seize the essence. [...] If my music has meaning, it does not lie in the musical material itself, but beneath it: in the artistic approach and its relationship with my world view.' (Walter Braunfels). Walter Braunfels wrote his first two string quartets in 1944; they were followed after the war by the String Quintet (1946/47), the Third String Quartet (1946/47), and the new Final Movement composed for the latter(1953). All these works meet the highest standards in terms of transparent voice leading, closely knit polyphony, and boldly expanded tonal harmony. In 1933 he was dismissed from all posts, regardless of his merits, because he was half Jewish. Braunfels was restored to his post of director at Cologne Conservatory in 1945. . Braunfels was swimming against the tide: profoundly rooted in the Classical-Romantic tradition, his style was deemed inconvenient in the face of prevalent postmodern tendencies in the first years after the war.

Nicola Porpora: L'aureo serto
Sergio Foresti, Abchordis Ensemble & Andrea Buccarella
Challenge Classics CC72924
Release: 7 October 2022
The third disc by baritone Sergio Foresti on Challenge Classics is devoted to the arias composed by Nicola Porpora. With a selection of arias of different moods and characters that ceaselessly tantalize and intrigue the listener, this is a disc you can listen to with constant pleasure and commitment from start to end, thanks also to the orchestral
accompaniment (and overtures) and the impeccable recording and production. Born in Naples in 1686 and deceased in the same city in 1768 Nicola Antonio Porpora is today considered as one of the most important composers of his generation, as well as a fundamental point of reference for the history of eighteenth-century music. That Porpora was an excellent writer for the human voice and an excellent singing teacher is a fact that seems to have never been forgotten over the centuries that separate us from his artistic and biographical exploit. For Porpora and his singers vocal virtuosity was primarily a fundamental linguistic tool to communicate ideas, and not merely a display of circus tricks. There is obsessive attention to detail, an intellectually sophisticated vision of the melodic line and its relationship with the accompaniment.
Porpora is part of that generation of Neapolitan composers of birth or formation (like Leonardo Vinci and Leonardo Leo) who were largely responsible for a series of important stylistic innovations that deeply affected the contemporary Italian opera scene. These innovations were clearly exported to the international scene from the mid-1720's and had their peak in the 1740s. The compilation on this CD offers the listener, in this context, an interesting benefit. It combines arias of very different characters and chronological and geographical origins. They are written for different performers in different contexts, and are part of works that belong to different genres. They are the
perfect tools to show the high value of a singer as well as the composer's ability
to allure the listener's ears to bewitch the listener's intellect.

Mustonen: String Quartet No 1; Piano Quintet
Engegard Quartet, Olli Mustonen
LAWO LWC1243
Release: 7 October 2022
The Engegard Quartet has a busy concert schedule throughout Scandinavia and further afield. They have performed in some of Europe's finest venues including the Mozarteum in Salzburg and Prague's Rudolfinum, as well as performing in South America with concerts in Medellin, Bogota and Sao Paolo. Festival performances include the Delft Chamber Music Festival, SoNoRo Festival in Bucharest, and Heidelberg's Streichquartettfest. Deeply committed to today's composers and to keeping the string quartet repertoire alive and developing, the Engegard Quartet has commissioned several works throughout their career. They have focused first and foremost on Norwegian composers including Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, Olav Anton Thommessen, Therese Birkelund Ulvo and Cecilie Ore, but also on the Finnish pianist and composer Olli Mustonen. The Engegard Quartet's acclaimed
collaborations with the jazz violinist Ola Kvernberg and hardanger fiddler Nils Okland have lead to commissions including the Telemark Quintet from Nils Anders Mortensen, and Hypnagogia and Flukt from Ola Kvernberg. Several of these commissions have been recorded by the Engegard Quartet. On the classical front, the Engegard Quartet has had the honour to work with (among others) Sir Andras Schiff, Leif Ove Andsnes, Christian Ihle Hadland, Paul Lewis, Kim Kashkashian and Emma Johnson.

Travel Concertos: Bach, Pisendel, Kress, Heinichen, Durant
Ensemble Diderot; Johannes Pramsohler
Audax Records ADX12204
Release: 7 October 2022
Featuring many first recordings, Johannes Pramsohler and his colleagues rummaged through Bach's luggage and that of his contemporaries and found concertos that were probably conceived especially to be taken on journeys. Grouped around the first version of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, these remarkable and brilliant pieces for up to five soloists are played with Ensemble Diderot's trademark warmth and vitality.

Brahms & Gernsheim Piano Quartets
Mariani Klavierquartett
Audax Records ADX11202
Release: 7 October 2022
After Volume 1, which was awarded a Diapason d'or, Mariani Klavierquartett continues its journey of discovery, juxtaposing the piano quartets of Johannes Brahms and Friedrich Gernsheim. Although this second album is dominated by Brahms' luminescent A major Quartet and although the friendship of the two composers stands at the center of this three-part project, Gernsheim's F-Major Quartet shows that not only Brahms numbered among his influences, but that Gernsheim was also able to blend echoes of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert into a convincing personal style. In the hands of the Mariani Piano Quartet, the formal perfection of his fervent work gleams with undreamt-of power.

Anakronos: Citadel of Song - ballate from Boccaccio's Decameron
Anakronos, Caitriona O'Leary
Heresy Records HERESY028
Release: 7 October 2022
'As the Black Death ravages their city, ten people leave Florence and go into the countryside to build a fortress of songs, stories and dances that will protect them from pandemic induced soul-destroying fear and creeping dispassion. This is the frame story of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, the iconic masterpiece of Western literature written during and relating to the plague that swept through Asia, North Africa and Europe between 1347 and 1351. While the cataclysm of the Plague always remains suspended in the background, the songs in The Decameron centre on the joyful, hopeful, anxiety- ridden, obsessive & painful aspects of romantic love – an enduring preoccupation of humanity. The seven young women and three young men who flee Florence spend ten days feasting, conversing and telling stories. At the end of each day, when ten stories have been told by each of the ten storytellers, one of them sings a song. The lyrics to the songs by Boccaccio are given, the music is left to the imagination of the reader. I have swum back against the tide of time and reconstructed the songs, setting Boccaccio's lyric poetry to music from that time and place. Anakronos – true to its name – has taken these songs from seven hundred years ago and fused them with sounds and moods of today. Citadel of Song sings the story of romance against the backdrop of imperilled humanity. Pain, Beauty, Hope, Life. All ten of Boccaccio's Decameron songs are in ballata form, a typical 14th century Italian song form. I plunged into the surviving codices, looking for ballate that most closely matched the syllable count; and, after carefully following the underlay of the original borrowed songs (exquisitely florid phrases, funkily syncopated hockets, rest-broken words and all), took them to my bandmates for us to use as the starting point in our (often very quick) journey to somewhere else entirely.' – Caitriona O'Leary

Mein Traum - Schubert, Schumann, Weber
Stéphane Degout, Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon, Sabine Devieilhe
harmonia mundi HMM905345
Release: 7 October 2022
One morning in 1822, Schubert wrote down an enigmatic text in which all his ghosts seem to take shape: wandering, solitude, consolation, disappointed love. Inspired by this dreamlike narrative, Raphaël Pichon, Pygmalion and Stéphane Degout have devised a vast Romantic fresco, combining resurrection of unknown treasures with rediscovery of established masterpieces.

The Black Fish - Music by Keyan Emami
CMC Centrediscs CMCCD 30422
Release: 7 October 2022
Inspired by a well-known Persian children's book, 'The Little Black Fish,' The Black Fish retells the story of its protagonist, a little black fish who leaves his pond to explore the world beyond, through the lens of the composer, Keyan Emami.  The music of The Black Fish Project reflects the diverse influences that have shaped Emami's compositional language, and the diverse musical traditions of the performers.  The Black Fish is a three-movement composition scored for speaking voice, mixed ensemble and electronics. The compositional style is an exploration and continuation of the composer's current artistic interests, namely the integration of repetition, improvisation and quotation. The musicians each bring something different to the project, including jazz bassist Andrew Downing, Syrian clarinetist Majd Sekkar, the Ton Beau String Quartet, and percussionists Louis Pino and Naoko Tsujita. Improvisation is used throughout the work to put these diverse performance styles into dialogue with one another, and further enrich Emami's eclectic score. Keyan Emami is an award-winning composer, pianist, and educator based in Toronto, Canada. Emami's music is known for its contemporary tonal language and innovative sonic texture, frequently inspired by Persian music and art heritage. His works have been commissioned, performed, and recorded all over the world by many different organizations, festivals, and orchestras.

Amanda Lee Falkenberg: The Moons Symphony
London Voices / Ben Parry; London Symphony Orchestra / Marin Alsop
Signum Classics SIGCD730
Release: 7 October 2022
'I hope that the listener to this piece can feel not just the power and the majesty of the music but also the incredible science behind the piece … we know such a small amount about our universe ... and this symphony starts to shed light on that fact' - Marin Alsop. Inspired by the beauty and majesty of the moons in our solar system, composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg's major new work is a thrilling merger of music and science. Discovering these fascinating moons of the outer solar system made her realise 'These moons need music – these moons need emotion.' Extensive research followed and discussions with leading planetary scientists at NASA/JPL, John Hopkins APL and UMich along with consultations with astronauts helped shape the stories of the symphony. Falkenberg's experience as a film composer made her acutely aware of music's emotional power and how she could unleash the moons' secrets and transport the listener to experience each moon's unique exotic habitats on a stunning space adventure. The Moons Symphony culminates in a powerful final movement, with full choir and soloists, where humanity stands together on the surface of our moon to view our planet from this unique vantage point – a view that has changed our perception of our place in the universe and of our planet. The powerful and emotional score from this final movement accompanied the tribute video shown at the Kennedy Space Center's celebration of Apollo 8's 50th Anniversary. This world premiere recording, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop, concludes with Falkenberg playing Debussy's Clair de Lune and a reading of Falkenberg's poem Reflections on Symphonic Space Flight by retired NASA astronaut Nicole Stott. The contemplative piano piece and the poem brings the listener 'Back to Earth' after their journey through Space – but that journey has only just begun as Falkenberg states: 'We are on a mission. It's my hope that this symphony will offer a chance to reflect on who and where we are and through the awe and wonder of spaceflight we celebrate Earthrise together.'

 

1 OCTOBER 2022

Victoria Bond: Blu and Green Music
Albany Records  TROY 1905
Release: 1 October 2022
The centerpiece of the album is the world premiere recording of Blue and Green Music, commissioned by the Cassatt Quartet through a Chamber Music America commissioning grant. The title track was inspired by a Georgia O'Keeffe painting of the same name, which uses the two colors to create an abstract study in motion, color and form. Victoria Bond writes, 'O'Keeffe said, 'Since I cannot sing, I paint.' Her painting is filled with music and it was my challenge to hear that music. I created two distinct motifs to express the two colors, and those motifs developed their own sense of direction and form. Just as O'Keeffe's painting is suggestive rather than specific, my music is intended to evoke rather than describe.' The Cassatt Quartet is a longstanding collaborator with Ms. Bond, who has appeared as guest composer at The Cassatt's Seal Bay Music Festival twice. The quartet has performed Bond's Dreams of Flying numerous times on the concert stage, and the world premiere recording is included on this album. Rounding out the album are songs performed by baritone Michael Kelly and pianist Bradley Moore. From an Antique Land is Bond's setting of poetry by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Percy Shelley and Gerard Hopkin, each tied together by the theme of memory. Art and Science was inspired by a 1927 letter written by Albert Einstein. Bond says she discovered through this letter that Einstein valued art fully as much as he valued science, and drew a connection between them.

 

30 SEPTEMBER 2022

The Golden Ring - a selection of the greatest scenes from the Solti Ring Cycle
Decca Classics
Release: 30 September 2022
Commemorating the 25th anniversary of Sir Georg Solti's death (September 5), Decca Classics is proud to announce a new high-definition transfer of the original master tapes of his most celebrated recording: the first stereo studio production of Wagner's complete Ring Cycle. Recorded in Vienna between 1958 and 1965, and masterminded by Decca's pioneering producer John Culshaw, this recording has always been regarded as the perfect marriage of art and technology and boasted a cast including Birgit Nilsson, Hans Hotter, and Kirsten Flagstad. These new transfers of the 38 original stereo master tapes have been made at 24 bit/192kHz resolution, allowing greater detail and dynamic range than ever before. The transfers have allowed the original recording to be remastered for Dolby Atmos; the spatial audio technology which recreates a multi-dimensional experience true to Culshaw's vision of a 'theater of the mind'. Dominic Fyfe, Decca Classics Label Director and Audio Producer of this reissue, says, 'Back in 1966, producer John Culshaw expressed the hope that this Ring would set a benchmark for years to come. Half a century later it is still the artistic and technical gold standard. Culshaw was above all an iconoclast and a visionary who rejoiced in new technology. I have no doubt he would approve of our efforts to utilize Dolby Atmos and the latest suite of remastering tools to make this new HD transfer the most immersive and vivid yet.' The remastered Ring will be available in the most extensive suite ever of deluxe physical and digital products including: - The first vinyl releases of the recording in 30 years. Half-speed mastered at Abbey Road Studios and pressed on 180g audiophile vinyl. - The first international release of the recording on Hybrid SACDs, allowing listeners to hear the enhanced resolution of these new transfers and playable on all CD players. - The first and only complete Wagner Ring cycle available in Dolby Atmos. The physical products will be accompanied by lavish booklets including facsimiles of the original conductor and producer scores, rare session photographs, newly discovered curios, and full libretti. The four operas of the Ring Cycle will be released in installments between November 2022 and May 2023.

Schubert Music for Piano Duo: Fantasia, Variations; Trout Quintet
Michele Benignetti and Eleonora Spina
Ulysses Arts UA220030
Release: 30 September 2022
Ulysses Arts releases a new album of piano duet music by Schubert, played by the Spina - Benignetti Duo - Eleonora Spina and Michele Benignetti. The album includes The Trout Quintet in Hugo Ulrich's version, Fantasia in F Minor, D.940, and Eight Variations in A-flat, D.813. The Fantasia is pre-released as an EP on 26 August 2022.  Laureates of numerous international music competition, the Duo performs regularly throughout worldwide. Highlights include recitals for live shows 'Génération Jeunes Interprètes' and 'Génération France Musique - le Live' at the Auditorium of the Maison de la Radio in Paris, broadcasts for France Musique national radio, recitals for the 'Jeunes Talents' concert series in Paris and at the Osaka Izumi Hall in Japan, a South African tour including the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival, and their Mexico debut at the CENART Blas Galindo Auditorium in Mexico City and at Teatro de la Ciudad in Celaya. Their last tour in South Africa saw them playing to full venues in Johannesburg, Grahamstown, Hermanus, Potchefstroom, Pretoria, and several other cities. To quote the Potchefstroom Herald, 'their two pianos recital will be long-remembered'. In 2019, Eleonora and Michele performed in Australia, with recitals in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Bateman's Bay. In New Zealand, they performed at the Turner Center Kerikeri, Globe Theater Palmerston North, Wanganui Royal Opera House, and in Wellington, in China at the Guangzhou Opera House, Tianjin Grand Theatre, Shandong Grand Theatre, Nankai University, La Plantation Beijing, and Dalian Grand Theatere. Eleonora and Michele are both professors at the Cité de la Musique et de la Danse in Soissons, France. The are regular invitees to give masterclasses in Italy, China, at the Colombes Summer International Academy in Paris, at the Summer Music Academy of Flaine (France), at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music in Melbourne and at Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The Spina - Benignetti Piano Duo are Official Yamaha Artists and have been sponsored by them since 2017.

Silvestrov
Daniel Hope, Alexey Botvinov
Deutsche Grammophon
Release: 30 September 2022
Valentin Silvestrov's exquisite music has attracted global attention in recent months. Violinist Daniel Hope and pianist Alexey Botvinov are now presenting an all-Silvestrov program with their latest album for Deutsche Grammophon – with the world premiere recording of Pastorales 2020 and a selection of ineffably beautiful companion pieces.

John Luther Adams: Sila: the Breath of the World
The Crossing, JACK Quartet, the musicians of the University of Michigan Department of Chamber Music, the University of Michigan Percussion Ensemble / Donald Nally / Kevin Vondrak
Cantaloupe Music CA21177
Release: 30 September 2022
Acclaimed by the New York Times as 'an alluring, mystical new work' when it premiered outdoors at the city's Lincoln Center in July 2014, John Luther Adams' large-scale Sila: the Breath of the World is so carefully orchestrated that the recording itself pushes the limits of how to capture multiple ensembles of musicians in one setting. Thanks to modern technology and the magic of multi-tracking (with producers Doug Perkins and Nathaniel Reichman at the controls), Sila maintains the composer's vision as a grandinvitation to the listener 'to stop and listen more deeply'.

Brahms Four Symphonies (Piano Duo Versions)
Soós Haag Piano Duo
Telos Music TLS254 (2 CDs)
Release: 30 September 2022
Brahms loved and intensely cultivated four-hand duets and two-piano performance throughout his life. However, as opposed to Schubert – who left an immense number of original works for two pianists to posterity – most of Brahms's output for piano duo consists of arrangements of his own orchestra and chamber music works. Although such works make up a significant part of his catalogue, they are still not appreciated for their full worth. Brahms often tended to make pairings of two works with opposite characters: consider, for instance, the two clarinet sonatas op. 120, the two piano concertos, the two string quartets op. 51, and the list could be further extended. The same applies to the symphonies: Brahms wrote the First in 1876, followed by the Second the next year. After a long hiatus he went on to compose the Third in 1883, and, finally, the Fourth in the two summers of 1884 and 1885. Previously released as four separate discs (Symphony 1 TLS219/Symphony 2 TLS218/Symphony 3 TLS236/Symphony 4 TLS252) – each symphony coupled with other repertoire, it makes great sense to draw together the four symphonies together. At the time of release each disc received excellent critical acclaim across continental Europe, but may well have been missed in the UK. The Hungarian-Swiss piano duo Adrienne Soós and Ivo Haag, who have long been seen as one of the best chamber music ensembles in Switzerland, delight in discovery and consistently meet the highest of artistic standards. Whether they are turning their talent and attention to the piano duo versions of Brahms' symphonies – performing Franz Schubert's works for piano duos, or rediscovering pieces of music that are rarely performed, Soós and Haag are always driven by the desire to make the rich repertoire of music for piano duets and for two pianos accessible to a wide audience. With large-scale projects such as the performance of complete cycles of the four-hand piano works of Franz Schubert and of Debussy/Ravel in Boswil, as well as their well thought-out, intelligent programmes, they have earned themselves an outstanding reputation far beyond the borders of Switzerland. Adrienne Soós and Ivo Haag both studied in Budapest at the Liszt Academy under Péter Solymos, György Kurtág, and Ferenc Rados, among others. Their cooperation with András Schiff, who was their artistic advisor for quite some time, has had a major influence on them.

Bach Piano Works – Previously Unreleased Recordings
Cyprien Katsaris, piano
Piano21 P21-062
Release: 30 September 2022
Presented here are previously unreleased recordings from 1994 and 2000. Cyprien Katsaris, the French-Cypriot pianist and composer, was born on 5 May 1951 in Marseilles. He first began to play the piano at the age of four, in Cameroon where he spent his childhood. He is a graduate of the Paris Conservatoire where he studied piano as well as chamber music. He gave his first public concert in Paris, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on 8 May 1966. His major international career includes performances with the world's greatest orchestras.  He has collaborated with conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Mstislav Rostropovich, Sir Neville Marriner, Sir Simon Rattle, Myung Whun Chung, Christoph von Dohnányi, Charles Dutoit, Antal Doráti, Ivan Fischer, and Nikolaus Harnoncourt to name just a few. In addition to his activities as a soloist he founded the 'Katsaris Piano Quintet'. This has received a very enthusiastic response from both the press and audiences in the Americas, Europe and Japan. Katsaris has recorded extensively for Teldec, Sony Classical, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, BMG-RCA, Decca, Pavane, and now on his own label, PIANO 21. His discography consists of solo works by most of the greatest masters as well as works for piano and orchestra. In addition to the standard repertory, Cyprien Katsaris has recorded, as world premières, long lost works such as the Liszt/Tchaikovsky Concerto in the Hungarian style with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Beethoven's own piano arrangement of his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus and Gustav Mahler's original piano version of Das Lied von der Erde with Mezzo Brigitte Fassbaender and Tenor Thomas Moser. Katsaris has been a member of the jury of numerous International Competitions. He has also conducted many masterclasses all over the world.


23 SEPTEMBER 2022

Spiritato
17th-Century Sonatas from the Düben Collection
Delphian Records DCD34276
Release: 23 September 2022
Between 1640 and 1720 the immigrant German Düben family produced three generations of Capellmeisters at Sweden's wealthy and fashionable Royal Court, where they amassed a huge collection of printed music and manuscripts.The meticulous cataloguing of this collection at Uppsala University has allowed Spiritato's Kinga Ujszászi to fulfil the ensemble's avowed aim of exploring a vast and little-known repertory. Of particular interest to the group was music that appears to show the first collaborations of the royal Capelle with the separate trumpet corps, bringing trumpets into the context of courtly music and allowing the players to push the boundaries of their instruments and skills.

Frank La Rocca: Mass of the Americas (Misa de las Américas)
Benedict XVI Institute's Choir and Orchestra / Richard Sparks
Capella Records CR425
Release: 23 September 2022
The work extends the genre of the Missa solemnis: a sublime setting of a Traditional Latin Mass for choir and orchestra. Listeners will discover a new masterwork: a rich modern tapestry with serene Gregorian chants, folk melodies from 18th-century regions of México, and florid praises in Nahuatl, the language spoken by Our Lady of Guadalupe to San Juan Diego in 1531. Benedict XVI Choir's début recording is sung by some of America's finest singers, many GRAMMY®-nominated. Sung in Latin, Spanish, and Nahuatl.

David Mastikosa: Escape
Chamber Works
Ravello Records RR8075
Release: 23 September 2022
Composer David Mastikosa's Escape is the work of an ambitious young composer whose skill belies his age. Born in 1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mastikosa is currently one of the most active contemporary classical music composers in his home country, and writes music for film and media. Escape features works composed in a variety of styles and arrangements. Poslovice is a chamber piece inspired by old Serbian folk proverbs and suggests a hidden, tongue-in-cheek storyline. Detune was written specifically to encourage younger pianists to explore the vast soundscapes locked within the instrument. Trichord for Viola and Accordion is purposefully sparse; Mastikosa leaves free space for performers to exercise their own creativity. Escape is both an artistic triumph in its own right and an early milestone in Mastikosa's promising career.

Sustain Vol 3
Solo works for piano and organ by Jacob E Goodman, John A Carollo, Hayg Boyadjian, Bruce Babcock and Sydney Hodkinson
Navona Records NV6466
Release: 23 September 2022
An exploration of the capabilities of piano and organ highlighting the varied compositional approaches of today's composers. Influenced by the classical canon and moving in new directions, the latest edition in the Sustain series pays homage to the classical composers of yesterday, while thoughtfully expressing modern personalities and ideals in a dynamic presentation of new piano repertoire. From the suspenseful passages of Sydney Hodkinson's Organmusic, to the turbulent times reflected in Bruce Babcock's Alternative Facts, and Hayg Boyadjian's delicate variations on Bach, Sustain once again gives it all, and everything in between.

Hans Bakker: Source Ground
Navona Records NV6452
Release: 23 September 2022
On Source Ground, Hans Bakker's second full-length release on Navona Records, the composer once again probes music's ability to, as Leonard Bernstein said, 'name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.' Rhythmically rigorous pieces for solo piano, organ works that fill every nook and cranny of the aural spectrum, powerful orchestral works, and pieces for the rare and haunting lame-sonore draw listeners towards a sense of infinite oneness connected by music.

All American Bass - Vittorio Giannini, John Carbon and William Thomas Mckinley
Richard Fredrickson, double bass; Slovak Radio Orchestra / Kirk Trevor
Navona Records NV6464
Release: 23 September 2022
A champion of repertoire and lauded by the New York Times as a virtuoso, double bassist Richard Fredrickson brings his instrument to the forefront on All American Bass, an album of works composed specifically for him. Joining the Slovak Radio Orchestra and conductor Kirk Trevor, Fredrickson flawlessly navigates the works by Vittorio Giannini, John Carbon, and William Thomas McKinley. From Giannini's darkly profound and agitated Psalm 130 to Carbon's Endangered Species, which portrays the double bass as a wild and powerful beast that gracefully reins itself in, to McKinley's modern, somber-then-lively Passacaglia, Fredrickson's command of tone and melody creates an unforgettable recording and serves as an encapsulation of the instrument's potential.

Best of Friends
Andy Malloy, trombone; Junko Ueno Garrett, piano
Navona Records NV6470
Release: 23 September 2022
Navona Records and trombonist Andy Malloy present Best of Friends, a collection of personalized pieces for trombone and piano. Featuring works that Malloy commissioned from his colleagues over the years, the album is truly an ode to the relationships formed through musical collaboration. Each piece on the album pushes the musical boundaries to which the trombone is often held through creative uses of tonality and soaring melodies. Rhythmically energetic passages, jazz harmonies, and more speak throughout the album, highlighting the musicianship of Malloy and the compositional dexterity of his colleagues, a musical testament to the power of collaboration.

J S Bach: Complete Sonatas for Flute & Piano
Julie Scolnik, flute; Sophie Scolnik-Brower, piano
Navona Records NV6468 (2 CDs)
Release: 23 September 2022
When Johann Sebstian Bach composed his flute sonatas, the flute was in its infancy as a replacement for the popular recorder. Nevertheless, his musical genius rings out as richly layered harmony and emotions exude from each fluently written piece on J S Bach: Complete Sonatas for Flute & Piano. On this two-disc recording, the mother-daughter duo of flutist Julie Scolnik, lauded by the Boston Globe for her 'urgency full of fire that melts into disarming delicacy,' and pianist Sophie Scolnik-Brower further amplify Bach's expressiveness, swapping the usual harpsichord for piano to deepen the dynamics and phrasing throughout the compositions.

Karen Sunabacka: Curlicue
Darryl Friesen, piano
Ravello Records RR8074
Release: 23 September 2022
Wide skies, whistling winds, and a love for the great outdoors take center stage on Karen Sunabacka's Curlicue, a collection of eight works for solo piano performed by Darryl Friesen. Each piece tells a story of Sunabacka's wilderness adventures, from the titular Curlicue's explorations of the twists, turns, and curls of a river, to Falling in the Water's conjuration of girls jumping into water and sheets of rain pummeling tents, to Lost's encapsulation of the fear and dread of losing one's way. Friesen's crisp performance brings each piece to life, transporting listeners to the Canadian woodlands and prairies for an adventure all their own.

Saint-Saëns Transcriptions
Cyprien Katsaris, piano
Piano21 P21-064 (2 CDs + bonus DVD)
Release: 23 September 2022
With this new project, offering more than two hours of music and a bonus special cinematographic feature, Cyprien Katsaris immerses us in the surprise-filled world of Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), with transcriptions, sometimes rare, of great symphonic works and a number of original pieces. For Cyprien Katsaris, the hundredth anniversary of the death of Camille Saint-Saëns offered the perfect opportunity to fill a void: other than in the case of Leopold Godowsky's transcription of his famous The Swan, the French composer predeceased his own discography. Entranced by Saint-Saëns' music right from his days at the 'Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris', to which he gained admission on the strength of the magnificent Allegro appassionato, at a time when he was equally spellbound by the Toccata, thanks to the fabled recording by his Professor Monique de la Bruchollerie, as by the concertos and other pieces, Cyprien Katsaris had always entertained the prospect of a recording dedicated solely to this extraordinary composer. Indeed, Saint-Saëns had always given free rein in composition to his emotions and his aesthetic convictions, eschewing any compromises with the 'modernist' trends of his time, even though he was himself an innovator, for instance in his writing of the first music for the new 'Seventh Art' (cinema). This bespeaks a surprising yet highly respectable attitude on the part of a man whose life, as a matter of passing interest, spanned a time when he might have been acquainted with Constanza, the widow of Mozart, or known Messiaen, and who witnessed the Industrial Revolution. Cyprien Katsaris' choices largely favour transcriptions; rather akin to Jean de la Fontaine, who 'transcribed' Aesop's Fables, his aspiration in these recordings is to cast new light on Saint-Saëns' great symphonic masterpieces. Here, for instance, we find a very rare transcription by Goetschius of Symphony No. 3, as also Concerto No. 2 in the seldom-recorded transcription by Georges Bizet, not to mention of course solo piano arrangements by the composer himself of other works (Africa, Bacchanale, Allegro Appassionato). Saint-Saëns also wrote the first-ever film music, for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise, in this excellent transcription by Léon Roques. And by way of an extra, this box set also contains a DVD of the film itself (fully restored for the occasion), with Cyprien Katsaris' recording of the Roques' transcription.

 

17 SEPTEMBER 2022

Christopher Jessup - Debussy, Grieg, Haydn, Ravel, Jessup, Mozart
Christopher Jessup, piano; Camerata Artists Orchestra / Ben Rhee
Available: 17 September 2022
A compilation of recordings which the pianist considers to be his finest work, recorded at Oktaven Audio, New York, live at Carnegie Hall and live at Merkin Concert Hall: Debussy: Minstrels, No 12 from Préludes, Book 1, L 117; Grieg: Sonata in E minor, Op 7 (II: Andante molto); Haydn: Sonata in B minor, Hob XVI:32 (I: Allegro moderato); Ravel: Sonatine, M 40 (I: Modéré); Christopher Jessup: Le Revenant (original composition); Mozart: Concerto No 19 in F, K 459 (III: Allegro assai)

 

16 SEPTEMBER 2022

Nuit Blanche
Duo Fortin-Poirier
Release: 16 September 2022
Made up of pianists Amélie Fortin and Marie-Christine Poirier, Duo Fortin-Poirier have distinguished themselves with fiery four-hand interpretations, remarkable for their vitality and wit. A close affinity between their playing styles along with a sharp, shared sensitivity fuel their extraordinary ensemble playing.  Since their inception in 2005, the duo have made waves both in Canada and abroad, garnering scholarships, prizes, and other distinctions (1st prize the Canadian Music Competition; 2nd Prize at the 2013 Concorso Pianistico Internazionale Roma; finalists at the 2009 Concours international de piano à quatre mains de Valberg and the 2011 Liszt 200 Chicago International Duo Piano Competition; Special Jury Mention at the 2010 International Edvard Grieg Piano Competition; and scholarships from the arts councils of Montreal, Québec and Canada). Very active on the North American scene, in 2008 they premiered Vingt doigts et un piano, the first classical concert to be chosen for Loto-Québec's Entrées en Scène. Their critically acclaimed concert Mémoires has been performed over a hundred times across Canada, the Western United States and Mexico. Their performance of the concert Mémoires at the Concerts aux Îles du Bic chamber music festival (August 2017) earned them two nominations at the Opus Awards 2018. The albums, Vingt doigts et un piano (2013) and Mémoires (2017) are broadcast regularly on Radio-Canada. Their new concert Nuit Blanche, a creation made unique by the dazzling repertoire, live projections of the duo's four-handed ballet and imaginative stage lighting design, is on tour since 2021.

The Psalms
Choir of St John's College, Cambridge / Andrew Nethsingha
Signum Records SIGCD712
Release: 16 September 2022
Andrew Nethsingha and The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge, present their new album The Psalms, celebrating music integral to the identity of the Choir. Recorded in the beautiful acoustic of St John's Chapel, Cambridge, the album allows listeners to immerse themselves in the beautiful music that the Choir perform daily during term-time as part of their Evensong services.  The album also coincides with Nethsingha's 15th anniversary as the Director of Music at St John's. During his time with the Choir, he has committed himself to preserving their iconic sound and tradition whilst simultaneously propelling them into the future. His work with the choir extends from the multiple contemporary compositions supported each year, commissioning and highlighting the work of composers both new and established, to the move to make St John's the first Oxbridge choir to include male and female voices in both the children and the adults, introduced earlier this year under his leadership. Andrew Nethsingha, Director of Music at St John's College, Cambridge, said: 'Psalm-singing, one of the most subtle forms of choral singing, is at the heart of the St John's choir's musical identity. The psalms inform everything else we perform - technically, musically, emotionally. In 1977 George Guest made a deeply moving Argo LP 'Psalms of Consolation and Hope', one of my favourite choral albums. All George's successors - Christopher Robinson, David Hill and myself - have sought to continue the distinctive St John's style of psalm-singing. The chemistry which each choir-director has with their singers is unique. I have written extensively about my own thoughts on psalm-singing, and on the beauty of the words and music, in the booklet notes; I hope these notes will enhance the listener's enjoyment and involvement in the album. The Psalms affect listeners in different ways. They can be profound and transformational not only for Christians; some psalms can be entrancing and healing.' Exploring settings of psalms from the eighteenth century through to the twentieth by composers steeped in the English choral tradition, the repertoire on this recording has been chosen and ordered carefully in terms of contrast and key relationships. Featuring psalm chants from composers such as Percy Whitlock, Henry Walford Davies and Thomas Attwood, the album also features music from a former Director of Music at St John's, Christopher Robinson, with his settings of Psalm 2 (Why do the heathen so furiously rage) and Psalm 148 (O Praise the Lord of Heaven). This release also marks the latest in a series of recordings that celebrates the music performed in Evensong, with previous releases Eastertide Evensong and Ash Wednesday focusing on live recordings of their Evensong services.

Bruckner Symphony No 4
London Symphony Orchestra / Simon Rattle
LSO Live LSO0875 (2 SACDs)
Release: 16 September 2022
The air shimmers and glows, and somewhere in the mists, a solitary horn gives a lonely call. The stuff of fairytales? The truth is, it's impossible to write about Bruckner's majestic Fourth Symphony without letting the imagination soar; he never wrote anything more colourful, or more poetic. In Germany, they call it the 'Romantic' symphony, and it's easy to hear why. Simon Rattle loves Bruckner's Fourth, and on this new recording from LSO Live, he conducts the work in all its splendour: music that never gets any less stirring, and has never sounded so fresh. He is aware, too, that Bruckner's inspiration burned so brightly that he ended up with more ideas than he could actually use. 'There is much wonderful music which remains almost entirely unplayed' he says. On this album he steps inside Bruckner's workshop, bringing to light some of the music that didn't make the final cut. This edition of the symphony and its discarded Scherzo and Finale by Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs was published in 2021. The world premiere performance with Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO is a must-listen for lovers of Bruckner's music, and gives us a glimpse into the composer's untold musical thoughts.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphonies Nos 1 & 3
National Symphony Orchestra / Gianandrea Noseda
National Symphony Orchestra NSO0008-D (digital only)
Release: 16 September 2022
A new cycle from the National Symphony Orchestra of the Kennedy Center, Washington DC, is inaugurated with Beethoven Symphonies Nos 1 & 3. Gianandrea Noseda conducts these impressively taut performances, captured live for the orchestra's own label in January 2022. Fine performances of two of Beethoven's pioneering early symphonies—No 1 from 1800, and the epic 'Eroica' completed just a few years later.

Hideen Depths
Weinberg: Symphony No 3; Symphony No 7; Flute Concerto No 1
CBSO; Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen / Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
Deutsche Grammophon 00028948624027
Release: 16 September 2022
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla continues her exploration of the music of Mieczysław Weinberg. She launched her Deutsche Grammophon recording career in 2019 with an album devoted to Mieczysław Weinberg's Symphonies Nos. 2 and 21, released to tie in with the centenary of this neglected composer. Among its many accolades, it was named Gramophone's Recording of the Year and won Gražinytė-Tyla the Opus Klassik Conductor of the Year award. Now she continues her mission to broaden awareness of the Warsaw-born composer's music with Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7 and Flute Concerto No. 1. She is joined by The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and soloist Kirill Gerstein for Symphony No. 7, and by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for the Flute Concerto – with soloist Marie-Christine Zupancic – and Symphony No. 3. The earliest work presented here is the Third Symphony, on which Weinberg began work in 1949. He had settled in Moscow by then, after being displaced by the outbreak of World War II, during which he lost many of his close relatives. By 1949, however, he had already fallen out of favor with the Stalin régime and the symphony's planned premiere was canceled. Having substantially revised the original score, he finally saw it performed in March 1960. A work full of rich contrasts, it incorporates folk tunes from Poland and from Belarus, where Weinberg had studied – whether for purely musical reasons or in an attempt to comply with the official Soviet doctrine of socialist realism – as well as reminiscences of Schubert, Mahler, and Weinberg's friend and champion Shostakovich. Gražinytė-Tyla and the CBSO, with whom she gave her final concert as Music Director in May, presented this work to great acclaim at the BBC Proms in 2019. One reviewer called it 'a revelation', adding, 'there is confidence and imaginative flair in this music; and there was faith, fidelity and verve in the CBSO's honest commitment to Weinberg's symphony' (Seen and Heard International). The composer wrote his Flute Concerto No. 1 soon after revising his Third Symphony, and it was premiered by its dedicatee Alexander Korneyev in Moscow in late 1961. Here too we find light and shade, with the rushing, virtuosic writing of the first movement followed by a far more somber, melancholy Largo. The finale is notable for its hints of klezmer music, a style Weinberg would have known from the Jewish weddings at which he played piano in his youth. Gražinytė-Tyla, the CBSO, and soloist Marie-Christine Zupancic – the orchestra's section leader flute – capture every changing nuance of this intriguing concerto. Compared to the considerable forces required for No. 3, Weinberg's Symphony No. 7 of 1964 is written for harpsichord and strings alone. A modern take on a Baroque concerto grosso, the symphony begins in tranquil style, but its writing becomes increasingly dissonant as its five movements unfurl without a break. Under Gražinytė-Tyla's direction, soloist Kirill Gerstein and The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen explore a wide range of sonorities, bringing a searing intensity to the most dramatic moments of this essentially dark work.

Project Encore, Vol 1
Timothy McAllister & Liz Ames
Neuma Records Neuma 165
Release: 16 September 2022
Project Encore, featuring today's most celebrated classical saxophonist Timothy McAllister and acclaimed pianist Liz Ames, was born from the idea that recital curation often relies too much on tradition and time-honored chestnuts while ignoring fresh, innovative and diverse voices. Alongside the duo's conscious efforts to weave a wide array of influences into their playing, from modernism to minimalism or popular idioms including latin, jazz, funk, and musical theater, they believe it is increasingly crucial to foster partnerships with living composers representing a broad spectrum of styles and backgrounds. The result of their efforts includes these virtuosic showpieces and vignettes which they hope will find a home as true 'encores' following larger compositions, dazzling concert openers, or, simply, the perfect introductions to these composers themselves as a means to round out any recital programming. From mechanical stutterings framing arguably the most famous pop sax solo in history to a crooning theater ballad; from elegiac music inspired by pandemic lockdowns to jubilant outbursts of renewal and hope, Project Encore, Vol 1, is a channel-surfing mosaic of modern composition at its finest. McAllister notes, 'there is a mission and a level of musical activism behind this album, and nothing can speak to the state and richness of concert music today like the saxophone.'

 


9 SEPTEMBER 2022

Voices of Earth and Air Vol IV
Works for Chorus
Heidi Jacob, Lydia Jane Pugh, Ray Fahrner, Denice Rippentrop,Sheila Bristow, John Robertson, Marty Regan
Navona Records NV6465
Release: 9 September 2022
A choral celebration of the human commonality we find within music. Featuring the works of six seasoned composers, each piece tells a sentimental story unique to each composer, fitting together like puzzle pieces and demonstrating the connective qualities of the human voice. Brought to life by Prague's Kühn Choir, these choral works are sure to entrance and entice listeners with flowing tonality and artful text settings that demonstrate the powerful storytelling capabilities that vocal music wields.

Nicholas White: Music for vocal quartet and chamber ensemble
Songs of Innocence (Blake); The Raven (Poe)
The Raven Consort / Nicholas White
Clara Rottsolk, soprano; Roger Isaacs, countertenor; Matthew Loyal Smith, tenor; Mark Andrew Cleveland, bass; Heather Braun-Bakken and Heidi Braun-Hill, violins; Christopher Nunn, viola; Colleen McGary-Smith, cello; Kate Foss, double bass; Laura Ward, piano
MSR Classics MS1739
Release: 9 September 2022
The Raven Consort was formed in 2013 to give the first performance of Nicholas White's The Raven, which was commissioned by Dumbarton Concerts, Washington, D.C. Since then, the group has performed and premiered many other works by White, with multiple performances of The Raven having been given across the Northeast region of the United States, as well as performances of his On Dreams Alone, My Mother's Shadow, Kyrie on a Theme of Albinoni, From Earth to Heaven and In Sure and Certain Hope, among others.  Nicholas White's musical career has evolved over three decades living and working in the United States. He is a Grammy-nominated composer and conductor, as well as a versatile organist, pianist and singer. In 2011, Nicholas was appointed to the post of Director of Chapel Music and Organist at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he finds time to compose during breaks in the school's academic schedule. Previously, White has held positions at St. John's Episcopal Church in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, St Michael's Episcopal Church in New York City, and at the Washington National Cathedral. He has held teaching and conducting posts with Boston Cecilia, Chorus Angelicus and Gaudeamus, Tiffany Consort, Woodley Ensemble and American University. White initially sang as a treble chorister in his native England, and went on to become an organ scholar of Clare College, Cambridge. He has received numerous commissions from choirs and musical organizations from around the world, and has amassed a large, distinguished catalog of compositions for a wide variety of ensembles and genres.

A Story of Life - piano music by Emile Naoumoff
Bulgaria 1300, Burlesque Brillante, Danses Bulgares, Flowing Souletude (No 24), Four Inventions, Menuet, Nocturno – Silent Ancient Alley of Tryavna, Pastorale, Quatre Préludes, Requiem, 7 Sisters Ballade et al.
Bogyeong Lee, piano
MSR Classics MS1782
Release: 9 September 2022
'Selecting pieces, reading notes, exploring my fingerings, researching composer's intentions towards the compositions, adjusting all of them to my interpretation, is for me like being a leader of an expedition. The process is a ceaseless combination of joy, hardship, cheerfulness, and having fun. I want to keep moving forward and present my discoveries to the audience. The reward from that process is absolutely priceless' - Bogyeong Lee.   Bogyeong Lee's prodigious abilities became apparent at the age of five. Admitted to the Incheon Korean Education Center for Gifted Children, Lee pursued her career as a pianist at Incheon Arts High School and the College of Music at Dankook University. Mentored by Professor Youngbang Cho and graduating magna cum laude in piano performance, Lee received the University Presidential Award and Excellence in Honors Performance Award at Dankook University, confirming her place among South Korea's next generation of musical talent. An international career beckoned with a move to the United States. In 2015, Lee graduated from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University under the tutelage of Professor Émile Naoumoff and was awarded for her artistic excellence. Doctoral studies followed with Dr. Ksenia Nosikova under a full  scholarship with University of Iowa's School of Music. Recognized for her exceptional talents in her homeland, Lee is now establishing an international career with rapid acclaim. She is a winner of the American Prize in Piano Performance (the Lorin Hollander Award), First Prize Winner of International Music Competition 'Brussels' Grand Prize Virtuoso, award winner with the WPTA Singapore International Piano Competition, gold medal recipient with the Grand Prize Virtuoso Competition, and winner of the American Protégé International Music Talent Competition. Active on the world stage, Lee has been embraced by the classical community for her fluid and dynamic virtuoso performances. She has been praised by IU piano faculty members as a musician with an artistic aura, whose interpretations do justice to the repertoire she plays. Comfortable with both solo and orchestral performances, Lee embraces the raw emotion and undying love in every touch of the piano keys. Her passion burns as bright today as it did when she began playing as a five-year-old in Korea.

Yes ... it's Still a Thing!
More first recordings of new music for flute and classical guitar by Deirdre Lynds, Gary Schocker, Kent Holliday, Andrea Clearfield, Nicole Chamberlain,Frederic Hand, Katherine Hoover and Harvey Sollberger
Duo Sequenza - Debra Silvert flute, alto flute; Paul Bowman, classical guitar
Navona Records NV6467
Release: 9 September 2022
Following their Navona Records debut in 2019, Duo Sequenza returns with Yes ... it's Still a Thing!, a new program geared towards building new audiences for today's classical music and promoting the work of living composers. Comprised of flutist Debra Silvert and classical guitarist Paul Bowman, Duo Sequenza brings an enchanting and harmonious quality that showcase the complementary capabilities of their respective instruments. From emotive and introspective works to scenic vistas painted in sound, the duo once again proves their musical chops and adaptability across a wide array of compositional styles.

Debussy & Ravel: The New Epoch
Lucia Lin, violin; Jonathan Miller, cello; Diane Walsh, piano
Navona Records NV6463
Release: 9 September 2022
Artists are liminal figures — they cross thresholds and collapse boundaries between past, present, and future.  In The New Epoch, three musicians from the Boston Artists Ensemble interpret works by French composers Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, and Lili Boulanger, infusing these pieces with unprecedented freshness and clarity. Each celebrated in their own right, cellist Jonathan Miller, violinist Lucia Lin, and pianist Diane Walsh join forces in every duo setting possible from this assortment of instruments. Exploring works written at the threshold of the First World War — with the world crossing into the violent twentieth century and composers reacting with music that looked both nostalgically back and innovatively forward — they underline the commonalities between each composer's unique voice and reinterpret this music for our turbulent present.

Nows
Sarah Belle Reid, David Rosenboom
Ravello Records RR8072
Release: 9 September 2022
Nows from David Rosenboom and Sarah Belle Reid is a captivating expression of the radical challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The music examines the notion of 'co-presence,' or togetherness, when experienced in isolation. This seemingly self-contradictory concept became an everyday occurrence as in-person gatherings became video conferences. Performer-composers Reid and Rosenboom spent this time passing fragmented musical ideas back and forth. In this organic way, a collection of 'sound correspondences' accumulated between the two artists, made with instruments ranging from strings and horns to modular synthesizers, analog signal processors, urban and desert soundscapes, and much more. The resulting album, Nows, is a post-genre masterpiece that speaks to our unique moment in history.

Karim Al-Zand: The Leader and other works
Navona Records NV6469
Release: 9 September 2022
The Leader from Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand is at once timeless and also deeply relevant for the age we live in. A commentary on the rise of fascist tyranny, its titular piece tells the story of a buffoonish charlatan who is adored despite his ridiculous behavior, echoing concerns of the modern day in this chamber opera based on Eugene Ionesco's 1953 satire Le Maître. Another vocal work, Songs from the Post Truth Era similarly comments on the political realities (or unrealities) of our time. The album features several other chamber works by Al-Zand including his Six Bagatelles, with music inspired by the art of Robert Motherwell (1915–1991).

Liszt: Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este (played live)
John Rusnak, piano
Visionmark Records / YouTube
Release: 9 September 2022
Liszt wrote the following words on the score: 'Sed aqua quam ego dabo ei, fiet in eo fons aquae salientis in vitam aeternam'. (This roughly translates to: 'But the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water springing up into eternal life.').  John Rusnak is a Los Angeles based pianist and film composer. He creates music for piano, pipe organ, brass, voice and synthetic. Cultivating many musical styles throughout his career, John's work encompasses genres ranging from classical, jazz, rock, pop, electronica and ambient. Influences include: Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Faure, Finzi, Bach, Scriabin, Tangerine Dream, Wayne Shorter, Alfred Brendel, Xenakis, Chet Baker, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Oscar Peterson, Hendrix and Jerry Goldsmith.

 

6 SEPTEMBER 2022

In Focus - Classical Music
Various artists
Azul Music AMDA1728
Available 6 September 2022
Classical and original works by various artists, a special selection to accompany moments of study and concentration. Featuring a selection of 24 songs specially selected from the Azul Music catalog, In Focus - Classical Music is a thematic-inspired compilation, whose main purpose is to provide a musical listening directed on moments of study, concentration and focus.  With well-known works from the traditional classical repertoire, as well as pieces by contemporary composers, the album presents a set of interpreters of different expressions, functioning as an introduction to the universe of classical music for new audiences: From Mozart to Satie, strolling through Rossini, Beethoven, Chopin and Villa-Lobos, the repertoire offers a non-intrusive and remarkably mild listening experience, assisting the listener in activities in which concentration and memorization are required. There is a wide variety of studies that point to classical music as an excellent tool to produce calming effects. According to Dr. Kevin S. LaBar, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, by stimulating the brain to release dopamine (a hormone associated with pleasure), music inhibits the release of neurotransmitters associated with stress and anxiety, thus increasing brain cognitive activity, which facilitates the process of learning and retaining knowledge.

Compositores Brasileiros: Duos Para Violino & Viola
Claudia Crus, Gabriel Marin
Azul Music AMDA1741
Available 6 September 2022
An anthology of musical pieces by Brazilian composers, written between 1946 and 2008 for violin and viola duos.

Debut - Amorim-Rufino Duo
Azul Music AMDA1755
Available 6 September 2022
The first album by the Brazilian-Canadian duo, featuring a selection of works by different composers, written for violin and viola.

Colours of Villa-Lobos
Olga Kopylova, piano
Azul Music AMDA1751
Available 6 September 2022
An anthology of piano works by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, in interpretations that privilege the preciousness and diversity of his musical writing.

5 Divertimentos
Claudio Cruz, Gabriel Marin and Alceu Reis
Azul Music AMDA1759
Available 6 September 2022
Adaptation for string trio of Mozart's 'Five Divertimentos', originally written for corno di bassetto.

Silence
Andrey Cechelero
Azul Music AMDA1733
Available 6 September 2022
Original compositions in intimate interpretations which invites us to contemplate silence and poetry.

Mind Oceans
Rodrigo Bragança
Azul Music AMDA1736
Available 6 September 2022
Atmospheric improvisations with emphasis on the use of effects and experimental processing of electric guitar tones.

 

2 SEPTEMBER 2022

MoonStrike
Apollo Chamber Players
Azica Records
Release: 2 September 2022
Apollo Chamber Players today releases its sixth album, MoonStrike, on Azica Records. MoonStrike is a universal celebration of storytelling, space, and folk song, realized through new works by Jennifer Higdon, Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, and Pierre Jalbert. Tate's title work, MoonStrike, is narrated by Chickasaw astronaut John Herrington, the first American Indian citizen to fly in space. All three works were commissioned by Apollo Chamber Players as part of its 20x2020 project, launched in 2014 with a mission to commission 20 new multicultural works before the end of the last decade. The New York premiere of MoonStrike will take place on Thursday 9 March 2023 at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon's In the Shadow of the Mountain (2020) is inspired by her upbringing in the Great Smoky Mountains and incorporates the sounds and colors of the region. Higdon shares, 'The resonance of that area led me to choose, for my first opera, Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain. The struggles of survival in Appalachia, the majesty of its natural features, and the sonorities of the mountain's music, color the quilt of that opera and of this string quartet.' Next is the title work, MoonStrike (2019), by Chickasaw composer and U.S. Cultural Ambassador, Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate. The work honors the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing through American Indian moon legends as narrated by Chickasaw astronaut John Herrington. Tate explains, 'American Indian legends are very colorful and have a tendency to take twists and turns within the narrative. Regarding the Moon, it is very consistent that the traditional tales involve trickster characters and competitions for ownership of this precious object.' MoonStrike features three diverse American Indian legends, and is bookended with an arrangement of a Calusa Corn Dance. MoonStrike also draws inspiration from Apollo Founder Matthew J. Detrick's love of space and childhood dream to become the first person to play the violin in space.  Rome Prize-winning composer Pierre Jalbert's L'esprit du Nord 'Spirit of the North' (2019) is a three-movement work that fuses three French-Canadian folk songs with his unique, contemporary musical language. The first movement, 'Chanson de Lisette,' is a playful theme and variations, while the second movement, 'Cantique (Canticle),' contains two religious folk tunes: a Passion and a tune entitled 'Les Pélerins.' The third and final movement, 'Fiddle Dance,' was inspired by the French-Canadian fiddling tradition.

 

29 JULY 2022

Time
Klaudia Kudełko, piano
C2 Management
Release: 29 July 2022
The album, in many ways, is a personal calling card for the pianist, whose musical lineage is of course linked to the most famous Polish composer, Chopin, as well as Grażyna Bacewicz. The album begins with Schubert's masterful Moments Musicaux, rounding about the album which, according to Kudełko, has 'one common thread. Throughout time, humans have been asking ourselves the same existential questions that I feel are reflected in these specific compositions. Chopin's 'Revolutionary' Etude was written while Warsaw was being bombarded by Russia, and Bacewicz's Sonata, composed post-World War II, is still painfully relevant today among the numerous global conflicts. Schubert was acutely aware of the little time he had left, and wanted to leave a musical legacy which encapsulated everything unspoken.'

 

24 JUNE 2022

Piano Minimalism - various artists
Azul Music AMDA1768
Release: 24 June 2022
A compilation of traditional repertoire and original contemporary music, performed on the piano by various artists. Nowadays, the need to create pauses that help us to recalibrate seems evident. Listening to music has become an ubiquitous act in our lives, sometimes taking on new meanings. From a simple passive act to an active and deep listening, the experience of listening 'in depth' brings a kind of suspension of time: While listening to music, we connect with another universe, one that spin slowly, providing rare moments in which we can better understand our limits and perspectives. With a selection of 24 pieces performed on piano solo or with subtle accompaniments of other instruments, Piano Minimalism presents emblematic works of the piano repertoire, such as Gymnopèdie No.1, written by Erik Satie in 1888 and Prelude No.4 in E Minor, Op. 28 by Frédéric Chopin, both performed by international acclaimed pianist, Clara Sverner. The repertorie is completed by contemporary pieces by young artists, such as Isaiah Rizzo, an artist from Rio de Janeiro, with his pleasing Oblivion and Svanire; Raphael Veronese with the moving Spring and Eyes of the Soul, as well as works by ambient/crossover composer Corciolli, and also the pianists Daniel Grajew, Andrey Cechelero and Flávio Franco Araújo. The subtlety of the pieces, their purity and apparent simplicity can sometimes not fit the most common definitions of minimalism: use of few notes, hypnotic repetitions, and harmonic suspensions. More than that, the selected works opens different doors to listeners, allowing deeper and more meaningful perceptions.

 

Posted 1 October 2022 and updated 3 October 2022 by Keith Bramich

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