GRETCHEN CRYER and NANCY FORD broke a glass ceiling in 1967 when they became the first female team to create a New York musical, Now Is the Time for All Good Men—the first antiwar musical of the Vietnam era. Their iconic I’m Getting My Act Together… debuted in 1978 as the first mainstream feminist musical—a 1,165-performance smash that has been performed all over the world. And in two other musicals they were the first to warn us that technology can separate us from each other—and from ourselves. In this deluxe 3-album set, four years in the making, you’ll explore their extraordinary partnership (which exists to this day), featuring both new and archival recordings by more than 30 artists including KAREN ZIEMBA, AUSTIN PENDLETON, GREGG EDELMAN, MARCIA RODD and the songwriters themselves. The collection includes the first release of the complete scores of Shelter (Original Broadway Cast), Still Getting My Act Together and Eleanor: A Musical Fantasy, plus a 60-page booklet with notes by Cryer & Ford.
These orchestral songs by the English composer Michael Csanyi-Wills - best known for his film music - all deal with the subject of loss. In Three Sogns: Budapest, 1944 Csanyi-Wills uses documentation from his own family history to shadow the fat of Hungary's Jews under the Nazis. One of them, "The Last Letter", sets a text written by his great-grandmother before she disappeared. Mortality is an omnipresent theme in A.E. Houseman's Shropshire Lad poems: Csanyi-Wills sets six songs, three for baritone and three for tenor. Elegy for Our Time sets an anguished lament by Jessica d'Este, sparked by death of her granddaughter in a car crash. Csanyi-Wills responds to the stimulus of these dark texts with music that is hauntingly lyrical and elegiac.
Currier, Escaich, Thierry: Concertos for Orchestra / Langree, Cincinnati Symphony
Fanfare Cincinnati
CD
$9.49$18.99Save 50%Nov 11, 2016
Since its founding, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) has maintained an unfaltering commitment to commissioning new music, resulting in substantial new works from a diverse array of composers including Aaron Copland and Philip Glass. For the 2015-16 season, three exciting international composers originating from three different continents, Sebastian Currier, Thierry Escaich and Zhou Tian, were each commissioned to write a new concerto for orchestra, showcasing the virtuosity, style, and sound of the CSO, thus furthering a genre championed by the likes of Bartók and Lutoslawski. The resulting three works featured on this live recording represent the culmination of this exciting project, and once again affirms the CSO’s core value of being a place of experimentation.
Curtis K. Hughes: Tulpa / Sentient Robots, Boston Percussion Group
New Focus Recordings
CD
$10.49$20.99Save 50%Apr 16, 2021
Curtis K. Hughes' "Tulpa" is a collection of his rhythmically incisive music heard in solo, duo, and ensemble settings, and culminating in the title work for ten players and guest soprano. The Boston based Hughes writes from a deep collaborative connection with his performers, crafting pieces that balance harmonic adventure with stylistic diversity, and political subtext with sardonic humor. The music of Curtis K. Hughes (b. 1974) is characterized by its rhythmic restlessness, its harmonic adventurousness and its often volatile mix of diverse stylistic elements and political subtexts. It has been described as "fiery" in the New York Times, "well crafted" in the Phoenix, and "colorfully scored" in the Boston Globe. A professor of composition at the Boston Conservatory since 2008, Curtis was a student of composers Lee Hyla and Evan Ziporyn, and is a graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory, and of the New England Conservatory (NEC), which honored him in 2010 with its Outstanding Alumni Award.
Curzon: Robin Hood Suite etc. / Cápová, Leaper, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Mar 25, 2022
Frederic Curzon started his career as a virtuoso organist, touring countless British theatres and concert venues. From 1938 he devoted himself to composition, creating a catalogue of works that is truly astonishing for its size and scope. This recording reveals Curzon’s fascination with Spain, and also features orchestral showpieces and evocations of cultured gentility, from the swagger of The Boulevardier to the wistful nostalgia of Simonetta. The Robin Hood Suite represents Curzon at the height of his melodic inspiration. As one affectionate obituary stated, ‘he was a classic among English light music composers’.
Czech Republic - Castles And Towns In Bohemia And Moravia
Naxos AudioVisual
DVD
$6.99$13.99Save 50%Jan 31, 2012
The Places The visit to the Czech Republic starts with Hluboká Castle, a massive building that for over three hundred years belonged to the Schwarzenberg family. The present building is modelled in part on England's Windsor Castle. Other sites visited include Konopiště Castle, the picturesque town of Telč, and Vranov Castle.
The Music Music for the visit is by Mozart and consists of his four Horn Concertos, written during the last decade of his life, when he was in Vienna. They were intended for his old Salzburg friend Ignaz Leutgeb, who had also settled in Vienna, prudently married there, and, in tandem with his musical activities, had become the owner of a small cheese-shop. The concertos, one of them unfinished at the time of Mozart's death, represent his work at its height.
Picture format: NTSC 4:3 Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1 Region code: 0 (worldwide) Running time: 53 mins No. of DVDs: 1
Carl Czerny, a student of Beethoven- whose music remained an inspiration- occupied an important place in the musical landscape of his time as both performer and pedagogue. His own students, such as Liszt, transmitted his teaching principles which were available in a large number of groundbreaking exercises and etudes. Carl Czerny wrote his 30 Etudes de mecanisme, Op 849 (’30 Studies of Technique’) at a time of exceptionally high demand for teaching material. The Studies make use of a limited range of keys but are intended as an introduction for students to the ‘School of Velocity.’ Perfectly placed between his simpler and more virtuosic Studies, Czerny’s Etudes have remained in demand to the present day. The works are performed here by Nicholas Horvath, who is known for his boundary-less musical explorations and his enthusiastic promotion of contemporary music.
d'Albert: Cinderella Suite, Little Mermaid, Overtures / Markl, Leipzig Radio
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Apr 29, 2014
D’ALBERT Aschenputtel Suite. Overtures: Esther; Der Rubin; Die Abreise. Preludes: Die toten Augen; Gernot. Das Seejungfräulein1 • Jun Märkl, cond; 1Viktorija Kaminskaite (sop); MDR Leipzig RSO • NAXOS 8.573110 (75:11)
The extravagantly gifted pianist and composer Eugen d’Albert had one of those improbably full, cosmopolitan lives spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. Born to a family of French and Italian origin in 1864, the same year as Richard Strauss, he grew up in Scotland. Taking on German nationality as a young adult, d’Albert studied with Liszt, who called him “Albertus Magnus,” and had a significant association with Brahms. A leading pianist of his time, he later turned to composition and was a prominent figure in Berlin’s extraordinary musical flowering in the 1920s.
D’Albert’s style isn’t easily pinned down, since he adopted differing stylistic approaches in different works. All of his music that I have heard is very well crafted, and some of it is inspired. It tends to be lively, affirmative, and light, at times, more like Humperdinck (traditional) than Busoni (progressive), to mention two of his contemporaries. Harmonically, it’s usually less adventurous than that of Liszt or Strauss. One of d’Albert’s teaches was Arthur Sullivan, for whom he composed the Overture to Patience. The writing for female chorus in Tiefland reveals this unusual influence.
D’Albert composed 19 operas in all manner of genres, changing his style from work to work, as Mascagni also did, in the quest for popular success. He found it with Tiefland, which is sometimes called a German verismo work, and is still occasionally performed. (Recordings of the Jewish-themed Der Golem, and the brief domestic comedy Die Abreise, have been issued in recent years.) Musically, Tiefland is compelling, and in it, one hears that d’Albert’s text setting and writing for the voice are as confident as his orchestration. It’s a very satisfying work to listen to, and I can recommend the Janowski recording with Marton, Kollo, Weikl, and Moll.
There’s a lot of music in this collection, all of it unfamiliar, and some of it very impressive. D’Albert’s colorful, sumptuously orchestrated preludes and overtures aren’t brief, and not all of them make a strong individual impression, but two stand out. The overture to Grillparzer’s play Esther from 1888 resembles a fully developed symphonic movement, majestic, with contrastingly playful sections, and perhaps modeled on Brahms. The prelude and introduction to Die toten Augen (1916), a biblical tale, sounds completely different, an atmospheric combination of a Korngold movie score mixed together with La mer.
Das Seejungfräulein (The Mermaid), an extended scene for soprano and orchestra, after Hans Christian Andersen, was composed in 1897 for one of d’Albert’s six wives, the soprano Hermine Finck. (Another was the pianist Teresa Carreño.) This intensely chromatic, surging music certainly shows the influence of Wagner, but manages not to sound derivative. Though it maintains more traditional harmony, it reminds me a little of the soprano “songs” in Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, and it’s the most impressive composition on the CD. In the strenuous vocal part that requires the power and range of an Isolde or Brünnhilde, the Lithuanian soprano Viktorija Kaminskaite has a warm, attractive voice, and a committed delivery, but she strains and loses tonal support on some sustained high notes.
Finally, the disc’s featured work, the 1924 Aschenputtel (Cinderella) Suite, after the Brothers Grimm, is a deftly scored set of five brief, programmatic dances. Keith Anderson’s notes don’t identify the suite as a ballet, but it would certainly lend itself to choreography. This tuneful, entrancing score is a masterpiece of its kind, and like Ravel in Ma mère l’oye—there’s a French feel to Aschenputtel—d’Albert had the gift of creating captivating, childlike music.
Jun Märkl leads lively, flexible performances, and the Leipzig Radio Symphony plays well, particularly in the Aschenputtel Suite, with its many solos. I highly recommend this disc for the chance to make the acquaintance of Die Seejungfräulein, although I hope that there will be future recordings of it with more technically assured singing, and especially Aschenputtel, a delightful find.
FANFARE: Paul Orgel
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Eugen D’Albert was a tremendously gifted musician, and even had he not been we would owe him respect for being married six times and inspiring his second wife, the also multiply married Venezuelan pianist Teresa Careño, to utter that immortal line, “Darling, your children and my children are quarreling with our children again!” Aside from multiple marriages, D’Albert composed multiple operas, nineteen at least, and the overtures and preludes contained on this disc are very enjoyable. They range from the moody prelude to Die toten Augen, to the the luscious The Ruby (his first opera), to the jolly comedy The Departure.
The Overture to Grillparzer’s Esther is actually a robust, early concert work, while the delightful Cinderella Suite has plenty of the requisite fairytale atmosphere. The Little Mermaid is a brilliant, post-Wagnerian scena for soprano and orchestra, and it’s quite beautifully sung by soprano Viktorija Kaminskaite. Her voice rides the orchestra effortlessly, while her tone remains consistently smooth and lovely throughout its range. Jun Märkl leads the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony with plenty of verve and a conviction often missing from his prior recordings of Debussy.
D’Albert’s style lacks the ultimate in individuality, but it’s unflaggingly attractive, and he clearly evolved from his Wagner/Liszt origins to something more contemporary, if not more personal. Anyway, the only way to find out is to listen, so let’s get to it.
D’ALBERT Tiefland: Symphonic Prologue. Symphony in F, Op. 4 • Jun Märkl, cond; MDR Leipzig RSO • NAXOS 8.572805 (62:40)
A recording of Eugen d’Albert’s early Symphony in F Major appeared on CPO three years ago and was reviewed by James A. Altena in 33:6. That version was conducted by Herman Bäumer leading the Osnabrücker Symphony Orchestra. D’Albert’s life story is reasonably well known, so it needn’t be recapped at length. In short, he was born in Glasgow, studied in London, and at 17 won a scholarship to study in Austria. There he was so taken with Austro-German music and culture that he repudiated his English training as worthless and from that day forward considered himself a right and proper German. He studied with Liszt, met Brahms, and built a career as one of the foremost piano virtuosos of his day. Between 1904 and 1905, d’Albert toured the U.S., and in 1907 succeeded Joseph Joachim as director of Berlin’s Hochschulefür Musik. D’Albert counted among his circle of associates and friends, Richard Strauss, who dedicated his Burleske to him, Hans Pfitzner, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Ignatz Waghalter (see the interview with Irmina Trynkos in 36:3). D’Albert’s personal life was a bit of a mess. Like Henry VIII, he married and divorced six times, though as far as we know, all of d’Albert’s wives kept their heads. When connubial contentment eluded him, he comforted himself in the arms of a mistress. His love of Germany and all things German must have soured when the First World War broke out, for in 1914, he moved to Zurich and became a Swiss citizen. He died, however, in Riga, Latvia, where he’d traveled to secure a divorce from his sixth wife.
Little by little d’Albert’s interest in composing began to overtake his career as a pianist. His output is not insignificant. It includes 21 operas, of which the seventh, Tiefland, first staged in 1903, was a major success, playing in houses around the world. It still holds the boards today, though mainly in Austria and Germany. Other works include a Cello Concerto, two piano concertos (available on Volume 9 of Hyperion’s “Romantic Piano Concerto” series), a couple of string quartets, an overture to Grillparzer’s Esther, a Piano Sonata, a handful of solo piano pieces, and lots and lots of songs.
Note: d’Albert composed the overture to Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience in 1881, just prior to his departure for Austria. Except for the cello concerto, the two piano concertos, the symphony on this disc, and his opera, Tiefland, plus several recordings of excerpts therefrom, not a lot else by d’Albert has found its way onto disc.
Another note: if you’re searching ArkivMusic for d’Albert, you’ll find him listed under the letter “A,” as Albert, Eugène d’—odd, since the site lists D’Indy as D’Indy, Vincent. Maybe it has something to do with the lowercase “d” vs. the uppercase “D.” Amazon and the Fanfare Archive put d’Albert under “D,” but the Archive purges the apostrophe, giving his name as dAlbert. How many ways can you spell “dog?” How about “dawg?”
I concur in the opinion of others that d’Albert’s compositional strength lies mainly in his mastery of the craft; his thematic ideas lend themselves well to development and he knows his way around the orchestra. I find it a bit more difficult, however, to concur with colleague Altena that Brahms and Schumann are ever-present in d’Albert’s 1886 symphony. If you’ve not heard the piece before, my guess is you would find its soundscape rather generic, as if fashioned from some factory-made, synthetic, wash-and-wear fabric. The garment fits the style of the day, but the pants are somehow baggy and nondescript. Granted, d’Albert was only 22 when he composed his one and only symphony, but attractive as it is in the moment, it’s not the sort of work whose melodies or other features linger.
If the opening strains of the Symphonic Prologue to Tiefland recall the opening of the Scène aux champs movement from Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, it’s with good reason. D’Albert is painting a similar pastoral scene in which two shepherds are heard calling to each other on their pipes. Following that, the music seems to meander along a path on which it first meets, greets, and passes Wagner, only to encounter Debussy around the next bend walking his poodles, Pelléas et Mélisande. I confess to never having heard d’Albert’s opera, Tiefland, but if the rest of it is anything like the Prologue, I can understand the work’s success; it’s actually quite alluring, more so I would say than the symphony. But then the symphony is one of the composer’s earliest orchestral efforts—only the Piano Concerto No. 1 of 1884 predates it—whereas Tiefland came after d’Albert’s self-styled conversion to German-hood, and is a mature work by a composer already seasoned in writing for the stage by six previous operas.
I’m unfortunately not familiar with the CPO recording Altena reviewed, but this current release by Jun Märkl and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra strikes me as eminently satisfactory. Playing and recording are both topnotch, and if you’re not acquainted with d’Albert’s music, this disc, at Naxos’s budget price, is an excellent way to gain some familiarity with it—enough, at least, to know whether you might care to explore further. On those grounds, recommended.
D’ANGLEBERT Harpsichord Suites: No. 1 in G; No. 2 in g; No. 3 in d; No. 4 in D • Elizabeth Farr (hpd) (period instruments) • NAXOS 8.570472 (2 CDs: 134:26)
Jean-Henry D’Anglebert (1629–1691) published only one book of his works, all of it for keyboard instruments, in 1689. It quickly became popular, appearing in a second, probably unauthorized edition, engraved in Amsterdam. Aside from the four suites that Farr has recorded here, it contained 15 dance transcriptions from Lully’s operas, four other transcriptions of anonymous origin, five fugues for organ on the same curiously angular subject, a Quatuor sur le Kyrie for organ, and a treatise on basso continuo. Though the composer wrote in his preface that he hoped to furnish at some future date existing works in other keys, they never found their way into print. More music written by D’Anglebert, however, has turned up in an autograph manuscript entitled Rés 89ter. It is believed to have been written largely in the composer’s hand, and includes 76 pieces, 54 of which are his transcriptions of lute music. Nine are earlier versions of his published works; four in C Major, were possibly meant for a second book; while the rest are pieces by Chambonnieres, Louis Couperin, Marin and Richard Marais.
So what Naxos and Farr have provided here is all of D’Anglebert’s original, extant, and known music for harpsichord, minus the four pieces in C Major. It is almost uniformly of substantial quality, favoring polyphonic mastery and fanciful invention in a lute style brisé over the richer vertical textures and descriptive pieces of other, later French Baroque musicians. It also possesses an expressively melancholy intimacy that brings to mind at times François Couperin.
There are other links to Couperin le Grand, as well. The most important for our purposes was their mutual insistence upon notational faithfulness in performance, without changes to tempo, rhythm, or further ornamentation. Couperin wrote as much in the Preface to his first volume: “I have already added all the necessary ornaments, and I have observed the correct vertical alignment of the notes.” James R. Anthony, in turn, remarked about D’Anglebert’s music in his French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau that “the music is extremely travaillée,” or worked up in a very detailed fashion. Just how worked up it is can be judged by D’Anglebert’s preface that provided an ornament table with 29 symbols, including some he invented, and many that he employed frequently throughout these pieces. (A copy of this table in Bach’s handwriting survives, indicating that he probably knew D’Anglebert’s work.)
Music as elaborate as this, with its rhetorical flourishes and pauses, could easily become mired in particulars. However, that’s not the case on this recording. Farr is very careful not to lose the forward pulse of the music while phrasing appropriately, as the Allemande in the G-Minor Suite illustrates. Nor does this force her into hectic tempos or rhythmic stiffness. The Courante II in G Minor, for example, shows how she can sustain an almost majestically gliding sense of movement in a piece played on the slow side of adagio (66 bps). Conversely, the Gigue I from the G Major Suite is a fast moderato (116 bps) treated with exceptional metrical flexibility, yet never loses its core dance-like element. It is this knife’s edge balance between rigidity and freeness, clarity of ornamentation and momentum, as much as it is a pursuit of clarity and loving sculpted phrasing that defines Farr’s performance on this release. She does a marvelous job, aided and abetted by a pair of fine instruments crafted by Keith Hill: a fine double manual harpsichord after François Blanchet, and a delicate lute harpsichord created using the description found in Adlung’s posthumously published Musica Mechanica Organoedi (1768).
Though each of these suites has been recorded by one or more harpsichordists other than Farr, I can find no instances of all four available in a single, current release. Byron Schenkman is both vital and distinguished on Centaur 2435, offering the Second Suite and excerpts from both other suites and the lute transcriptions. Céline Frisch is stylish if slightly less relaxed than Farr in the First Suite (minus the Gavotte and Minuet) and the Second on Alpha 74. She has the advantage of offering all five of the fugues, played on the organ, as well as several of the Lully transcriptions and the originals, performed by Café Zimmerman, of which Frisch is a founding member. Neither the Third nor the Fourth Suite is included, however. Barbara Maria Willi offers the First, Third, and Fourth Suites on Musicaphon 56827 (which I have not heard), but foregoes the Second. This makes the current set recommendable even if it weren’t such a delight to hear—which, fortunately, it is.
It only remains to note that the sound on this recording is bright but close, with none of the mechanism noise or over-reverberant hall sounds that sometimes bedevil harpsichord albums. Farr supplies excellent and lengthy notes focusing on the music, while Hill offers some background on both D’Anglebert’s own harpsichord, the instruments we hear, and the practice of ravalement, adding wood to extend either the treble and/or bass of an older instrument.
Full praise to Farr and Naxos for the good they’ve wrought here. Get this if you enjoy French Baroque harpsichord music.
These songs for one and two voices come from the first four of D'India's five books of Musiche, a series containing masterpieces of astonishing originality in the style of monody (solo melody with accompaniment), which had eclipsed the polyphonic madrigal in popularity at the dawn of the 17th century. With a career based largely in Turin and Rome, Sigismondo D'India nevertheless demonstrates stylistic links to both Monteverdi and Gesualdo, and it is the latter's influence which supports new scholarship claiming D'India grew up in Naples (not Sicily) in the shadow of the great madrigalist's free thinking on harmony. That very harmonic freedom - to accentuate key emotions in the text with piquant chord changes - is the hallmark of D'India's own, self-styled 'true manner' of composing monody, adopted from Gesualdo's intense, chromatic polyphony to the solo song or duet, and it suggests a Neapolitan, rather than Roman-Florentine, musical background. In D'India's own words, he uses 'intervals out of the ordinary, moving with the greatest invention from one consonance to the next, depending on the variety of the meaning of the words' for 'greater impact and greater power to move the emotions of the soul'. It is this sense for the dramatic power of song that positions D'India as a true proto-operatic composer. In fact, his three-part setting of Clorinda's death scene from Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata (Amico hai vinto) predates by several years that of his contemporary Monteverdi: the revolutionary Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. Perhaps the young D'India's wide travels across Italy, absorbing the musical styles at each locale and acquiring a broad grasp of the varied stylistic practices throughout the peninsula in the early Baroque, gave him the conviction to claim his own style as the 'true manner'. In any case, it's originality and vision are truly remarkable.
D. Johnson: 12 Preludes & Fugues for Solo Piano / Guild
Divine Art
CD
$10.49$20.99Save 50%Apr 19, 2024
Dr. David Charles Johnson (27 October 1942 in Edinburgh – 30 March 2009 in Edinburgh) was a Scottish composer and a scholar of 18th-century Scottish music. Johnson was 'an internationally recognized scholar' whose work significantly contributed to rediscovering and redefining 18th-century Scottish music within its historical context. His research focused on the music and social life of lowland Scotland during the 18th century, exploring influences, tastes, and key musical figures of the era.
Johnson’s 12 Preludes and Fugues are among the few significant pieces he composed for the piano, alongside a five-minute Sonata. Written in the early to mid-1990s and published in 1995, these compositions are notable for their unique blend of sound, reminiscent of 20th-century composers like Hindemith or Prokofiev, while incorporating elements such as quotations from Bach and references to Hugh MacDiarmid's work. They also feature direct quotations of popular tunes like 'Johnny Cope' and 'The Animals Went Marching Two by Two', infused with a distinct Scottish flavor. The thematic backbone of the suite is borrowed from Aberdonian composer Shaun Dillon, using the Scots-Gaelic word bheatha, ‘life’, represented musically by the notes B-flat, B, E, A. Johnson masterfully employs this motif to form a tone row, guiding the keys across the 12 works in the suite, making his Preludes and Fugues a unique and distinguished addition to Scottish piano music.
Christopher Guild is making waves on the international music scene for his exceptional work with British, particularly Scottish, piano music. He has recorded numerous albums for esteemed labels such as Toccata Classics, Piano Classics, and Champs Hill Records, featuring works by renowned composers like Ronald Stevenson, Francis George Scott, and Bernard van Dieren. His upcoming recording for Divine Art marks another milestone in his career, further solidifying his reputation as a prominent interpreter of British piano repertoire.
D. Matthews: Complete String Quartets, Vol. 5 / Kreutzer Quartet
Toccata
CD
$10.49$20.99Save 50%Sep 02, 2022
The American critic Robert Reilly described the music on Volume One of this cycle of the complete string quartets of David Matthews (b. 1943) as ‘some of the most concentrated, penetrating writing for this medium in the past 30 years or more. It is musical thinking of the highest order and quartet writing in the great tradition of Beethoven, Bartok, Britten, and Tippett’. Matthews’ three most recent quartets call in a wide range of references. Birdsong – heard in Nos. 13 and 14 – is a standard Matthews topos; and the fugal No. 15 seems to find a middle ground between late Beethoven and folk-music. No. 13 presents the biggest surprise: it introduces four solo voices, siting the work somewhere between Berg’s Lyric Suite and Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music. Some touching arrangements and two canons for two Michaels – Tippett and Berkeley – complete the program.
REVIEWS:
Perhaps the most important series of quartets written in the last two decades.
The disc is topped off with various miniatures, mainly beautifully idiomatic arrangements for string quartet of pieces which Matthews finds particularly interesting, as he explains in his booklet essay, or written for friends or for special occasions...if you have been collecting David Matthews quartets on this wonderfully enterprising label, then you will wish to snap up this one...One cannot find fault with the four singers or with the Kreutzer Quartet who clearly understand the composer’s requirements and communicate them lucidly and intelligently.
There is little or no difference in the acoustic and atmosphere of the recordings made at varying venues. The sound is consistent and always transparent.
'Daa Dee' is the first groove a baby learns in Ethiopia as it takes it's first steps. It is the sound the mother makes to help her baby in it's first attempt into independence. Minyeshu explores her own upbringing and the resulting positive changes in this uplifting album of strength, vulnerability, faith and doubts overcome. Daa Dee is Minyeshu's fourth album, a collection of dance songs exalting love, spiritualism, and what it means to be a woman- especially a mother and daughter- in today's times. Drawing from her cultural life experiences in Africa and Europe, Minyeshu has sculpted her signature tone- a hypnotic and modern hybrid of Ethiopian grooves and melodies, delicately mixed with Western instruments and styles. "Minyeshu manages to sound both accessible to a wider audience yet still authentically and proudly Ethiopian at the same time." (Songlines) "... brave and new musically stimulating and exciting experience." (NetRhythms UK)
Henri Texier (b. 1945) is a true jazz legend. The Paris-born French jazz double bassist is most known for his work with Don Cherry in the 1960s and with his band the Transatlantik Quartet in the 1980s alongside fellow musicians Joe Lovano, Steve Swallow, and Aldo Romano. What’s remarkable about Texier is that he is a self-taught bassist. He credits Wilbur Ware as his biggest influence. This release includes seven original compositions by Texier, the connecting theme being the culture and history of the Native Americans. As a special feature, the eighth and final track on the album is an interview with Texier conducted by Gotz Buhler. Texier is joined by fellow jazz heavyweights Sebastian Texier, Francois Corneloup, and Louis Moutin.
Spaniard Joaquin Rodrigo is probably the most outstanding composer of guitar music of the 20th century. He composed numerous works for solo guitar and guitar duo, including some of the most substantial pieces in the classical guitar repertoire. This release from Dale Kavanagh and the State Philharmonic of Arad presents several of his works for guitar and orchestra and solo guitar. Canadian-born Dale Kavanagh is one of the guitar world’s most gifted interpreters. She has been a top prize-winner in Spain’s “Segovia Competition,” Italy’s “Gargnano Competition,” Switzerland’s “Neuchatel Competition,” and Finland’s “Scandinavian International Guitar Competition.” She performs internationally as a soloist and in the Amadeus Guitar Duo, and has given more than 1,500 concerts in more than 70 countries.
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REVIEW:
The music of Rodrigo simultaneously traverses the technical limits of the guitar and a broad emotional range; thus, it is perfect for guitarist Dale Kavanagh. Like her personality, the playing is direct and personable, while at the same time precise and deeply passionate. Having honed these works on many a concert stage, Kavanagh gives each phrase an unencumbered intention and direction that never fails to communicate to the listener.
Dall'Abaco, Porpora, Macello, Tartini & Telemann: Concertos / Bicket, The English Concert
Signum Classics
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Oct 05, 2018
Founded in 1973 by Trevor Pinnock, the English Concert has been a leading light in the performance of Baroque and Classical music for for over 40 years. Under their present Artistic Director Harry Bicket and with distinguished guest artists they continue to perform with the passion, sophistication and technical mastery established at their creation. Such is the commitment and passion that their players bring to every performance. Drawn not only from home-grown talent, The English Concert can boast a truly international cast of musicians. Soloists in their own right, and backed-up by scholarly knowledge of style and genre, the close-knit relationship between their musicians makes for a truly special blend of sound. This new recording features the talents of these soloists in performances of Concertii by Telemann, Marcello, Dall’Abaco, Tartini and Porpora.
Among the most active composers of the past century, Jean-Michele Damase undoubtedly occupies a prominent place. Student of the ecole francaise, he has always been linked to the great musical institutions, and he dedicated his activity to the musical theater, ballet, instrumental music and he gives particular attention to the flute and harp, for which he composed works in honor of Jean-Pierre Rampal and his mother Micheline Kahn, great harpist and direct interpreter of the works of Faure. His music ''refined and sincere'' is correctly interpreted in this album by the duo Luise-Parrino after 4 years from the composer's death.
This fun release features both old and new songs and dances from Israel, presented with energy and enthusiasm by Gevatron and by Effi Netzer and Yonathan Gabay. The music is from modern Israel, from the Kibbutz and with Eastern European, Mediterranean and Arabic influence. The Gevatron are representatives of Israeli folk music and songs of the good and lovely Israel. The group was established in 1948, and has since been composed of members of the Kibbutz and its surrounding area. Effi Netzer is a musician, composer, and music director. Choreographer Yonathan Gabay was one of the pillars of Israeli dancing, who passed away in 2011. He left us with a legacy of unforgettable Israeli dances.
