The BuJazzO premiere took place in January 1988. The first record release was in the same year. 35 years... "35 Years": this new album in an impressive series acts like a cornucopia of ideas and stylistic ingredients. But it can hardly be more than a kind of opulent teaser for all that BuJazzO currently is.
Tony Ann brings together all his exploration of astrological signs in one album, 360°. Each song functions as a meditation on a different horoscope, encompassing 12 keys at different meters and tempos. It plunges listeners into a living and breathing musical ecosystem punctuated by bliss and catharsis. He employs the full range of the piano to evoke the singularity of these respective astrological signs. The entire suite revolves around his virtuosic chops, melodic empathy, and electrifying energy.
The International Competition of Polish Music aims to popularize Polish music in the world and to consolidate the importance of the oeuvre of Polish composers - especially of those active in the 19th and 20th centuries - in the public's mind. The competition is to contribute to the presentation of newly discovered works to a wide audience and to ensure that this unjustly neglected legacy is duly elaborated and republished. No less important is the task of promoting talented musicians who decide to include in their repertoire lesser-known works by Polish composers. On July 3-9, 2023, at the headquarters of the Artur Malawski Subcarpathian Philharmonic in Rzeszow, the already third edition of the Festival took place. On the album, we present the most interesting competition performances.
Reissue of 1998 album including bonus tracks. 4 is the fourth studio album by Fourplay, released in 1998. This is their first album with guitarist Larry Carlton. 4 contains a number of Fourplay's finest moments such as 'Still The One', their remake of Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual Healing' featuring El Debarge on vocals, the wonderful Brazillian influenced track 'Rio Rush', and 'Charmed, I'm Sure'. Includes the bonus track 'Out Of Body'
Those who have seen the Quartetto Maurice play live have seen this on their faces, in their gestures: the long sweetness and the angry acceleration, the smile and the serenity, the eurhythmy and the euphoria. The latter has often accompanied their wish that everything should change. We know that when we want everything to change, we evoke fire. Flame, Bachelard writes in an essay, is of all the objects that evoke reverie, one of the greatest operators of images: flame forces us to imagine. This is a truth that Fausto Romitelli knew well. Referring precisely to the synthetic work Natura morta con fiamme (1991), for string quartet and electronics, he explicitly refers to an imaginary scale, to an extremity which has a language without words, purely of relations, of which the essential elements are conventional and abstract, implemented by algebraic and combinatory processes. Dedicated to the memory of Fausto Romitelli, the piece by Mauro Lanza, The 1987 Max Headroom Broadcast Incident (2017), for "augmented" string quartet, reflects precisely on what lies beyond what we always see - on the eye forced to watch and the ear forced to listen - we could almost say on the reverie that admires interference. Andrea Agostini conceived Legno, sabbia, vetro, cenere (2009-10), for quartet and electronics. The composer formed the idea of using additive and deferred synthesis- a technique that the composer is pleased to describe as "very old" - to pursue an ideal he never then abandoned. This was writing electronics with a degree of control over detail and articulation of sound that aspires, one could say, to a very marked musical determinism. Silvia Borzelli searches for a profound explanation with Earwitness (familiar 2) (2017), for string quartet and stereo soundtracks. The earwitness of the title is the person described by Elias Canetti in that strange collection of stories that take their name exactly from the story of that name.
4 Cycles (The) – Where the Heart Is Pure / The Changing Light / 5 Love Motets / 3 Songs from Ish River
Naxos
CD
$19.99Aug 12, 2016
Peter Scott Lewis is based in San Francisco, and his deeply expressive music is much in demand across the world. Performed here by renowned artists, The Four Cycles collects his complete vocal music to date. Where the Heart Is Pure depicts the natural world around the Skagit River in Washington State where the poet Robert Sund, a close friend of the composer, made his home. Themes of light and love are embraced by the rich sonorities of a vocal quartet, while the Three Songs From Ish River examine the history of the Pacific Northwest.
4 Hands at Home - Domestic Music-Making in the Mid-19th Century / McCallum, Helyard
Toccata
CD
$20.99Jan 19, 2024
Playing piano four-hands was both vital in the dissemination of music in the nineteenth century and also a popular domestic activity. The original 1853 Parisian Erard piano on which this recording was made demonstrates the clarity, warmth and differentiated timbres characteristic of the ‘straight stringing’ that was later replaced by the ‘cross-stringing’ of the modern concert grand. The repertoire from the period covers the many genres of four-hand piano works in their varied roles as domestic ‘info-entertainment’: orchestral works large and small, serious sonatas and variations, showpieces for emerging virtuosi and even a string quartet are all equally engaging in this once-familiar medium.
Frederic Rzewski is most celebrated for his virtuosic variations for piano, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (8.559360). The Four Pieces began as a sequel to that breath-taking work, but whilst sharing certain similarities – Andean dance rhythms and tremendous drama – it occupies its own very distinct sound world, offering a compound of intense lyricism, shattering darkness, and hints of revolutionary fervor. The Housewife’s Lament is a set of variations on an anon. 19th c. tune with strong influences of Beethoven. The punning title Hard Cuts refers to cuts both budgetary and musical, and Rzewski’s signature elements appear throughout: folk rhythms, pointillist clarity, minimalism, and unique craftsmanship.
4 RHAPSODIES from critically-acclaimed pianist Kristina Marinova and Navona Records is a collection of vibrant, dynamic, and technically demanding works for solo piano. The album’s titular piece, Four Rhapsodies op. 11 by early 20th-Century composer Ernst von Dohnanyi is rarely performed in concert given the level of musicianship it requires of pianists. Now, its combination of stark drama and dazzling virtuosic passages may be enjoyed by listeners everywhere. This impressive piece, along with works by the likes of Astor Piazzolla, Franz Liszt, and George Gershwin, makes for a varied collection of masterworks performed by the gifted hands of Kristina Marinova.
If, as I did, you were to begin your examination of this release with disc 1, track 1 (the Brahms symphony), you might well conclude that there was little need to continue. There is something rather too cool and casual about Dausgaard’s interpretation of this powerful music. It lacks inner tension. There is not enough contrast between ideas. Accents are in the wrong places. Short notes are cheated of their value. And that’s not all. The second movement just plods on, the third is charmless, the fourth frantic and lurches from one tempo change to the next. Listening to the complete symphony several times could not induce me to alter my initial unfavorable observations. Adding visual insult to aural injury, sight and sound are not synchronized, and the difference between the two is disturbing, to put it mildly.
But then came the Nielsen symphony. What a difference! Right from the opening moments it had all the vigor and élan and determination lacking in the Brahms. Rhythms were tight and crisp. The music bristled with enthusiasm and commitment. The finale positively beamed with Elgarian nobility and breadth, rising to an absolutely thrilling climax. What a joy! Nielsen’s Third had hitherto never been one of my favorite symphonies, but Dausgaard nearly made it so in this performance.
Does Dausgaard work his magic on the two remaining works as well? The answer, I’m glad to say, is yes. Furthermore, the synchronization problem that affected the Brahms symphony is only minimal in the Nielsen and nonexistent in Dvo?ák and Sibelius. The “New World” Symphony receives one of the finest performances I have heard. Dausgaard’s approach is no romantic wallow but rather a clean, purposeful traversal filled with taut rhythms, precise attacks and releases, glowing sound, and architectural strength. Dausgaard likewise makes a strong case for the Sibelius Fifth, never allowing momentum to sag, carefully propelling the music forward with masterly control. I am particularly impressed with the ease in which he handles the tempo change for the second part of the first movement. By the time the grand climax of the finale arrives, one feels a great journey has been completed.
All four performances were recorded live in Copenhagen’s Koncerthuset in 2009. The personnel changes from symphony to symphony, but both principal horns, both principal trumpets, and both timpanists are star players. Generally the woodwinds are excellent, but violins seem a bit thin for an orchestra that is otherwise so assured and well balanced. However, the basses make up for this deficiency with their huge, rich sound, heard at its best at the quiet endings of three of the Brahms movements and in some of the more powerful moments of the Dvo?ák symphony. Aside from the basses, the orchestra plays with a bright sound, textures are clear and clean, balances are well controlled.
The camerawork is devoted about 20 percent of the time to Dausgaard and his facial contortions, 10 percent to views of the full orchestra from afar, and 70 percent to the business of jerking the viewer’s eyes from one instrumental close-up to another—two seconds of a horn player’s embouchure, a second of flute keys, two notes from the timpani, etc. Who determined that this is what we want to see? I find it annoying to the point where I simply can’t bear to watch.
On ArkivMusic the price for these four symphonies is $27 ($40 for the Blu-ray version)—just under $7 a symphony, a good buy even without the inferior Brahms symphony, especially for performances as fine as the other three.
With its unique combination of instruments, the Vienna Reed Quintet creates a new and refreshing sound that differs significantly from that of the conventional wind quintet. This programme opens up three very special keyboard works to these exhilarating sonorities, starting with the virtuoso dances of Rameau’s descriptively titled suite La Triomphante. Mozart’s Fantasia has all the stately grandeur of a Bach fantasia, while Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin is a tribute both to his great musical ancestor and to friends who fell during the First World War. The Vienna Reed Quintet is a first on the Austrian chamber music scene with its combination of single and double reed instruments in a chamber ensemble. With Heri Choi on oboe, Heinz-Peter Linshalm on clarinet, Alfred Reiter on saxophone, Petra Stump-Linshalm on bass clarinet and Sophie Dartigalongue on bassoon, five strong musical personalities present a fresh and unusual wind ensemble.
