The Flanders Recorder Quartet is going to finish its career in 2018. While this news has spread quickly among the recorder aficionados and created a huge interest in their final world tour, this famous ensemble again released a unique record. This release is an anthology of five hundred years of music history in a nutshell, combining the intimate sonority of old masterpieces with a touch of jazz by contemporary composers. But in contrast to previous recordings, the quartet has chosen from the substantial pile of five-voice music that music literature has been spoiled with and invited a revered colleague to join its ranks: Saskia Coolen. This is not only a masterful overview of music history, but a fitting overview of an impressive and influential career.
Ensemble 5o Elemento was formed by Mexican musicians who came together to explore jazz and all it's rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic facets. Their repertoire covers a broad spectrum, from jazz classics of the sixties a la Miles Davis, to contemporary jazz works inspired by Spanish influences. Most of the pieces they play are composed by the members themselves. The present release is presented in honor of the group's 20th anniversary and features a programme of Mexican jazz.
The CD presents partly unpublished choral works of Paul Hindemith who wrote in 1952: "It is not going too far to say that the art of a cappella ensemble singing and the music written for it can be thought of as the measure of the achievement of the musical culture of any particular period." The brief texts of the canons reveal his love of punning games and an underlying sense of humor.
Little is known about Francesco Zappa, Milanese composer and cellist of the mid-eighteenth century. This recording allows us, for the first time in modern times, to appreciate the qualities of a musician who, in his lifetime, was welcomed with general, broad esteem. His six Duets for violin and cello, published in Paris and presented here, sound like a polite parlor conversation. If Zappa chooses a classical gallant style, his music is never superficial, and he clearly proves a first-rate composer whose unmistakable trait is his Italian melodiousness.
Andreas Blau and his orchestral colleagues of the Berliner Philharmoniker are to be admired for discovering the treasure that is Anton Hoffmeister's Flute Quartets, and they play them superbly well, while placing Hoffmeister's output in close proximity to Mozart and Haydn, and in the vicinity of early Beethoven. The solo parts are evidently tailor-made for the flute, and their virtuoso passages seem modeled on cadenzas from Mozart piano concertos. Their musical sensitivity, evident enjoyment and great orchestral experience ensure the recordings do not just document the artistry of so-called minor masters, but are a valuable addition to our view of the brilliant epoch of Viennese classicism.
Denmark’s leading composer of sacred music Bernhard Lewkovitch dedicated the 6 Partitas and the 12 Chorales recorded here for Royal Danish Brass. One of the most prominent ensembles of Denmark Royal Danish Brass has a long standing collaboration with Lewkovitch, which culminates in this brilliant CD of strong spirituality.
For this recording project, the fearless French musical collective ensemble 0 (pronounced “zero”) began a new kind of collaboration with the Swiss percussion ensemble Eklekto and Gamelan Oksitan- this last the traditional Javanese ensemble of gongs and metallophones based in France. Their transcultural bridge has foundations that go back to Claude Debussy’s fascination with the radiant tones of gamelan music that he heard at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Yet neither Debussy nor many other sympathetic composers who followed actually composed for those instruments. They faced challenges of different tuning systems, intricacies of unfamiliar instruments, the weight of another classical tradition, but perhaps no obstacle greater than the cultural gulf of that colonial era. It was not until the 1970s that non-Indonesian composers began to bridge that divide, none more committed than the American composer Lou Harrison. Compositions by Harrison are paired here with works by Larry Polansky, Petar Klanac, Billy Martin, and Roland Dahinden. The diversity of approaches represented on this collection provides a glimpse towards a vibrant future, a future that Lou Harrison helped create.
Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing. On his first Blue Note date since relinquishing the Jazz Messengers moniker to Art Blakey, Horace Silver struck gold with the 1956 album, 6 Pieces of Silver, a sterling set of hard bop that introduced his indelible composition "Se¤or Blues." The pianist was joined by an ace quintet featuring Donald Byrd, Hank Mobley, Doug Watkins, and Louis Hayes. Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series is all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Optimal.
Led by the excellent and award-winning mandolinist Anna Torge, the ensemble on this album is dedicated to the small but exquisite legacy of a musician about whom, apart from his name and the key dates of his life, almost nothing is known - Abbate Ranieri Capponi (1680-1744). And even this incredibly modest proof of existence would have disappeared if his brother Ruberto Capponi, after Abbate's death in Florence, had not printed twelve of his sonate da camera for several instruments and dedicated them to the Archbishop of Cologne Clemens August. And so, in the endless expanse of history, the delicate traces of a man were preserved. He was clearly well versed in the instrumental forms of his time and had mastered the art of intellectual entertainment, as Anna Torge and her colleagues from Continuo enjoyably demonstrate with six of Capponi's delightful chamber sonatas.
Eugene Ysaÿe was considered to be one of the world's best violinists and was mentioned in one breath alongside such celebrities as Paganini, Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski. In the 1920's was when Ysaÿe wrote his best-known violin masterworks, the echoes of his fascination with impressionism and symbolism. "I allowed free improvisation to reign. Each sonata constitutes a kind of little poeme where I abandoned the violin to it's fantasies. I wanted to associate musical interest with grand qualities of true virtuosity". - Ysaÿe
![5[five] / Coolen, Flanders Recorder Quartet](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3747339.jpg?v=1786727711&width=800)
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