As a result of his varied activities inside and outside the concert hall, as composer, conductor of professional and amateur ensembles, lecturer on television and radio, author of books on music, and a visible supporter of the anti-nuclear movement, Yasushi Akutagawa (1925–89) might be considered the Japanese equivalent of Leonard Bernstein. Thanks to Morihide Katayama’s thorough program notes, we learn that Akutagawa’s compositional career can be divided into three periods: early, in which he attempted to integrate the rhythmic impulses learned from his main teacher, Akira Ifukube, with a lyrical strain identified with another teacher, Qunihico Hashimoto (who himself had studied with Egon Wellesz in Vienna), while also absorbing musical influences from Russian composers like Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and Shostakovich (he conducted the Japanese premiere of the latter’s Fourth Symphony); middle, exploring avant-garde tendencies as Akutagawa aligned himself with fellow composers Toru Takemitsu and Toshiro Mayuzumi; and late, attempting a populist combination of elements from the first two. Helpfully, on this disc we are given one work illustrating each of these respective periods.

Listening to these attractive works, however, one can hear commonalities that run consistently through Akutagawa’s music—a rhythmic vitality, colorful orchestration, and ability to paint a mood, all of which may be attributed to Akutagawa’s childhood love of Stravinsky’s early ballets. Occasional echoes of The Firebird and The Rite of Spring emerge and quickly recede—so quickly, in fact, that they sound less like an influence and more like a brief, subconscious, unattributable memory. Much more substantial, primarily in the earliest of these compositions, the Trinita Sinfonica (1948), is the post-Stravinsky Russian influence. There is a playful tone and flair unheard in the later works, especially in the jubilant roller-coaster finale, and a hint of dark undercurrent to the otherwise romantic flow of lullabies in the slow second movement.

Even though the Ellora Symphony (1958), a product of Akutagawa’s exploratory period, was originally designed to allow an aleatoric re-ordering of its 20 (now reduced to 15) concise movements from performance to performance, the alternately tranquil passages and turbulent outbursts (heavy on percussion) contain a motivic and symbolic unity that keep their dramatic logic intact. Built from Akutagawa’s primary compositional method of manipulating small units, each movement’s close-knit intervallic motifs represent masculine and feminine characteristics. Katayama states that the symphony is “a hymn to primitive reproduction,” but the fantasy and power of the music—especially those Stravinskyan ostinatos—suggest sources and a setting more mythic than merely primitive.

From the period of his greatest popularity, the Rapsodia (1971) fluidly mixes these propulsive rhythms, via small energetic units and ostinato figures, with long-lined counterpoint and tone painting. Despite his occasional use of indigenous dance melodies and pentatonic scales, if these three works are typical, Akutagawa’s compositions contain less specific Japanese musical references than many of his contemporaries. But his fluency in the mid-century modernist vocabulary—especially in the hands of an experienced conductor like Yuasa—makes his music worthy of attention.

Art Lange, FANFARE

Before the early 20th century, any list of significant Western composers would have included Benedetto Marcello. Through his advocacy of a return to the proportional values and simplicity of ancient Roman civilization, he helped set the stage for the Classical era in Western music, soon to unseat the aesthetic norms of the Baroque in which he lived.

"1955. The Brasserie de la Cigale was the Parisian Harlem. Influenced by Dixieland, Middle Jazz and Rhythm ‘n Blues, the sextet led by the Guadeloupian trombonist Al Lirvat presents a pyrotechnic display of groove and swing. A rare performance by the American saxist Benny Waters, on excellent form. An exceptional and historic document in every way." Jean-Pierre Meunier

Mónica Giraldo is a woman walking two paths. The first one is taking her deeper and deeper into the heart of Colombian music, surrounded by the power of her native land's traditional rhythms. The other one leads her out and away, following melodies and harmonies from the world. Mónica is a singer-songwriter who released two independent albums before earning a nomination for Best New Artist at the 2008 Latin Grammys. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Giraldo studied music at Unviersidad de los Andes in her hometown and subsequently studied further at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Since her return to Colombia, she recorded several albums: Muy Cerca in 2005, Todo da Vueltas in 2008, which earned her a nomination for Best New Artist at the 2008 Latin Grammys. She also released Que venga la vida with Polen Records in 2014, and Bajo el mismo cielo in 2017. This new release features her very best work.

The charismatic, cosmopolitan cellist Giovanni Sollima joins the instrumentalists of Il Pomo d'Oro for Al-Bunduqiyya - The Lost Concerto. The album, which crosses cultures and eras, sets Vivaldi, born in Venice in 1678, in the context of his native city's historical relationship with the eastern Mediterranean and Asia. Al-Bunduqiyya is the Arabic name for Venice and 'The Lost Concerto' (Il Concerto Perduto) is a work composed in 2021 by Sollima. His starting point was all that remains of one of Vivaldi's concertos for cello: the orchestral viola part, now preserved at the Venice Conservatory. Among the other items are complete concertos by Vivaldi, solo improvisations by Sollima, a piece by Vivaldi's contemporary Tartini, and music of the Cypriot and Albanian traditions. When the programme of Al-Bunduqiyya was performed at London's Wigmore Hall, Seen and Heard International wrote: "Sollima conjured a feast of tone colours, plunging into pizzicatos, climbing to the heights of the fingerboard with Romantic bravura, conjuring ornamental flourishes with improvisatory flair, finding intense sentiment before whipping up a wild dance and concluding with some glissandi yelps! This was as much theatre as music."

Vinyl LP pressing. Christmas is the first Christmas album by Alabama. The album was released on RCA Nashville in 1985. The album includes one of their more popular holiday songs, 1982's "Christmas in Dixie," which charted on two of Billboard magazine's music popularity charts in six different calendar years.

Although Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) was born in Massachusetts and ended his days in Seattle, his music was profoundly coloured by his Armenian heritage, in particular through his fondness for the modal melos of the ancient Armenian church. His combination of modality and melisma, of hymn and dance, can often make him sound like an eastern cousin of Vaughan Williams. The organ is an ideal medium for his musical language, allowing it to range from timeless, questing prayer to gloriously full-bodied statements that stir the soul.

Justin Robinson's adventurous alto saxophone sound is at the center of this powerful quintet session, a tribute to the late bassist and Criss Cross regular Dwayne Burno. Featuring Burno himself on bass in one of the last sessions before his untimely death in late december 2013. Alana's Fantasy finds Robinson and his esteemed colleagues in peak form, playing standards, originals, music by Jackie McLean, Thelonious Monk and more.Trumpeter Michael Rodriguez, a noted Criss Cross leader and sideman, joins Robinson in the frontline, while Sullivan Fortner makes his Criss Cross debut, and drummer Willie Jones III his first label appearance since 2008.

This release is Alarm Will Sound’s fifth full-length project with Cantaloupe Music, and precurses several performances throughout 2016. The six tracks on this album feature incidental variations on compositions by The Beatles, Charles Wuorinen, Edgard Varese, and more. Best described as postmodern classical music, this genre-bending ensemble doesn’t fail to entertain as they push the outer limits of the canon with this adventurous project. -----

REVIEWS:

The 23 members of Alarm Will Sound perform the provocative pieces playfully, inviting all sides of the modernism debate to lighten up and listen. Each work composed for the ensemble is easily digestible, running under seven minutes. Wolfgang Rihm’s Will Sound delivers in trickily spaced bursts, mostly centered around a sinewy saxophone line. The ensemble’s percussionists are in particularly fine form, rattling and skipping through unintuitive and complex rhythms.

– NPR

The comic portrait of screaming human faces on the album's cover poses a rhetorical question: Do we honestly still need to act scared by this modernist stuff? Over the course of their set, the Alarm Will Sound players and conductor Alan Pierson respond to this prompt by delivering pure modern-classical fun. The six pieces they’ve chosen speak different structural languages, though each one shares a desire to bring across a sense of wildness that is exuberant at heart.

– Pitchfork

Carlo Albanesi was an Italian composer-pianist who moved to London in 1882. He balanced a career as a piano soloist with that of professor of piano at the Royal Academy of Music. Acclaimed pianist Julia Severus continues her survey of works by this unjustly forgotten composer-pianist. World premiere recordings. Volume 1 can be heard on GP924.

Kosovo native Flaka Goranci’s extensive international opera career features leading parts in operas by Mozart, Rossini and Weill. She is also accomplished in the genre of folk music, as can be heard on her new CD “Albanian Flowers”. Supported by colleagues of Balkan descent, Ms. Goranci presents songs from Albania and the Kosovo. Love’s bliss and love’s sorrow go side by side and the appropriate roundelay of symbols mostly includes spring and flowers. Further typical elements found in this music coming out of peoples’ daily lives include weddings, loyalty to one’s homeland and shepherd tunes.

Venezuelan trumpet virtuoso Pacho Florez wowed the packed Royal Albert Hall at the BBC Proms concert given by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under their chief conductor Domingo Hindoyan last year. Pacho and Domingo have a real chemistry on stage, they are old friends going back to their time in the Simon Bolivar Orchestra. This album showcases Pacho as composer as well as soloist - his own brilliant concerto Albares is vibrant, rhythmic and wonderfully written for the instrument. It, like the two other concertos on the album by Sierra and Ortiz have more than their fair share of ear worm tunes, and you won't be able to resist smiling and swaying to the infectious music.

The arrangement of Albeniz's piano works for solo guitar, multiple guitars, and even guitar plus a melody instrument has a long tradition, beginning with Francisco Tarrega and Miguel Llobet as well as many other legendary guitarists. The arrangements and versions recorded here are not actually original arrangements but are compiled from a multitude of existing templates and suggestions from recordings.