British composer Eleanor Alberga is renowned for her mastery of orchestral colour and form. With her distinctive blend of lyricism and rhythmic dynamism, Alberga crafts a sonic journey that is both exhilarating and deeply moving. From the arresting grandeur of the symphonic landscapes in her first symphony, Strata, to the pulsating and evocative energy of Mythologies, each piece is a testament to Alberga's boundless creativity. The BBC Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Thomas Kemp, are joined by the Castalian String Quartet for Tower with it's cascading melodies and rhythmic intensity, embodying both strength and intimate intricacies.
Alberga: Works / Bowes, Pearse, Swensen, BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Lyrita
CD
$20.99Feb 04, 2022
“Eleanor Alberga was born in 1949 in Kingston, Jamaica. Her mother founded, and subsequently ran, her own high school in Jamaica and believed passionately in the Arts. Consequently, Eleanor was introduced to classical music at an early age. As a teenager she had piano lessons at the Jamaica School of Music and in 1968 she won the biennial Royal Schools of Music Scholarship for the West Indies, which she took up two years later at the Royal Academy of Music in London, studying piano and singing. 2001 was a turning point when she was awarded a NESTA Fellowship and chose to give up her career as a concert pianist and concentrate full-time on composition. Her distinctive creative output encompasses instrumental, chamber and orchestral pieces, as well as works for stage and film. With its vibrant rhythms, rich harmonies and idiomatic writing for every instrument, her music has the authentic stamp of an experienced performer and an accomplished executant.” (Paul Conway)
Born in 1972, Albert Schnelzer has established himself as one of the most successful contemporary Swedish composers. Taking inspiration from both dance and literature, he writes music that has been described as pulsating with feverish tension and vibrating rhythms, outgoing but with room for fragile and lyrically expressive moments. The three works gathered here were composed between 2011 and 2014, with two multi-movement works flanking the single-movement Tales from Suburbia. The work is inspired by the idea of suburbs embodying the transition between countryside and urbanity, where the organic world of nature contrasts with concrete structures and where past meets present. Framing Tales from Suburbia are two concertos, one for cello and one for orchestra, which both owe a debt to the rock band Pink Floyd’s iconic album Dark Side of the Moon. The work titles – Crazy Diamond and Brain Damage – are both borrowed from the album tracklist, and the individual movements carry titles taken from the lyrics. As Schnelzer himself explains in his liner notes, he hasn’t used any actual musical quotations but the lyrics have provided catalysts for his own music. In the cello concerto his focus has been on the fate of Syd Barrett, one of the founder members of Pink Floyd who was forced to leave the band due to deteriorating mental health. Brain Damage – Concerto for Orchestra on the other hand can be seen in terms of wandering through a series of different moods: anger, frustration, grief and perhaps even a glimpse of hope.
Chet Baker is highly regarded as one of jazz's greatest trumpet players recording numerous albums over his 35-year recording career. Recorded in in 1969, Albert's House features 11 instrumental compositions by Steve Allen who produced the recording session to assist Baker in restarting his career after a horrific dental injury in '68. The LP hasn't been in release for vinyl reissue for years.
Erinnerungsspuren by Alberto Posadas is an homage to the piano in six parts. In his "reminiscences", the Spanish composer brings to mind some of the best in his profession, taking them as sources for his studies of the piano's sound space. From François Couperin to Robert Schumann and Claude Debussy to Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Karlheinz Stockhausen. What matters to Posadas in his cycle is not to make explicit connections to the past; he rather discerns concepts from the historical repertoire, namely Erinnerungsspuren [memory traces], that find expression in pianistic experiments. Special playing techniques with the pedals, with preparations and inside the piano allow changes of individual sounds and micro-intervals while they are resounding, thus creating a trans-historical sound space. In his cycle Alberto Posadas gives less answers than he raises questions in which the music of his six predecessors can be heard as sounds of remembrance: How can new and old material put each other in a different light and perhaps even redefine themselves? And what can be the meaning of quotations when it comes to building bridges between old and new, between the known and the unknown?
Albinoni & Locatelli: Works for Violin & Orchestra / Michelucci, I Musici
IDIS
CD
$8.49$16.99Save 50%Feb 03, 2017
Musici: a real legend in the history of classical disco, in Sixties and Seventies of twentieth century of the rediscovery of the great eighteenth century Italian instrumental repertoire that was too long neglected and put in a second plan than one of German-Austrian origin. This release presents one of the greatest classical works of the eighteenth century- the famous Albinoni Adagio in F minor recorded by Musici in 1961 with three incredible violin Concertos by Pletro Antonio Locatelli the most important predecessor of Paganini’s Italian virtuosity.
that Albinoni wrote excellent solo concertos is clear enough from this record, all players involved are splendid... very well recorded. These will please admirers of I Musici, the group is well-balanced and the soloists admirable. The oboe concerto No.2 is splendid, while the finale of No.5 is irresistible. Of the violin concertos Nos.7 and 10 are outstanding... Op.5 is an altogether tauter piece, and indeed a very distinguished one by any standards, with an exquisite central Adagio(Gramophone)
Albinoni, Legrenzi, Muffat & Telemann: A Cinque - String Sonatas PURGATORY
Urania Records
CD
$22.99Mar 22, 2024
The five-part writing for strings has its period of greatest development in the 16th and 17th centuries, only to fall into a progressive obsolescence. The most commonly used instrumental ensemble included two violins, alto and tenor viola da braccio, cello and basso continuo. Of this quintet, the instrument that undergoes a progressive dismissal is the viola tenore, which in this recording we propose in its original late seventeenth century mounting.
Albinoni: The Late Violin Sonatas / Guglielmo, L'Arte dell'Arco
Brilliant Classics
CD
$17.99Feb 11, 2022
During Albinoni’s lifetime (1671-1751) four separate collections of sonatas with violin were published under his name, though only the Trattenimenti armonici Op.6 were prepared by their composer. The works in Op.6 have accordingly dominated the record catalogues and obscured the virtues of the others, which Federico Guglielmo presents here with his customary flair and feeling for the Italian Baroque which has previously yielded the much-praised Brilliant Classics collection of Vivaldi’s Opp 1-12 (95200) as well as the Op.1 Trio Sonatas (94789) by Albinoni himself. In common with Venetian contemporaries such as the Marcellos, Albinoni observed the conventions of post-Corellian sonata form: four movements configured Slow–Fast–Slow–Fast, where the first pair is more formal (dignified) in character and the second pair more informal (expressive). However, in vocal and instrumental music alike, Albinoni’s style was highly individual, even slightly idiosyncratic: dignified, wary of technical or expressive excess and very attentive to the cantabile side of violin-playing. The sonatas here are drawn from the six Sonate da chiesa issued by the Amsterdam publisher Estienne Roger in 1707 or 1708; Roger’s later collection of five Sonate a violino solo composed for the virtuoso Pisendel and augmented by a sonata by a Giovanni Battista Tibaldi; and then the six Sonates da camera brought out in 1742 by the Parisian engraver and music publisher Louis Hue. Both dates and even authorship of some of these sonatas remains uncertain, but only the third of the Sonate a violino solo has been omitted from this new recording as authoritatively attributed to the German-born composer Nicolas Pepusch. This recording is thoroughly illuminated by a new booklet essay from Michael Talbot, pre-eminent scholar of music in 18th-century Venice, and demands the attention of all Baroque-music collectors.
