Polish by birth, Fryderyk Chopin made his name in post-Revolutionary Paris and is often depicted as the archetypal Romantic artist – blessed with extraordinary talent but consumed by the flame of genius, tormented by intense and tempestuous relationships and doomed to an early death. But how much of this story is based on fact? This account of Chopin’s life and times separates myth and reality. Illustrated with numerous musical examples, the narrative, written by music historian Dr. Davinia Caddy and narrated by actor Lucy Scott, takes us from his youthful beginnings as ‘a second Mozart’ to the darkness and light of his life and the brilliance of his work.

Kemal Belevi’s works for the guitar, either solo or in combination, as heard on this album, exude the color and allure of the eastern Mediterranean. Without alluding to any specific tunes, he evokes Cypriot folk music in Cypriana, while the linked Four Sketches show his variety in the work’s bracing modernity. Belevi is at heart a romantic and a melodist of touching beauty as can be heard in Catch 22 and in the subtle color study Clouds. The poignant Suite Chypre is heard in this special arrangement made for Silvia and Livio Grasso.

When we think of Ludwig van Beethoven images of a stormy and passionate but tortured genius are brought to mind, alongside the transformative effect of his work on musical history. All of these things are true, but no artist lives in a vacuum, and even music that opens a portal onto ‘the infinite realm of the spirit’ has its wider context. Illustrated with music from each period, this enlightening life history by esteemed musicologist Davinia Caddy tells us about Beethoven’s place in society from his earlier career as a fine pianist, his life on the edge of the Napoleonic war, his professional triumphs and many romantic misfortunes, and that famous defiance of deafness and declaration that he would ‘seize Fate by the throat’. The musical excerpts include the ‘Pathétique’ and ‘Moonlight’ Sonatas, ‘Diabelli’ Variations, Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, 6 and 9, ‘Emperor’ Concerto, Missa solemnis and Fidelio, among many others.

Featuring performances by...

City of London Choir | Béla Drahos | Kenneth Schermerhorn | Kodály Quartet | Jay Baylon | Inga Nielsen | Kölner Kammerorchester | Nina Tichman | Capella Istropolitana | Maria Kliegel | Michael Halász | Sergio Gallo | Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra | Westminster Boys' Choir | Helmut Müller-Brühl | Hilary Davan Wetton | James Taylor | Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia | Nashville Symphony Orchestra | Stefan Vladar | Edmund Battersby | Lori Phillips | Stuttgart Piano Trio | Jeno Jandó | Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Twice GRAMMY-nominated composer and performer Derek Bermel studied with Henri Dutilleux, Dutch avant-gardist Louis Andriessen, and ragtime revivalist William Bolcom. In his music, seemingly antithetical qualities – classical and vernacular, comic and serious – merge and transform each other unpredictably, their inspiration ranging from theatre (Ritornello), to gestalt psychology (Figure and Ground), to meditations on cosmology (A Short History of the Universe). Thracian Sketches explores and reimagines Bulgarian folk music, while the Violin Etudes distill Bermel’s intellectual creativity into its purest form. The widely celebrated JACK Quartet has maintained an unwavering commitment to its mission of performing and commissioning new works, giving voice to underheard composers, and cultivating an ever-greater sense of openness toward contemporary classical music.

REVIEWS:

The JACK Quartet plays with great clarity and athleticism; and the group is wholly comfortable in any context, from hushed moments to driving climaxes and raucous special effects. Hijmans executes his concerto grosso with flair and virtuosity; and Otto renders the etudes with marvelous skill and artistry. As expected, Bermel contributes his superb fingers, wide dynamic range, and mind-blowing sonic manipulations that should not be possible on the clarinet.

-- American Record Guide

Part of Naxos’s esteemed ‘American Classics’ series, Intonations is a composer-based collection with a difference: Derek Bermel not only wrote its five works, he plays on two also. His clarinet isn’t the only distinctive sound on the nearly seventy-minute release, either. Dutch electric guitarist Wiek Hijmans plays on one piece, and the renowned JACK Quartet appears too, generally as a group but with violinist Christopher Otto playing solo on Violin Etudes. Intonations is marked by many things, including variety, and in featuring five world-premiere recordings, the release is an invaluable addition to the award-winning composer’s discography.

Intonations speaks flatteringly of Bermel’s gifts as a writer but also instrumentalist. To call his clarinet playing impressive hardly does it justice. He’s appeared as a soloist alongside Wynton Marsalis, has performed his clarinet concerto Voices around the world with dozens of orchestras, and is the founding clarinetist of Music from Copland House. His playing is so credible, Bermel could easily fill a personnel spot in an ensemble such as Oregon or The Silk Road Ensemble were the opportunity to present itself...That Bermel’s classical creations often exhibit a pronounced jazz, blues, and/or world flavour shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, given such diversity of experience.

Intonations is an arresting portrait, not only for its kaleidoscopic range but for the sheer breadth of Bermel’s imagination and interests. That no other recording sounds quite like it is one of the better compliments one could pay to its creator. There’s nothing, it seems, he can’t do and no musical subject matter he’s incapable of tackling.

-- Textura

This showcase of music for different forms and instrument combinations is united by Bermel’s musical curiosity and creative showmanship. Elements of folk and blues permeate traditional classical forms in masterful ways, resulting in a joyous listen. Characterful.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Peter Breiner is one of the world’s most recorded musicians with over 2 releases and more than two million albums sold, of which his Beatles Go Baroque alone reached sales of a quarter of a million copies. In addition to being a multifaceted composer, arranger and conductor, Breiner is also a pianist, and the third of his 'Calm Romantic Piano Music' series melds melodic substance with delicate musical expressiveness. (Naxos)

Johann Sebastian Bach today has a reputation as the Godfather of Western European music, as a fountainhead of classical music theory and the creator of some of the greatest works the world has ever produced. Better known as a keyboard virtuoso, Bach was not regarded as a genius in his day, so how did this headstrong and belligerent but ambitious young musician become so extraordinarily productive? What were his influences? How did he end up in jail and what did he get up to in Café Zimmerman? Discover all of this and more in musicologist Davinia Caddy's fascinating biography of a composer who, to Max Reger, represented ‘the beginning and the end of all music’. The narrative, presented by actor Leighton Pugh, is illustrated with musical excerpts including the Brandenburg Concertos, Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, Harpsichord Concerto in D minor, The Art of Fugue, St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor among many others.

With performances by...

Nils Thilo Krämer | Christian Benda | Petra Morath-Pusinelli | Alexander Jablokov | Robert Hill | Kölner Kammerorchester | Takako Nishizaki | Ariane Pfister | Capella Istropolitana | Andrés Gabetta | Helmut Müller-Brühl | Wolfgang Rübsam | Sebastian Benda | Ralf Otto | Swiss Baroque Soloists | Slovak Philharmonic Chorus | Christian Brembeck | Julia Brown | Luc Beauséjour | Gerhild Romberger | Bachorchester Mainz | Jan Cižmár | Oliver von Dohnányi

Tchaikovsky declared that Mozart was ‘full of divine beauty’, and Schubert’s wonder at the ‘countless images of a brighter and better world’ that Mozart was able to conjure up through his music knew no bounds. Many of us carry the image of Mozart as a transcendent genius, but what do we really know about his life and career, and indeed his music? This entertaining and informative biography, written by music historian Davinia Caddy and narrated by actor Leighton Pugh, takes us from Mozart’s beginnings as a child prodigy to his greatest successes and cruelest setbacks. The narrative is illustrated with music from each stage of Mozart’s intense career, including the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, Clarinet Concerto, Coronation Mass, Requiem, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro and many more.

With performances by:

Pier Giorgio Morandi | Kölner Kammerorchester | Petersen Quartet | Werner Hollweg | Celina Lindsley | Capella Istropolitana | Walton Grönroos | Michael Halász | Concentus Hungaricus | Concerto Köln | Anna di Mauro | Helmut Müller-Brühl | John Dickie | Gabriele Schreckenbach | Andrea Martin | Hungarian Radio Chorus | Péter Köves | Janusz Monarcha | Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia | Priti Coles | Mátyás Antál | Budapest Failoni Chamber Orchestra | Patrizia Pace | Herbert Lippert | Slovak Philharmonic Chorus | Camerata Cassovia

Award-winning Lithuanian, London-based pianist Indre Petrauskaite makes her AVIE label debut with a selection of Mozart’s piano works with a twist: she uniquely brings together the composer’s solo keyboard works written in minor keys. The nine works offered here represent a fraction of the composer’s overall oeuvre, yet they span a gamut of genres – including improvisatory and emotional fantasies, enigmatic miniatures and complex sonatas. Indre showcases these pieces – much loved staples of stage and studio alike – in a novel and stunning album. “Strong and well-played performances.” (MusicWeb International)

REVIEW:

Petrauskaite has an original voice in Mozart, not something that's so easy to accomplish. She is what's called a strong pianist, generally avoiding the delicately lyrical style in Mozart except in small details. Although this certainly isn't a historically oriented performance, Petrauskaite avoids Romantic gestures and extensive use of the pedal except in the fantasies; her playing is clean, tough, and insightful. The album, as a whole, offers an emotional journey that's rare in Mozart recordings, yet in Petrauskaite's hands, it seems to make sense. A superior Mozart recording.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Following the success of their previous album, English Music for Strings, John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London turn their attention to the music of Henri Dutilleux. His ballet Le Loup was composed as a commission for Roland Petit’s dance company and premièred in Paris in March 1953. Rarely recorded – this is the first recording by a non-French orchestra – the work unfolds in three tableaux and tells a convoluted tale of a bridegroom who jilts his bride (to run away with a gypsy) by persuading her that he has been changed into a wolf. Over time she discovers that the wolf is real, but her feelings turn from terror to love and when the alarmed villagers hunt the wolf, she defends him and dies at his side. The album is completed by three world première recordings of new orchestrations (by Kenneth Hesketh) of wind solos written for the Paris Conservatoire in the 1940s. Both the Sarabande et Cortège and Sonate pour hautbois are virtuosic tours de force for their soloists, as is the Sonatine pour flûte, which displays the lyricism, agility, and sparkling incisive qualities of the flute in what became Dutilleux’s most-performed work.

The piano duet was an opportunity to have fun and make music with friends for Mendelssohn as it was for many other 19th-century composers, who wrote pieces that far transcended their domestic origins and often arranged their larger-scale works for the medium so that it could be appreciated by listeners where full orchestral performances were much harder to come by. In 1844 Mendelssohn made his own piano-duet arrangement of the Incidental music he had composed to accompany a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Potsdam two years earlier, a suite which itself drew on the precociously immortal Overture he had composed as a 16-year-old. The magical purity of the orchestral score is here translated into a limpid graininess which renders each phrase even more crystalline than in the symphonic version, especially in its most rapid passages. The relationship between the two versions might be likened to that between a sketch and a painting, though with no certainty as to which had been composed first. A comparison of the full-colour orchestral score with the ‘black and white’ of the piano-duet arrangement reveals how the timbres of Mendelssohn’s orchestral imagination stem from the conceptual outlines and regular forms first devised on a keyboard. Thus the arrangement has plenty to reveal about the score to even to listeners intimately familiar with the fully scored original. Having given the triumphant premiere of the overture to The Fair Melusine in Leipzig in 1836, Mendelssohn then arranged it for piano duet the same year. Again, every phrase of the symphonic original resounds with greater emphasis: the yielding swell of the waves is evoked by a delicacy of touch rendered almost liquid by brushing of the damper pedal.