Maasai Footsteps is a project that reveals the evolution of the Maasai culture and shows the value of their traditions in the world today. To illustrate this development, Anuang’a brings modern choreography to the traditional performance of song and dance. Anuang’a describes it as “a show that travels to the ancient times and connects to the present, while revealing how much of the present-day culture is influenced by the past... This is a show that brings out the beauty of the Maasai culture and the unique rhythm of powerful voices and dance.” Anuang’a explains that the dancers are not professionals, and that he wanted to demonstrate the raw talent that exists in the local villages, those who sing and dance as part of their daily routine. The three clans involved are Purko from Maasai Mara, Loodokilani from Magadi and Kisonko from Amboseli. Each of the three clans bring their own combination of rhythm, voices and movements to traditional Maasai songs. While the groups perform a cappella, the contemporary dance that Anuang’a displays is a tribute to the Maasai community.“Tradition is what makes people who they are. If you lose it, you lose your identity.” – A.F.

A unique collaboration: the All-Star Orchestra's Music Director Gerard Schwarz guest conducts the United States Marine Band. Founded by an Act of Congress in 1798, it is America's oldest continually active musical ensemble. Three programs feature masterpieces for symphonic band and the history of the famed ensemble.

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s influence as composer and teacher was profound in Russia and beyond, yet his chamber music has been overshadowed by his operas and orchestral works. The unfinished Piano Trio in C minor was completed by his son-in-law Maximilian Steinberg to reveal a substantial work of considerable depth. César Cui’s charming and lyrical Farniente is an arrangement from a piano original, while Borodin’s Piano Trio in D major is reminiscent of Mendelssohn in its joyous agility and nostalgic beauty. The Brahms Trio is one of the leading Russian chamber ensembles. Since its foundation in 1990, the trio has regularly appeared at prestigious international concert venues. Legendary musicians such as Tatiana Gaidamovich, Alexander Bonduriansky (Moscow Trio), Valentin Berlinsky (Borodin Quartet) and Rudolf Barshai have had a significant influence on the formation of the performing style and career of the trio. The Brahms Trio has made an invaluable contribution to enlarging the chamber repertoire by rediscovering unknown piano trios of Russian composers of the late 19th and early 20th century.

REVIEW:

The latest release in this excellent Naxos series of Russian Piano Trios features Rimsky-Korsakov’s rarely performed Piano Trio in C Minor, César Cui’s À Argenteau No. 2. Farniente (version for piano trio), and Alexander Borodin’s Piano Trio in D Major. Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s chamber music has been overshadowed by his operas and orchestral works. The unfinished Piano Trio in C minor was completed by his son-in-law Maximilian Steinberg to reveal a substantial work of considerable depth. César Cui’s charming and lyrical Farniente is an arrangement from a piano original, while Borodin’s Piano Trio in D major is reminiscent of Mendelssohn in its joyous agility and nostalgic beauty. The outstanding, award-winning Brahms Trio, founded 1988, has performed and recorded much of Russian piano trio repertoire and has made a significant contribution to enlarging the chamber repertoire by rediscovering unknown music by Russian composers of the late-19th and early-20th century.

– New-Classics.co.uk

Albert Camus once wrote ‘when I describe what the catastrophe of modern man looks like, music comes into my mind – the music of Gustav Mahler’. If asked to specify a particular work, it is quite possible that Camus would have proposed Symphony No. 6 in A minor – the symphony that Bruno Walter claimed portrayed ‘a terrifying, hopeless darkness, without a human sound’. Nevertheless, the period during which Mahler wrote his Sixth was one of the most successful and happiest of his life – prior to any marital difficulties, at the time of the birth of his second daughter Anna, his professional reputation growing. Alma Mahler, in her memoirs, suggested that the symphony was in fact predicting instances of future distress in the composer’s own life, and she and various commentators have proposed various interpretations of different elements. Most famous of these are possibly the hammer strokes in the Finale, falling, according to Alma, like ‘blows of fate’ on the ‘hero’ of the symphony. But Osmo Vänskä has a reputation for engaging with even the most iconic scores at face value, avoiding preconceived ideas and ‘time-honored’ traditions.

His and the Minnesota Orchestra’s recording of Mahler’s Sixth follows upon the 2017 release of the composer’s Fifth Symphony. Nominated to a 2018 Grammy Award, that interpretation has been described as ‘at once committed and detached, intense and transcendentally timeless’ (Norman Lebrecht) and ‘an exceptional performance that promises great things to come’ (allmusic.com).

REVIEWS:

The Finnish maestro opts for the revised order of middle movements, the searing andante preceding the scherzo, with its “old fatherly”, Ländler-like trio. The Minnesotans shine in the eerie sonorities of the finale, building to another allegro energico, but ending, movingly, in the minor tonality.

– Sunday Times (UK)

The interpretation here is intensely focused and utterly compelling, and the playing is impassioned and unnervingly vivid in the multichannel format, so listeners who loved the exceptional analog versions by Solti and Tennstedt or modern digital recordings by Abbado, Tilson Thomas, and Pappano can be sure that Vänskä's audiophile version ranks just as high in quality. The integrity of the performance and the expressive heights that are achieved carry the day and make Vänskä's recording essential for Mahler buffs.

– All Music Guide

Florent Schmitt was a strikingly original composer whose influences were as varied as his own restless and imaginative music. A number of his solo piano works are little known and offer an important insight into his compositional development. Neuf Pièces, Op. 27, which includes a Spanish-infused Gitanella movement, was composed during his first period of travel. The expressive and vivid elements of Crépuscules, Op. 56 are infused with harmonic richness and quiet melancholy, while Ritournelle, Op. 2 No. IIbis displays an airiness and wit characteristic of French music of the Roaring Twenties. Internationally renowned pianist, Biljana Urban, presents a selection of neglected gems of French piano literature including many world première recordings.

The second half of the 18th c. and beyond witnessed the widespread popularity in Germanic and Hapsburg regions of a particular type of wind ensemble of varying forces known as Harmonie. The repertoire consisted of divertissements, cassations, serenades and nocturnes, performed for the most part outdoors, as well as “dining music” played at important banquets, and Harmoniemusik heard at parties and ceremonies. Original pieces were performed together with transcriptions of celebrated works, such as this adaptation by Wenzel Sedlak of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

Encapsulating the voluptuous sound of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s strings, Tasmin Little is both the soloist and conductor in this unique coupling: Vivaldi’s ever-popular ‘Four Seasons’ meets Roxanna Panufnik’s ‘Four World Seasons,’ the premiere recording of a set of highly inspirational pieces. As a complete cycle, ‘The Four Seasons’ offers a set of vivid tableaux, imaginative, enticing, and wonderfully contrasted, with ample chance for the violin soloist to display technique, sensitivity, and color. These are qualities that the British composer Roxanna Panufnik also sought for her own Seasons tribute, Four World Seasons, written for the violinist. Three of the pieces are dedicated to her, while the fourth, ‘Autum in Albania,’ is dedicated to the memory of Panufnik’s father, Polish composer Sir Andrzej Panufnik, who, his daughter says, was born, loved, and died in autumn.