The charm of this opera is in that it contains everything, like Cervantes’ Don Quixote: any life experience is within it. Love, hate, death, dream, despair, the innocent and the wicked play. Purcell’s awareness in portraying such opposite feelings is amazing as well as the room that he leaves to the conductor. So, here is why a new “Dido”: as an artist in love with this opera, Fabio Bonizzoni wants to deliver his reading. He wants to translate Purcell’s “sign” his own way, how much this opera is alive, lively, modern, contemporary. How Purcell’s genius was able to convey Dido’s despair and Aeneas’ cowardice and how much Purcell himself had fun in depicting the plot. Fabio Bonizzoni, one of the leading Italian harpsichordists and organists of his generation, graduated in organ, organ composition and harpsichord at the Royal Conservatorium in The Hague in Ton Koopman’s class. He frequently enjoys commitments as guest conductor: in recent times he has been invited by Capella Cracoviensis and Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra in Poland, by the Holland Bach Society in The Netherlands, and by the Orchestra Barroca de Sevilla.

REGER: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1950 / 19

In Hungary at the beginning of the 20th century, Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály were collecting and making analytical studies of Hungarian folk music, creating a new interest in the native music of their homeland. This album, featuring rarely heard works from the succeeding generation of Hungarian composers, presents a distinctive portrait of the Hungarian music scene from the interwar years to the 1950s, by composers who faced discrimination or paid the ultimate price for their Jewish heritage. The Offenburg String Trio was created in 1981 in Offenburg, Germany, the home town of its three musicians. The current ensemble consisting of the Schilli brothers Frank (violin) and Rolf (viola) and Martin Merker (cello) has played concerts since 1987. The Trio has received awards in several international chamber music competitions in Germany, France, Italy, and The Netherlands. The ensemble has been invited many times to perform on radio and television, including productions by SWR, Swiss Radio DRS 2, RAI Roma, Radio Catalunya, and the Irish, Brazilian, Russian, and Vietnamese television networks. The members of the Offenburg String Trio have served as the artistic directors of the Offenburg Cloister Concerts since 1995 and in recent years have directed the Trio Chamber Music Weeks for amateur ensembles in Germany and Switzerland.

REVIEW:

This issue is not just music for its own sake, but an inspiring testament that, despite adversity, injustice and cruelty, man’s indomitable spirit of courage always triumphs in the end. Sensitive and engrossingly passionate performances, coupled with some excellent sonics, complete a disc that is certainly not for the squeamish, but deeply rewarding for those who are inclined to search for the meaning behind the notes.

– Classical Music Daily

Classical Music

Anne-Catherine Bucher studied harpsichord and basso continuo with Michele Deverite, Robert Kohnen, Francoise Lengelle, and Huguette Dreyfus, and organ with Norbert Petry. She has taken master classes with Jesper Christensen and Gustav Leonhardt and has performed concerts throughout Europe and Latin America with the finest ensembles specializing in Early Music. Passionate about research, she creates original programs and develops new forms of concerts and encounters with audiences of all kinds. She is professor for harpsichord at the Metz Metropole Conservatory. She has taught master classes in France, Belgium, Finland, Poland, Germany, Mexico, and Cuba, and has recorded several radio and television programs. This release contains Bach's Goldberg Variations played on harpsichord by Anne-Catherine Bucher and comes with a detailed form analysis in the liner notes.

Launched by its prologue Das Rheingold (8660374-75), Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) - one of the supreme works in the history of music - continues with Die Walküre. Part II of the tetralogy centres on the young lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde, whose relationship angers Ficka, goddess of marriage, and on the disobedience of the Valkyrie Brünnhilde who is sent to carry out Fricka’s wishes. Performed by an all-star international cast, the work features thrilling set-pieces such as Wotan’s Farewell and the Ride of the Valkyries.

This is the sixth CD in the first complete recording of the 72 cantatas in Georg Philipp Telemann’s collection Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, published in Hamburg in 1726 – the first complete set of cantatas for the liturgical year to appear in print. The cantatas are designated for voice, an obbligato instrument (recorder, violin, transverse flute or oboe) and basso continuo, and generally take the form of two da capo arias with an intervening recitative. Telemann’s cantatas are a masterly blend of tunefulness with skilled counterpoint and vocal and instrumental virtuosity.

Classical Music

Both organs recorded on this album resound optimally within their respective church interiors thanks to the outstanding acoustics there. The very different sizes of these interiors are ultimatley responsible for the diverging interpretations on the two instruments. The recurring long note values of the Gregorian chant in the Mass awaken the feeling of timelessness - here, the tremendous monumentality of the performances can make a maximum effect within the large space of Klosterneuburg Monastery Church. The smaller Gabelbacher organ evokes a nimble, chamber-music orientated manner of playing which conveys to the listener a certain closeness to the events within the much smaller space. Hassler's keyboard music assumes that the player will use a single manual, and this consideration was observed on the present recording; solo registrations were as yet unknown in Hassler's time. Of course, "sparing" registrations were occasionally used on the large organ of Klosterneuburg.

Classical Music

A 2021 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Choral Performance!

Philadelphia based contemporary vocal ensemble The Crossing, under the direction of Donald Nally, releases "Rising w/ The Crossing," an uplifting offering that serves as an offering of hope amidst a pandemic as well as a journey through the ensemble's projects over the last several years. Including music by Joby Talbot, Eriks Ešenvalds, Dieterich Buxtehude, Paul Fowler, Alex Berko, Ted Hearne, Santa Ratniece, and David Lang's hauntingly topical "protect yourself from infection," which sets texts from a 1918 U.S. government document, with the names of Philadelphians who fell victim to the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Written over the course of a quarter-century, these four flute works reflect the individual approaches to the flute sonata taken by their composers. Hindemith’s aim was to offer new music of buoyancy and brio, tempered by elegiac moments. Prokofiev’s famous sonata has Classical formal elegance, while the sonatas of Denisov and Nagovitsyn are single movement works that explore the flute’s extreme registers, as well as its dynamic contrasts and virtuosic capacities. Denis Lupachev won First Prize at the International Festival ‘Virtuosi2000’ (Russia) in 1993, and in 1997 received the jury’s Special Prize at the Kobe International Flute Competition (Japan). In 1999, he was awarded First Prize at the ‘Leonardo de Lorenzo’ International Flute Competition(Italy). Lupachev gives many recitals and chamber music concerts in Russia as well as throughout Europe. Since 2016, he has organized the International Festival ‘Virtuosi of the Flute’ in the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg. Peter Laul was awarded First Prize in both the Bremen International Piano Competition (1997) and the Scriabin International Piano Competition in Moscow (2000). Laul has given recitals at prestigious international venues such as the halls of the St Petersburg Philharmonic and the Moscow Conservatory, the Auditorium du Louvre, Lincoln Center in New York, the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, and Suntory Hall and Opera City Concert Hall in Tokyo. He is a consummate chamber musician, who regularly partners with Maxim Vengerov, Ilya Gringolts, Valery Sokolov, Alexander Ghindin and the Borodin Quartet.

United States Army Field Band: The Legacy of Edwin Franko Go

Michael Endres plays a wide-ranging repertoire including such rarely performed composers as Leopold Godowsky, Gabriel Fauré, Charles Ives and Eduard Tubin. The leading US critic Richard Dyer (Boston Globe ) described Endres as "one of the most interesting pianists who appear nowadays on CD". Michael Endres has recorded an equally wide-ranging repertoire for OehmsClassics, including releases with works of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Gershwin, Weber and the sonatas of Arnold Bax. The present album features works by Franz Schubert, including a special treat entitled the Kupelwieser Waltz. Endres’s playing has often been described as subtle, elegant, and refined, never taking the dramatic elements of the music to the extreme.

Tchaikovsky wrote music for the piano throughout his life, many of these pieces being dedicated to family members or close friends and musical associates. Rich in variety, the Douze morceaux range from playful dances to a substantial Marche funebre, as well as lyrical jewels such as the Chanson triste and a Danse russe that found its way into the ballet Swan Lake. A background of romantic entanglements permeates the Souvenir de Hapsal which concludes with the well-known Chant sans paroles, while charm and virtuosity reside side-by-side in the Valse-scherzo and Capriccio.

The music of Eugene Zádor is both warmly expressive and colorful. The composer took great delight in writing for overlooked solo instruments, as his Trombone Concerto, garnished with elements of Hungarian folklore, clearly shows. The easy-going, gypsy-influenced Music for Clarinet and Strings is a beautifully proportioned quasi-concerto. The Sinfonia Technica, composed much earlier when he was living in Vienna, and something of a one-off, is an enchanting and exuberantly orchestrated example of ‘industrial music’. Polish conductor Mariusz Smolij has garnered much critical acclaim from the international press, and has led over 130 orchestras in 28 countries. He currently serves as music director of the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra in Louisiana, the Riverside Symphonia in New Jersey and the International Karol Lipi?ski Violin Festival and Competition in Toru?, Poland. His recordings for Naxos include releases of works by Andrzej Panufnik (8.570032), Tadeusz Szeligowski (8.570371), Eugene Zádor (8.572548, 8.573529, 8.573274, 8.572549 and 8.573800) and Ernst Bloch (8.570829). In 2015, his recording of music by female Polish composer Gra?yna Bacewicz (8.573229) won the prestigious Fryderyk Award.

Mackerras unseated? This magical version from Australia comes close

Chandos certainly has guts, going toe-to-toe with Mackerras’s Gramophone Award-winning set. Hickox’s Australian forces need not fear the comparison. Cheryl Barker may not have the refulgent tones of Renée Fleming on Decca (who has?) but she is even more moving in conveying Rusalka’s desperation. Mackerras is still my must-own, but this runs it close.

-- Gramophone [3/2008]

REVIEWS:
American Record Guide (11-12/97, p.139) - "...Two of the instruments heard--an oboe and the musette--were made by Hotteterre....The playing is alert, adept, and sometimes even better than in more recent period-instrument forays....This is French baroque music at its best."

One of the most emotional liturgical works, the Stabat Mater meditates on the suffering of Mary the mother of Jesus during the crucifixion. The Stabat Mater by Boccherini, featured on this new release, was composed for solo soprano and string ensemble, one of the most intimate settings for this text. A specialist in Baroque repertoire, soprano Francesca Boncompagni performs here alongside the Ensemble Symposium, which performs on original instruments.

2020 is the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, and this album presents three works that reshape the composer's awe-inspiring music for the 21st century. The Sonata for Orchestra considers how the Violin Sonata No. 7 would sound had it been written for orchestra, while A Fidelio Symphony transforms vocal lines into symphonic textures to take us through the entire arc of the composer's sole opera. Based on the famous Ode to Joy of Beethoven's final symphony, BEETHOVEN9 Symphonic Remix uses loops, grooves and musical transformations to create a contemporary tribute to Beethoven's universal message. This release contains world premiere recordings of three works that reimagine the music of Beethoven in differing and special ways: a brand-new 'symphony' in the style of Beethoven based on the Seventh Violin Sonata, an orchestral suite that captures the spirit of Fidelio, and Gabriel Prokofiev's unique take on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony featuring styles from minimalism to impressionism via Hip-Hop, African, Funk, Baroque and many others to create an eclectic but striking remix of some of the most famous movements in all music. Conductor Yaniv Segal is a versatile polymath who has appeared on stages as a violinist, actor, singer, composer, and conductor dedicated to bringing classical music of all types to a broad and mainstream audience, and has been spotlighted by Esquire Magazine as a rising star that is 'redefining classical music.'