Harpists Eva Tebbe and Ekaterina Levental remark that Debussy makes the invisible visible and turns the unspeakable into a musical world full of mysticism, layers of ambiguity and evocative meanings. A century after his death, he is being celebrated across the world in 2018, and this album promises to make a special contribution on record with arrangements of works, most of them relatively unfamiliar, which particularly lend themselves to the ethereal and exquisite combination of voice and harps. Much of the music here was written while Debussy was composing his only opera Pelléas et Mélisande, a Symbolist drama based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, who recognized that in many ways Debussy had not only set his play to music but even outstripped and further enriched his original. There is the early and peaceful Ballade from 1890, then the Proses lyriques from 1892-3 and the seductive Trois Chansons de Bilitis (1897), from which this musical partnership takes its name. Bilitis is the fictional poet of Classical antiquity invented by Pierre Louÿs, writing in an erotic, symbolist vein after the fashion of Sappho: and when in 1900 Debussy came to use the texts of Louÿs again for the Musique de Scène pour les chansons de Bilitis, the music accompanied a tableau vivant in pre-Raphaelite style of winsome and scantily clothed young women. The recital is completed by the Danse sacrée et danse profane – originally composed for harp and orchestra in 1904, here with the orchestral parts arranged for a second harp – and the six Epigraphes Antiques from 1914, which return to the musical material of the Bilitis works but in the composer’s more allusive late style which would lead to his final masterpiece written for Serge Diaghilev, Jeux.

Louis Lortie’s Chopin series is achieving landmark status, as confirmed by the increasingly enthusiastic reviews of progressive volumes. This fifth one sumptuously highlights the Polish influences in Chopin’s music, offering gems from among the mazurkas and polonaises. Relatively brief in duration and simple in structure, the mazurkas reveal other aspect of Chopin’s music: quirky melodies, strangely chromatic harmonies, oddly accented rhythms, irregular phrase lengths, and wildly contrasting keyboard textures. They represent a fascinating part of Chopin’s output, for audiences and pianists alike. The vigour of the polonaises featured here, including the first two to be published, confirms Chopin as a radical, yet idiomatic transformer of the genre. The Allegro de concert, which Chopin was said to have kept for his projected return to ‘a free Warsaw’, is another link to his beloved country.

The Jupiter String Quartet feels a strong connection to the core string quartet repertoire. they also frequently commission and premiere new works, including string quartets by Syd Hodkinson, Hanah Lash and Dan Vixconti, as well as a quintet with vocalist Thomas Hampson. This release has a well-known classic by Dvorak, an arrangement of African-American spirituals and a contemporary reflection on the music of Tin Pan Alley.

V 29: MUSICA CLAROMONTANA

John Dowland is without doubt one of the most famous English composers, the foremost exponent of the Golden Age of the Elizabethan Era of the 16th and 17th Century. Dowland’s songs fully reflect the spirit and tastes of the Elizabethan age, with their tendency towards deep melancholy and their pronounced focus on darkness, moonlight and night time. Despite the predominance of grief, sadness, tears and death there are also songs in which a sense of optimism, lightness and joy prevail. This new recording uses the classical guitar as accompanying instrument, played by Adriano Sebastiani. The young soprano Siphiwe McKenzie was twice nominated by the prestigious magazine Opernwelt as “Young Singer of the Year.” She sang in important theatres such as the Wiener Volksoper, Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), Teatro Regio di Parma, Leipzig State Opera and many more.

Recording of the Month

This is a major release no matter what the colour, creed, nationality, race or gender of the composer. I repeat: this is a major release.

Born in Texas, Lokumbe is a composer and a jazz trumpeter who has worked with Gil Evans, Roland Kirk and the Jazz Composers Orchestra amongst others. Dear Mrs Parks was premièred in February 2005, by many of the performers here. That performance was broadcast nationwide and on the net. I recorded it and thus have heard the work several times prior to receiving this new CD.

The story of Rosa Parks is well enough known, I think, but for anyone who doesn’t know it, briefly: on 1 December 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white passenger. This action sparked the Montgomery (Alabama) bus boycott. Because of her actions, Rosa Parks became an important figure in the modern Civil Rights movement. She has been called “The Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement”. She died a few months after the première of this work, which she attended.

What we have here is a celebration of Rosa Parks, using jazz, blues, funk and classical elements all fused together with great skill. Nowhere is one conscious of the change from one style to the other simply because the work is written in only one style – that of Hannibal Lokumbe. This is the work of an obviously very talented, and gifted, composer which makes it all the more confusing that it’s the only work of his I have ever heard.

As a composition it has arias, choruses, orchestral movements; everything you’d expect from an oratorio – drama, release, praise. This is a very fine piece indeed. It is full of good things. The orchestration is brilliantly colourful. Lashings of percussion drive the dance music, which is truly joyous. The arias are ecstatic declamatory utterances, and the choruses are full-blooded.

The performance is totally committed, but be warned both Janice Chandler-Eteme and Kevin Deas employ a very fast vibrato which becomes tiring on the ear. Otherwise I have no worries about this disk whatsoever.

As a new look at oratorio it is vibrant and totally compelling. I hope that this piece will make many friends. Here is an important composer who has something to say and knows how to say it. Good notes and a full text are included in the booklet. Perhaps I should point out that the language is easily understood: it’s tonal and approachable.

Don’t miss this. It’s as important a choral work as Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast or David Blake’s Lumina.

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

Baset writes the rare note "Allegro con valentía" at the beginning of his 10th symphony. It seems to be a declaration of intent when it comes to realizing his compositions, which is far removed from the fashion of Italian imitation. A breathtaking, experimental, courageous music that drinks from the theatrical effects of a fascinating time full of chiaroscuro (light and dark). A new work on the European music scene that demands an uncompromising, imaginative interpretation. Courageous! Forma Antiqva, directed by Aarón Zapico, nourished by the best generation of Spanish musicians, deals with the important phase of Spanish Baroque music in an ideal time of growth and development.

The three pieces by New York-based composer Byron that are collected here (two for strings and keyboards and one for four pianos) are dramatic, lush, insistent, and lovely and reveal their compositional processes as they unfold. Music of Nights . . . might be likened to the sound of rainfall on a roof—delicate, resonate, active, continuously changing while seeming to remain the same. Entrances starts with intermittent bursts of notes and builds to a dense barrage of sound. Kyle Gann writing in the Village Voice called the pieces collected here, “…lovely in their cloudy string textures and abrupt piano riffs… it all breathes the air of pre-Silicon Valley California.” Fanfare magazine wrote of this album: “Cascades of swirling music… sincere, technically challenging musical art with a distinct point of view.” International Record Review commented, “The deeply engaging pieces…are rigorously about process and implications…. Music of Nights Without Moon or Pearl is a piece to savor…. David Rosenboom’s realization of Entrances is a marvel of stamina and precision.” ClassicalNet noted, “Byron creates a maximalist effect out of minimalist means.” And the San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote, “One is reminded not only of the time-bound nature of sculpture (one must move around a piece to fully experience it), but the mobiles of Alexander Calder, which are both fixed and moving. And like Calder's work, Byron's music is immediately comprehensible and beautiful, while it remains experimental.”

This double album is the third and last volume of Easy Studies for Guitar. The aim of the series has been to collect original works for the guitar by 20th- and 21st-century composers that fulfill didactic functions as well as being entertaining to play and listen to. Many of the studies here are receiving their first recordings, and the pieces by Biberian, Cavallone and Franco are so far unpublished. Music by the Belgian organist and composer Jean Absil (1893–1974) shows the influence of Wagner in the same way as his better-known compatriot Franck, and he absorbed the music of Milhaud and Schoenberg during his time in Paris. However, the Pièces Caractéristiques of 1964 capture a piece of sunshine no less than the folk- inspired Sei Canzoni Ebraiche by Cavallone or the Sette Aphorismi of Franco, even while certain movements exploit the more mysterious, nocturnal character of the guitar. The idea for Brèves de Pupitre sprang from Olivier Chassain’s work as a teacher, arising from his students’ basic technical needs or flaws – as well as his own. Cristiano Porqueddu is a distinguished editor and composer as well as performer, and he has selected an especially attractive set of Ten Studies for Guitar from among the many unpublished works by Gilbert Biberian, a British composer/guitarist born in 1944. Perhaps the set’s most intriguing rarity comes from the gifted Viennese composer Ferdinand Rebay, active in the early decades of the last century, and featured on a couple of previous Brilliant Classics albums; though himself a pianist rather a guitarist, he was encouraged to turn to the guitar by a fellow-professor and also by his guitar-playing niece; he eventually composed around 600 pieces for the instrument, including these Ten Little Songs without Words.

The Newberry Consort and EnsAmble Ad-Hoc present A MEXICAN CHRISTMAS, an album of 17th century traditional music for worship and celebration. The collection features pieces commonly heard in both liturgical service and in the streets, and evoke the solemnity and fanfare heard in Mexico City’s convents and plazas, with jubilant vocals and lively strings, guitars, and percussion. Organ, harp, bassoon, and a variety of Mexican traditional instruments bring this exuberant and diverse music to life.

This album is the second release in the Naxos Czech Music Masters from Vienna series, and features the world premiere recording of Kozeluch’s magnificent coronation cantata. The coronation of Leopold II in Prague in 1791 came at a difficult time for European monarchs, although Leopold himself enjoyed a reputation as an enlightened ruler. Two musical works were commissioned for the occasion: Mozart’s opera ‘La clemenza di Tito’ and Kozeluch’s cantata ‘Heil dem Monarchen.’ The cantata, by turns celebratory, serene and darkly dramatic, was well-received and enhanced Kozeluch’s reputation in royal circles. It almost certainly played a part in his appointment in 1792 to the court of Leopold’s son and successor, the last Holy Roman Emperor Franz II.

Haydn, M.: Missa Sanctae Ursulae / Mozart, W.A.: Ave Verum C

The vocal ensemble Singer Pur will celebrate its 25th performing jubilee in 2017. The first public performance of the ensemble on March 8, 1992 at a benefit concert at the Cologne Philharmonie laid the cornerstone for an international career. So far, the sextet has sung in over 50 countries and is considered one of Europe's leading a-cappella formations. Its high ranking is reflected by numerous honors, including the Bavarian State Prize for mUsic, the Caeciliaprijs and three Echo Klassik prizes. At the jubilee concert on March 8, 2017 at the Prince Regents' Theatre in Munich, the ensemble will present a programme showing the entire spectrum of its activities - ranging from works performed during the ensemble's early years to a world premiere.

Teach me! The students of Nadia Boulanger is the Boulanger Trio's first album on the Berlin Classics label, an album dedicated to the trio's eponymous heroine. The three musicians present music by Bernstein, Piazzolla and Françaix alongside Quincy Jones, Aaron Copland and Philip Glass. The works are very varied in style, yet a common bond unites their composers: they were all students of Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger's special personality as a teacher and her charismatic engagement as a source of inspiration for composers from all over the world lie at the heart of this album. Would Piazzolla have ever discovered Tango nuevo without Nadia Boulanger? What form would Philip Glass's repetitive structures have taken, and would West Side Story have turned out as we know it today? Generations of music-makers were influenced by Nadia Boulanger, who supported them in their quest to evolve their own personal style. She composed no works of note, nor did she write a guide to composition or harmony. Her work focused on her relationship with her students, on exchange of ideas with them and conversations with them. The repertoire of this album is wide-ranging and imaginative. The Trio pour violon, violoncelle et piano (1986) by Jean Françaix rubs shoulders with the well-known Cuatros Estaciones Porteñas by Astor Piazzolla. The melodious love song Maria from Leonard Bernstein's celebrated musical West Side Story is side by side with Philip Glass's repetitive Head On. Other musical excursions whirl listeners away to the avant-garde with Aaron Copland's Vitebsk - Study on a Jewish Theme (1929) before landing them in film music with the main title theme to the film The Color Purple by Quincy Jones.

Anthony McGill, the New York Philharmonic’s principal clarinetist, and brother Demarre McGill, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra’s principal flutist, return to a beloved training ground, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras (CYSO), for an album of works for flute, clarinet, and orchestra featuring world-premiere recordings of specially commissioned duo concertos. The album’s title track, celebrated African-American film and concert composer Michael Abels’ Winged Creatures, was commissioned for the project by Cedille Records. Inspired by the flight of butterflies and other creatures, its solo parts are, in turns, delicate, frenetic, soaring, and powerful. The orchestra originally commissioned Joel Puckett’s Concerto Duo for a 2012 concert with the McGill brothers. The work evokes family affection and sibling camaraderie. Franz Danzi’s virtuosic and elegant Sinfonia Concertante for Flute, Clarinet, and Orchestra, Op. 41, is a tour de force of late-Classical charm. Saint-Saëns’ youthful, virtuosic Tarantelle, Op. 6, draws inspiration from a southern Italian folk dance. It is something of a signature piece for the McGills, who performed the piano-accompanied version on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood when the brothers were 18 and 14, respectively.

REVIEW:

The Chicago Youth Orchestra are impressive for their age. The McGill brothers charge forward with a dynamic and indefatigable zest that is captivating and even exciting to hear. It is one of those couplings where everything works together, that matches up well with performers and compositions that fit together in absorbing ways. The new works are mainstream Modern and well crafted, nicely wrought. Definitely recommended.

– Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

Frederic Rzewski is most celebrated for his virtuosic variations for piano, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (8.559360). The Four Pieces began as a sequel to that breath-taking work, but whilst sharing certain similarities – Andean dance rhythms and tremendous drama – it occupies its own very distinct sound world, offering a compound of intense lyricism, shattering darkness, and hints of revolutionary fervor. The Housewife’s Lament is a set of variations on an anon. 19th c. tune with strong influences of Beethoven. The punning title Hard Cuts refers to cuts both budgetary and musical, and Rzewski’s signature elements appear throughout: folk rhythms, pointillist clarity, minimalism, and unique craftsmanship.

A Witches' Sabbath, A Little Dance with the Grim Reaper and The Battle on the Ice. The author of the programme booklet of this album, Hartmut Luck, gave these headings to the three magnificent works recorded for OehmsClassics by the Gurzenich Orchestra with Dmitrij Kitajenko. The Gurzenich Orchestra of Cologne and its Honorary Conductor since 2009, Dmitrij Kitajenko, have been united in an outstanding collaboration lasting over the course of decades. Their Tchaikovsky cycle, already now considered a reference recording, was completed in early 2014 with the Seventh Symphony and the Third Piano Concerto. Their recording of Tchaikovsky's one act opera Iolanta issued in the summer of 2015, with Olesya Golovneva, Alexander Vinogradov and Andrei Bondarenko in the leading roles, created a sensation and received outstanding reviews in the international specialist press. This highly successful artistic collaboration was continued with an equally highly praised Rachmaninoff cycle. The Gurzenich Orchestra of Cologne and Dmitrij Kitajenko have dedicated their latest recording to Tchaikovsky's complete ballet music to The Nutcracker as well as Stravinsky's Divertimento from The Fairy's Kiss.

In this great program of music, Daniel Raiskin and his Koblenz Orchestra prove they are at the highest standard, producing superb sound and very musical playing.

Benjamin Schmid was born in Vienna and grew up in Salzburg. In 1992 he won the Carl Flesch Competition in London, where he was also awarded the Mozart, the Beethoven and the Audience prize. Since then he has performed on the world's major stages with renowned orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra London and many more. Probably one of the most versatile of today's violinists, Schmid combines his qualities as a soloist, the extraordinary broad range of repertoire - in addition to the usual works he also plays the Violin Concertos by Harmann, Gulda, Korngold, Muthspiel, Szymanowski, Lutoslawski and Schonberg - with remarkable skill in jazz improvisation.

“Occurrence is the third, and at least for now the last, in a hugely illuminating series devoted to works by contemporary Icelandic composers, as performed by Iceland’s 70-year-old national orchestra. Speaking for myself – and surely for many others, as well – the series has been a milestone project, one that any conscientious collector of symphonic music simply must have on the shelf. Across three albums now, Sono Luminus has capitalized shrewdly on swelling global interest in the music of Daniel Bjarnason and Anna Thorvaldsdottir, using their works as a means by which to introduce seven more composers with original, substantial voices. Three of the composers represented on Occurrence return from previous installments in the series. In addition to Bjarnson – who also has served as an insightful, sympathetic conductor throughout – we hear new works from Þuri´ður Jonsdottir, whose Flow and Fusion opened the initial disc, Recurrence, and from Haukur Tomasson, whose Piano Concerto No. 2 was a highlight of the second release in the series, Concurrence. These repeat engagements prove serendipitous, showing off fresh facets of these newly familiar creators. One, Bjarnason’s own Violin Concerto, scarcely requires introduction, having proved its merits and attractions already on concert platforms around the globe since its 2017 world premiere at the Hollywood Bowl. Pekka Kuusisto, the violinist for whom the piece was written, demonstrates his consummate skill as a technician, a melodist, a collaborator and – not least – a whistler, and the orchestral accompaniment, no surprise, is vivid and alert.

REVIEW:

‘Recurrence’, ‘Concurrence’, and now ‘Occurrence’. The Iceland Symphony Orchestra’s three-disc survey of new orchestral music from its homeland has reached its end point and it’s easy to conclude that no country on earth has reinvented the language of the symphony orchestra on such distinctive and locally relevant terms as this one. So much so that a Canadian such as Veronique Vaka can fall for Iceland and cook up a piece like Lendh, an extraordinary canvas with an umbilical connection to the landscape of the place. Lendh is a marvel.

Haukur Tómasson’s In Seventh Heaven is full of ear-catching orchestration, as raw and unconventional as Jón Leifs’s, ulterior harmonies tugging while colours shift as rapidly as the Icelandic weather above. The orchestra’s handling of the exposed passages for high strings and characterised woodwind-writing demonstrate technically how far it has come in the past decade alone.

Þuríður Jónsdóttir's Flute Concerto, "Flutter", features sampled insect noises and other electronics, including a promotion of the ubiquitous Nordic pedal note to a general hum. Structurally it feels like a road movie – a journey through textural landscapes more than anything developmental.

Conductor Daníel Bjarnason own Violin Concerto has dedicatee Pekka Kuusisto’s puckish spirit all over it, from the infectious soloist whistling (used to moving effect when it returns late on as the violin’s sole accompanist) to the grunge-improvisatory elements and clear-cut, eyemoistening tune.

As an appendix we hear from a dead composer, Iceland’s great 12-tone pioneer Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson (1938-2005). His Adagio for strings and percussion of 1980 marked a shift in style following the death of his wife and a battle with the bottle. This is a bleak, translucent elegy that places unison sheets of wannabe-lyrical string melody over held pedal notes and drones, ending with a sudden rush of air as the last pedal falls away. A quizzical gesture to wrap up an outstanding and historic series, one that affects the mind as much as the ears. 

– Gramophone