Sergei Rachmaninov's songs rival his piano works in terms of popularity, and are the culmination of a uniquely Russian lyrical tradition. Piano transcription became a fashionable art form in its own right after Liszt's work in the genre, and Rachmaninov's elaborate piano parts make his romances ideal for solo performance in works that express effortless sensuality as well as darkness and loss. Unearthed in 2002, Rachmaninov's own transcription of his remarkable Suite in D minor explores both tragic depths and light-hearted bravura.

Also available in DVD!

The award-winning Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin has become one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras on period instruments. These concerts reveal some of the foundations of Beethoven’s genius, and capture vital performances from the 2020 SWR Schwetzingen Festival, the biggest radio festival for classical music in the world. These first two concerts of four see Beethoven’s revolutionary development through his first three symphonies set against C.P.E. Bach’s novel orchestration, Mozart’s pre-echo of a theme from the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, and Paul Wranitzky’s richly narrative Grande Sinfonie caractéristique, a work banned by the Viennese authorities of the day. The third and fourth concerts are also available on Naxos.

There is a tradition among the Greek peoples of the singing of carols ('Kalanda') on Christmas Eve. This album is a set of carols newly composed by Greek-Cypriot composer Cilia Petridou. As musical works they also qualify as art-song in fine performances by three excellent sopranos. For those who love Christmas music but want something new, this album will fit the bill. The three sopranos each take a number of solo carols and form a trio for the last two; Lesley-Jane and Alison have both worked with the composer for some time and also made several highly-praised recordings for Divine Art and Metier. Cilia Petridou was an accomplished pianist until her career was ended by major surgery since when she has concentrated on composition. Moving with her family to the UK after the Turlish invasion of north Cyprus which destroyed their home town of Famagusta, her music is often informed by that political tragedy, but her Kalanda are bright and full of joy.

Using the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Hindemith first completed Das Marienleben (The Life of Mary) in 1923 and it occupies a key position in his output, marking a transition from avant garde Expressionism to his mature neo-classical style. He regarded the cycle as "the best thing I have yet written", an affection retained through painstaking revisions over subsequent years. Hindemith responded to Rilke's imagery with truly moving music that ranges from tenderness and hushed emotion to sweeping dramatic power, the 1948 version transforming his youthful songs into "an organic masterpiece ranking with the great song-cycles".

Grieg is one of the world’s best known composers, but the three Violin Sonatas are a relatively unfamiliar part of his output, despite being among his own favourite pieces. Grieg never wrote a violin concerto, and the foremost Norwegian violinist of his generation, Henning Kraggerud, assisted by Bernt Simen Lund, a member of the Tromsø Chamber Orchestra, has taken up the challenge of creating three new concertos from the sonatas. In these arrangements the solo violin is set against a string orchestra augmented by wind instruments in order to retain the feel of chamber music.

Famed for it's interpretations of some of Handel's most loved works, The Sixteen marks the start of it's 40th anniversary season by releasing it's first new Handel recording in five years. Handel's pastoral opera is a tale of love, tragedy and liberation. The libretto by John Gay, based on Ovid's Metamorphoses (book XIII), tells of the eternal love between the mortal shepherd Acis and goddess Galatea and how it is doomed by the jealous cyclops Polyphemus. Handel's music beautifully demonstrates the pain and love in such beautiful, dramatic choruses as 'Wretched lovers!' and the grief felt by Galatea in 'Must I my Acis still bemoan'. Staying true to the premiere in 1718, just five singers and nine instrumentalists feature on this intimate recording.

This DVD is accompanied by Harry Christophers and The Sixteen's  audio recording of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 (COR16126). In the BBC documentary, actor and former chorister Simon Russell Beale invites us into the heart of the Vespers and the world of their creator. It is the story of a Renaissance Duke and the composer who worked for him - and how their volatile relationship would create one of the most revolutionary and beautiful collections of music ever published: The Monteverdi Vespers of 1610.

Classical Music

Peter Breiner is one of the world’s most recorded musicians, with acclaimed releases such as Beatles Go Baroque (Naxos 8.555010), accounting for millions of albums sold. An exceptional composer/arranger and an accomplished pianist, Breiner is equally at home in almost every genre of music. His origins in Slovakia and his experience in composing for films and for all kinds of audiences has resulted in a personal style that is both accessible and deeply touching. The tranquil and serene pieces for Caressing Your Soul meld melodic substance with musical expression to provide solace, relief and peace of mind in an oasis of calming music. Peter Breiner is one of the world’s most recorded musicians, with over 200 albums released and multiple streams and downloads. Known as a conductor, composer, pianist and arranger, he has conducted, often doubling as a pianist, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bournemouth, Jerusalem, New Zealand, Moscow and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestras, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Slovak Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de France, to mention just a few. His compositions and arrangements have been played in concerts and broadcast worldwide, and some of the most prestigious ballet companies have used his music in numerous performances.

A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month!

As an opera-lover with a particular interest in the ways opera developed and proliferated over the centuries, I’ve sometimes dreamt of a world in which every important composer’s first opera was available to listen to. It’s a fantasy: first operas are seldom as good as later ones and the recording industry, quite naturally, tends to seek out the best, not the earliest. Nevertheless, to anyone like me, first operas always have an intrinsic fascination, for they mark the point at which a particular individual talent joins the larger tradition. They often have much to say about a young composer’s influences and aspirations as well as the standards and expectations of those for whom the opera is written.

Johann Simon Mayr’s Saffo (1794) is a superlatively good and superlatively interesting first opera. Mayr wrote some seventy operas in the course of his three-decade operatic career and the vast majority have not been recorded, nor indeed performed since he enjoyed his final premiere in 1824. Franz Hauk’s decision to excavate the very first is thus both enterprising and unexpected, yet the results fully vindicate the project and the efforts of those involved. Saffo is revealed as an extraordinarily confident and masterful work with the composer’s mature personality already largely developed. A major reason for this, no doubt, is its comparative lateness: Mayr was already thirty when it received its premiere at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice. It is hard to think of any other important opera composer from this era, Beethoven always apart, who waited so long before seeing his work on stage. Cimarosa, the leading Italian opera composer when Mayr’s career commenced, composed fourteen operas before he was thirty; Rossini, the dominant presence at the end of Mayr’s career, managed over twice as many as that.

Delay, in Mayr’s case, appears to have been all to the good. There is something very deliberate about Saffo, a work bearing none of the signs of haste and inexperience that mar so many composers’ first operas. It is carefully planned and beautifully composed with a strong feel for the dramatic potential inherent in Antonio Simeone Sografi’s fine libretto. Gluck was surely a powerful influence and it is easy to suppose that Mayr, a German, may have dreamed of being a second Gluck. A more immediate influence was no doubt Ferdinando Bertoni (1725-1813), Mayr’s teacher in Venice, who was himself influenced by Gluck – to the point where Gluck did not scruple quietly to ‘borrow’ some of Bertoni’s arias. Then there was the larger influence of the Venetian operatic world which had become a hotbed for experimentation with the forms of opera seria – with Paris in turmoil, there was surely no better city for a composer of Mayr’s originality to be making his debut.

Sografi’s libretto is in two acts; as Marion Englhart points out in the Naxos notes, this was itself unusual, as three acts were standard. As each act of Saffo lasts almost exactly an hour on this recording, we thus have the distinctively modern shape of a two-hour opera with a single interval. Nothing seems hurried, yet there are no longueurs either; the pacing and overall dramatic arc of the opera are finely judged. The story is simplicity itself. Saffo, Alceo, Faone and their attendants have come to the Greek city of Leucadia to hear the Pythia, or High Priestess, pronounce an oracle inspired by Apollo. Saffo, the legendary poetess (known in English as Sappho) loves Faone, but it is not reciprocated; he is mourning the death of his wife Cirene. Alceo, a poet, loves Saffo. This much is established in Act One. In Act Two, the oracle is finally pronounced, and as was often the case with oracles, it is not perfectly clear:

Saffo ardisca! Saffo dare!
Alceo, gemi! Aleco groan!
Tremi Faone! Faone tremble!
(The Naxos translation gives ‘Saffo ardisca!’ as ‘Saffo bears it’, which is surely an unfortunate mistake.) This winds the emotional situation up to a higher pitch. Saffo, with some encouragement from the Pythia, believes she should commit suicide by undertaking the famous Leucadian leap. However, at the last moment the tragedy is averted by Faone, encouraged by Alceo, showing some sympathy for Saffo’s sufferings.

I must say this ending came as a complete surprise, and not a welcome one. It has the sort of tacked-on happy ending quality found in so many earlier opere serie — and beautifully sent up in The Beggar’s Opera — but this was certainly not a requirement in Venetian operas of the 1790s. I was taking it for granted that the opera would end with Saffo’s spectacular suicide, in the manner of Giovanni Pacini’s much more famous Saffo of 1840. Interestingly, another Sappho opera of 1794, Jean Paul Égide Martini’s Sapho, did end tragically. The general dramatic movement of Mayr’s opera seems to be towards tragedy, and the sombre colouring of his music prepares one for it. Perhaps, for some reason, he was not allowed to compose the ending he would himself have chosen.

This was my only disappointment with this really exciting release. At no point does Mayr’s score sound routine or turgid, nor is there any of the fluff and padding that make so many eighteenth-century operas much longer than they need be. His recitative is incisively dramatic; his arias strongly shaped, brief and to the point; his choruses noble; his use of the orchestra colourful and inventive. One feels throughout that the subject and libretto were very congenial to Mayr, allowing him to play to his strengths in the alternation of grand ceremonial scenes with the emotionally-fraught conflicts between, and within, the three principal characters. In his 1989 book on Mayr, John Stewart Allitt refers to Saffo briefly as ‘a block-buster of an opera’. He does not elaborate on his grounds for that judgement, but now the evidence is here, such an accolade seems fully justified.

The Naxos studio recording is bright and forward to the point of occasionally being a little claustrophobic, but there is something gripping about its immediacy. Franz Hauk, who has done so much for Mayr (see below) and is surely the greatest living authority on the composer, conducts with authority and panache. The singers are uniformly impressive, with the principals entering into the drama of the opera rather than just singing beautifully.

What’s not to like? Well, you have to download the libretto, which always annoys me, but I haven’t enjoyed a first opera so much for a long time, nor felt so enlightened by the experience of listening to one. Saffo will be an essential acquisition for anyone who loves Mayr’s music and, at Naxos prices, it should prove very attractive to anyone interested in the way opera developed in the crucial period after the French Revolution and Mozart’s death.

– MusicWeb International

Pianist Charles Owen presents a very personal interpretation of the Six Keyboard Partitas by J. S. Bach - works amongst the greatest in the literature for the keyboard. With this release he adds to his acclaimed discography which already includes Faure’s Nocturnes and Barcarolles.

-----

REVIEW:

Technical polish, intelligent musicianship, well-reasoned tempi, and scrupulously executed ornaments characterise Charles Owen’s Bach Partitas, along with a rounded and focused sonority largely informed by finger power and hand balance, with a little help from the sustain pedal.

– Gramophone

Classical Music

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

This new release is a documentary series about the great tenors and bel canto singing in the first half of the 20th century by Jan Schmidt-Garre. With the development of sound film in the 1920s and 30s, the great tenors, such as Beniamino Gigli, Richard Tauber and Lauritz Melchior, became movie stars. Countless “singer movies” were made, but great vocal performances were also captured in documentaries and privately made movies. Using a wealth of rare restored material, this thirteen-part documentary series presents the great tenors from Enrico Caruso to Jussi Bjorling, and together with comprehensive essays, offers a deep and inspiring insight into the art of bel canto. Bel Canto – The Tenors of the 78 Era series was broadcast in thirty countries and awarded at the Columbus International Film Festival and at Classique en Images at the Louvre.
DETAILS:

Picture format: 1080i NTSC 16:9 NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo
Subtitles: EN, FR, DE, IT, ES, JP, KR
Region code: A, B, C
No. of disc/s: 2 BD50, 1 DVD5, 2 CDs

Richard Strauss was appointed co-director of the Vienna State Opera in 1919 and soon set about composing a new ballet for the refurbished historic Redoutensaal in the city. At carnival in February 1923 the work was unveiled – a delectable series of eight arrangements of music by François Couperin called Tanzsuite. For the Divertimento, an orchestral suite that includes characteristic Straussian orchestration, and which was written many years later, Strauss rearranged six movements from the earlier work and added two further dances. About Jun MärklJun Märklis a highly respected interpreter of core Germanic repertoire and has become known for his refined and idiomatic explorations of the French Impressionists. His long-standing relationships with the state operas of Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Semperoper Dresden and the Metropolitan Opera have been complemented by his music directorships of the Orchestre National de Lyon and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra. Among the more than 50 albums Märkl has recorded are the complete Schumann symphonies with the NHK Symphony Orchestra; Mendelssohn and Wagner with the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra; and a highly acclaimed Debussy series with the Orchestre National de Lyon. He is currently working on a cycle of works by Saint-Saëns, R. Strauss and Hosokawa.

This is an audio-only (i.e., with no video content) Blu-ray disc playable only on Blu-ray players.

Also available on standard CD

George Gershwin’s Concerto in F was a response to demands for a ‘proper concerto’ after the success of Rhapsody in Blue, avoiding programmatic content while providing a feast of tunes both uplifting and nostalgic. Originally intended as music for a film, his up-beat Rhapsody No 2 describes the bustling Manhattan cityscape while under construction. Sourced from his hit musical Girl Crazy, I Got Rhythm Variations was Gershwin’s last full score. Pianist Orion Weiss is one of the most sought-after soloists and collaborators of his generation of young American musicians.

Alexander Rahbari’s My Mother Persia is a cycle of symphonic poems suffused with the rich melodies, rhythms and improvisations of Persian traditional music in which he is profoundly versed both as composer and conductor. Originally written as a violin concerto, Symphonic Poem No. 9 ‘Nohe Khan’ – the name relates to a singer at religious ceremonies – was recast for baritone saxophone in 2018. Symphonic Poem No. 10 ‘Morshed’ vividly explores ritualized song in the context of ‘ancient sport’. Volume 1 is on 8.574064 and Volume 2 on 8.574065. Alexander Rahbari is a remarkable figure in the music world, taking a leading position in the cultural development of his country from a young age, winning numerous awards as a conductor and becoming closely associated with the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra as assistant to Herbert von Karajan. Rahbari has conducted numerous successful Naxos recordings, but this is the world premiere release of his cycle of symphonic poems My Mother Persia.

Award winning pianist Klara Min has been recognized for her "excellent technique, exuberance and vitality". Here she brings the unique synthesis of traditional sources and contemporary compositional techniques of five leading Korean composers.

Clownaround is a funny kind of musical for the entire family that is based on the subject of fools, jesters and clowns. The delightful show is performed by a singing, dancing company of over seventy clowns and columbines.

Two years ago, Alvin Cooperman brought the concept for the show to his riend, composer Moose Charlap, whose musical talents were responsible for Peter Pan. He was fascinated by the material, and together they completed the music and lyrics for this new kind of arena musical.

Clownaround entertains everyone, young and old alike with its freshness, its zaniness and its total enjoyability. It is a musical adventure which takes you into the world of clowns – that magical, musical laugh-filled and slightly distorted mirror of the real world that moves on its bent axis around the first corner of the universe. Its light is a reflection of the sun bouncing off small handmirrors used by pretty ladies. Its moon is the light atop the Empire State Building. Its culture is made of our dreams, our faults and our wild oats, all of which we see so clearly in clowns but rarely ever see in ourselves. As you journey through this musical adventure into the world of clowns, you will feel and see and laugh and sing and, occasionally, taste the salt of a tear while watching them perform in our motlied reflection.

When the show was completely written, Cooperman and Charlap played it for the one man whose personality, experience and talent would take concept and music and lyrics and weave them into a tapestry of family entertainment to be enjoyed by one and all – and that man was Gene Kelly. He took the material and Sean Kenny’s clown machine and added his particular brand of genius to give us Clownaround.

– From the original liner notes for LSP-4741


CONCEIVED AND WRITTEN BY Alvin Cooperman
LYRICS BY Alvin Cooperman
MUSIC BY Moose Charlap
ORCHESTRATIONS BY Jack Elliott and Allyn Ferguson
MUSICAL SUPERVISION BY Harper MacKay

Tracks:
1 Clowns 4:28
2 You’re a Clown 2:52
3 Here Are Your Children 2:28
4 Silhouette (Paper Heart) 3:46
5 Animal Band 4:47
6 Balloon 4:08
7 Thingamajig 3:28
8 Laugh Song 3:20
9 Sunny Day 4:25
10 I Need a Ship 3:58
11 Clown Alley 1:43
12 Clowns Say Goodnight (But Not Goodbye) 2:19

Korngold’s breathtaking precocity is everywhere in evidence in these two chamber masterpieces. The Piano Trio was composed when he was just twelve years old but its symphonic breadth and brilliantly demanding piano writing reveal myriad tonal colors and a mischievous reinvention of conventional Viennese form. Audacious yet rooted in lyricism, the String Sextet was written almost five years later and possesses memorable themes as well as a refined, theatrical intimacy.

Spectrum Concerts Berlin is one of Germany’s most significant voices in the world of chamber music and has specialized for Naxos in the music of expatriate German/Austrian composers. Their recording of Schulhoff’s String Sextet (8.573525) was a MusicWeb International ‘Recording of the Month’ in December2016: ‘This is sometimes quite difficult music... [But] it is given a terrific performance here by a group of string players’.

Classical Music