This is a program of great choral works, including one work from the 1500s, works from the 20th Century, and one work, Black Pierrot that was commissioned by R. Paul Crabb for the ensembles on this album. R. Paul Crabb, University of Missouri's Director of Choral Activities, earned degrees in Music Education, Vocal Performance and Choral Music Education. His ensembles have performed at state, regional and national conventions and have traveled extensively in Mexico, Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Russia, Bulgaria and Australia. Crabb served as assistant conductor at the Russian/American Choral Symposium for two years where his choir was invited as the resident American choir at the Moscow Conservatory. He served for one year as a visiting professor in Salzburg, Austria, where he taught and worked with the choir of the Salzburg Cathedral. He has taught conducting in Taiwan, eighteenth-century music in England, and studied sixteenth century polyphony in Italy with the renowned Peter Phillips. More recently he served as Guest Visiting Choral Professor at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary - the first American selected for that position.

•Conductor Herbert von Karajan leads the Choir and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera in this New Year's Eve performance of Johann Strauss's (1825-1899) ever-popular Die Fledermaus. This unique live recording insplendid sound features a spectacular cast of singers including Hilde Güden, Walter Berry, Rita Streich and a special guest appearance by Giuseppe di Stefano.

Described by Saint-Saëns as "the most remarkable of the young British composers," York Bowen was widely known as a pianist and as a composer, his fame reaching its zenith in the years immediately preceding the First World War. The writer and composer Thomas Dunhill described Bowen’s chamber music as "an essentially healthy and breezy phase in modern art." This is especially true of the 1922 Carnegie Trust Award-winning Second Quartet, and while both quartets are based on clear-cut classical models the Third is more elusive and intimate in feeling, revealing the composer’s rarely displayed private side. The atmospheric Phantasy-Quintet provides a rare opportunity to hear the beauty of the bass clarinet in a truly eloquent and expressive soloist capacity.

The pieces recorded in this release stem from an all-pervading performance practice that deeply marked out the musical taste of the nineteenth century: that of “transcription”. This practice enabled a widespread dissemination of the most popular opera passages, well beyond the official circuits of the great theatres, and above all into the sphere of holy rites. Arias, cavatinas, cabalettas and symphonies were plentiful everywhere: in many cases they were transcriptions of pieces by well-known composers (it was sufficient to give them a “liturgical” title); more often they were homely elaborations. Almost all these pieces are being performed here for the first time in the modern age; the composers are practically unknown; in their music, famous opera themes are freely mixed with fanciful variations on those themes. The purpose was to reproduce this atmosphere, at once theatrical and sacred, in its entirety, by means of period instruments: a wonderful nineteenth-century organ and a series of precious original brass instruments. In fact Marco Arlotti is sitting the Adeodato Bossi Urbani 1874 organ, and Michele Santi, a specialist in nineteenth-century trumpets, is playing seven different period instruments delivering the best and most characteristic sound to each track.

The music of Estonian organist-composer Süda (1883–1920) combines contrapuntal mastery with virtuosic command of the Romantic organ. Süda’s brief life and his perfectionism meant that his output – exclusively for the organ – remained small, but it is beautifully crafted and highly expressive.

Classical Music

OH Canada: A Young 150!, is the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra’s (NBYO) celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday. The NBYO’s celebration pays tribute to Confederation and the accomplishments of a great history, but also to a future to be built from all the genius, optimism and hope of our youth. The centrepiece of the celebration is a song commissioned by the NBYO, for orchestra, soloist and choir, by Canadian composer Howard Shore, winner of three Academy Awards, three Golden Globes and four Grammy Awards, and one of the most celebrated composers in the world. The song ‘Sea to Sea’ is performed by the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra with internationally renowned soprano Measha Brueggergosman and a special Canada 150 Choir.

***** (out of 5)
The first prerequisite of great Chopin playing is arguably beauty of tone, as well as refinement and variety… Lortie is a model Chopinist: eloquent but never sentimental, elegant without ever sounding effete, dramatic but never exaggerated, harmonically luminous, structurally immaculate – and surprising.

– BBC Music Magazine

"Lortie's Chopin playing has a wonderful, penetrating directness about it; there's not a trace of dreamy indulgence in any of the nocturnes, though all their decorative tracery shines out with a sharp-cut brilliance, and the impromptus dance and divert without a trace of self-consciousness” – The Guardian

Tchaikovsky has long maintained his position as among the most popular of all composers, his unequalled gift for melody and colorful orchestration given added depth through a rich Russian soulfulness. The Second Piano Concerto has always lived under the shadow of the famous First but, played here in the composer's original version, is full of life-enhancing character and emotion. Both this and the Concert Fantasia also contain beautiful chamber music sections allowing unique interaction between soloist and orchestra.

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REVIEWS:

Nebolsin opts for a reading that is refreshingly mellow, almost intimate and, above all, profoundly lyrical. His focus is on the shape of the phrase, inflected with the most delicate rubato. Stern and the New Zealanders mirror this rhetorical flexibility with great skill and subtlety. The finale has a fleet lightness, heightening the overall golden bravura of the concerto.

– Gramophone

Nebolsin hardly puts a foot wrong, and Michael Stern secures rhythmically vibrant playing from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

– BBC Music Magazine

A true Platti Renaissance was initiated with the first two CDs that Sebastian Hess recorded for OehmsClassics. This CD, made as a co-production with BR Klassik, was recorded on August 2012 at St. Jacobus Kirche in Grosslangheim. Axel Wolf accompanies Sebastian Hess on the lute. Volume 3 is supplemented with solo sonatas by Antonio Vivaldi.

‘Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her’ is a new CD featuring organ music with which to celebrate the Christmas season. + Works by Bach, Brahms and Barber stand alongside lesser-known works by composers including Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911), Otto Malling (1848-1915) and Flor Peeters (1903-86), making for an interesting and diverse holiday listening experience. + Michael Hartmann (b. 1955), organist, lecturer and artistic director, is the featured performer on the Oehms Classics release.

Weber: Der Freischütz, Op. 77, J. 277

Contemporary American music for wind band is among the most varied, colorful and brilliant to be heard anywhere, not least when performed by one of the genre’s leading young ensembles. Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Schwantner is represented by his evocative concerto “Luminosity.” David Maslanka has helped to reshape the wind band sound and “Hosannas,” some of which are based on chorale melodies, are full of moments of self-reflection. These qualities of quiet and timelessness are shared by the first movement of Steven Bryant’s “Alchemy in Silent Spaces.”

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia

Classical Music

Composer Kenneth Fuchs and conductor JoAnn Falletta completed their fourth recording with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, August 30–September 1, 2013. The recording features baritone and Naxos artist Roderick Williams and is produced by Grammy Award-winner Tim Handley. The repertoire includes Falling Man (for baritone voice and orchestra); Movie House (seven poems by John Updike for baritone voice and chamber ensemble); and Songs of Innocence and of Experience (four poems by William Blake for baritone voice and chamber ensemble). Fuchs’ music continues to find its visual counterpart in the work of Abstract Expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler, whose art adorns the cover of this disc.

Classical Music

Footprint is delighted to release the debut recording from Harlanda Chamber Choir in the ensemble's tenth anniversary year. 'A bright star shineth' is an atmospheric celebration of Christmas music from throughout Europe from the Sixteenth Century to present day. This recording charts a Christmas journey from France to Iceland, via England, Wales, Ireland and of course Sweden. Traditional songs in alluring arrangements by Åke Hillerud and John Rutter and more are heard alongside original compositions by the likes of Francis Poulenc, Thomas Tallis and Morten Lauridsen. The choir pays homage to it's own roots with a traditional song from the Halland Province, 'Guds son är född' (arranged by Otto Olsson). Two premiere recordings from Scandinavian composers complete the picture: Ola Gjeilo's striking 'Det hev ei rose sprunge' and Anna Cederberg-Orreteg's emotive interpretation of Sibelius's 'Julvisa.' With fulsome, warm singing and careful direction from Molin, 'A bright star shineth' combines head and heart this festive season, "our birthday gift to ourselves and a Christmas present to the world," in the choir's own words.

Violinist Tianwa Yang turns her attention to one of the great 19th century violin concertos, coupled with two of Mendelssohn's youthful yet astonishingly mature works.

REVIEW:

Young violinist Tianwa Yang has exceptional technique, and her vision in the great E minor concerto is unfailingly intelligent. The first movement is taken a touch on the slow side, giving the music added weight and seriousness. In the finale, too, Yang refuses to rush or indulge in empty showmanship, while the Andante’s singing melodies do just that. If there is any down side to her interpretation, it is this: older, wiser violinists such as Nathan Milstein shape the many moments of passagework to more purposeful effect, just as a masterful singer understands that coloratura expresses virtuosity but also can be phrased and articulated so as to heighten the emotion and intensity of the phrase. Yang isn’t quite in that league yet, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with the playing as such. The accompaniments, similarly, won’t compare to the best versions featuring major orchestras, but they offer distinguished contributions nonetheless.

What makes this disc such a smart one, though, is the inclusion of the youthful D minor concerto and the F minor violin sonata. Most Mendelssohn discs couple another major violin concerto (usually Bruch’s or Tchaikovsky’s), and God knows we don’t need another recording of those works any more than we need another Mendelssohn E minor concerto. Both youthful works are vintage early Mendelssohn, and he was not a composer who invariably got better with age. Yang plays them very well indeed, and there’s far less competition here than in the more famous companion pieces. Pianist Romain Descharmes accompanies very sympathetically, and both in the concertos and the sonata the engineering is very clean and well-balanced. In sum, the couplings make this disc worth acquiring even if you’d never think of buying another version of the E minor concerto. As for Yang, she remains an artist to watch.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The opening salvo of Wagner's tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), Das Rheingold establishes immediately the epic nature of Wagner's intentions in a epochal tale that owes much to Old Norse and Icelandic sagas. Featuring the acclaimed conductor Jaap Van Zweeden with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, this production is graced with the presence of noted soloists such as Matthias Goerne, Kwangchul Youn, Eri Nakamura and Michelle DeYoung, among others.