•Heritage of the March is a series of 185 vinyl records of marches and galops released from 1973 to the early 1980’s. It remains as the largest single march music record series in history, featuring close to 3,000 different marches! Volumes 7 and 8 feature the marches of Russell Alexander, Gabriel Pares, Joseph Olivadoti, and Franz Lehar, a combination of American, French, and Hungarian composers. These marches highlight the best of the genre from both the United States and Europe, re-mastered for CD release. Altissimo! Recordings is proud to release the next installment of this classic collection as a two-volume set.

Medieval England exerted a strong influence on Johann Simon Mayr, especially during his final proto-Romantic period. Alfredo il Grande was to be one of his last operas, with a narrative that takes us to a land under threat of war with the Vikings. Escaping capture, Alfred the Great travels incognito, ultimately defeating the enemy and rescuing his beloved Alsvita. With its grandiose choruses and sensuous melodies, this opera was conceived on a monumental scale and proved both impressive at its premiere and influential on the next generation of bel canto composers, making a substantial contribution to the development of the melodramma romantico.

The four American composers onthis album have all won recognition for their diverse approaches to contemporary art song. Both Emmy-nominated Craig Brandwein, in his beautiful Three Rilke Songs and Jonathan Santore in Two Letters of Sulpicia use computer generated electronics to enhance the vocal line, while Edie Hill's setting of poems by Amy Lowell exemplifies why her music has been described as 'full of mystery' (Stereophile). The common thread running throughout Jessica Rudman's works is expressivity, and These Distances Between Us charts a cycle that recognizes the precarious nature of personal connections.

The four cellist-composers in this recital share a common background: from musical families they played as soloists in outstanding orchestras, taught many students, and wrote music for the instrument that continues to challenge players of our own time with its virtuosity and intensity. In his 12 Caprices Alfredo Piatti fused dazzling technical demands with operatic drama, whilst David Popper’s Suite remains an admired piece for two cellists. Wilhelm Fitzenhagen’s Concert Waltzes for four cellos makes prolonged use of the upper register, and in contrast Julius Klengel’s Hymnus is a sonorously beautiful elegy for twelve cellists.

Haydn worked during a period that witnessed a great deal of stylistic change, including the evolution of keyboard instruments from the harpsichord to the pianoforte with its hammer action and greater dynamic flexibility. These rarely heard but influential early Piano Trios include music originally conceived for piano solo or baryton trio. The Trio in F minor is unusual for its elaborate ornamentation and darker key,and is highly at-tractive in its youthful freshness. The acclaimed Aquinas Piano Trio brings these un-justly neglected works vividly to life.

Much of Joseph Haydn’s musical life was spent in service at the palace of Eszterháza on the Hungarian plains, a complex of buildings to rival Versailles in magnificence. Haydn’s reputation abroad was, however, already considerable by 1790, and he was invited to travel to London where the delightfully lively and at times brilliantly virtuosic trios Hob.XV:16and 19were published. Further trios from the 1760s express music of sheer joy, all performed here by the acclaimed Oberlin Trio.

The emergence of the cello as a solo instrument at the beginning of the 19th century encouraged composers to explore its melodic and sonorous potential, with compositions for two or more cellos becoming increasingly popular. Bernhard Romberg, and Anton Kraft both had personal connections to Beethoven – their works offer inventive timbres, intimacy and substantial virtuosity. The world premiere recording of the sparkling Concertino by Kraft’s son Nikolaus completes an album of unique gems, influenced by Beethoven and Haydn, which helped to usher in the golden age of the cello.

Schubert was known in his time primarily as a composer of songs, but he was also a master of the dance form and wrote prolifically for a middle-class society eager for domestic entertainment. He loved Ländler (triple time country dances), the Écossaises (supposedly Scottish), and the rich variety of genial German dances. Viennese pianos of the day produced a sound that was clear and transparent, very different from modern instruments, and in this recording Yang Liu plays on a Steinway grand and a copy of a mid-1820s fortepiano by Conrad Graf, a maker well known to Schubert.

Xiaogang Ye is one of China’s best-known contemporary composers whose work is acclaimed both in East Asia and the West for its colorful sonorities and lyrical expressiveness. Demonstrating Ye’s deep love for ancient Chinese poetry, Seven Episodes for Lin’an is a large-scale symphonic canvas that sets famous texts for the first time in contemporary history, weaving their eloquent imagery with intricate and timeless melodies. Twilight in Tibet evokes the landscape of the Himalayas, while the Tianjin Suite reflects the diversity of Tianjin, a city with a profound historical and cultural heritage, expressed through Ye’s signature combination of traditional and modern musical textures. This release features rising vocal stars Yuanming Song, Yijie Shi, and Songhu Liu alongside horn soloist Cong Gu.

When lockdown was imposed in 2020 many artists began streaming performances from their own homes. In response, pianist Francesco Piemontesi and director Jan Schmidt-Garre launched a concert series to showcase artists living in Berlin, given in the renowned Schinkel Pavillon with an expert technical team assembled at short notice. Fourteen concerts were held, without audiences, under the name Home Music Berlin featuring some of the world’s leading instrumentalists and singers. In addition, a documentary film captured rehearsals and private backstage scenes. This collection of performances is a testament to the resilience and solidarity of these artists during the pandemic.

Polish by birth, Fryderyk Chopin made his name in post-Revolutionary Paris and is often depicted as the archetypal Romantic artist – blessed with extraordinary talent but consumed by the flame of genius, tormented by intense and tempestuous relationships and doomed to an early death. But how much of this story is based on fact? This account of Chopin’s life and times separates myth and reality. Illustrated with numerous musical examples, the narrative, written by music historian Dr. Davinia Caddy and narrated by actor Lucy Scott, takes us from his youthful beginnings as ‘a second Mozart’ to the darkness and light of his life and the brilliance of his work.

Kemal Belevi’s works for the guitar, either solo or in combination, as heard on this album, exude the color and allure of the eastern Mediterranean. Without alluding to any specific tunes, he evokes Cypriot folk music in Cypriana, while the linked Four Sketches show his variety in the work’s bracing modernity. Belevi is at heart a romantic and a melodist of touching beauty as can be heard in Catch 22 and in the subtle color study Clouds. The poignant Suite Chypre is heard in this special arrangement made for Silvia and Livio Grasso.

Twice GRAMMY-nominated composer and performer Derek Bermel studied with Henri Dutilleux, Dutch avant-gardist Louis Andriessen, and ragtime revivalist William Bolcom. In his music, seemingly antithetical qualities – classical and vernacular, comic and serious – merge and transform each other unpredictably, their inspiration ranging from theatre (Ritornello), to gestalt psychology (Figure and Ground), to meditations on cosmology (A Short History of the Universe). Thracian Sketches explores and reimagines Bulgarian folk music, while the Violin Etudes distill Bermel’s intellectual creativity into its purest form. The widely celebrated JACK Quartet has maintained an unwavering commitment to its mission of performing and commissioning new works, giving voice to underheard composers, and cultivating an ever-greater sense of openness toward contemporary classical music.

REVIEWS:

The JACK Quartet plays with great clarity and athleticism; and the group is wholly comfortable in any context, from hushed moments to driving climaxes and raucous special effects. Hijmans executes his concerto grosso with flair and virtuosity; and Otto renders the etudes with marvelous skill and artistry. As expected, Bermel contributes his superb fingers, wide dynamic range, and mind-blowing sonic manipulations that should not be possible on the clarinet.

-- American Record Guide

Part of Naxos’s esteemed ‘American Classics’ series, Intonations is a composer-based collection with a difference: Derek Bermel not only wrote its five works, he plays on two also. His clarinet isn’t the only distinctive sound on the nearly seventy-minute release, either. Dutch electric guitarist Wiek Hijmans plays on one piece, and the renowned JACK Quartet appears too, generally as a group but with violinist Christopher Otto playing solo on Violin Etudes. Intonations is marked by many things, including variety, and in featuring five world-premiere recordings, the release is an invaluable addition to the award-winning composer’s discography.

Intonations speaks flatteringly of Bermel’s gifts as a writer but also instrumentalist. To call his clarinet playing impressive hardly does it justice. He’s appeared as a soloist alongside Wynton Marsalis, has performed his clarinet concerto Voices around the world with dozens of orchestras, and is the founding clarinetist of Music from Copland House. His playing is so credible, Bermel could easily fill a personnel spot in an ensemble such as Oregon or The Silk Road Ensemble were the opportunity to present itself...That Bermel’s classical creations often exhibit a pronounced jazz, blues, and/or world flavour shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, given such diversity of experience.

Intonations is an arresting portrait, not only for its kaleidoscopic range but for the sheer breadth of Bermel’s imagination and interests. That no other recording sounds quite like it is one of the better compliments one could pay to its creator. There’s nothing, it seems, he can’t do and no musical subject matter he’s incapable of tackling.

-- Textura

This showcase of music for different forms and instrument combinations is united by Bermel’s musical curiosity and creative showmanship. Elements of folk and blues permeate traditional classical forms in masterful ways, resulting in a joyous listen. Characterful.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Peter Breiner is one of the world’s most recorded musicians with over 2 releases and more than two million albums sold, of which his Beatles Go Baroque alone reached sales of a quarter of a million copies. In addition to being a multifaceted composer, arranger and conductor, Breiner is also a pianist, and the third of his 'Calm Romantic Piano Music' series melds melodic substance with delicate musical expressiveness. (Naxos)

With Two Marimbas in Berlin, award-winning duo DoubleBeats presents world premiere recordings of four pinnacles of the keyboard repertoire and two modern classics in their own remarkable arrangements for marimbas and percussion. Soft, resonant tones and high drama emerge through the duo’s exceptional dexterity and control in works by Chopin and Rachmaninov, as well as in Bach’s iconic Goldberg Variations. Haydn’s lighthearted Variations contrast with the thrills of Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango, and the album finishes with Minoru Miki’s poignant Marimba Spiritual.

Johann Sebastian Bach today has a reputation as the Godfather of Western European music, as a fountainhead of classical music theory and the creator of some of the greatest works the world has ever produced. Better known as a keyboard virtuoso, Bach was not regarded as a genius in his day, so how did this headstrong and belligerent but ambitious young musician become so extraordinarily productive? What were his influences? How did he end up in jail and what did he get up to in Café Zimmerman? Discover all of this and more in musicologist Davinia Caddy's fascinating biography of a composer who, to Max Reger, represented ‘the beginning and the end of all music’. The narrative, presented by actor Leighton Pugh, is illustrated with musical excerpts including the Brandenburg Concertos, Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, Harpsichord Concerto in D minor, The Art of Fugue, St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor among many others.

With performances by...

Nils Thilo Krämer | Christian Benda | Petra Morath-Pusinelli | Alexander Jablokov | Robert Hill | Kölner Kammerorchester | Takako Nishizaki | Ariane Pfister | Capella Istropolitana | Andrés Gabetta | Helmut Müller-Brühl | Wolfgang Rübsam | Sebastian Benda | Ralf Otto | Swiss Baroque Soloists | Slovak Philharmonic Chorus | Christian Brembeck | Julia Brown | Luc Beauséjour | Gerhild Romberger | Bachorchester Mainz | Jan Cižmár | Oliver von Dohnányi

Tchaikovsky declared that Mozart was ‘full of divine beauty’, and Schubert’s wonder at the ‘countless images of a brighter and better world’ that Mozart was able to conjure up through his music knew no bounds. Many of us carry the image of Mozart as a transcendent genius, but what do we really know about his life and career, and indeed his music? This entertaining and informative biography, written by music historian Davinia Caddy and narrated by actor Leighton Pugh, takes us from Mozart’s beginnings as a child prodigy to his greatest successes and cruelest setbacks. The narrative is illustrated with music from each stage of Mozart’s intense career, including the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony, Clarinet Concerto, Coronation Mass, Requiem, Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro and many more.

With performances by:

Pier Giorgio Morandi | Kölner Kammerorchester | Petersen Quartet | Werner Hollweg | Celina Lindsley | Capella Istropolitana | Walton Grönroos | Michael Halász | Concentus Hungaricus | Concerto Köln | Anna di Mauro | Helmut Müller-Brühl | John Dickie | Gabriele Schreckenbach | Andrea Martin | Hungarian Radio Chorus | Péter Köves | Janusz Monarcha | Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia | Priti Coles | Mátyás Antál | Budapest Failoni Chamber Orchestra | Patrizia Pace | Herbert Lippert | Slovak Philharmonic Chorus | Camerata Cassovia

Robert Docker was one of the giants of light music – a composer and arranger whose works graced stage, screen, radio and television. Two of his best pieces were written for piano and orchestra: Legend, which can rank alongside Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto (Naxos 8.554323); and the brilliantly witty inventions of the Pastiche Variations. Not only was Docker a distinguished orchestrator, he was also a rich melodist as his classic Scèneduba lillustrates, while the composer’s impish humor can be savored in Tabarinage. Docker’s early training as a classical violinist fully equipped him to explore the British pastoral tradition in the languid and beautiful Air.

Haydn’s 30 Piano Trios were written at a time when the harpsichord was being replaced by the pianoforte and when a parallel change saw the emergence of sonata-allegro form. His earliest trios, such as the Trio in F major, Hob. XV: 40, were also known as Divertimentos or Partitas, whilst the Trio in G major, Hob. XV: 15, was part of a group that offers the performer the alternative scoring of flute over the more usual violin. They reflect the airy and nimble qualities that grace all of Haydn’s works in the genre.

Since composer, conductor and musicologist Alicia Terzian founded Grupos Encuentros in 1978, the six-person group has garnered international acclaim for it's success at bringing the music of avant-garde Argentinian and Latin American composers to the world. On 40 Years of Contemporary Music, the group combines compositions from such well-known Latin American composers as Heitor Villa-Lobos, Alberto Ginaslera, and Terzian herself with works by an international array of composers that ranges from Anton Weber to Luciano Berio to Franz Schreker to Pierre Boulez. Grupo Encuentros consists of mezzo soprano Marta Blanco, pianist Claudio Espetor, flutist Fabio Mazzetelli, clarinetist Matias Tchicourel, violinist Sergio Polizzi and violoncellist Carlos Nozzi. The program presented on 40 Years of Contemporary Music originally premiered at the annual Encuentros International Festival in Buenos Aires and truly highlights the brilliance of these award-winning musicians, who have earned high praise from such media outlets as the Los Angeles Times, where they were lauded as "deeply serious and challenging." Over their 40 year-long career, the group has performed at dozens of prestigious venues, including London's Royal Albert Hall and New York City's Merkin Auditorium. 40 Years of Contemporary Music transcends cultural boundaries with such selections as Villa-Lobos' Choro No. 7, which unites the sounds of Amerindian primitivism with the polkas and waltzes of suburban dance halls in Brazil. Emphasizing her status as a renowned ethnomusicologist, Terzian dedicates her composition Yagua de Uca to the Chinguano and Chanel peoples, who belong to a lost indigenous northwestern Argentinian culture. O King was composed the same year as the assassination of Martin Luther King, a tragedy which deeply affected it's Italian composer Luciano Berio. Grupo Encuentros founder Alicia Terzian has composed over 80 compositions for orchestras, orchestras with soloists, and chamber orchestras with and without soloists, musical theater, and multimedia. She travels the world giving seminars on composition and contemporary chamber music at universities and is often invited to participate on juries at international compositions.