Throughout his lifetime, Antonio Vivaldi – a composer of many lyric operas – penned an enormous corpus of works encompassing countless concertos, sonatas, and sacred music. In his concertos and chamber sonatas, Vivaldi reveals his wonderful melodic talent with both deep and elegant allure. The concertos and the sonata of Antonio Vivaldi offered here are seldom performed and recorded. Recorder virtuoso Maria Giovanna Fiorentino leads I Fiori Musicali. “(IFM is) of Europe’s leading baroque ensembles.” (Journées Baroques sur Vienne)

Anna and Ines Walachowski have long been considered amongst the leading present-day piano duos. For the past two decades, the sisters have thrilled their audiences on international stages. They have received invitations to many renowned festivals, including the Rheingau Music Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Mecklenburg Vorpommern Festival, the Dresden Music Festival, the MDR Music Summer, the Lower Saxon Music Days, the Mosel Festival, the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival as well as the Harbin Music Festival and the Bangkok Music Festival. The present album is the third issued by OehmsClassics.

The Michael Thompson Wind Quintet, today known as The Michael Thompson Wind Ensemble, came into existence in 1992 when Barry Tuckwell announced that he was leaving the Wind Quintet that bore his name. The remaining instrumentalists unanimously turned to the finest horn soloist they knew to take his place, and Michael Thompson had no hesitation in accepting the invitation to head the illustrious group. The original Quintet, which brought together five of London's leading wind-players, was formed in 1969 and in the course of the next two decades performed in Russia, Australia, the Far East, Europe and the United States. The Ensemble today is of impeccable pedigree, each player a soloist in his own right. Michael Thompson himself is in great demand throughout the world as a teacher and, in addition to his post as horn professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London, has given master classes in the United States, Japan and Australia. As soloist/director he has recorded Mozart's complete works for horn and orchestra with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta.

Classical Music

" This 2CD set features a new recording of the complete Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words) by Felix Mendelssohn. These ever popular works, often of deceptively “simple” language and writing, in fact contain a wealth of moods. Hungarian master pianist Balázs Szokolay (b. 1961) has been a piano professor at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest since 1987. repertoire is wide, his discography extensive and he concertizes worldwide as both soloist and chamber musician."

Although Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s first instrument was the piano, even as a child he revealed himself to be a highly gifted violinist. In this domain too he was encouraged by his father Leopold, well-known violin teacher in his own right and author of a violin method widely respected at the time. Even when Wolfgang was already 21, father Leopold reaffirmed his son’s violinistic talent, on 8 October 1777. ‘You don’t realize how good you are on the violin when you put your mind to it, playing with character, conviction and spirit, just as if you were the best violinist in Europe.’ That letter was written in the period between 1773 and 1779, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed numerous works requiring string soloists. From April to December of 1775 alone, the 19-year-old penned 5 violin concertos, in an unbroken process as it were. At that time Mozart was employed as concertmaster by the archbishop’s court in Salzburg, where instrumental music was highly prized. He had, however, previously got to know the Italian tradition and art of the violin in situ, frequenting students of the famous Giuseppe Tartini there, such as Pietro Nardini and Gaetano Pugnani. On several occasions during his three journeys to Italy, he also met the Bohemian composer Josef Myslivecek, who cultivated the violin concerto genre intensively. Synthesizing the influence of Italian masters with that of Joseph Haydn, Johann Christian Bach and French violinists, Mozart composed his own concertos, which sparkle with vitality but are at the same time both intimate and graceful.

László Kecskeméti was born in 1972 in Budapest and is proud to have been a pupil of László Czidra. Since completing studies in 1993, and in the class of Lõrincz László in 1997 in Szeged, he has performed frequently as a soloist and as a member of different early music ensembles. He also teaches at a music school in Budapest. Kecskeméti is joined in five of the concertos by oboist Lászlo Hadady. Undergirding these performances is the fine and often virtuosic harpsichord and cello continuo played by Borbála Dobozy and György Kertész respectively. The bassoon joins the fray in four of the concertos and is played by the redoubtable György Olajos. The two violinists are Attila Falvay and Katalin Párkányi. The little cadential flourishes that all the soloists make at appropriate moments are delightful.

The history, legends, culture, art and music of Naples were constant companions to composer Angelo Gilardino in his formative years. Never attracted as a composer to pictorial music, he does feel that the impressions derived from the experience of places and literary works leave profound imprints on the emotions and the intellect, which can provide the impulse to write music associated with a particular place. A project to create music based on the mythical Parthenope (precursor of modern Naples) began with a conversation between Gilardino and two Neapolitan masters of the guitar: Aniello Desiderio, virtuoso guitarist acclaimed throughout the world; and Lucio Matarazzo, who embodies the forthright Neapolitan style so typical of the school of Eduardo Caliendo (the guitarist who collaborated in the performances and recordings of Roberto Murolo). Having joined forces in a new duo, the two guitarists asked Gilardino to compose a concerto for guitar and orchestra, and he replied with the Concerto del Sepeithos for two guitars and orchestra in 2013. The river Sepeithos (Sebeto) flowed through ancient Neapolis, and Gilardino was drawn to accounts of the raging current making its way through the city and into the sea at today’s Piazza del Municipio. The duo’s response to the Concerto del Sepeithos was another request: for Gilardino to write a Sonata for two guitars for them, as well. In 2014 they were rewarded with Riviera di Chiaia – Passeggio reale, a piece evoking an imagined Naples informed by impressions ranging from Cimarosa to Anna Maria Ortese, Leonardo Leo to Nicola Pugliese. In particular, the composer was reading Pugliese’s novel Malacqua (Four Days of Rain in the City of Naples) while writing the second movement, ‘Pioggia’ (Rain).

• A 10-CD box set of Romantic music in honor of the 80th Birthday Sir Roger Norrington (March 16th, 2014) • Contains the most famous works by Romantic composers • Interpretations featuring what has been called the "Stuttgart Sound"

Schumann brings out the best in baritone Christian Gerhaher on this striking recording with pianist Gerold Huber

Frage is the opening chapter of Christian Gerhahrer’s project to record all of Schumann’s songs. For Gerhaher himself, this release represents the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream and, as he himself emphasizes, is “probably the most important project of my entire life.” Since Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s pioneering recording of the 1970s no other singer has devoted himself so comprehensively to Robert Schumann’s complete lieder output. Frage will focus on one key cycle. The twelve Kerner Lieder op. 35 are combined here with the op. 49 and op. 89 cycles as well as with the Sechs Gesänge op. 107 and the Vier Gesänge op. 142. This project will include his long-time collaborator and pianist Gerold Huber and fellow singers Julia Kleiter, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Sybilla Rubens, Camilla Tilling and Martin Mitterutzner.

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REVIEWS:

What makes the duo so special is the combination of highest refinement, supreme intellectualism—preferably stern and terribly serious, shot through with a strong sense of the melancholic—with total artlessness and simplicity. Throughout the recital the pervading sense of miniature drama is chilling. If—and probably only if—you listen to and understand the text, Gerhaher and Huber can cause goosebumps with a single syllable (like, say, “Tod”), accompanied by a ghostly draining of color, a Gerhaher hallmark. Schumann lovers and Lied-aficionados will instead paraphrase Karajan: “Everything else is gaslight”.

– ClassicsToday

Even the supposedly straightforward Romanzen und Balladen, Op 49 acquire an extra dimension in their capable hands. It’s typical of the care that has gone into performing every song; there is no sense of any kind of routine on this album.

– Guardian (UK)

Gabriel Prokofiev's famous first Concerto for Turntables reached a global audience when performed by Mr. Switch at the 2011 BBC Proms, under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski. It has since been performed 55 times worldwide, with the 5th movement being performed 20 times as part of the BBC's Ten Piece's project. The aim of the piece is to demonstrate the main DJing techniques, with each movement showing off a specific one. Prokofiev's Cello Concerto was composed in 2012 and is the third concerto he composed. It was the most conventional of his concertos, with the other two (at that point) being for Bass Drum and Turntables. Despite this, Prokofiev still manages to explore influences of electronic and dance music in the concerto, whilst also exploring the traditional lyrical side of the cello.

The Heritage of John Philip Sousa, Vol. 1

Classical Music

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi owes much of his fame to La Serva Padrona, a comic intermezzo designed to be performed between the acts of an opera seria. In it, a maid and a servant conspire to convince their master to marry the maid. When Aldo Tarabella was asked to direct a performance of Pergolesi's intermezzo, he wanted to do more than simply pair it with one of the operas it traditionally sits alongside - so he composed Il Servo Padrone, a companion piece, and a kind of sequel, to Pergolesi's original. At the level of the plot, things come full circle, and by the end, master and servants have returned to where things began, highlighting the difficulty of fundamentally changing social conditions. A kind of emancipation seemed within reach, but is ultimately not achieved - in some senses, the reverse of what one might expect given the transformation of social roles in Europe among (at least middle-class) women in the 17th century and since. Musically, however, this homage to an 18th-century musical form is very much brought into the present day. It's arias are developed in an atonal context and it's recitatives leave traditional Classical form behind to travel symbolically towards the light-hearted episodes found in 20th-century musical comedy. This unique album is the first ever recording of Tarabella's tributary composition.

During the first decades of the last century, Paris took over from Vienna as the center of the art-music’s universe. Ideas and styles exploded like fireworks from the French capital, and among the first figures sending them into the wider world was Claude Debussy. His Première Rhapsodie began life as a competition piece for clarinet, first performed in 1911, and while the later orchestral version is now more commonly heard, it is instructive to revisit the composer’s original, more subtly allusive first thoughts. Seven years later, by now dying of cancer, Debussy completed the last of three works in which he returned to the traditional form of sonata which he had avoided through much of his career in favor of tone-pictures such as the Préludes and suites for piano. The Violin Sonata counts among his most concise and refined works in an output touched throughout by those qualities, demanding the greatest subtlety and passion from its interpreters. In the same year as the Première Rhapsodie, Stravinsky had scored his career-defining succès de scandale with the premiere of Le sacre du printemps, and by 1918 he was established as a darling of the Parisian avant-garde when he composed L’histoire du soldat for a septet of instruments and narrator. The following year he arranged five self-contained numbers from the score into a suite, further reduced for a spiky instrumental trio and featuring the marvelously sly tango as well as the Rite-like final Danse du soldat. Milhaud’s Suite and Bartók’s Contrasts date from two decades later, but they are still infused with the absinthe and lemon of 20s Parisian culture. Heard together, the five works paint a portrait of a world of dazzling colours and restless momentum, sometimes bewildered by its own precosity, taking what it wanted from old cultures and always breaking new paths.

Born in 1971, Marco lo Muscio is an organist, pianist and composer who has performed on the great organs of Europe and the US. His own music been performed by the likes of Christopher Herrick, Thomas Trotter and David Briggs. This album focuses on another, more intimate side of his output. There are pieces dedicated to his mother and to the memory of his late father; tributes to both Debussy and Satie; meditations on literary themes from the work of J.R.R. Tolkien in a neo-medieval style; a pair of ricercari originally composed for organ, paying homage to Renaissance-era counterpoint; and to begin with Three American Preludes. Composed in 2001, the first two of the preludes were also Lo Muscio’s first works intended for the piano. Their bluesy harmonies and ostinato bass lines are inspired by the playing of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett. The third of them (from 2009) is a homage to Jarrett, but composed in the style of prog rock – an idiom that the organist adopted with such success that he began to work with the guitarist Steve Hackett, founder member of Genesis. Since first meeting Hackett in 2008, Lo Muscio has made many transcriptions of prog rock classics (by Genesis and others) in a parallel career to his own compositions. The two careers intersect here with Horizons, written by Hackett in 1972 for the Genesis album Foxtrot, and itself derived from the Prelude to Bach’s G major Cello Suite. In 2009 Lo Muscio composed his own Meditations on Horizons, which transforms elements of Hackett’s piece with a habanera rhythm Having established a career as a pianist with a speciality in the music of Bach (as winner of the 1995 J.S.Bach International Piano Competition), Andrea Padova has attracted international praise for his performances and recordings. His performance of the Goldberg Variation has won glowing encomia: The Washington Post wrote that he ‘conveys the sense of successfully exceeding the limits of human possibility.’ This is his debut recording on Brilliant Classics.

CHILL WITH BACH comprises superb Johann Sebastian Bach interpretations selected for their soothing properties. For example, pianist Hae-won Chang plays "Siciliano" from Bach's Piano Concerto in E Major with incredible sensitivity and melodic flow. Her version of this piece relies on subtle dynamic shifts, which in turn create a wonderful depth in the music. Chang's interpretation of this slow movement is profound because of its expressiveness. She avoids the motoric tendency of lesser players and instead brings out the understated symmetry of this melody.
Chen Pi-Hsien's pianistic skills are equally engaging. Performing two themes from the Goldberg Variations, Hsien reveals the harmonic congruity of these themes by also avoiding a mechanized approach. Indeed, Hsien embraces the ebb and flow of Bach's counterpoint; this is essential since Bach's music is so openly fugal. In addition to all the tremendous excerpts found here, this collection also contains Bach's famous piece, "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." Performed by a solo pipe organ, this work contains one of Baroque's most contagious melodies.

In this the first of a series of three recordings of Schubert’s great song cycles for Chandos, Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside bring their formidable talents to bear on one of the pinnacles of classical lieder. In November 2015, Williams decided to immerse himself in an intensive three-year period of studying and performing the three song cycles by Schubert, following an invitation from the Wigmore Hall to perform them- with Iain- in their 2017/18 season. The process has involved not just performances in concert around the globe, but open rehearsals, master-classes, workshops, and radio broadcasts. Roderick Williams has documented all of these experiences in great detail in his fascinating Schubert Cycle Project blog. He writes: “Somewhere along the way I came to a decision; that my eventual performances at the Wigmore would not be the ultimate goal of my study; rather, the study itself, the act of preparation would be my focus. It is possible that other singers might find the process interesting, even if only to share some of the grind that is most often done alone; it is also possible that others might be intrigued, especially audiences, perhaps even (fellow) students.”

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REVIEW:

This is a beautiful and thoughtful account of Die schöne Müllerin. Roderick Williams’ approach is supremely intelligent and apart from the interpretative care he takes, his singing per se will give enormous pleasure.

– MusicWeb International

Beethoven's oeuvre only comprises a small collection of works for cello and piano, but that the composer was an accomplished writer for this combination of instruments is evident from the fact that Jean-Louis Duport, one of Frederick II's court cellists and one of the most revered musicians of his day, incorporated many of the techniques found in the Op.5 sonatas into his instruction manual for cello. The two works each contain only two movements, and the absence of a slow movement was probably to avoid the problem of dynamic imbalance between the instruments (which would have been accentuated in adagio passages) -- something that is also the case with the Op.68 sonatas, composed in 1807. Only with the second Op.102 sonata does the composer finally replace the slow introduction, as found in No.1 and all of the above works, with a full-scale slow movement, one that precedes the massive fugal finale that was to form such an intrinsic part of Beethoven's late-period works.

Also featured are the three delightful sets of variations for cello and piano, each modelled on a different aria from Handel's opera Judas Maccabeus and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, and each (just like the sonatas) placing the piano on an equal footing with the cello throughout. The works are an engaging addition to a collection that marks the return of Israeli/Dutch cellist Timora Rosler and Hungarian pianist Klára Würtz, whose previous Brilliant Classics release 'Cello Rhapsody' (9157) was released to critical acclaim, and which provides a snapshot of the composer's stylistic development over a period of nearly 20 years.

Other information:
- Filling "only" two CD's, the complete works for cello and piano are quintessential and vintage Beethoven. The two youthful Opus 5 sonatas are written in virtuoso concerto style, with an especially glittering role for the piano (Beethoven was a tremendous pianist in his early years), the sonata Op. 69 is in the expansive, sonorous and deep-feeling tonal language of Beethoven's Middle-Period, whereas the two Late sonatas Op. 102 are marvels of originality, experiment, "quirkiness" and humanity.
- The two musicians Timora Rosler and Klára Würtz have been playing together for more than 15 years, having won several chamber music prizes. They performed the Beethoven cycle several times in concert over the years, and their interpretation has ripened to such an extent that the time came to record it. And here it is: every note alive and vibrant, played with gusto and feeling, alternating melancholy and joy, sadness and sheer fun.
- Contains notes on the music and detailed artist biographies.
- Recorded 19--23 January 2013, Sala congressi del Parco naturalistico di Onara, Padua, Italy.

For his solo debut recording, acclaimed American cellist Matthew Zalkind has chosen three works which, he explains, “have an especially strong sense of kinship, each of which explores the vast expressive and technical possibilities of the solo cello.” Johann Sebastian Bach’s cello suites represented such a high level of achievement that until Kodaly composed his Sonata nearly 200 years later, barely a single significant work was written for solo cello. The Suite of 2012 by Michael Brown, a close friend and colleague of Zalkind’s, was influenced by both the earlier pieces and provides a perfect bridge between them. “impressive refinement… eloquent phrasing… singing tone… fine technique…” (The New York Times) “darts around the instrument fearlessly… The sharply etched passagework in the Bach was startling, surpassing that of many world-class cellists.” (Washington Post)

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REVIEW:

There’s an epic quality to Zalkind’s reading of Kodály’s sprawling Sonata, and his plaintive tone in highlying lyrical passages has an almost keening quality that carries an unexpected whiff of tragedy. The Adagio, too, is conceived on a grand scale, starting with a fearsome, slow crescendo. He seems to think of phrasing in terms of gestures that make both rhetorical and dramatic sense, and in the finale this thoughtfulness is evident in the way he picks up and carries melodic threads through the music’s intricate fabric. Michael Brown’s Bach-inspired Suite sounds a little flimsy placed between these two masterworks but works well enough as an interlude. All in all, this is a most auspicious debut.

– Gramophone