Volume 2 of this complete edition of Martinu's songs is set mainly to Czech poems on themes of life, love and nature. Mezzo-soprano Jana Wallingerova, a member of the National Theatre in Brno, Czech Republic, has sung many of the most well-known mezzo roles on it's stage. Concert activities are also an essential part of her repertoire. Prague-born Giorgio Koukl is a pianist/harpsichordist and composer who has given many recitals and concerto performances.

4 RHAPSODIES from critically-acclaimed pianist Kristina Marinova and Navona Records is a collection of vibrant, dynamic, and technically demanding works for solo piano. The album’s titular piece, Four Rhapsodies op. 11 by early 20th-Century composer Ernst von Dohnanyi is rarely performed in concert given the level of musicianship it requires of pianists. Now, its combination of stark drama and dazzling virtuosic passages may be enjoyed by listeners everywhere. This impressive piece, along with works by the likes of Astor Piazzolla, Franz Liszt, and George Gershwin, makes for a varied collection of masterworks performed by the gifted hands of Kristina Marinova.

The March sisters are among the most beloved characters in children’s literature, and Little Men picks up the story of fiery, headstrong Jo where Little Women left off. Intelligent, funny, perceptive and genuinely touching, the novel is set at a rather unusual boarding school run by Jo and her husband, where the pupils are encouraged to pillow fight and keep pets. When the penniless but talented orphan Nat Blake shows up on her doorstep, Jo takes him in, and his arrival sets in motion a chain of events that will affect all their lives. Liza Ross has read several titles for younger listeners. Her warm and personable voice perfectly complements Alcott’s gentle tone. Little Women, the first volume, is currently available on Naxos Audiobooks as well. This release is presented for the junior audience as always with attractive classical music.

This new release is an album of eloquent contemporary music for children performed by Mr. E and Me and The Norwegian Radio Orchestra. The wonderful songs are written, arranged and sung by the highly accomplished duo Mr. E and Me, which consists of Martin Hagfors and Erik Johannessen. Martin, American born, is an artist, composer and lyricist in his own right and a popular collaborator for the likes of Ellen Andrea Wang, Bobby Bare, Big Bang, Motorpsycho etc. Erik is a Norwegian composer, arranger and trombone playing member of Jaga Jazzist, he is also known for his studio work with Susanne Sundfor and The Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. New Orchestral Hits 4 Kids also includes a guest appearance by the world music icon, Mari Boine on the hauntingly eerie, Long, Long and performances by The Norwegian Girls Choir. New Orchestral Hits 4 Kids aims to open ears to the wonderful sounds of the orchestra while introducing whimsical, imaginative songs about friendships, forests, wet socks, dancing, space, a robot, a birthday, and a beautiful narrative about a girl on the moon.

Beethoven’s permanent move to Vienna in 1782 allowed him direct contact with the operatic and Italianate culture of the city. He took lessons in Italian word setting from Salieri and almost immediately began the composition of a series of arias in that language, including Primo amore, piacer del ciel and later the dramatic recitative and aria Ah! perfido. Beethoven also set strophic songs in German that form part of the popular Singspiel tradition which are genial and rare examples of his art. Here, the songs are performed by soprano Reetta Haavisto, tenor Dan Karlstrom, and baritone Kevin Greenlaw.

The sparkling overture to Leonard Bernstein’s 1956 musical Candide immediately found a prominent place in concert programs all over the world and is now one of his most frequently performed pieces. Many of Bernstein’s best loved works drew inspiration from the city of New York, and this is true both of the three sailors pursuing female conquest in the ballet ‘Fancy Free,’ and of the rip-roaring swing rhythm and big tunes from the musical ‘Wonderful Town.’ Bernstein celebrated his friends and family with his ‘Anniversaries’- piano vignettes heard here for the first time in colorfully expanded orchestrations. Marin Alsop is an inspiring and powerful voice in the international music scene who passionately believes that “music has the power to change lives.” She became music director of the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra in 2012 and made history in 2013 as the first female conductor of the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms, which she returned to conduct in 2015. As a student of Leonard Bernstein, Alsop is central to his 100th anniversary celebrations, conducting Bernstein’s ‘Mass’ at the Ravina Festival, where she serves as musical curator for 2018 and 2019.

For most of his life Eric Craven has kept a very low profile, concentrating on his teaching career and quietly developing his 'non-prescriptive' composing method, a sort of aleatory style that allows the performer varying degrees of freedom. His earlier cycle of short pieces, 'SET', was recorded after Craven was persuaded by leading pianists to make his work available. Highly praised, that technique is shown again to great effect in the 'Pieces for Pianists', producing music that is varied, interesting, but perfectly accessible for listener and performer. Volume 1 attracted very positive reviews: "joyous, playful and satisfying music." - New Classics; and we are sure that this second set will find many new fans for this very individual composer.

Mary Dullea is an Irish pianist based in London, who enjoys a very busy career as a soloist and chamber musician and regularly performs and broadcasts in many countries. Her discography is exceptional and demonstrates her support and championing of new music. Her pianism and musicality as well as remarkable virtuosity make her an ideal interpreter. She is also Reader in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Following the huge success of My First Classical Music Book, Genevieve Helsby and Jason Chapman return with My First Piano Book. Bursting with life and humor, this is a uniquely comprehensive introduction to the piano, designed first and foremost to inspire. Text and illustrations are so perfectly in tune with each other that every page is a treat to explore. With a cast of animal characters showing what they know (and what they don’t!), this truly is both informative and great fun. This original and vibrant approach to the piano integrates listening to professionals and learning to play in a unique and approachable way.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Choral Concert: William Ferris Chorale – HOVHANESS, A. / COH

Written in 1944, Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony is one of his greatest and most complete symphonic statements. At its première he himself called it “a symphony of the grandeur of the human spirit”. The first movement couples considerable strength with unexpected yet highly characteristic twists of melody. After a violent scherzo followed by a slow movement of sustained lyricism, with a fiercely dramatic middle section, the finale blazes with barely suppressed passion. The Year 1941 is another wartime work, a symphonic suite written in response to the German invasion of the Soviet Union. This is the first volume a of complete cycle of the Prokofiev Symphonies with the OSESP and Marin Alsop, the orchestra’s newly appointed principal conductor.

REVIEW:

Alsop is evidently a sympathetic interpreter of Prokofiev, because the tempo and pacing always feel spot-on, and the character of the music rings true. Naxos offers exceptional reproduction of the vivid instrumental colors with appropriately resonant acoustics, so this series starts off brilliantly, with worthy performances that sound terrific.

– AllMusicGuide.com

MOZART Piano Sonatas: in c, K 457; in C, K 545; in B?, K 333. Rondos: in F, K 494; in D, K 485; in a, K 511 • Marcia Hadjimarkos (fp) • AVIE 2138 (76:29)


The best compass, it seems to me, for successful traversal of Mozart’s piano music is constant reference to and evocation of his operatic style. If some gesture cannot conceivably be accomplished by the voice, accompanied by a late 18th-century pit orchestra, chances are it is an anachronism and has no place within Mozart’s keyboard textures. Listening to Avie’s remarkable new release of three sonatas and three rondos by Mozart, played superbly by Marcia Hadjimarkos, the imagination repeatedly roams to the operatic stage where, of the generations after Monteverdi and prior to Verdi and Wagner, the Austrian master reigns supreme.


A native of Oregon, Hadjimarkos earned degrees at the University of Iowa before pursuing her studies at the Paris Conservatoire with Jos van Immerseel; she has specialized in performing on the fortepiano and clavichord since the 1980s. One of the more appealing aspects of Hadjimarkos’s interpretations is her exploitation of the richly varied registers of her instrument (in this case a replica of a 1793 Sebastian Lengerer fortepiano by Christopher Clarke). Mozart himself was keen to mine this expressive potential on the pianos of his day; this tendency constitutes a veritable hallmark of his style that unfortunately is all but lost on modern pianos. Hadjimarkos never neglects expressive nuance in melodic inflections and her varied strategies of attack and release result in a realm of beautifully realized legato and detached effects. The lavishly applied variants—to the repeat of the exposition of the C-Major Sonata and indeed to each thematic repetition in the D-Major Rondo, to cite but two examples—seem both appropriate and inevitable. Nor does Hadjimarkos shy from engaging the una corda mechanism of her fortepiano: witness its highly effective use for long stretches in the F-Major Rondo and in the Andante of the C-Major Sonata.


As a player, Hadjimarkos remains rooted “in the moment,” lending her performances a refreshing emotional immediacy. Inevitably, one comes across the curious interpretive choice. At the beginning of the development in the first movement of the C-Minor Sonata, for instance, Hadjimarkos lifts the dampers in the ascending triad, the central thematic material of the entire movement, which she plays (appropriately) secco elsewhere in the exposition and recapitulation.


The recording was made in Chenôves, France, in August 2004. The parish church there has a sweet, flattering acoustic for the Clarke fortepiano. The engineers have done a marvelous job and the sound is dimensional and clear. Brian Robins wrote the engaging booklet notes, to which Christopher Clarke contributed information on his fortepiano.


This is living, breathing Mozart interpretation of a very high order, simultaneously innocent of “received wisdom” or “tradition” (which, as Artur Schnabel was fond of saying, is nothing but a collection of bad habits) and constantly informed by obvious immersion in the music of earlier masters, including C. P. E. Bach and Haydn. Those who still prefer their Mozart on the modern concert grand will no doubt continue to enjoy the performances of Schnabel (Music & Arts Programs of America 1193) and what perhaps remains the all-around best complete recording of the sonatas, that of Lili Kraus (Sony 88808). But those with an ear for the manifold beauties of the instrument that Mozart knew and loved—the late 18th-century Viennese action piano—are not likely to find more imaginatively realized, full-blooded, or loving readings than these presented by Marcia Hadjimarkos. Very highly recommended.


FANFARE: Patrick Rucker

The international success of Faust after it's premiere in 1859 completely overshadowed all of Gounod's subsequent operas. He had known Goethe's masterpiece for two decades and brought to the text his gifts for memorable melody and rich orchestration. Added to this, the plot of Faust's ageing and the heroine Marguerite's redemption, offered the opportunity for the most spectacular stage effects. Heard here in it's 1864 London version with an additional air and without spoken dialogue or ballet, Faust represents 19th-century French opera at it's peak.

One of the outstanding composers of his day, Johann Adolph Hasse was seen as possessing "the same qualities of true genius, taste and judgment" as his librettist Pietro Metastasio. Didone abbandonata represents the once hugely popular 18th century genre of opera seria, exploring the same tragic story as Purcell's earlier Dido and Aeneas while expanding the heroine's conflicts between regal duties, love, and helplessness in the face of desertion.

Named after a scribe at Madrid's Royal Chapel, the Guerra Manuscript is a vital source of the tono humano, a form of secular song characteristic of and exclusive to the Spanish Baroque, from a period when solo accompanied songs were at their most popular. Accompanied by double harp or harpsichord, these texts deal with subjects such as the pain of unrequited love and the balance between suffering and joy, also drawing on mythology and the natural world to symbolize the many facets of the human condition. This is the penultimate volume in a complete edition of these 17th-century gems.

Composed to mark the centenary of the genocide of 1915, the Armenian Requiem is a large-scale sacred work structured around the liturgical chants encountered in requiem services appended to the traditional Armenian Mass. It is written in a form that, uniquely for the music of the country, is not based wholly on the model of the Latin Mass. Instead, taking the precedent of Britten’s War Requiem, Ian Krouse embeds poems as interludes, and his work- a poignant meditation on loss couched in a marriage of Western and Armenian forms- offers both conciliation and hope. American composer Ian Krouse has been lauded in the music press and is widely known for his pioneering efforts in the development of the guitar quartet. Over the past few years Krouse’s vocal works have begun to receive more attention. In addition to hundreds of performances annually by guitarists and guitar quartets all around the world, Krouse’s works have been performed or recorded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Ukraine Radio and Television Orchestra, the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, and the UCLA Philharmonic Orchestra.

WAGNER: Orchestra Opera Excerpts / Siegfried Idyll (1950 / 1

Classical Music

At first glance Tchaikovsky does not seem easily to fit the "Chill" bill. He is known for pieces such as the 1812 Overture, music which is impassioned and animated in distinctly Russian style, often fiery, even ballistic, and infused with darker moments inspired by the composer's personal turmoil. However he also wrote some of the most beautiful, fragile and ethereal ballet music that has ever been choreographed, as well as lyrical slow symphonic movements and haunting songs. His unique talent lay in his inspired and inventive use of melody, seen at it's best in works such as the Nutcracker with it's myriad infectious tunes. Many of Tchaikovsky's melodies are based on folksongs he collected, predominantly Russian and Ukrainian but also Polish, Italian, Spanish and French (this last seen in the Piano Concerto No. 1, in this collection).