Leoš Janáček was an authority on his native folk-music, and the Lachian and Moravian Dances preserve and celebrate culture and traditions which were vanishing even in his own lifetime. Based on Gogol’s historical novel, Janáček’s inspired orchestral rhapsody on Taras Bulba depicts three moving and dramatic episodes in the violent life of the Cossack leader, climaxing in his stirring and triumphant prophecy of liberation. This release follows Antoni Wit’s acclaimed Warsaw recording of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass and Sinfonietta (8.572639). Antoni Wit, one of the most highly regarded Polish conductors, studied conducting with Henryk Czyz and composition with Krzysztof Penderecki at the Academy of Music in Kraków, subsequently continuing his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. In 2002 he became managing and artistic director of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.

REVIEWS:

Everything about this disc is fabulous: the performances, the coupling, and the sonics. Antoni Wit’s Taras Bulba sounds like no other. It’s full of details that you won’t have heard before, particularly in the layering of textures and shades of woodwind color. This is particularly obvious in the second movement, “The Death of Ostap”, but these personal touches never get in the way of an idiomatic, indeed visceral response to the music’s high drama. Wit builds the tension in the first movement’s successive episodes as well as anyone ever has, and releases it in a truly menacing battle sequence, with vicious contributions from the low brass. In the finale the Naxos engineers balance the organ and orchestra uncannily in the concluding apotheosis, which Wit conducts with a wholly individual combination of grandeur and serenity. It’s just plain wonderful.

Wit’s first Janácek disc contained the Glagolitic Mass and the Sinfonietta, and finding appropriate couplings for the composer’s scant orchestral output is never easy. There are the two other symphonic poems (The Ballad of Blaník and The Fiddler’s Child), some assorted overtures, the Schluck und Jau incidental music, the early works for string orchestra, and very little else. Wit’s choice of the two dance suites turns out to be an inspired decision, since they offer music that marries very well with Taras Bulba. The Lachian Dances are somewhat well known from recordings, though still a rarity in concert, but the Moravian Dances of 1891, a five-movement suite lasting about nine minutes, remains the preserve of Janácek specialists. They are delightful, and I offer a sample of No. 2 (“Kalamajka”). For the record, Wit omits the optional organ part in the Lachian Dances (the score refers to it as “inobligato”), a smart idea as the orchestration is already somewhat thick. Strongest recommendation.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Award-winning Irish pianist David Quigley, heralded by The Birmingham Post as a musician of "amazing maturity and concentration," makes his Avie label debut with a stunning and beautiful recital that takes the listener on a moonlit journey of the solo piano nocturne, beginning and ending with Quigley's compatriot and the genre's originator, John Field, and traversing the highways and byways of interpretations by composers through the centuries, from Chopin to Schumann, Liszt to Lowell Liebermann and many more in between. "Considerable virtuosity... expertly played." (MusicWeb International) "Crisp, elegant, sophisticated... full of technical elan..." (Culture Northern Ireland)

The music of the Ukrainian composer Boris Lyatoshynsky (1895–1968) is familiar in his home country but sorely neglected abroad. Lyatoshynsky’s songs are neglected even there: this anthology of his best romantsiy for low voice and piano contains many first recordings.
The songs meld intense Scriabinesque expressionism with elements of Ukrainian folksong in a language that embraces both the lyrical and the dramatic. His setting of Shelley’s Ozymandias, with its warning of the impermanence of power, was a brave act in the Soviet Union of 1924. The booklet contains full sung texts, with English translations by Russian-music expert Anthony Phillips, who also provides an extensive introduction to Lyatoshynsky.

REVIEW:

Ukrainian composer Boris Liatoshinsky (1895–1968) studied with Gliere at the Kiev Conservatory and then became a life-long member of that faculty. Death, melancholy, dread, and grief over unrequited love are the subjects of his chosen texts by mostly Ukrainian poets Ivan Bunin, Alexei Pleshcheyev, Leonid Pervomaiski, Maxim Rylsky, and Volodymyr Sosyura as well as Heine and Shelley. The mood of his songs is consistently somber.

The program of works from 1922 to 1951 is ordered mostly chronologically. His earliest compositions show an evident love of Schumann, Chopin, and Borodin; but the works heard here show a Scriabinesque expressionist style that reflects the cultural chaos following WW I and the Russian Revolution. His 1924 setting of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ with its image of the impermanence of power shows his courage and conviction in the face of Socialist Realism as Stalin was consolidating his stranglehold over the Soviet Union.

The performances here are broodingly powerful. Savenko’s lyric bass is a good fit for these songs, written specifically for bass (or low voice). With smooth legato singing and well applied dynamics, his performance gives full expression to their mournful nature.

-- American Record Guide

Pondering the Baroque violin repertoire, one would be forgiven to think of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works and little else. Acclaimed English violinist Thomas Bowes courageously sets out to change this preconceived notion with TELEMANN FANTASIAS, a rare and remarkable full performance of all of Georg Philipp Telemann’s solo violin fantasias. Telemann is to violinists what Mozart is to keyboard players: deceptively simple on paper, notoriously difficult to master in actuality. Bowes, never a stranger to a challenging repertoire, expertly articulates the cheer, spirit, and zest of these pieces with a strikingly light-hearted panache, as if it could be no different. Indeed, upon listening to this rendition, it is easy to imagine a future in which public performances of Bach’s pious partitas are habitually rounded off by Telemann’s buoyant secular fantasias. For Bowes, this future is now.

Classical Music

Following several exciting and critically acclaimed albums as a Baroque trio, this Amsterdam-based group is now augmented to become a chamber orchestra for the first time, and with a new moniker - Fantasticus XL! Their debut recording as an expanded group features three diverse early concerti that chart the differing forms of French and German forms of this evolving genre. The album consists of one concerto for each original member of the trio: Rie Kimura (Jean-Marie Leclair), Robert Smith (Johann Gottlieb Graun), and Guillermo Brachetta (Wilhelm Freidemann Bach).

Hamburger Ratsmusik: an ensemble with a 500-year-old history. This contrast prompts a creative dialogue between tradition and the present day, about Early Music and vivid interpretation. The origins of Hamburg‘s “municipal music” go back to the 16th century. Under the motto “in praise of God and for the pleasure, delight and edification of Hamburg”, the city created an elite ensemble of eight city musicians, which was to be the equal of the princely court ensembles (Hofkapellen) to be found elsewhere. The Ratsmusik attained early excellence in the 17th and 18th centuries under such eminent musicians as William Brade, Johann Schop, Georg Philipp Telemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Revived in 1991 by gambist Simone Eckert, the ensemble now performs in Germany, many European countries, the USA and China. More than 30 albums (largely with world premiere recordings of Early Music) and recordings for all German public radio stations and Austrian broadcaster ORF document its rediscoveries of music from the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. The ensemble received the Echo Klassik award in 2006 and 2010, and was awarded the 2016 RITTER Prize by the Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation in Hamburg. The musicians will be responding to renewed invitations to China in 2021. Hamburger Ratsmusik is the Ensemble in Residence in the Komponisten-Quartier museum complex in Hamburg.

Classical Music

A New York Times 25 Best Classical Track Selection for 2019

Susan Narucki has worked closely with Kurtág on the interpretation of these songs, and her readings may be regarded as definitive.

American soprano and Latin Grammy-nominee Susan Narucki, one of today’s most committed advocates of the music of our time, has a deep and lasting working relationship with Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag which dates back to 1986. Susan’s luminous tone and distinctive artistry and Kurtag’s idiosyncratic fusion of poetry and music come together in this quintessential recorded collection of some of the composer’s most iconoclastic vocal works. In Susan’s words, “I have spent much of my life immersed in this repertoire, and it has become essential to the way I understand music; it is the heart of my practice as a musician.” Equally appreciative, Kurtag acknowledges Susan, “who sang so warmly, purely, so ‘integer’ these songs- with thanks and love.”

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REVIEWS:

Susan Narucki has worked closely with Kurtág, in Hungary, on the interpretation of these songs, and her readings may be regarded as definitive. She puts across how Kurtág's songs, more than embodying a relationship between text and music, constitute a heroic attempt to weld the two, through the use of extremely detailed instructions in the score, into a single unit. Small though they are, they may be regarded as virtuoso works. Recommended, although not to everyone's taste.

– All Music Guide (James Mannheim)

These seven songs, a highlight in this album of Kurtag’s vocal works, pass in just over nine minutes: dark little pools of fervor, articulated by Ms. Narucki with precision and tenderness and accompanied by just the percussive cimbalom, played here with richly pianistic resonance by Nicholas Tolle.

– New York Times (Zachary Woolfe)

Venetian musician and composer Antonio Caldara (1670-1736), unlike some of his contemporaries who today are quite famous but experienced little fame during their lifetimes, enjoyed enormous success, then faded inexplicably from music history. +Alongside a vast production of vocal music, his only significant instrumental works are two trio sonata collections published during his youth, as well as these “sonate a violoncello solo col basso”, composed in 1735, a year before his passing.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Grammy Award-winning baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire and its founder-director Jeannette Sorrell have blazed trails in the world of historically informed performance with pioneering programming, presentational flair and an entrepreneurial spirit, qualities that have earned them eight Billboard chart-topping albums and more than 7 million views on YouTube. Their latest release, which launches the ensemble’s 30th anniversary season, is destined to soar to similar heights: the ensemble’s first recording of the perennial audience favourite, Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, featuring the phenomenal Spanish-born fiddler Francisco Fullana. Frequently performed at Apollo’s Fire home base in Cleveland, Ohio and on their international tours, “Sorrell’s vivid approach to the pictorial elements make these familiar works seem freshly minted, full of astonishing incident”, according to Seen & Heard International. Fullana, winner of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, has been dubbed a “rising star” by BBC Music Magazine, and an “amazing talent” by conductor Gustavo Dudamel. The Four Seasons is the first of five releases spread throughout the season celebrating Apollo’s Fire’s milestone 30th anniversary.

When a CD bears the title 'Fantasia' for Viol and Piano, it is perhaps surprising that no less than two of the four recorded works correspond to the clearly defined form of the sonata. However, fantasia is not the designation of a musical genre, but rather expresses a basic intellectual attitude, a program. This does not mean that it is 'program music' in the proper sense - none of the four works display clear content-related links to a given program. Yet while listening one can easily get the impression that stories are being told. Not stories with a heroine or hero, or victors and losers, but atmospheric and emotional stories. The dark, soft sound of the viol is a wonderful transport medium for this.

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

Also available on standard DVD

Recorded live from the Teatro Regio di Parma, 8 October 2011

Bonus:
- Verdi’s Backyard – A documentary by Sergej Grguric

Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: PCM 2.0 / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese (concert) / English, Italian (documentary)
Running time: 95 mins (concert) + 52 mins (documentary)
No. of Discs: 1 (BD 50)

Five works for string orchestra of composers, fellow countrymen and contemporaries Paweł Łukaszewski (b. 1968) and Mikołaj Górecki (b. 1971) are featured on this Dux release. +Mr. Łukaszewski has received numerous commissions for new works, and his discography runs to over 90 CDs. +Mr. Górecki's works have received performances in Europe, Canada and America. +The Baltic Neopolis Orchestra is a chamber string orchestra founded in 2008 by violist Emilia Goch.

Classical Music

Vocal secular music in 17th century Spain began to be studied when Francisco Asenjo Barbieri and Felipe Pedrell showed interest for the issue at the end of the 19th century. Everything pointed to an exponential increase in those studies with the arrival of the 21st century, but it was not the case. Once the first years of the new millennium were over, in which the studies by Gerardo Arriaga, Lola Josa and a few others were published, the research drastically decreased. This album aims to rekindle that preservation. The works here are sung pieces, in verse and vernacular language, known in that period as human tones (or just tones) when they were profane, and divine tones when they were religious. Those composed in the first half of the 17th century were mostly polyphonic, which reveals that, in this period, polyphony was still thought to be highest. The Book of Human Tones, preserved at present at the National Library of Spain under the signature M 1262, constitutes, with its 222 works, a privileged sample of all the aspects. Who might be interested in these works has now the possibility to listen to them in a retrained performance on four voices with harp accompaniment, one of the instruments used in this repertoire. If, on the one hand, the vocal quartet shows that the “grace notes” (“quiebros”) and voice effects do not constitute an impediment for the care of tuning, on the other hand the harp adds to the score beautiful introductory and transition passages based on the features of passacaglias and 17th century dances.

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Through Puccini represents the late-Romantic apex of the Italian operatic tradition, his songs are much less well known and, in their pared simplicity and emotional restraint, could hardly be more different from his stage works. The nineteen complete songs for soprano (two in duet with a mezzo) and piano cover themes typical of lyric poetry including life, death, personal resolution, love, nature, home and religious faith. There are also rare salon pieces and examples of Puccini's secular juvenilia, written between 1875 and 1880.

PIAZZOFORTE