CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA, ROMANI

Sharon Paige broke into show business in her teens as a singing and dancing chorus girl and moved quickly to featured roles. She has traveled throughout the United States and Canada, performing in the national companies of Broadway and Off Broadway musicals. Sharon has also toured the summer-tent, dinner-theater and nightclub circuits. In 2008, she and Keith Ingham released their Ned Washington tribute album, Love Is the Thing; Burke Beautiful is their second collaboration. Sharon currently resides and sings in New York City. Keith Ingham has recorded extensively and worked with Benny Goodman and other bands. He wrote the arrangements and led an all-star group of musicians on three notable Maxine Sullivan recordings for Harbinger Records. The first, “Maxine Sullivan Sings Great Songs from the Cotton Club by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler,” was nominated for a Grammy Award. He and Maxine also collaborate on Harbinger albums devoted to the music of Jule Styne and burton Lane. Keith was also arranger and leader on the classic Peggy Lee recording, “Love Held Lightly,” also for Harbinger Records. Johnny Burke was one of America’s greatest composer/lyricists. He enjoyed a long collaboration with James V. Monaco and then Jimmy McHugh writing songs for films, shows, and such singers as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.

Franz Schubert is perhaps the greatest of all composers of art songs. He left huge body of songs for voice and piano of amazing quality. The song cycle Winterreise stands out even among this literature. Steven Tharp sings with great understanding and sensitivity, beautifully accompanied by Janice Wenger on fortepiano. Steven Tharp has been praised by Opera News for the “bel canto flexibility and sweetness” of his voice, while the New Yorker has described his voice as “strong, free, and forward in tone, verbally sure, lyrical in utterance.”

As well as being internationally recognized as a leading interpreter of music new and old, Peter Sheppard Sk�rved is the only violinist to have performed on the personal violins of Viotti, Paganini, Joachim, Kreisler and Ole Bull. In this new series, he plays music on these and many more instruments, many of which only he has access to. This double album contains 96 (short) pieces which are all of the works for solo instrument contained in the Klagenfurt Manuscript, a substantial folio dated circa 1685 and which the violinist believes may have been composed by a nun - we will probably never know. He plays these works which mainly consist of individual movements of a style typically found in the baroque Dance Suite; some seem to 'fit' into multi-movement suites, others clearly do not. For the purposes of this recording each movement is listed and tracked separately. This is the world premiere recording. Peter plays a wonderful Stradivari instrument of 1685 (thus exactly contemporary with the music). In those days violins were made in several sizes and this one measures 328mm (the modern standard being 350mm). It's design and construction is clearly influenced by Nicola Amati. Though 'modernized; in the 19th century, it is hear played with a period-design bow and gut strings for authenticity. The violin is from the historic instruments collection of the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, England.

Classical Music

Argentinian composer, poet and teacher JOSÉ ANTONIO BOTTIROLI found his ideal means of expression in the Romantic idiom and in shorter forms of music. Exploiting the rich resources of the waltz, his pieces are infused with a remarkable range of moods, intimacies, real-life experiences and scenes from nature, as well as portraits of children and loved ones, such as the iconic Verdadero in honour of the composer’s wife – all played with the unique insights of his student and protégé Fabio Banegas. FABIO BANEGAS has appeared in recitals and as soloist in the United States, Europe and in his native Argentina. A recipient of numerous scholarships and awards in Argentina and in the US, he studied at the National University of Rosario (UNR) under Professor Nelly Gabús and Professor Anna María Cué, and earned a Masters of Music at California State University Fullerton (CSUF) under Dr Susan Svr?ek. Fabio Banegas is a specialist interpreter of the Argentinean composer José Antonio Bottiroli, of whom he was a student, and has given world premières of many of the composer’s works. He is currently based in Los Angeles.

Building on one of the most successful music distribution networks in North America, Naxos has launched a new label in its already diverse label family. Suite 28 Records was founded out of a need for up-and-coming young artists to be recognized for their great talent. Suite 28 Executive Producer Jeff Van Driel describes the label as one that “puts aside genre and cultural constraints. Suite 28 is a record label for listeners who truly love music in all of its forms." Pianist Kory Caudill began playing melodies on the piano when he was only a toddler. Twenty-five years later, he is one of the most sought after pianists in the country. Tree of Life is his debut recording. As with many artists who compose the music that they perform, Caudill often looks to the things around him for inspiration. The title track of Tree of Life was inspired by a quilt that was made by his grandmother. Caudill explains, “The beauty of instrumental music is that it allows for personal interpretations and is not bound to specific memories or events that are portrayed by the artist. For me, this song is about family, and the people who have given selflessly to make the world a great place for my generation. The song title comes from a beautiful quilt my grandmother, Juanita, designed. On the quilt is a tree with a limb representing each family member.” A classically trained pianist, Caudill’s influences range widely from Frederic Chopin to Ricky Skaggs and from Bruce Hornsby to Yanni. Tree of Life is evidence of Caudill’s diverse musical background as the album travels through many musical eras in its eleven tracks.

Bernard Haitink was born and educated in Amsterdam. His conducting career began at the Netherlands Radio where in 1957 he became the Chief Conductor of the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. The links between Bernard Haitink and the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra have withstood the test of time, even when his career was taking him all over the world. One fine example of this was Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust in 1998, later issued on CD(CC 72517). He returned on 15 June 2019, when he gave his very last concert in Amsterdam, with Bruckner Symphony no. 7, a work that has always been especially dear to him.

For most of the past century the Russian composer Leonid Sabanayev (1881-1968) was known principally as a writer, not least for his publications on his close friend Alexander Skryabin (he was also a scientist and mathematician). It is only now that his own music is being rediscovered. This first recording of his monumental Piano Sonata, 'In Memory of Skryabin', cast in a single movement half an hour in length, is prefaced by a number of characteristic miniatures.

Milégé is a group of young talented musicians who derive inspiration from the diverse cultural musical traditions of the different tribes of Uganda, which they fuse with contemporary elements. The group writes: “We derive our name Milégé from the ankle rattle, a bell worn round the ankle to create rhythmic sounds that compliment dance performances. The rattle exists across the entire continent of Africa in different forms and in other parts of the world. Milégé is a symbol of unity, celebration and heritage. This album is very special to us, this will be our first album after nine years of the band’s existence amidst countless hurdles. It is for this reason that we chose the album name Afwoyo which means thank you in Thuphadola, a luo dialect from the Japhadola tribe of Eastern Uganda.We are thankful for the love and support from all those who have believed in our sound and have waited patiently for this authentic piece of work. We hope that this music will bring healing, hope and inspiration to the world!”

Political crises and rising anti-Semitism in Europe during the first half of the 20th century prompted many leading musicians to immigrate to America. An influx of refugees formed a flourishing artistic community centered within a few square miles near Hollywood and this exceptional gathering of composers transformed America's musical landscape. This survey explores their diverse output through music for cello and piano, including arrangements by the composers and their fellow expatriate performers never before heard on the cello.

The choral pieces brought together on The Call range widely, from ceremonial works associated with affairs of state to intimate compositions addressing moments of great personal significance. The composers are similarly diverse. They include an English composer of Polish extraction (Panufnik), an Italian who spent most of his life in Paris (Rossini), an Irish and a German composer who became leading lights in English music (Stanford and Mendelssohn). However, all the works recorded here have one thing in common: all are considered quintessential to the Anglican choral tradition.

Anybody with deep affection for the more noble anthems of the Anglican tradition will need no excuse to grab a copy of this tasty selection, especially so when it features performances of such tasteful restraint. You only need sample Oliver Browne’s unaffected treble in ‘O for the wings of a dove’ or Xavier Hetherington’s ethereal tenor in the Ave Maria to know that Andrew Nethsingha has musical integrity at the heart of these performances.

- Gramophone

A member of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St Petersburg, Russia, Leo Zeitlin (1884–1930) was known almost exclusively for Eli Zion, a classic of Jewish art-music. Zeitlin died only seven years after emigrating to New York, still a young man, and his reputation languished until the recent discovery of a trunk full of scores brought his music back to light. This album attempts to remedy decades of neglect, especially for his charismatic Yiddish song-settings for voice, strings and piano, powerful declamations of spoken Yiddish and Russian poetry underscored by Romantic piano music, all of which points to a once popular but now forgotten genre. The Festival musicians of the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival are the highest-caliber local professionals; players for the orchestral and chamber-music concerts include members of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Pittsburgh Opera and Ballet Orchestras, and university faculty members. In its eleven seasons since its founding by cellist Aron Zelkowicz the PJMS has programmed over 130 pieces of classical chamber and orchestral music inspired by Jewish traditions. The recordings on this CD series represent a six-year project devoted to the St Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music and its affiliated Russian composers.

REVIEW:

The performances of Leo Zeitlin’s music are first-rate from start to finish, as is the recorded sound. The liner notes by Paula Eisenstein Baker (a key figure in the resurrection of the Zeitlin’s music) and Robert S. Nelson provide detailed information on the composer’s life and the featured works. Original language texts (Cyrillic script for Russian, and transliterations for the Yiddish poems) and English translations are provided for each of the songs. While the repertoire on this disc may have a less broad appeal than the Stutschewsky release, I think anyone at all curious to explore the work of Leo Zeitlin will not be disappointed.

-- Fanfare

This album features songs from the Qiang and the Yi tribes, who both mainly live in the mountainous regions of southwestern China, specifically in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. Many of the Yi folk songs make reference to the mountains in this region, especially in love songs and group dance songs, as heard in tracks 19 and 23. The music of both of these two minority groups includes lively short dance songs in duple metre and long melodious labor or love songs that employ a free rhythm. At first, you may not be able to distinguish between the music of these two minority groups; in fact, the two tribes are closely related and the Yi are thought to be descendants of ancient Qiang tribes. The languages of the Qiang and Yi both belong to the Sino-Tibetan language phylum. Yet the music of each tribe has its own distinct characteristics. Although both of them often prefer high pitches, the songs of the Yi tribe use a broader vocal range. The dance songs of the Qiang have lively rhythms and are structured with repetitions of a few musical phrases. The dance songs of the Yi incorporate more melodic and rhythmic variations and long, resounding cries. The cries also appear in other types of Yi songs, for example, the middle of track 23, and the beginning and end of track 24. It is noteworthy that the songs featured here have distinct local characteristics, which may differentiate them from the songs of the Qiang and Yi minority groups living in other parts of China. The Qiang songs in this album come from Xin Beichuan County, the only Qiang autonomous county in China.

Migrations provides a generous view of Derek Bermel's superb craftsmanship and eclectic style, in which classical forms, world music, jazz, blues and American folk music create a mix that reaches directly into the body and the heart. Commisioned by Wynton Marsalis, Migration Series has it's roots in African American music, it's impeccable counterpoint and biting rhythms expressed through orchestration that sounds like a city coming to life. Mar de Setembro was inspired by Luciana Souza's bell-toned voice and the intense feelings of Portuguese saudade, while A Shout, A Whisper, and A Trace honors Bartok's last years in New York, referring to the Concerto for Orchestra as well as to jazz and Balkan music.

As a young man, Harold Shapero (1920–2013) reacted against the dominance of modernism in American musical life by using a Stravinsky-animated neoclassical language with its roots in Beethoven and Schubert. +These three early piano works – two of them receiving their first-ever recordings – reveal his superb craftsmanship and ready wit in music that embraces rather than rejects the past. +The result is an extraordinary fusion between the Viennese classics and contemporary America.

REVIEW:

Massachusetts-born and -raised Harold Shapero belonged to that generation of American 20th-century composers who eschewed European Modernism, including serialism, employing instead a kind of wrong-note Neoclassicism in the manner of Prokofiev. He was extraordinarily well educated; private lessons with Nicolas Slonimsky and Ernst Krenek as a teenager, then on to Harvard where he studied with Walter Piston. World War Two prevented the obligatory post-graduate studies in Paris or Rome, so Shapero worked with Nadia Boulanger, herself dislocated by the war, at the Longy Conservatory in Cambridge.

These three works are from that early period in Shapero’s career, and as the very titles of the works would indicate, are intentionally retrograde. There are echoes of Beethoven strewn about the sonatas, with typical fast-slow-fast three-movement construction in the Sonata in F Minor, and a broad, harmonically complex introduction for the Four-Hand Sonata, while the variations are more Baroque in their use of florid melodic figures and free fantasy. Not surprisingly, given the composer’s superb training, the music is very well crafted. There is an attention to precise detail that recalls Stravinsky. The Four-Hand Sonata is enlivened by an easy theatrical expressivity and jaunty spirit that sounds influenced by the composer’s dear friend Leonard Bernstein, to whom the piece is dedicated, and with whom he performed it. I was mildly bothered, however, by Shapero’s occasional quirky sense of rhythm, including the stuttering pace of the Arioso movement from the Sonata in F Minor. I don’t think I can fault the playing, having heard many fine performances of contemporary piano music from the reliably excellent Pinkas. She is also well abetted by Evan Hirsch, her regular partner (in life as well as on stage).

Shapero, who died in 2013 at the age of 93, probably did not have the robust career that his early days seemed to promise. Perhaps his time is yet to come; this excellent collection of piano music is a step in the right direction.

-- Fanfare

This third double CD set completes Gilbert Rowland's survey of these Handel's groundbreaking solo keyboard music, works that began to free the form from the formal constraints of Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue. Forty-plus years of recitals, appearances at major festivals in several countries, together with regular broadcasts, have helped to establish Gilbert Rowland's reputation as one of Britain's leading harpsichordists. The standard of playing is very high indeed... a most enjoyable recording. (The Consort on Vol.1)

The multi-award-winning Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds’ 21st-century choral sound is both exquisite and angular, and in this album he explores ideas of ‘translation,’ legend and the divine. With his expanded tonality and employment of shimmering singing hand bells in ‘Translation,’ and the angelic use of the viola and cello in ‘In paradisum’ he creates music of ravishing refinement. In ‘Legend of the Walled-In Woman’ Esenvalds transcribes and employs an authentic Albanian folk song.

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REVIEW:

Ethan Sperry’s immaculate Portland State Chamber Choir clearly relish the luscious choral textures, which often expand into 16 parts. The engineering captures with great clarity both this sense of spaciousness and the extreme dynamic range. All the solo vocal contributions are magnificent...A stunning, timely triumph, therefore, full of ravishing, transformative and deeply touching music.

– Gramophone

Van Cliburn's youthful impetuosity is most convincing. This is very much a performance that takes one along with it, just as a fine performance live in the concert hall would.

It is some eighteen months since Van Cliburn's surprisingly successful account of the Brahms Second Concerto appeared, and on the face of it this vast youthful inspiration of the First Concerto should suit Van Cliburn's special qualities even more closely. And so it proves, and though Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony do not prove such perceptive collaborators as the lamented Reiner with his Chicago Orchestra, this is in terms of pianistic display and dynamic driving force as exciting a performance as we have ever had on record. The way for example that Van Cliburn in the finale sweeps the music on from the first subject into the second is irresistible. Those pianists who insist on relaxing may seem a little lacking in excitement in direct comparison—even to Clifford Curzon. Where they score—and Curzon of course is the prime example of a thinking virtuoso in this work—is in the subtlety of shading. You could not claim for Van Cliburn much sense of 'inner' thoughtfulness. But that does not mean he is hard, and throughout the warmth of the playing is as striking as the dynamic drive. It is a pity perhaps that in the American manner the soloist is put so close to the microphone, for it is hard for him to achieve a real pianissimo, however gently he plays. But RCA's technique of spotlighting individual instruments (not merely the piano) pays off very well at the climax of the slow movement—a moment that for me at least is perhaps the most important single passage in the whole work. If in the great call of the rising fourths slowly enunciated over piano arpeggios you have a sense of culmination and achievement such as opera composers provide at moments of dramatic catharsis, then I am disposed to think favourably of the whole performance. It is so with the Gimpel performance on HMV Concert Classics where Kempe is marvellous, and here Leinsdorf (with the help of the spotlighting engineers) directs with more warmth than I remember from him for a long time.

In the first movement of course, Curzon's subtlety coupled with his wiry strength is a hard combination to compete with, but Van Cliburn's youthful impetuosity is most convincing. The speed is not fast (much less fast than in the Fleisher/Szell performance for example) and Leinsdorf, though not specially good on detail, gives the music a tremendous sweep which exactly matches the soloist's sense of command.

I hope I have made it clear that this is very much, a performance that 'adds up'. In other words it takes one along with it, just as a fine performance live in the concert hall, and on that account I have been wary of drawing too sharp a contrast with Curzon on the basis of a side-by-side comparison of extracts. Curzon, I think, would be most people's choice, but if I wanted bravura above all, then Van Cliburn even more than his fellow young American, Leon Fleisher, provides it. Apart from the balance, the recording—I have so far heard mono only—is good, though it never achieves the atmospheric clarity that the Decca engineers provided for Curzon.

-- Gramophone [3/1965]
reviewing the original LP release of the concerto

Since his emergence on the musical scene in 2002 when his Symphony No. 1, “Oceanic Days” was the winner of The Nordic Council Music Prize, Faroese composer Sunleif Rasmussen has continued to make a name for himself and his island home on the world music scene. Among his many striking compositions is a growing corpus of works featuring the recorder. Beginning with his expansive concerto for recorders and large orchestra, Territorial Songs (2008-09), Rasmussen sought to expand the instrument’s persona and possibilities, freeing it from its historic associations with the music of the Renaissance and Baroque, pushing it into new territories. In this mission, the composer has been exceptionally fortunate to have as muse and musical partner one of the greatest recorder players ever, Michala Petri. The current project represents an overview of works composed from 2009 to 2020. All are scores featuring the recorder: as concerto soloist with a symphony orchestra, (Territorial Songs), a string ensemble (Winter Echoes), an obbligato in a complex choral setting (“I” ), chamber music (Flow), and unaccompanied (Sorrow and Joy Fantasy), each work a milestone in Rasmussen’s musical development . As always, Michala Petri brings each score to life with consummate artistry and is perfectly matched by each of the ensembles performing with her.