Classical Music

MOONBOW is Gunnar Andreas Kristinsson’s second album, the first to be released on a major label. The music, performed by leading members of the Icelandic contemporary music scene, was recorded in Kaldalo´n and Norðurljo´s, the two recital halls of Harpa Reykjavik Concert Hall. While Gunnar’s first album, Patterns, contains pieces from his study and freelance years in The Hague, MOONBOW is a selection of more mature works from a fruitful period in the composer’s life after moving back to Iceland in 2009, with all the experience from the Netherlands in his pocket. The album features a trio, a quartet and a quintet, flanked by two larger ensemble pieces. The works are diverse, not only in terms of instrumentation but also in terms of musical subject and give a good insight into Gunnar’s distinctive and personal sound-world.

REVIEW:

Kristinsson’s style blends elements of tonality, atonality, New Simplicity (especially in its obsessive repeated patterns) and postmodernist techniques. Patterns IIb (2016) is a fine example of that, with its louring atmosphere despite its use of an Icelandic folk song and euphonious chiming percussion: it was based on a piece of 2004 scored for quartets of gamelan and Western instruments. Roots (2019), by contrast, takes the overtone series as its abstract inspiration. The evocative titletrack, Moonbow (2017), played with relish here by the excellent Siggi Quartet, is more straightforwardly descriptive, reflecting in sound the lunar rainbow (or ‘moonbow’). As such, it is the most directly communicative, and put me in mind at some removes of Saariaho’s celebrated aurora borealis-inspired Lichtbogen (1986).

Sono Luminus provides sound to match Kristinsson’s often coruscating textures and the performers’ clean, luminous virtuosity. You will not regret investigating this music.

– Gramophone

The charm of this opera is in that it contains everything, like Cervantes’ Don Quixote: any life experience is within it. Love, hate, death, dream, despair, the innocent and the wicked play. Purcell’s awareness in portraying such opposite feelings is amazing as well as the room that he leaves to the conductor. So, here is why a new “Dido”: as an artist in love with this opera, Fabio Bonizzoni wants to deliver his reading. He wants to translate Purcell’s “sign” his own way, how much this opera is alive, lively, modern, contemporary. How Purcell’s genius was able to convey Dido’s despair and Aeneas’ cowardice and how much Purcell himself had fun in depicting the plot. Fabio Bonizzoni, one of the leading Italian harpsichordists and organists of his generation, graduated in organ, organ composition and harpsichord at the Royal Conservatorium in The Hague in Ton Koopman’s class. He frequently enjoys commitments as guest conductor: in recent times he has been invited by Capella Cracoviensis and Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra in Poland, by the Holland Bach Society in The Netherlands, and by the Orchestra Barroca de Sevilla.

REGER: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart (1950 / 19

In Hungary at the beginning of the 20th century, Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály were collecting and making analytical studies of Hungarian folk music, creating a new interest in the native music of their homeland. This album, featuring rarely heard works from the succeeding generation of Hungarian composers, presents a distinctive portrait of the Hungarian music scene from the interwar years to the 1950s, by composers who faced discrimination or paid the ultimate price for their Jewish heritage. The Offenburg String Trio was created in 1981 in Offenburg, Germany, the home town of its three musicians. The current ensemble consisting of the Schilli brothers Frank (violin) and Rolf (viola) and Martin Merker (cello) has played concerts since 1987. The Trio has received awards in several international chamber music competitions in Germany, France, Italy, and The Netherlands. The ensemble has been invited many times to perform on radio and television, including productions by SWR, Swiss Radio DRS 2, RAI Roma, Radio Catalunya, and the Irish, Brazilian, Russian, and Vietnamese television networks. The members of the Offenburg String Trio have served as the artistic directors of the Offenburg Cloister Concerts since 1995 and in recent years have directed the Trio Chamber Music Weeks for amateur ensembles in Germany and Switzerland.

REVIEW:

This issue is not just music for its own sake, but an inspiring testament that, despite adversity, injustice and cruelty, man’s indomitable spirit of courage always triumphs in the end. Sensitive and engrossingly passionate performances, coupled with some excellent sonics, complete a disc that is certainly not for the squeamish, but deeply rewarding for those who are inclined to search for the meaning behind the notes.

– Classical Music Daily

Classical Music

Anne-Catherine Bucher studied harpsichord and basso continuo with Michele Deverite, Robert Kohnen, Francoise Lengelle, and Huguette Dreyfus, and organ with Norbert Petry. She has taken master classes with Jesper Christensen and Gustav Leonhardt and has performed concerts throughout Europe and Latin America with the finest ensembles specializing in Early Music. Passionate about research, she creates original programs and develops new forms of concerts and encounters with audiences of all kinds. She is professor for harpsichord at the Metz Metropole Conservatory. She has taught master classes in France, Belgium, Finland, Poland, Germany, Mexico, and Cuba, and has recorded several radio and television programs. This release contains Bach's Goldberg Variations played on harpsichord by Anne-Catherine Bucher and comes with a detailed form analysis in the liner notes.

Working with Ry on creating the score for The Sun Is Also A Star was a wonderful and smooth process, says composer Herd�s Stef�nsd�ttir of the soundtrack. "I immediately felt we had a musical connection, which helped create the themes for the film. I was 7 months pregnant when I started writing the score and that made the experience very special for me. I was extra emotional and focused because of my situation, which I felt helped me overall in the creative process, and was able to write the music quickly and felt inspired by the story. I needed to write music that would evolve and mature with the characters in the film and the growing feeling of love. I mostly used a mix of ukulele, harp, electronics, flutes, strings and piano. The score was lighter in the beginning of the film, but as the drama progresses I brought in deeper sounds and more emotional instruments like the piano, cello and harp." In the film, college-bound romantic Daniel Bae (Charles Melton) and Jamaica-born pragmatist Natasha Kingsley (Yara Shahidi) meet - and fall for each other - over one magical day amidst the fervor and flurry of New York City. Sparks immediately fly between these two strangers, who might never have met had fate not given them a little push. But will fate be enough to take these teens from star-crossed to lucky in love? With just hours left on the clock in what looks to be her last day in the U.S., Natasha is fighting against her family's deportation as fiercely as she's fighting her budding feelings for Daniel, who is working just as hard to convince her they are destined to be together. A modern-day story about finding love against all odds, The Sun Is Also a Star explores whether our lives are determined by fate or the random events of the universe.

Launched by its prologue Das Rheingold (8660374-75), Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) - one of the supreme works in the history of music - continues with Die Walküre. Part II of the tetralogy centres on the young lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde, whose relationship angers Ficka, goddess of marriage, and on the disobedience of the Valkyrie Brünnhilde who is sent to carry out Fricka’s wishes. Performed by an all-star international cast, the work features thrilling set-pieces such as Wotan’s Farewell and the Ride of the Valkyries.

John Goodman as a government official is tasked with uniting the world against a common extra-terrestrial enemyMusic by Rob Simonsen, co-composer of Academy Award Best Score winning soundtrack Life of Pi​​​​​​​MAIN CASTJohn Goodman (10 Cloverfield Lane, Barton Fink, Argo),Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, The Departed, Orphan),Aston Sanders (Moonlight, The Retrieval, The Equalizer 2),Jonathan Majors (Hostiles, White Boy Rick, TV: When We Rise)INFOSet in a Chicago neighborhood nearly a decade after an occupation by an extra-terrestrial force, CAPTIVE STATE explores the lives on both sides of the conflicts - the collaborators and the dissidents.ABOUT THE COMPOSERHaving learned to play the piano at a young age and with an educational background in jazz, electronic and traditional orchestral music, Rob Simonsen has lent his scoring talents to a wide range of film projects.  Since the early 2000s, he’s worked on an expansive list of film soundtracks, among them Love, Simon, Nerve, Foxcatcher, The Way, Way Back and The Spectacular Now.  Under the apprenticeship of composer Mychael Danna, Simonsen worked on films like 500 Days of Summer and Moneyball, in addition to collaborating with Danna on his Academy Award-winning score for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi.  In addition to his lengthy catalogue of film scores, Simonsen is the founder of The Echo Society, a Los Angeles-based non-profit artist collective.  Surrounding himself with a network of like-minded artists, Simonsen founded The Echo Society in order to connect, inspire, challenge and enrich the creative community in Los Angeles by sponsoring live, professional sonic/visual performances and offering immersive and interactive audience experiences.

The "superb, sinister" Tales of Hoffmann at the Dutch National Opera with "excellent soloists, the impressive John Osborn" (Theaterkrant) and "Christine Rice, a vocally and physically voluptuous Giulietta" (bachtrack. Com), "mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts, who plays and sings brilliantly" (Groene Amsterdammer) and "Erwin Schrott, singing the four villains for the first time, made it look like a blast. " (bachtrack. Com) "Les Contes d'Hoffmann is a parade of golden voices". (Volkskrant) Maestro Rizzi conducted with elegance and momentum the chorus and the "excellent playing Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra". (Volkskrant) "Spectacular" (Trouw) "This production effortlessly fascinates from start to finish. " (Theaterkrant)

This is the sixth CD in the first complete recording of the 72 cantatas in Georg Philipp Telemann’s collection Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, published in Hamburg in 1726 – the first complete set of cantatas for the liturgical year to appear in print. The cantatas are designated for voice, an obbligato instrument (recorder, violin, transverse flute or oboe) and basso continuo, and generally take the form of two da capo arias with an intervening recitative. Telemann’s cantatas are a masterly blend of tunefulness with skilled counterpoint and vocal and instrumental virtuosity.

Classical Music

Both organs recorded on this album resound optimally within their respective church interiors thanks to the outstanding acoustics there. The very different sizes of these interiors are ultimatley responsible for the diverging interpretations on the two instruments. The recurring long note values of the Gregorian chant in the Mass awaken the feeling of timelessness - here, the tremendous monumentality of the performances can make a maximum effect within the large space of Klosterneuburg Monastery Church. The smaller Gabelbacher organ evokes a nimble, chamber-music orientated manner of playing which conveys to the listener a certain closeness to the events within the much smaller space. Hassler's keyboard music assumes that the player will use a single manual, and this consideration was observed on the present recording; solo registrations were as yet unknown in Hassler's time. Of course, "sparing" registrations were occasionally used on the large organ of Klosterneuburg.

Classical Music

A 2021 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Choral Performance!

Philadelphia based contemporary vocal ensemble The Crossing, under the direction of Donald Nally, releases "Rising w/ The Crossing," an uplifting offering that serves as an offering of hope amidst a pandemic as well as a journey through the ensemble's projects over the last several years. Including music by Joby Talbot, Eriks Ešenvalds, Dieterich Buxtehude, Paul Fowler, Alex Berko, Ted Hearne, Santa Ratniece, and David Lang's hauntingly topical "protect yourself from infection," which sets texts from a 1918 U.S. government document, with the names of Philadelphians who fell victim to the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Written over the course of a quarter-century, these four flute works reflect the individual approaches to the flute sonata taken by their composers. Hindemith’s aim was to offer new music of buoyancy and brio, tempered by elegiac moments. Prokofiev’s famous sonata has Classical formal elegance, while the sonatas of Denisov and Nagovitsyn are single movement works that explore the flute’s extreme registers, as well as its dynamic contrasts and virtuosic capacities. Denis Lupachev won First Prize at the International Festival ‘Virtuosi2000’ (Russia) in 1993, and in 1997 received the jury’s Special Prize at the Kobe International Flute Competition (Japan). In 1999, he was awarded First Prize at the ‘Leonardo de Lorenzo’ International Flute Competition(Italy). Lupachev gives many recitals and chamber music concerts in Russia as well as throughout Europe. Since 2016, he has organized the International Festival ‘Virtuosi of the Flute’ in the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg. Peter Laul was awarded First Prize in both the Bremen International Piano Competition (1997) and the Scriabin International Piano Competition in Moscow (2000). Laul has given recitals at prestigious international venues such as the halls of the St Petersburg Philharmonic and the Moscow Conservatory, the Auditorium du Louvre, Lincoln Center in New York, the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, and Suntory Hall and Opera City Concert Hall in Tokyo. He is a consummate chamber musician, who regularly partners with Maxim Vengerov, Ilya Gringolts, Valery Sokolov, Alexander Ghindin and the Borodin Quartet.

United States Army Field Band: The Legacy of Edwin Franko Go

Michael Endres plays a wide-ranging repertoire including such rarely performed composers as Leopold Godowsky, Gabriel Fauré, Charles Ives and Eduard Tubin. The leading US critic Richard Dyer (Boston Globe ) described Endres as "one of the most interesting pianists who appear nowadays on CD". Michael Endres has recorded an equally wide-ranging repertoire for OehmsClassics, including releases with works of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Gershwin, Weber and the sonatas of Arnold Bax. The present album features works by Franz Schubert, including a special treat entitled the Kupelwieser Waltz. Endres’s playing has often been described as subtle, elegant, and refined, never taking the dramatic elements of the music to the extreme.

Tchaikovsky wrote music for the piano throughout his life, many of these pieces being dedicated to family members or close friends and musical associates. Rich in variety, the Douze morceaux range from playful dances to a substantial Marche funebre, as well as lyrical jewels such as the Chanson triste and a Danse russe that found its way into the ballet Swan Lake. A background of romantic entanglements permeates the Souvenir de Hapsal which concludes with the well-known Chant sans paroles, while charm and virtuosity reside side-by-side in the Valse-scherzo and Capriccio.