This new release is the debut album of soprano Maureen Batt, and features a rare recording of Schubert’s “Op. 52 Lady of the Lake” song cycle and a newly commissioned work on the same epic Walter Scott poem by Nova Scotian composer Fiona Ryan. Sir Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake is set during an uprising of the Highland clans against the Lowland Scots who are loyal to King James V. The story focuses on Ellen Douglas, a young woman who lives in exile with her father, an outlaw who has fallen out of favor with the royal court and fled to an island in Loch Katrine with his daughter. Today, the work is not that widely known but in the nineteenth century it was a bestselling book throughout Europe. It was translated into several languages, including German which Schubert used for his song texts. Fiona Ryan writes about her contributions to this album: “I draw upon Scottish (and Nova Scotian) folk music traditions in my songs. Some movements are very obviously influenced by Scottish folksongs…and others draw inspiration from rhythmic patterns, ornamentation, and droning sounds found in Scottish bagpipe music. In a way, this project is about bringing people and ideas together… Although this is a story of a different and dangerous time, it gives an affirmative answer to the eternal question of whether people who are enemies can eventually reconcile.”

RECITAL

Played by Jeroen van Veen, the solo-piano collection (95129) of themes from Yann Tiersen’s film scores is a Brilliant Classics best seller. Now also available, some of Tiersen’s best-known melodies arranged for guitar by George Tossikian, who has given many successful concerts of this repertoire. Tiersen shot to worldwide fame with his quirky, haunting score for the Oscar-winning Amélie (2001), but by that point he had gained considerable experience composing soundtracks for short films and incidental music for plays. Several of these pieces ended up on his first album, Valse des Monstres (1995); they also featured intricate arrangements incorporating various instruments. Borrowing from French folk music, chanson, musette waltz, and street music, as well as rock, avant-garde, and classical and minimalist influences, Tiersen’s deceptively simple style has a classical base in the music of Chopin, Satie, Philip Glass and Michael Nyman. His gentle melodies lends themselves to the intimate language of the guitar, and Tossikian has selected pieces from throughout Tiersen’s career, focusing on these two albums but also including the title track La Plage. Since the days of Segovia, guitarists have practised the art of transcription, and the Greek guitarist George Tossikian continues that tradition with this album. In pieces scored for solo piano or violin, he has aimed for close fidelity, whereas in the ensemble numbers he has taken a freer, more creative approach in order to recreate the colors of Tiersen’s score using guitar techniques such as natural harmonics and tremolo. The result is no less delightful or captivating than the originals.

This album brings together players, wind instruments, and associated traditions from four continents. The compositions were written over a span of more than twenty years. They illustrate very different responses to the many compositional challenges presented by trying to create a complete sound world entirely through the use of melody. David Loeb was born in 1939 in New York into a family which took music and painting very seriously. He studied composition with Peter Pindar Stearns at the Mannes College of Music in New York, and then completed a master's degree at Yale. His catalog of compositions is unusually extensive and diverse. In addition to the expected assortment of works for orchestra, various chamber combinations, soloists, and voice, he has also written many pieces for Asian instruments (in addition to Japanese, some for Chinese, Korean, Thai, and Mongol) and for early Western instruments (in addition to viols, some for lute, harpsichord, and recorder). He has often brought these instruments together in unique combinations, such as four shakuhachi and four viols; flute, guitar, koto, and shakuhachi; and khaen, flute, guitar, cello, and percussion.

About the artist Originally formed in the early 1970s to play Afro-inspired music, the present group has maintained a consistent lineup since the early 1990s. While the band started performing covers of West African tunes, Good People has evolved to be a repertoire of original material with some traditional tunes with new arrangements. As more and more African immigrants entered Finland, they joined the band and now Good People can boast it features top West African musicians as well as some of the best Finnish professionals around. About the music Drawing inspiration from both traditional West African music and Western pop-based music, the group combines these distinctive styles for a special 'Good People' sound. The percussive beats make use of indigenous instruments like djembe drums, balafon, marimba while modern equipment like guitar and saxophones provide a contemporary air to the melodic proceeding. Mix in it's inspirational lyrics of harmony and fabled stories, and the result is a pulsing delight of Afro-Nordic jamming.

One of the most important missions of the work of the 441 Hz Chamber Choir is performing and promoting contemporary choral music. On a daily basis, the ensemble, under the direction of Anna Wilczewska, carries out a busy concert schedule, performing mainly contemporary music repertoire. This album is a presentation of contemporary choral music originating from countries of the North, mainly from Scandinavia. The album is filled with the diversity of creative inspiration, free references to the folklore, customs and savage northern nature, and originality of the compositional techniques. All this contributes to a broad musical panorama constructed from the works of eleven composers, which, despite this fact, constitutes a coherent, homogeneous whole, which is brilliantly performed by the ensemble.

Wilke te Brummelstroete, Peter Gijsbertsen, Jozef de Beehouwer and the Antverpia String Ensemble join together, lead by Ivo Venkov to showcase the Flemish composer, Jef Van Hoof. Van Hoof was a prolific composer of choral music, symphonies, songs, piano music and operas. His works were incredibly important to the struggling Flemish culture of his time.

Arthur Schoonderwoerd and his Ensemble Cristofori are taking on Beethoven’s Symphonies but in a very different style. Tempo, accentuation, phrasing, or structural architecture are not the first thing that strikes us when we listen to Arthur Schoonderwoerd’s performances of Classical orchestra music for the first time. Instead, the first thing we notice is that the music sounds different. The orchestra is unusually small. Ensemble Cristofori plays as an orchestra- string quartet, double bass, and winds- and the effect is stunning. The orchestral sound is present, but each voice can be heard specifically as well. Arthur Schoonderwoerd is a well established pianist and powerful conductor, and is widely known as a consistent advocate for Early Music performance. He is also a powerful conductor of 21st century music.

REVIEW:

Hungarian virtuoso Géza Anda (1921-1976) opens a recital derived from radio broadcasts from SWR Stuttgart with Haydn’s perky F Major Sonata (17 April 1950), given a sparkling bravura rendition. Anda’s pearly play and deft touch make themselves felt in every concerted bar, and the runaway Presto finale might be a minor meteor. Schumann ever maintained Anda’s devotion, and he often programmed Symphonic Etudes, including the free interpolation of the five posthumous variations. The rendition included here (2 October 1951) includes two of the posthumous etudes, nos. 4 and 5, inserted after the sixth and eighth of the traditional studies. The first exploits sweeping arpeggios and glissandi techniques; the latter opens a jeweled music-box filled with nectar crystals. The serenity yields to the following Etude, a staccato study in syncopations that becomes quite frantic. Etude X, for want of a better term, has always struck me as “Brahmsian” for its double octaves. The agitato mysteries of Etude XI have rarely been so rarified in their mist contours, except perhaps from Cherkassky. The Etude XII finale, besides its obvious, heroic bravura, exudes the Innigkeit requisite...

The Ravel waltzes, in their sturdy percussion, date from 19 May 1951. Anda does not spare the fortissimos nor the pedal, moving to extremes in the first two waltzes, from aggression to erotic insinuation. The dance marked “Presque lent--dans un sentiment intime” has its perfect executor in Anda, which rivals the classically-chiseled entry by Robert Casadesus. Lithe and sensuously nimble, the last two waltzes--Moins vif et Epilogue--combine Vienna glitter and Schubert’s intimate suggestiveness in Ravel’s idiosyncratic kaleidoscopic panoply. Rolf Liebermann’s 1951 Sonata (2 October 1951) marks one of the few pieces Anda programmed that post-date World War II. His “modern” repertory ceased, for the most part, with the 1945 Third Concerto of Bartok. Liebermann (1910-1999) begins his nine-minute work with a toccata-style Vivace with periodic moments of pointillist staccati. The heart of the piece is the Andante espessivo, rather angular and reminiscent of Ravel, Gershwin, and modal Poulenc.

The second disc is devoted to the 1955 (May 21) recital at Ludwigsburg, a venue frequented by Anda’s esteemed colleague, Clara Haskil. Anda opens with the First Ballade of Chopin, a reading of balanced intensities, gothic and introspective at once. The music’s fierce Neapolitan harmonies and inner tumult manage to find a noble repose in the course of its poetic declamation mid-way, only to yield to the Dionysiac dramaturgy of its late pages with a passionate abandon that belies Anda’s repute for “objectivity.”

Anda recorded the Op. 25 set of Chopin Etudes for EMI, and he often featured the complete ensemble as a concert staple. He plays the A-flat Major for its serene beauty, and thus sets the tone for the remainder, to be played in the classic style of Backhaus, for poetry and strength of form.

The Brahms E-flat Major intermezzo, a simple, nostalgic folk song evocation, makes the perfect commentary to all of the “learned” counterpoint of this evening’s colossal recital at Ludwigsburg, where the spirit of colleague Clara Haskil must have lingered nigh.

-- Audiophile Edition

Classical Music

Fryderyk Chopin transformed the scherzo into an autonomous, independent work, rather than a part of a symphony or sonata as it was previously part of during the Classical era. Expanding this genre gave it a newer, more romantic and dramatic expression. The composer's polonaises give us a glance into his Polish patriotism. The polonaise is the most important national dance of Poland, and Chopin composed 18 over his lifetime. Polish pianist Raphael Alexandre Lustchevsky performs these works brilliantly. He has won multiple international awards, and has performed with some of the world's leading orchestras, such as the Krakow Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Oman Philharmonic.

The CD begins with one of Friedrich Cerha’s first surviving compositions, the Hindemith-like First Violin Sonata of 1947. Two later works, from almost half a century on, complete the stylistic trajectory. One of them, the Sechs Stücke für Violine Solo, was written for the violinist on this CD, Ernst Kovacic, a friend of the composer for many years. Cerha wrote the booklet notes, available in English and German.

REVIEW:

For those who wish to explore a cross-section of the violin music of what appears to be one of the most commanding voices among recent composers, not to mention violinist-composers, Toccata’s collection, with its brilliant and, seemingly, authoritative performances and lively recorded sound, should be a natural choice. In every way, it’s another winner from Toccata that can be very warmly recommended.

-- Fanfare

John Blow, who was to give service to five monarchs, was born into a humble family in Nottinghamshire, presumably at Newark, sometime within a month of the beheading of King Charles I. He was a music scholar at the Magnus Song School in Newark before becoming a chorister in the Chapel Royal. There, under the tutelage of Henry Cooke, his colleagues included Pelham Humfrey, Robert Smith, William Turner and Michael Wise - all of whom achieved significant distinction in their later careers. Blow showed considerable promise as a composer; several of his anthems were included in the chapel repertory. Blow became an organ pupil of Christopher Gibbons before his first appointment at Westminster Abbey at the age of nineteen and he was made Musician for the Virginals to the King a year later. From 1674 until his death, he was Master of the Children at the Chapel Royal. In 1679 he transferred his office at Westminster Abbey to his pupil Henry Purcell, with whom he shared a close professional relationship and lifelong friendship. He took over the post again after Purcell’s untimely death in 1695, and held several other important positions in London: as Master of the Choristers of St Paul’s Cathedral and appointments at court. He continued to serve as Abbey organist until his death. Blow stands out as the dominant figure among the group of London-based musicians whose work is associated with the royal court beginning around 1650, and which assimilated first Italian, and then later elements of French influence. Among the new school of composers were Blow’s pupils Jeremiah Clarke and William Croft, and, of course, the towering musician of the age - Henry Purcell.

Opus 2 - the second album of violinist Sebastian Bohren & Chaarts Chamber Artists for RCA Red seal. A singular combination of Mendelssohn’s early, rarely performed violin concerto in D minor with works by Hartmann, Respighi & Schubert. The Violin Concerto in D minor was composed when Mendelssohn was just 13, and has remained popular since its rediscovery in the middle of the 20th century by Yehudi Menuhin. The Concerto funebre for violin and strings has established itself as Karl Amadeus Hartmann's most familiar work. Hartmann (1905-1963) discovered new and individual solutions that confirm the importance of his concertos as significant and original contributions to the development of this form in the 20th-century. “Old dances and arias”, Suite No. 3 - masterpieces of Ottorino Respighi. His Antiche danze ed arie, free arrangements of arias and dances from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, enables listeners to rediscover forgotten rhythms and tones. Franz Schubert wrote the Rondo for Violin and Strings, D 438 in 1816. Like the roughly contemporary Adagio and Rondo concertante in F major, D 487, the work is a concertante piece designed to highlight the skills of the violin soloist. The piece was unpublished during the composer's lifetime, not seeing publication until 1897, when Breitkopf & Härtel published it in an edition edited by Eusebius Mandyczewski.

Grigoriu (b. Moldavia, 1926) is one of the major Romanian composers in the period after Enescu. His vast output is little known outside his own country, although it includes oratorios, symphonies, cantatas, chamber music, film-scores, and much more. His musical roots reach back to Romanian folk-music and the modal melodies of ancient Byzantium.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Danish organist Kristian Krogsoe is the cathedral organist for the second biggest Danish town, Aarhus. The cathedral has the biggest Danish cathedral organ build by Danish organ builder Frobenius. All of the music on this new release is by an organ master, and it all comes back to Bach- it is all either by J.S. Bach himself or inspired by Bach with arrangements done by Guilmant, Middleschulte and Max Reger. The famous Chaconne for solo violin is here receiving a truly stunning performance in an idiomatic arrangement by the German Middleschulte. Overpowering is the Liszt organ work Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, not to be diminished by the Max Reger Fantasy and Fugue on BACH. These works are all brilliantly recorded, and the release includes an extensive booklet.

Vivaldi, more than any of his Italian contemporaries, left a great number of works composed for diverse and highly imaginative combinations of wind and string instruments. The source of this inspiration can be traced back not only to the composer’s own personal tastes, but especially to his good fortune to have worked for an institution such as the Pietà, which had at its disposal an unrivalled wealth of instrumental forces. This interest is a constant element throughout his entire production.

POLISH CHRISTMAS CAROLS