Classical Music

Pierre Boulez conducts the Vienna Philharmonic with pianist Daniel Barenboim in works by Ravel, Bartok, and Stravinsky.

"•Wilhelm Mengelberg, the legendary and controversial conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra for fifty years (1895-1945), famed for his championing of both Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, is heard here conducting, among other Schubertian coimpositions,Schubert's final two symphonic masterpieces. • This set has received excellent reviews in the European music press."

This is an audio-only (i.e., with no video content) Blu-ray disc playable only on Blu-ray players.

Also available on standard CD

George Gershwin’s Concerto in F was a response to demands for a ‘proper concerto’ after the success of Rhapsody in Blue, avoiding programmatic content while providing a feast of tunes both uplifting and nostalgic. Originally intended as music for a film, his up-beat Rhapsody No 2 describes the bustling Manhattan cityscape while under construction. Sourced from his hit musical Girl Crazy, I Got Rhythm Variations was Gershwin’s last full score. Pianist Orion Weiss is one of the most sought-after soloists and collaborators of his generation of young American musicians.

Alexander Rahbari’s My Mother Persia is a cycle of symphonic poems suffused with the rich melodies, rhythms and improvisations of Persian traditional music in which he is profoundly versed both as composer and conductor. Originally written as a violin concerto, Symphonic Poem No. 9 ‘Nohe Khan’ – the name relates to a singer at religious ceremonies – was recast for baritone saxophone in 2018. Symphonic Poem No. 10 ‘Morshed’ vividly explores ritualized song in the context of ‘ancient sport’. Volume 1 is on 8.574064 and Volume 2 on 8.574065. Alexander Rahbari is a remarkable figure in the music world, taking a leading position in the cultural development of his country from a young age, winning numerous awards as a conductor and becoming closely associated with the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra as assistant to Herbert von Karajan. Rahbari has conducted numerous successful Naxos recordings, but this is the world premiere release of his cycle of symphonic poems My Mother Persia.

Award winning pianist Klara Min has been recognized for her "excellent technique, exuberance and vitality". Here she brings the unique synthesis of traditional sources and contemporary compositional techniques of five leading Korean composers.

Clownaround is a funny kind of musical for the entire family that is based on the subject of fools, jesters and clowns. The delightful show is performed by a singing, dancing company of over seventy clowns and columbines.

Two years ago, Alvin Cooperman brought the concept for the show to his riend, composer Moose Charlap, whose musical talents were responsible for Peter Pan. He was fascinated by the material, and together they completed the music and lyrics for this new kind of arena musical.

Clownaround entertains everyone, young and old alike with its freshness, its zaniness and its total enjoyability. It is a musical adventure which takes you into the world of clowns – that magical, musical laugh-filled and slightly distorted mirror of the real world that moves on its bent axis around the first corner of the universe. Its light is a reflection of the sun bouncing off small handmirrors used by pretty ladies. Its moon is the light atop the Empire State Building. Its culture is made of our dreams, our faults and our wild oats, all of which we see so clearly in clowns but rarely ever see in ourselves. As you journey through this musical adventure into the world of clowns, you will feel and see and laugh and sing and, occasionally, taste the salt of a tear while watching them perform in our motlied reflection.

When the show was completely written, Cooperman and Charlap played it for the one man whose personality, experience and talent would take concept and music and lyrics and weave them into a tapestry of family entertainment to be enjoyed by one and all – and that man was Gene Kelly. He took the material and Sean Kenny’s clown machine and added his particular brand of genius to give us Clownaround.

– From the original liner notes for LSP-4741


CONCEIVED AND WRITTEN BY Alvin Cooperman
LYRICS BY Alvin Cooperman
MUSIC BY Moose Charlap
ORCHESTRATIONS BY Jack Elliott and Allyn Ferguson
MUSICAL SUPERVISION BY Harper MacKay

Tracks:
1 Clowns 4:28
2 You’re a Clown 2:52
3 Here Are Your Children 2:28
4 Silhouette (Paper Heart) 3:46
5 Animal Band 4:47
6 Balloon 4:08
7 Thingamajig 3:28
8 Laugh Song 3:20
9 Sunny Day 4:25
10 I Need a Ship 3:58
11 Clown Alley 1:43
12 Clowns Say Goodnight (But Not Goodbye) 2:19

Although most widely remembered for his operettas in partnership with W.S. Gilbert, Sir Arthur Sullivan was the most famous of all British composers of the nineteenth century. He was revered as a composer of oratorios, and was urged by Queen Victoria to compose a grand opera. The result, Ivanhoe, achieved 155 consecutive performances (in an opera house especially built for it). Achieving equal success in his lifetime, his substantial legacy of songs fell into neglect in the twentieth century, but as this album demonstrates Sullivan's endlessly fertile melodic gifts withstand comparison with those of any other song composer. David Owen Norris and his quartet of outstanding young British singers deliver this fascinating programme with terrific style and panache.

Korngold’s breathtaking precocity is everywhere in evidence in these two chamber masterpieces. The Piano Trio was composed when he was just twelve years old but its symphonic breadth and brilliantly demanding piano writing reveal myriad tonal colors and a mischievous reinvention of conventional Viennese form. Audacious yet rooted in lyricism, the String Sextet was written almost five years later and possesses memorable themes as well as a refined, theatrical intimacy.

Spectrum Concerts Berlin is one of Germany’s most significant voices in the world of chamber music and has specialized for Naxos in the music of expatriate German/Austrian composers. Their recording of Schulhoff’s String Sextet (8.573525) was a MusicWeb International ‘Recording of the Month’ in December2016: ‘This is sometimes quite difficult music... [But] it is given a terrific performance here by a group of string players’.

The English composer Edmund Rubbra described the string quartet as 'the purest and most lucid texture available to a composer', his essays in the form enlivened by Beethovenian vigour and song-like beauty.

Also available on Blu-ray

Rossini’s comic masterpiece The Barber of Seville was based on Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’s French play Le Barbier de Séville and is the ultimate opera buffa. The score is a compendium of the composer’s wittiest and most brilliant writing, and includes the famous entrance aria Largo al factotum and a raft of superbly dynamic ensembles. This vibrant and youthful production features Florian Sempey, one of the world’s best Figaros, the ‘Rossini tenor’ Michele Angelini, vivacious and critically admired Catherine Trottmann, and the award-winning team of acclaimed director Laurent Pelly and conductor Jérémie Rhorer who directs his spirited period ensemble Le Cercle de l’Harmonie.

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REVIEW:

The cast are in modern dress but the interaction of characters is so forceful as to sweep away any lurking objections. Add to this some very fine singing, particularly from Michele Angelini’s glorious high tenor as Almaviva, and there is a great deal here to admire and enjoy.

– Lark Reviews

Also available on Blu-ray

Classical Music

Spanish Composer Joaqui?N Rodrigo (1901-99) Was One of the Foremost Guitar Composers of the 20th C. His 1939 Concierto de Aranjuez, with It's Evocative Andalusian Color, Indelible Melody and Subtle and Effective Orchestration, Is Assuredly One of the Genre's Best-Loved Works. The Passionate and Vital Concierto Andaluz Is Scored for Guitar Quartet and Orchestra, Whilst in the Concierto Madrigal Rodrigo Employs Variation Form to Brilliant Effect.

The Places - the monastery at Ottobeuren was founded in 764 and included buildings from the succeeding centuries, subsequently destroyed by fire. The present buildings date from the beginning of the 18th century, with the church rebuilt under the architect Johann Michael Fischer. It remains a remarkable monument to it's period, and the ornate Abbey Church, with it's frescoes and elaborate rococo decoration is bewildering in it's splendor. The Music - Music accompanying the visit to Ottobeuren consists of choruses from Handel's oratorio Messiah, written in 1741. Of all English oratorios Handel's Messiah has always been the most overwhelmingly popular. It is the least theatrical of all his oratorios and the most purely sacred in it's choice of subject, the Messiah, a compendious version of the coming of Christ, His death and resurrection. The text, by Charles Jennens, drew extensively on the Authorized Version of the Bible, and an additional attraction has always been the large number of choruses included, a larger number than in any other of Handel's oratorios.

Oberto was Verdi's first staged operas and was heard for the first time at La Scala, Milan in November 1839. As a young and unknown composer, Verdi was subject to the rules governing the opera industry in Italy. Even so, there are many scenes in this early work that reveal unmistakable signs of the composer's individual style.

BACH - BRITTEN - KODALY

Rodrigo’s music for solo guitar is not extensive but represents an important pillar of the repertoire, ranging from vignettes to sonatas over a six-decade period. The 1933 Toccata was rediscovered in 2005 and has since provided an ambitiously virtuosic vehicle for today’s guitarists. Rodrigo flecked his works with elements of fantasy, flamenco and bird song while Un tiempo fue Itálica famosa, one of his very greatest works in the genre, is superbly impassioned. The tender Pastoral, originally for piano, is here transcribed for guitar by Jérémy Jouve whose first volume in this series (8.570286) received a three-star review (“The young French guitarist plays brilliantly”) in the Penguin Guide.

The violin works of the leading German composer Wolfgang Rihm encompass almost his entire career and reflect the variety of his stylistic thinking. ‘Lichtzwang,’ the earliest of his concertos, draws on chorale-like sequences and piercing outbursts alike in its memorializing of the writer Paul Celan. ‘Dritte Musik’ begins almost imperceptibly before growing in intensity and eventually slipping beyond audibility. Defter and more subtle than the preceding pieces, ‘Gedicht des Malers’ (Poem of the Painter) was inspired by an imagined painting of the great Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye. As Rihm has written: “The soloist virtually embodies the painter’s brush as it moves over the canvas in sometimes faster and sometimes more deliberate ways.”

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REVIEW:

Lichtzwang is one of the great elegaic works for violin and orchestra, in the same class as Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto. Dritte Musik, his third violin concerto, also has its contemplative moments, but overall it has a wider range of emotions. His most recent violin concerto, from 2014, is his Gedicht des Malers (Poem of the Painter). The painter is Max Beckmann, an important figure in Rihm’s music. This is a wonderful album.

– Music for Several Instruments (Dean Frey)

This premiere recording of master percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie's new international ensemble offers a programme of fourteen improvised pieces that push the boundaries of spontaneous music-making. The group brings together musical traditions from four varied cultures (Scotland, Serbia, the United States and Denmark) but with a common goal: to create spontaneous music of great beauty and power which utilizes the basic formal elements of musical composition- melody, harmony, rhythm, and form.