Angelo Gilardino (born 1941) is one of the most important guitar composers of the last half century. His unique style is a blend of the old and new, folk art and contemporary music, from Mozart to Messiaen, all his works are illuminated by a warm and Mediterranean glow, a feeling of humanity and love for life. This new recording brings together Gilardino’s works inspired by Spain: the important and substantial Sonata Guadalquivir, a selection from the Transcendental Studies, and the touching Colloqio con Andrés Segovia. The musical and historical roots of this beautiful music are deep in Spain and its culture, delving from the profound heart of the guitar sound: obscure and at the same time crystalline, penetrating and elusive, from the innermost of Man’s soul. Played with affection and dedication by Antonio Rugolo, a winner of several international guitar competitions. He recorded 5 solo albums and recorded for Brilliant Classics guitar duos by Lhoyer.

REVIEW:

We are told that Luis Carlos Figueroa is one of the senior and much esteemed figures in Colombian music. As such this disc is very welcome as to most intents and purposes it serve as an initiation into the man’s music. Given his dates we might perhaps have expected a thornier style but it is warm and welcoming. This is attractive music that is well worth your ear-time.

-- MusicWeb International

This program presents a comprehensive overview of works by contemporary Italian composers played on the harpsichord, collected by Luca Quintavalle. Included are pieces for harpsichord already composed but not yet recorded (Morricone, Fedele, Solbiati, Nova, Galante, Cacciatore, Maestri, Di Cecca), arrangements for harpsichord by the artist, with the consent of the composer (Vacchi, Francesconi, Filidei, Lanza, Solbiati, Gervasoni) and completely new pieces written for the artist (Vacchi, Colombo Taccani, Palumbo, Baboni, Schilingi, Montalti, Capogrosso). It is fascinating to witness the experiments of contemporary composers when writing for the harpsichord, this “ancient” instrument, nowadays mostly used for Renaissance/Baroque music, but proving to be an endless source of unheard-of sounds and timbres, affects and sonorities. Luca Quintavalle is one of the most remarkable keyboard players of the moment. He has collaborated as a soloist with orchestras such as Concerto Köln, Les Talens Lyriques, Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble, Cappella Gabetta, Il Canto d’Orfeo, Harmonie Universelle, Divino Sospiro, Il Pomo d’Oro, Capella Augustina, La Folia Barockorchester, Kölner Kammerorchester, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and WDR Sinfonieorchester. His first solo recording of Jean-Baptiste Barrie`re’s and Bernard de Bury's harpsichord music by the label Brilliant Classics was chosen as “Recording of the month” from MusicWeb International and got really positive reviews (“a great deal of excellent playing by Luca Quintavalle; enjoyable listening, which may be unreservedly recommended.” Early Music-Oxford Journal; “I don't expect this recording to be surpassed” American Record Guide. Recently he recorded the Piano Sonatas by Anton Eberl for Brilliant Classics, to great critical acclaim.

Ian Krouse has been acclaimed by Gramophone as “one of the most communicative and intriguing” of today’s composers, his style drawing on historical and traditional influences as well as being innovative and modern. With references to Beethoven and Schubert, metaphors of darkness and light are conveyed with powerful emotion in Nocturnes, which sets four texts by well-known Armenian poets to form an odyssey through the mind of a man at mid-life. With profound sadness at its heart, Invocation explores the intangibility of love, contrasting atonality and tonality to express emotional outpourings that ultimately remain ephemeral and elusive. Both of these song-cycles are performed by the singers for which they were composed. Soprano Jessica Rivera has collaborated with many of today’s most noted composers. She appeared in the world premiere recording of John Harbison’s Requiem (8.559841), in which Gramophone wrote: ‘Among the soloists, Jessica Rivera...stand out.’ Vladimir Chernov has sung over 40 leading roles at the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala, Teatro Colón, Paris Opéra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera and Vienna State Opera, under conductors including Claudio Abbado, Valery Gergiev, James Levine and Seiji Ozawa. He previously appeared on the Naxos recording of Ian Krouse’s Armenian Requiem.

Classical Music

Winner of a 2020 GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition

Champions of new American music, the Nashville Symphony and its music director Giancarlo Guerrero had premiered numerous works and received 13 GRAMMY Awards including two for Best Orchestral Performance. Among their award-winning recordings include works by Michael Daugherty (Metropolis Symphony on 8.559635; Tales of Hemingway on 8.559798), Stephen Paulus (Three Places of Enlightenment on 8.559740), and Jennifer Higdon (All Things Majestic and Viola Concerto on 8.559823).

Rouse's Concerto for Orchestra is a ‘hyper-concerto’ that gives each player a chance to shine, while the mournful intimacy and passion of Supplica unfolds somewhat like the slow movement of a Bruckner or Mahler symphony. Rouse’s Fifth Symphony fondly recalls Beethoven’s mighty Fifth but blurs the lines between tradition and modernity, transporting the listener from turbulence to serenity. It was described as “brilliant, exciting and at times hauntingly beautiful” in The Dallas Morning News.

REVIEW:

This latest issue of music by the late Christopher Rouse contains some really splendid music. Both the Fifth Symphony and the Concerto for Orchestra exploit Rouse’s ability to juxtapose music of supercharged turbulence and rhythmic bite with passages of deeply expressive lyricism. Both take the form of a single, continuous movement some thirty minutes long, but the internal structures are quite different. The symphony features two quick outer movements enfolding a mix of adagio and scherzo, while the concerto starts like a rondo with alternating fast and slow sections, before a genuine slow movement gradually gives way to a brilliant conclusion. Rouse’s music is always so effectively scored that you might call all of it “concerto for orchestra,” and both pieces are full of arresting ideas, both melodic and gestural.

Supplica is relatively brief (twelve minutes) slow movement that sounds exactly like its title suggests: supplication, prayer, or entreaty. Its scoring is quite restrained: strings harp and brass, but Rouse’s imaginative handling of sonority is everywhere in evidence, proving conclusively that he was much more than a master of splashy instrumental effects (though he was that too). It’s a lovely, passionate piece whose lyricism never sounds trite or facile. All three works here receive excellent performances by the Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero, and they are very well engineered. Rouse was an extraordinary composer whose career ended too suddenly (he died of renal cancer in 2019, and was only 70), but his work surely deserves to endure. This release does him proud.

-- ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

When Luc Beauséjour recorded Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier [8.557625–26] he was hailed by International Piano for ‘his instinct for discovering exactly the right tempo; his playing is so natural’. He turns now to Book II of the Preludes and Fugues in all twenty-four keys, assembled for publication in 1742. A number of the pieces survive in earlier versions from previous decades, which Bach revised or transposed. Together with Book I, this constitutes one of the pinnacles of Western music.

The repertoire of Finnish music for violin and orchestra is full of hidden gems, with a substantial amount of works remaining unperformed and unpublished. The music on this recording represents a style of light classical music that was popular from the 1930s to the 1960s but remains largely forgotten today. All of the composers represented here created highly lyrical and charming works, including Uuno Klami who, after Sibelius, is considered one of the most important composers in the history of Finnish music. Linda Hedlund graduated from the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, in 2002 and went on to complete her doctorate in violin performance at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, in 2010. Since 2019 she has specialized in Baroque violin performance at Novia University of Applied Sciences in Finland. Performing internationally as a soloist and chamber musician, Hedlund has appeared as a soloist with La Tempesta Orchestra and in ensemble alongside the principal players of the Vienna Philharmonic and pianist Oliver Kern, as well as with numerous other orchestras and chamber groups worldwide.

The three cello concertos on this disc illustrate that fertile period in the second half of the 18th century when features of the Baroque were gradually replaced by the so-called galant style. Foremost amongst the composers inaugurating this change was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach chose Concerto in A major is a perfect example of the passionate and dramatic range that marked him out as a pivotal figure of his time. Haydn’s Concerto in C major modulates between older and newer styles, whereas his Concerto in D major is a Classical masterpiece, and a worthy companion to his greatest symphonies. For this recording Brantelid plays on an Emil Hjort, Copenhagen 1887 with gut strings.

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) composed two sets of “Seven times seven plus one Menuet’, resulting in the total of a hundred Menuets. It is not certain what Telemann meant with this numerical title, most likely the biblical holy number 7 plays an important part in it. Telemann’s menuets are well-crafted miniatures of sixteen to forty measures; those of the second collection are generally briefer than those of the first. In both collections, the keys are arranged alphabetically. With few exceptions, the dances are unvarying in their two-reprise structure and four-measure phrasing. Andrea Coen is an organist, harpsichordist, and fortepianist, who has studied with such distinguished artists as Ton Koopman and Alan Curtis, and has collaborated with such figures as Christopher Hogwood and Monica Huggett. His recordings of Baroque and early-Classical keyboard repertoire for Brilliant Classics have attracted glowing reviews. Coen recorded the “Kleine Kammermusik” and made the first complete recording of Telemann’s Fantasias (94228). According to MusicWeb International: ‘Coen, an experienced, insightful instrumentalist with a profound knowledge of historical performance practice and a sackfull of important recordings under his belt, could make Telemann sound special even on a typewriter.’ Andrea Coen about these 100 Menuets: “The most exciting thing, in this journey of a hundred stages, was to find in each individual minuet a unique and unrepeatable sense of originality: a hundred miniatures that compose a kaleidoscope as rich and coherent as was ever heard”.

This collection of early music for the Advent season provides a glimpse into the days of anticipation and hope leading up to Christmas during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Pierre de La Rue spent his professional life serving some of the most influential rulers of that time, and the glorious polyphony of his Missa Conceptio tua celebrates the Immaculate Conception in a manner appropriate to the extravagant liturgy of the Habsburg-Burgundian court. The seven O Antiphons focus on the theme of Jesus’s imminent arrival, while the concluding English carols centre on the Virgin Mary’s birth of the Christ child. Schola Antiqua of Chicago is a professional vocal ensemble dedicated exclusively to the performance of music from before the year 1600. An ensemble that executes the pre-modern repertory with “sensitivity and style” (Early Music America), Schola Antiqua was founded in 2000 under the artistic leadership of Calvin M. Bower (University of Notre Dame). The ensemble has recorded three albums on the Discantus label (including first recordings of music by Léonin, Du Fay, Guerrero, and Lassus).

Among Schubert’s compositions are rare and overlooked works for solo piano that reflect staging posts of his short compositional life. As a boy he had studied with Salieri who almost certainly encouraged him to explore contrapuntal techniques in 1812 – the fugues and fugal expositions he wrote are testament to his secure grounding in the form. Schubert’s admiration for Mozart is clear in the Fantasy in C minor, while the substantial Two Scherzi, D. 593 show early mastery. Also included is the Allegro in E major, Schubert’s first, unfinished attempt at a piano sonata. Pianist Wojciech Waleczek recorded Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques etreligieuses, Vol. 53 of the Complete Piano Music series on 8.573773.Gramophone wrote: ‘He is sufficiently technically equipped to allow his imagination full flight. He has a strong dramatic instinct and brings a sense of proportion when Liszt grows discursive. Perhaps most importantly, Waleczek conveys an aura of rapture to this music.’

SOPRANO MEETS BASS is the latest from Ansonica Records. This album of traditional medieval Sephardic songs arranged by jazz bassist and music director Alan Lewine and classical soprano Ana Mar�a Ruimonte is an ethnomusicological celebration of the ancient Sephardic culture. These Spanish Jews were expelled from Spain in the 15th Century and resettled throughout the world, mingling their musical traditions with those of other peoples they encountered. The original arrangements meld medieval Moorish Iberia, jazz, flamenco, Middle Eastern music, and bel canto. They have set these songs in a sort of recombinant world fusion reflecting a vibrant embodiment of the Sephardic communities and their culture. As the album's title suggests, the female voice plays a starring role in SOPRANO MEETS BASS. This reflects the fact that the Sephardic tradition has, for centuries, been an oral one, passed down from mother to daughter across an expanse of generations. Only in the 20th Century were these songs transcribed by musicologists. The stories told in the Sephardic Romancero-the repertoire from which the album's program is drawn-conjure up portraits of life in medieval Spain and the universal truths that undergird them. Spanish soprano Ana Mar�a Ruimonte gives life to these ancient melodies and lyrics, radiating from the center of a constellation of renowned virtuosos. Flamenco guitar, Israeli flute, shofar, and a trove of other culturally significant musical instruments vitalize the music of SOPRANO MEETS BASS. The artists' arrangements of the songs on SOPRANO MEETS BASS have been performed throughout the world, from Spain to Cuba to Israel and the United States. This is fitting, since each of these nations has had a hand in forming the unique amalgam of cultural music we hear in this album.

Roberto Valentini (1671-1747) was born in England in Leicester in 1671, the fourth child of a fairly wealthy family. He remained in his homeland until his twenty-first birthday, when, to complete his musical studies, he emigrated to Italy, settling in Rome. He made his name as a multi-instrumentalist (he played flute, violin, cello and oboe) and started in the music publishing business, successfully publishing his own works. Valentini’s style was first influenced by the instrumental tradition of Corelli, but in his later works he embraced the then upcoming Galant Style, with a strong emphasis on melody, charm and brilliance. This new recording contains the 12 sonatas for flute (that is the recorder) and basso continuo Op.5, as well as “La Villeggiatura’, a set of 6 sonatas for two flutes. Performed by the Cappella Musicale Enrico Stuart, with Carolina Pace and Romeo Ciuffa on recorder, accompanied by viola da gamba, theorbo, guitar, harpsichord or organ. The group already successfully recorded chamber music by Boismortier for Brilliant Classics.

Classical Music

This special ‘241’ set celebrates ten years of Gianandrea Noseda’s Musica Italiana series. Recording with both the BBC Philharmonic and the Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino, Noseda has shown a remarkable commitment to championing long-forgotten scores by well-known Italian composers as well as the finest works by altogether neglected ones. Both discs feature excerpts of more substantial orchestral and operatic works by several Italian late-Romantics and early-mid-20th c. modernists.

Wunderlich, FRITZ: Historical Recording (1954-1965)

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a contrapuntal tour de force, and one of the pinnacles in the history of the variation genre. Composed ‘to refresh the spirits of music-lovers’, it is a constantly fascinating and deeply enriching evocation of an entire musical universe. This arrangement with two ten-string guitars is a transcription of the original text including later corrections and additional musical indications made by the composer. The additional bass strings of these instruments provide an entire lower octave, giving access to the full range of musical timbres in this eternal masterpiece. Angela Kleger and Dimitar Ivanov founded Duo Synaphé in 2020 to present and record new repertoire for two ten-string guitars. These works were originally written for symphony orchestra, solo piano and other instruments. Having an extra four bass strings, the ten-string guitar offers the striking resonances of an extra octave below the normal guitar. This brings wider flexibility to voicing in arrangements, and retains the extended bass range of piano, harpsichord or other lower range instruments. The nature of these guitars takes classical masterpieces into unknown dimensions of musical expression and sound colors.

East West explores musical landscapes from the European and American parts of the globe, resulting in a kind of travel journal that begins in Eastern Europe and then travels westward Duo Aliada is known for their creative approach to adapting classical repertoire for their own instruments. Polish saxophonist Michal Knot and Serbian accordionist Bogdan Laketic formed the duo in 2013 in Vienna, a city whose rich musical tradition reflects its history as a crossroads between Eastern and Western Europe. The following years brought Michal and Bogdan to performances around the world, and into contact with various cultures and musical traditions. This wide range of experiences, beginning all the way back with their childhoods in Eastern Europe, is a major source of inspiration for their music making and for this album.

Around the world, millions of readers eagerly await the impending release of the new thriller ‘Origin’ by Dan Brown, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of ‘The Da Vinci Code.’ According to Brown, the initial spark of inspiration for his highly anticipated novel struck him when he first heard a provocative piece of classical music entitled Missa Charles Darwin — a piece composed by award-winning composer Gregory W. Brown, who also happens to be the author’s brother. The composition is featured at a crucial moment in the ‘Origin’ narrative.

Missa Charles Darwin, was written for Grammy-nominated New York Polyphony and is structured on the standard liturgical Mass. Brown painstakingly translated DNA sequences and markers into musical phrases set to texts by Charles Darwin.  In doing so, Brown simultaneously commemorates the scientist’s genius while interrogating the relationship between faith and reason.

“For some listeners Missa Charles Darwin might seem inherently subversive,” adds Gregory W. Brown, “but that can be part of the conversation. It doesn’t take anything away from religion to also celebrate Charles Darwin.”

All of Gregory’s proceeds from this release are being donated to musical education charities including Chorus America, American Choral Directors Association, and the International Society for Music Education.