Apollo descends to earth and proposes marriage to Oebalus' daughter Melia. But when he goes to play discus with her brother Hyacinthus and his friend Zephyrus, a tragic accident occurs, after which nothing will ever be the same again... Classical Opera's series of Mozart's complete operas on Signum continues with the addition of Apollo et Hyacinthus, the second of his two stage works from 1767. The opera is sung in Latin, and is based on a colourful story from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Mozart was only eleven years old when he wrote this remarkable work, but the music is astonishingly accomplished, frequently anticipating the wonders of his maturity.

A 2021 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Orchestral Performance!

Pulitzer and Erasmus Prize-winning composer John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of American music. His works stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. Adams describes My Father Knew Charles Ives as “an homage and encomium to a composer whose influence on me has been huge.” Harmonielehre was a deliberate move by Adams to expand his musical language beyond Minimalism, keeping its energetic pulse but embracing the rich tonal resources of the past to create a work that has accrued an aura of timelessness. Six-time GRAMMY Award-winning conductor Giancarlo Guerrerois music director of the Nashville Symphony and the NFM Wroc?aw Philharmonic in Poland, as well as principal guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, Portugal. He has championed contemporary American music through numerous commissions, recordings and performances with the Nashville Symphony, presenting eleven world premieres of works by Michael Daugherty, Terry Riley, and others. As part of this commitment, he helped guide the creation of Nashville Symphony’s Composer Lab & Workshop initiative.

 

REVIEWS:

 

In point of fact, John Adams’ father did not know Charles Ives, but imagined that they had a good deal in common, and that was a springboard to a work that is unlike any other among Adams’ output. It’s not at all clear why My Father Knew Charles Ives has been so neglected. The work gets a detailed, sympathetic treatment here from Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Guerrero and the Nashvillians have done a major service by reviving My Father Knew Charles Ives.

 

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

 

Given the difference in ambiance and style between the two works, these brilliantly played and recorded performances might just make an ideal point of entry for those new to the composer.

 

 

– MusicWeb International

In 2015, Sony Classical reissued Die Walküre and Siegfried from the first digital recording of the Ring. “It has stood the test of time remarkably well”, observed ClassicsToday.com when the complete set, originally released in 1983, was last reissued. “The Staatskapelle Dresden plays spotlessly for Marek Janowski … An excellent ‘Ring’ experience.” Now the remaining two music dramas from this acclaimed cycle are again available separately. Gramophone in 1997 praised the “marvellously clean, spacious digital recording” and “Janowski’s fast, lyrical, wholly cogent reading [which] has the Dresden Staatskapelle playing with the utmost beauty from start to finish – try the start of Act 3 of Götterdämmerung – and with lean power when that’s called for … Voices and players are in an ideal relationship, which is not say that such [orchestral] passages as the Rhine Journey and Funeral March want anything in visceral excitement … Matti Salminen is a commanding, often subtle Hagen … The smaller parts, especially Rhinemaidens led by Lucia Popp, are well taken …

It’s no surprise that The King’s Singers have recorded a huge number of love songs on all kinds of albums over the last fifty years. Some of these were albums devoted to love songs like Chanson d’amour and Romance du soir. Other albums couldn’t help but include music about love, although their theme was actually different. This album, Love Songs, is a chance to revisit some of the ensemble’s favorite tracks that they’ve recorded over the last two decades, compiled from across their back catalogue with Signum Records. The tracks they’ve chosen have come from five different albums, released between 2008 and 2017. Rather than trying to take in any of the enormous number of classical love songs from the back catalogue, the group wanted to focus on some of the best folk songs, jazz standards, and pop songs that have featured in King’s Singers concerts throughout their history. This selection has been curated especially to celebrate the group’s favorite recent albums, and to show how rich and varied the tapestry of love songs we have today is.

REVIEWS:

[A] spirited, handsomely sung program of entries representing a number of genres. I enjoy the bass fiddle licks sung with such jazzy appeal in ‘I’ve Got the World On a String’ (Harold Arlen) and Jerome Kern’s ‘I Won’t Dance’. The softrock arpeggios in Paul Simon’s ‘April Come She Will’ and ‘Helplessly Hoping’ (Stephen Stills) are great fun, and I will happily make time for Simon Carrington’s radiant arrangement of ‘My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose’. For a union of the British choral tradition and the Doo-Wop style, look no further than this rendition of ‘At Last’.

A cappella groups singing in this style have proliferated like gangbusters on high school and college campuses. If a young musician you know is singing in one, why not get ahold of this and show them what the gold standard sounds like.

-- American Record Guide

At long last our successful Reger Edition continues on its way. The critics have been more than enthusiastic about the previous releases, and Musik & Theater even stated: “These recordings number among the best currently available in the field of Reger’s organ music.” This month we are releasing Vol. 7, again with two albums in the best SS, and this time featuring Reger’s five easy-to-play Preludes and Fugues op. 56. Although the composer termed this composition “an organ work of small caliber” in a letter to the publisher Lauterbach & Kuhn, the critics reacted positively, and the organist and composer Robert Frenzel numbered its pieces, which form anything but a secondary work, “among the most poetic phenomena in the most recent organ literature.” And we absolutely have to agree with him. The generic combination of “Prelude and Fugue” is frequently assigned to the realm of so-called absolute music, but Reger’s op. 56 does not seem to belong to this world in which only the musical structure is of significance; instead, particularly the preludes, which mostly practice dynamic moderation – like many of the “pieces” from op. 59 and other works – are distinguished by a pronounced poetic character.

Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen is undoubtedly a rising star at the moment, following successful appearances at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Oper Frankfurt, Komische Oper Berlin, and Teatro alla Scala in Milan. On the concert stage she has made recent important appearances with the Orchestre de Paris, Berliner Philharmoniker, Oslo Philharmonic, and Münchner Philharmoniker among others. Here she joins the Bergen Philharmonic and Edward Gardner for a powerful album of orchestral songs, coupling Britten’s Les Illuminations and Four French Songs with a selection of Cantaloube’s inimitable Songs of the Auvergne. Eriksmoen spent a year studying in Paris, and proves an effective and natural singer of the French language. As she mentions in her program note: ‘It is highly demanding to sing in French when it is not one’s native tongue, but I have always felt at home when singing in French and nurture an emotional attachment to the French language.’

REVIEWS:

One cannot can’t praise Eriksmoen enough for the accuracy of her singing, its tonal beauty, and her absorption in the text. There are running passages, exposed intervals, and those chromatic steps to contend with. She faces every challenge with ease.

-- Fanfare

In Britten’s Les illuminations, the generally belllike accuracy of Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen’s singing is more than matched by the expressive truth of her interpretations. She is most beguiling when floating her voice weightlessly and with a serene joie de vivre in ‘Antique’, perfectly partnered by the lovely violin playing of the Bergen Philharmonic leader Melina Mandozzi.

-- BBC Music Magazine

There are many questions surrounding Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Six Solos for violin’, or the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, as they are usually called today. When did he compose them, and why, and for whom? In what circumstances were they performed? And why would a master of polyphony choose to write for a melody instrument with limited scope for polyphony or chords? We can only guess at the answers – which makes the works all the more fascinating. The legendary violinist George Enescu famously described the set as ‘the Himalayas of violinists’, but for more than 200 years they were primarily regarded as pedagogical exercises rather than compositions worthy of the concert hall. Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann tried to popularize them by making versions with piano accompaniment, while Busoni did away with the violin altogether in his transcription of the famous Chaconne from Partita No. 2. But since Yehudi Menuhin made the first complete recording of the Sonatas and Partitas, between 1929 and 1936, they have become a staple during violin recitals, on disc and in concert. Fascinating performers and audiences alike with their architectural perfection as well as their emotional range, these are works that lend themselves to very different interpretations, and on this recording it is the Bach of Finnish violinist Jaakko Kuusisto we hear. Himself a composer – as well as violinist and conductor – Kuusisto remembers beginning to study individual movements from the set at the age of ten. The music has been with him ever since, and to him ‘no other works for the violin provide a higher challenge or greater beauty’.

REVIEW:

Kuusisto plays with an offhanded, technical nonchalance, as if there were neither any of the traditional expectations or technical hurdles to overcome. Everything sounds so organic and natural that listening becomes increasingly enjoyable. The musical detail can certainly be heard, yet Kuusisto does not force that conspicuously on the listener.

– Klassikheute.com (Germany)

What we know as ‘Handel’s Opus 3’ is most likely little more than a brazen attempt by the London publisher John Walsh to make some quick money. In 1715, Walsh had issued a pirated edition of Corelli’s 12 Concerti Grossi Opus 6 which proved an instant success and left him constantly looking for similar opportunities. Almost 20 years later, perhaps in the knowledge that the royal protection granted to Handel’s musical output was about to expire, Walsh assembled a set of six orchestral pieces for a wide range of instruments. He prefaced them with a wholly misleading title-page – based on Corelli’s style-defining collection – and advertised them as Handel’s ‘Opera Terza’. It is likely that Handel never took part in the selection and organization of the individual movements, although he may have been involved in the revisions made when a reprint was necessary a few years later. Selected from various sources, the six concertos certainly don’t form an organic cycle – in complete contrast to the future Op.?6 concerti grossi, which Handel carefully conceived as a set. The fact remains that Opus 3 contains some of Handel’s best-loved music, in instrumental combinations that are colorful and often unexpected – aspects that Martin Gester and his musicians in the Tasmanian period band Van Diemen’s Band make the most of.

REVIEW:

Handel's op. 3 collection is a test for any group: staying true to the letter & spirit of the score, while keeping the music sounding fresh and alive. Martin Gester and his Tasmanian group Van Diemen's Band have done exactly that, in this wonderful new album from BIS. There's plenty of fire burning here, but it's within the context of impressive musical discipline and lightly-worn Historically Informed Performance scholarship. BIS provides the kind of direct and transparent sound that allows Early Instruments to flourish. This is a highly recommended release!

-- Music for Several Instruments

Widely regarded as one of America’s pre-eminent living composers, Joan Tower, who is also a pianist, is particularly devoted to chamber music. Organic structures underpin her string quartets; there is ‘heat from within’ and radiance of texture in "Incandescent", her third quartet, virtuosic interplay in No. 4, "Angels", and fluid connections in "White Water", her fifth string quartet. Only the third composer – after Stravinsky and Copland – to be commissioned by the Dumbarton Oaks Foundation, Dumbarton Quintet pursues extremes of moods both romantically consonant and dissonant.

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REVIEW:

Premiere recordings of three quartets and a piano quintet, composed over a 10-year span and performed by two outstanding American quartets. The Fifth Quartet has an aquatic feel and flow, the music leading towards an exquisite, radiant end. The Piano Quintet is a characteristically dynamic and angular score, tempered by the piano's warmth and and an intriguing range of combined sounds.

– Gramophone

This is the penultimate release in the Chandos series of Brahms works for solo piano, performed by Barry Douglas. | Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist and an innovator with his music being rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of Baroque and Classical eras. | These recordings are being performed in the finest international venues including the Wigmore Hall and Concertgebouw. | This fifth volume is the most virtuosic of the series, including the Scherzo in E flat minor, technically demanding variations, several intermezzi, and three Hungarian Dances. | Barry Douglas is gainging a reputation of one the few world-class piano virtuosi of the romantic repertoire. | Barry Douglas won the 1986 Tchaikovksy Competition in Russia.

Classical Music

The cellist Jan Vogler, who lives in New York and Dresden, has recorded three Double concertos for violin, cello and orchestra with his wife, the outstanding violinist Mira Wang, with the renowned Royal Scottish National Orchestra under direction of Peter Oundjian. Brahms' famous Double concerto captivates with wonderfully sweeping melodies, romantic sounds, eloquent solos and great orchestral sound. The English press wrote about one of the previous concerts: "Vogler, in particular, treated his solo sections like an operatic recitative, even in the faster Vivace sections of the finale, and Wang, his wife, matched him both in virtuosity and in beauty of tone. The highlight, however, was the opening of the slow movement, which produced sensational legato tone, soloists and orchestra slotting into one another like concentric circles, and creating a sound like molten chocolate.” The American composer John Harbison (born 1938), whose cello concerto premiered by Yo-Yo Ma has already caused a sensation, composed the Double concerto for the Boston Symphony Orchestra commissioned by the Friends of the Dresden Festival. The highly praised world premiere with Jan Vogler and Mira Wang took place on April 8th 2010 in Boston under the direction of Carlos Kalmar. Now this colorful, dynamic work full of glittering virtuosity can be heard for the first time in a recording. The German composer Wolfgang Rihm (born 1953) is considered one of the most important composers of our time. His "Duo Concerto", performed at Carnegie Hall in New York by Jan Vogler and Mira Wang with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in 2015, completes this fascinating new recording of three Double concerts with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

• A 1957 live performance from Stuttgart, conducted by Lovro von Matacic. • The great Heldentenor Wolfgang Windgassen stars as Rienzi. • Stuttgart came to be known as the “Winter Bayreuth” for its staging of Wagner operas not slated for performance in Bayreuth.

The first album of Natalie Dessay for Sony Classical is a journey through music (Great American Song Book, Broadway & Jazz) and art (Edward Hopper) - This is not a classical album. "I was delighted to once again work with Claire Gibault, who now leads her own chamber orchestra, the Paris Mozart Orchestra, more than twenty years after she first accompanied my Mozart performance at the start of my career as a classical singer. It all started with a couple of Edward Hopper paintings that inspired the beautiful stories of poet Claude Esteban, which Graciane Finzi in turn illustrated with her delicate and inventive music. Claire asked me to tell the story of these "melologues". For my part, I selected ten other paintings that inspired me to choose a range of songs from what's known as the "Great American Songbook".

I asked five incredible musicians to arrange them for the Paris Mozart Orchestra, thereby building a bridge between classical music, jazz, and musicals. I then worked to develop a new voice—a deeper and more intimate sound that would whisper into the listener's ear. It was a voice I had to learn to control, like a small, secretive wild animal. I wanted to open things up with "On A Clear Day", which serves as an introduction, and a promise. Next comes a self-deprecating and low-pitched version of "I Feel Pretty" in quintuple time that leads naturally into "I Am A Fool To Want You", a song about someone who is ready to do anything and everything to win over a lost love. "Send In The Clowns" marks the disenchantment of people whose paths cross, but never at the right time. Hope lies just beyond the next bend in the road with "Detour Ahead" followed by "Something's Coming…Maybe Tonight". Next is "Autour de minuit" based on the beautiful poem by Claude Nougaro, which rings with the promise of a brighter tomorrow and of luck that might finally go our way. But the memory of our beloved refuses to fade, and every night we find ourselves back at the counter of a café that echoes with happy memories with "I Keep Going Back To Joe's", except that now it's just us at the bar as we listen to "In My Solitude". It's times like these that make us want to settle down with "A Place You Want To Call Home", but in the end, as "The Two Lonely People" asks, won't we always wind up alone even when we think we have a special someone? What do we have left, then, if not show business? As "There's No Business Like Show Business" tells us, isn't the world just a stage filled? Enjoy your journey through music and paintings with these "Pictures of America"."

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REVIEW:

Dessay sounds in great form and uses every trick in the book. She takes aspects of a Streisand-inspired technique. Taking the cover off the voice mid-note and opening the tone right out to its full; or whittling it down to a sexy, Julie London whisper.

– Opera Now

Robert Still’s four string quartets vividly encapsulate his compositional career. The first two, of which No. 1 was first performed in 1948, display an early inclination towards folk-song and pre- classical models, while Nos. 3 and 4, written during the 1960s “without key”, reflect his later change towards a continental European-influenced method of composition that can be summed up by the abandonment of writing in a tonal style. These world première recordings owe a considerable debt to the editorial expertise of James Dickenson, leader of the Villiers Quartet, who prepared the performance material from the original scores.

Following his extraordinary, critically acclaimed recording of concertos by Martinu, Hindemith, and Honegger, the charismatic Johannes Moser returns with a stunning new release, featuring two of the most distinguished 20th century cello concertos. Both works were originally composed for the great Mstislav Rostropovich. Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 was premiered in October 1959, and is characterized by vitality, humor and virtuosity. Britten's "Symphony for Cello and Orchestra" op 68 was premiered in 1964, with Rostropovich once again as soloist. This new recording continues Moser's stunning exploration of 20th century cello concertos while at the same time building upon his masterful interpretations of cello sonatas by the same featured composers, Shostakovich and Britten.

Classical Music

Finnish pianist-composer Olli Mustonen’s recordings of Preludes and Fugues by Bach and Shostakovich were released in 1999 and 2004. “Perhaps only an artist as innovative and convincing as Mustonen could have made it work as well as it does,” wrote BBC Music Magazine of the first volume. Of the second, Gramophone wrote that “one cannot deny either the brilliance or imagination of his playing”. Mustonen boldly alternates between the composers’ works: Andrew McGregor wrote for the BBC that “it becomes harder to hear where Bach ends and Shostakovich begins, and less important to separate them … I recommend it without hesitation or reservation.” Mustonen’s 1998 recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations “contains moments of absolutely spellbinding playing, with textures of wonderful clarity and a deeply imaginative approach to the music,” said BBC Music Magazine of an interpretation still considered iconoclastic today. It is reissued here along with a second disc of Beethoven featuring works including the E major sonata op. 109.

Sergei Prokofiev virtually grew up at the keyboard – he composed for the piano from early childhood, and the instrument was his workshop and laboratory. Well before the end of his student days he had absorbed the virtuoso techniques of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, and to these he added his own brilliant, sharp-edged virtuosity, marked by a keen contrast between dramatic, hard-driven passages and more intimate and gentle lyrical moments. His nine sonatas therefore hold a very special place in his output and represent his language at its most personal, free of any external dramatic, verbal or visual associations: they contain the essential Prokofiev. Freddy Kempf has previously recorded four of the sonatas to critical acclaim: ‘Kempf is joyfully exuberant, flashing through every savage challenge with the assurance and instinct of a born virtuoso’ (Gramophone). With this release, he adds another three sonatas to his discography, starting with Sonata No. 3 in A minor which Prokofiev premièred in Petrograd in April 1918. Three weeks later he left Russia and only returned in 1936, after seventeen years spent in the USA, Germany and France. Premièred in 1944, Sonata No. 8 is the third and last of the so-called ‘War Sonatas’ – possibly less virtuosic than its predecessors, it has a wide emotional range, with unexpected depths. His final, ninth sonata Prokofiev wrote for Sviatoslav Richter, saying: ‘Don’t think it’s intended to create an effect.’ Often almost improvisatory, it was the last work he completed before the infamous 1948 decrees that disciplined many Soviet composers, and the first performance did not take place until 1951.

Modernism. Multiculturism. Multi-tuning. Lockdown. These are among the elements that bind the works on The Solo Album by award winning cellist Christoph Croisé, who took the opportunity of 2020’s coronavirus isolation to work intensively on a variety of solo works and also turn his hand to composition. At the heart of the album is Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály’s epic Sonata, the first major work for solo cello after the suites by Johann Sebastian Bach which were written two centuries earlier. The virtuosity demands of the soloist re-tuning two of the cello’s strings, double-stop trills and simultaneous bowed and plucked passages, all of which Christoph dispatches with aplomb. Framing Kodály’s Sonata are works by two compatriots, György Ligeti’s two-movement Sonata which draws inspiration from Béla Bartók, and the more recent Stonehenge by cellist, composer and pop-music producer Péter Pejtsik which includes intimations of electric guitar. A “sandwich filler” is Christophe’s first composition for solo cello, Spring Promenade, which is infused with boogie-woogie, reggae, swing and techno. He took inspiration from Sicilian composer-cello virtuoso Giovanni Sollima whose Concerto Rotondo incorporates electronics and extended techniques. Closing out the album, Sollima’s short work Alone gives way to the album’s “encore”, the exuberant Some like to show it off by Croatian cellist-composer Thomas Buritch.