Classical Music

Koželuch: Complete Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 2

Classical Music

The sisters Ani and Nia Sulkhanishvili won the outstanding second prize at the 64th ARD International Music Competition in 2015. This release was created in January 2016 as a co-production between Oehms Classics and BR-Klassik.

Recorded in the inspirational surroundings of The Cobbe Collection of early keyboard instruments in England’s Hatchlands Park, the celebrated early keyboardist Menno van Delft makes his Resonus solo debut with J.S. Bach’s six keyboard Partitas – the first part of Bach’s Clavier-Übung series of keyboard works. Using an original 1784 instrument by Christian Gotthelf Hoffmann (one of only two remaining clavichords from this maker), van Delft makes the case for performing these works on Bach’s most favored keyboard instrument. Born in 1963 in Amsterdam, Menno van Delft studied harpsichord, organ, and musicology at the Sweelinck Conservatory in The Hague and the University of Utrecht. Amongst his professors were Anneke Uittenbosch and Gustav Leonhardt. In 1988 Menno van Delft won the clavichord prize at the C. Ph. E. Bach Competition in Hamburg and subsequently made his debut at the Holland Festival Early Music Utrecht. He teaches harpsichord, clavichord and basso continuo at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater in Hamburg.

With the present CD, OehmsClassics releases the “Linz Version” of Anton Bruckner’s First Symphony. It is part of the complete symphony cycle being recorded by the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra under Ivor Bolton, its Chief Conductor since 2004. This live recording from the Large Festival Hall in Salzburg was realized in October 2013. The 91-regular member Mozarteum Orchestra is one of Austria’s leading symphonic organizations, presenting two concert series of its own throughout the year as well as playing the Sunday Matinees concerts at the annual Salzburg Festival.

Also available on Blu-ray

The Verbier Festival is one of classical music’s greatest events. In celebration of the festival’s 25th anniversary, this unique concert brings together 36 classical stars in an unprecedented evening of ingenious programming and captivating performances. The line-up includes the world’s greatest violinists, violists, cellists and pianists as well as other leading performers conducted by Valery Gergiev and Gabor Takacs-Nagy. Founder and director Martin T:son Engstroem writes: “We started this incredible adventure in 1994, and 25 years on, our Festival has become one of the world’s most important cultural events. But it is not just another festival; our vision right from the beginning was to build something which combined important musicians with a very visible youth and learning element. This is what we set out to do and this is what we achieved.”

Paul Hindemith’s life was dominated by the events of the two world wars. In 1917, his discovery of contemporary Expressionist poetry and drama transformed him from a talented student to Germany’s leading new composer. His one-act operas Sancta Susanna and Das Nusch-Nuschi date from this period. Sancta Susanna – Hindemith’s first masterpiece – combines religious and erotic symbolism into an eerie narrative that was shocking for its time, whereas the dance suite from Das Nusch-Nuschi emphasises the plot’s origin as a Burmese comedy. The three symphonic movements from the opera Mathis der Maler refer to the three panels of the Isenheim Altarpiece by Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald, but also graphically reflect Hindemith’s own artistic struggles in Nazi Germany.

This tour starts with the ancient walled city of Pingyao, with visits to the Qu and Wang courtyard houses and the Shuanglin Temple. There are views of Mount Wutai, as well as the Hanging Monastery at the foot of Mount Heng.

Estelle Revaz is entering the "Hall of the Greats". This is how the press describes Estelle Revaz's playing when she joined Gautier Capuçon and the Armin Jordan's Camerata in the Vivaldi Double Concerto. Revaz is a 27-year old cellist from Switzerland, debuting her first recording with Solo Musica. The album features solo cello works by J.S. Bach and their reflections in selected repertoire of contemporary composers. Estelle Revaz belongs to the leading cellists of her generation, received several important prizes and is performing worldwide with great success as a soloist and chamber musician, as well. Since 2015 Revaz is a member of the prestigious "Forum of the 100" which shows off those who represent the future of Switzerland. The cello Revaz plays is by A.T. Fiorini and the bow by J. Eury.

This brand new Christmas album from The King’s Singers features 25 tracks covering everything from contemporary choral gems and folk songs through to well-loved carols. Dotted throughout the album are several of the most famous English church carols, which take The King’s Singers right back to their earliest singing days, and which also reflect the group’s heritage at King’s College, Cambridge. In Christmas Carols with The King’s Singers, the group bottle that frosty, moonlit, fireside Christmas wonder and pour it into their sound.

The King’s Singers have represented the gold standard in a cappella singing on the world’s greatest stages for over fifty years. They are renowned for their unrivalled technique, versatility and skill in performance, and for their consummate musicianship, drawing both on the group’s rich heritage and its pioneering spirit to create an extraordinary wealth of original works and unique collaborations.

REVIEWS:

If you love a capella men’s ensembles in Christmas music the King’s Singers are for you. This new album has some of the most beautiful ensemble singing I’ve heard in a long time. The arrangements are all tasteful and the singing, both in solos and ensemble, exquisite. These are not the same singers that recorded some truly ugly arrangements in some truly ugly albums several decades ago. Back them there seemed to be an attempt by their producers to make the King Singers more “withit” by recording them in arrangements that someone deemed funny or original. Since then someone brought the group back to what they do best. There are a number of familiar carols here (`Ding! Dong! Merrily on High!’, `Tomorrow Shall be my Dancing Day’, etc.), but also some newer carols that are really lovely (`The quiet heart’, `The little road to Bethlehem’, `O, do not move’). What a suitable disc for a wintry evening by the fire! Notes, texts, and translations.

-- American Record Guide

In conceiving his inaugural season as Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony, Louis Langtree wanted to celebrate the Orchestra’s rich tradition of excellence and its legacy of introducing the world to new works. Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait had its world premiere performance by the Cincinnati Symphony at Music Hall in 1942. November of 2013 marked the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Those powerful words were delivered here by legendary author, poet, activist and humanitarian Dr. Maya Angelou, a mere seven months before her recent passing at the age of 86; Hallowed Ground is dedicated in her memory. Hallowed Ground also features live recordings of two new works commissioned by the Orchestra for the MusicNOW Festival in March of 2014. Nico Muhly’s Pleasure Ground is a musical portrait of the iconic landscape architect and designer Frederick Law Olmsted and David Lang’s mountain is a musical portrait of composer Aaron Copland, who had a strong connection with the Cincinnati Symphony. Both these pieces and the Orchestra’s overall collaboration with the MusicNOW Festival represent a true spirit of innovation in Cincinnati, and affirm this as a place of experimentation.

Although Marilyn Horne was 58 years old at the time of this concert, no weakness clouded the beauty of her voice. Among the recordings over the course of Horne's career, there are many Rossini operas. This all-Rossini program shows that she could convincingly dominate the smaller forms as well.

REVIEW:

Little needs be said about Marilyn Horne, one of the greatest singers of all time, with a highly distinctive voice, immediately recognizable and colorful, a deep sense of musicality, and a vocal technique that is awe-inspiring. No ornamentation, no roulade, no trill, not the longest phrase, were beyond her phenomenal breath control. Add to this her almost magical personality.

Liederabend does need a word of explanation. The Liederbands (Liederabenden) were an extensive series of vocal recitals (over 60 years) performed at the Schwetzingen South- West Radio (Germany) Festivals. For all its touting as a Liederabend Horne’s program is all-Italian, all-Rossini (a Horne specialty). 19 songs, early and late, familiar and unfamiliar; all musical delights. Among the better known are ‘La pastorella’, ‘Bolero’, ‘La molinara’, the arias ‘Cruda sorte!’ (Italiana in Algeri and ‘Di tanti palpiti’ Tancredi. A few from ‘Sins of my Old Age’ are included.

Here is a great singer at the top of her form with most entertaining music. No texts, but a biography of Horne and a history of the Festival are included.

-- American Record Guide

This programme portrays the ‘birth’ of the flute in France in the late 17th century and the following 40 years of its life as a new and fashionable instrument. A famous patron of the arts, King Louis XIV gathered elite composers and musicians to create the refinement, elegance and good taste that was demanded at his Paris Court. From the early petites pièces to more virtuoso suites and sonatas with their ornamented lyricism and grand dance rhythms, the mellow, robust and almost husky sounds of flutes from this period blend and weave around each other like the voices of two singers.

This new recording presents two iconic violin sonatas in an arrangement for cello and piano. Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata and Franck’s Violin Sonata are two undisputed masterpieces of the violin repertoire. Their power of structure, expression and imagination transcends their mere instrumental restrictions, and their human message stands above the musical matter. The arrangement for cello and piano sheds a new light on the music, enriching and enhancing its dark and dramatic atmosphere, while giving a new dimension to their lyrical and ethereal sections. The Beethoven arrangement is by the famous 19th century cellist Franchomme (also dedicatee of Chopin’s cello sonata), the Franck arrangement is by Jules Delsart, with permission of Franck himself. Roberto Trainini and Cristiano Burato, who have already successfully recorded Martucci’s cello sonatas, provide here beautiful and heartfelt performances.

William Mathias was one of the most significant and prolific Welsh composers of the 20th century. His flexible and highly approachable style can be heard in the holiday mood of the Suite Parisienne, the brilliance and lyricism of the Capriccio for flute and piano and the wonderfully rhapsodic Sonata for Harp. Mathias’s songs are among the most communicative settings of their kind, including Pan Oeddwn Fachgen (‘A Dream of Youth’), considered by the composer to be ‘one of the finest lyrical poems in modern Welsh.

MOZART, W.A.: Symphonies (Essential), Vols. 1-6 (Norrington)

Cellist Charles-Antoine Duflot (b. 1986) has won numerous prizes since 1999, including first prizes at the U.F.A.M. Competition in Paris, the 2009 Int’l J&A Beare Solo Bach Competition in London, the 2010 Int’l Beethoven Competition in Hradec-nad-Moravici and the 2011 Possehl Music Prize in Lübeck. In May 2013 he won first prize at the violoncello competition “Ton und Erklärung – Werkvermittlung in Musik und Wort” (Tone and Explanation – Work Mediation in Music and Words) in Hanover. This CD, featuring works by Ortiz (d. 1570), Mundry (b. 1963), Bach and Poulenc, is the result of that prize.

Marko Topchii, winner of the 2017 Michele Pittaluga Guitar Competition, has selected a rich and varied repertoire ranging from neo-Romanticism to serialism, each work offering a unique vision of the instrument’s technical and expressive capabilities. Antonio Jose’s Sonata is remarkably inventive, bringing a new language to ancient dance forms, while Frank Martin’s Quatre Pieces breves, written in the same year, offers the flourish and vigor of contemporary harmonic vocabulary. Ronald Dyens’ Libra Sonatine is one of the most virtuosic and brilliant of late 20th-century guitar works. Ukranian-born guitarist Marko Topchii, has been the winner of more than 40 international guitar competitions. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Salle Cortot, Yamaha Ginza Hall, and at the Tchaikovsky Hall. He often performs with orchestras, having performed more than ten concertos for guitar and orchestra. He is sponsored by the D’Addario Strings Company and records with a guitar made by Jim Redgate.

Egyptian master percussionist Hossam Ramzy presents this album of Egyptian rhythmic dance. The first part of the album explains the Egyptian dance rhythms, and gives examples of each, such as the Masmoudi, Maqsoum, and Saaidi. From track 25 on, Hossam presents a drumming workshop. He explains the drums, which include the table, darabuka, mazhar, and duf, then plays simple examples as well as how the drums fit into a full percussion section.