Richard Strauss's orchestral music includes several works with autobiographical significance, including Ein Heldenleben (Naxos 8.554417). Scored for large symphony orchestra, the Symphonia domestic depicts the joys and worries of married life with Strauss, his wife, child and other family members deftly portrayed in a variety of situations, including a 'cheerful quarrel' in which the father has the last word! The Symphonic Fragment from the opera Die Liebe der Danae, based on mythic themes, was arranged by one of Strauss's great champions, conductor Clemens Krauss.

Gottlieb Muffat was the most important Viennese harpsichord composer of the 18th century. He inherited and developed a compound style that fused high Italian Baroque with the lightness of the French school. From his father, Georg – one of the greatest organ and orchestral composers of his own generation – Gottlieb absorbed a gift for ballet movements. This is the third and final volume in Naoko Akutagawa’s critically acclaimed series of Muffat’s Harpsichord Suites.

The technical challenging of balancing a choir singing at full volume and a guitar, renowned for its gentle sound, has tended to discourage composers from pairing these resources. Handled sensitively, however, the combination yields a seductive sound-world, full of mystery and imagination, tending in this trio of works to evoke a reassuring feeling of familiarity: there is balance, a sense of form, awareness, and respect for a past that is renewed while it nourishes the present. At the peak of his maturity in 1959 and in a burst of creativity, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco set to music seven poems by Federico García Lorca as a cycle, Romancero Gitano Op.152. The vocal writing is limpid, capturing the colours and contrasts of Lorca’s text, whether it is representing the placid flow of three rivers (Baladilla de los Tres Rios) with an incessant stream of semiquavers, or depicting Carmen’s dance through the streets of Seville with an elegant and slightly grotesque “Tempo di Seguidilla” (Baile). Everywhere, what shines through, to quote the composer, is a sense ‘of the Spanish lands: the parched Castile, the pale olive groves, the scent of the orange orchards in Andalusia and, along the coast, the sea which breaks at the shore with vibrations, almost, of a guitar.’ Receiving their first recordings here are Nulla Sors Longa Est by Nicola Jappelli (b.1975) and Materna by Nicola Campogrande (b.1969). Jappelli’s chosen text was written by the Roman philosopher Seneca, and addresses the concept of happiness, ending with a bitter reflection on human frailty. Campogrande’s piece has a more positive outlook, celebrating motherhood in a commission from the guitarist on this recording, Nicolò Spera, to mark the birth of his daughter. Campogrande has set four texts – also in Latin – by the contemporary poet Marco Vacchetti, who was in turn inspired by Renaissance-era nativities painted by Piero della Francesca, Caravaggio, Luini and Solari.

 

REVIEW:

 

Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s soulful settings of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca are the most affecting songs of the lot. Nicola Spera, Professor of classical guitar at the University of Colorado, is a fabulous guitarist, so with his flamenco-inspired playing, the orange trees and olive groves of Andalucia sound fragrant indeed.

 

– American Record Guide

Also available on Blu-ray

Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Atys, a tragédie en musique, became known as the ‘king’s opera’ due to Louis XIV’s fondness for it. The work stands as a testament to the Sun King’s courtly refinement, as well as his moves to make France the center of European artistic culture. The opera’s themes of romantic dilemmas and ultimate tragedy, set amidst the poetic atmosphere of Ovid’s classical mythology, create the perfect vehicle for a narrative filled with dramatic intensity combined with a myriad of moving and expressive arias and duets. William Christie conducts this acclaimed production – hailed by The New York Times as being ‘as satisfying as it is bold’.

REVIEW:

The role of Atys is physically as well as vocally taxing, but is here superbly realised by the German tenor, Bernard Richter, while the French soprano, Emmanuelle De Negri, is an excellent Sangaride, with the creamy voice of the mezzo, Stephanie D’Oustrac, as Cybele completing the love triangle. The cast list is large, and with the Compagnie Fetes Galantes providing the dancers, the stage is at times totally filled. The reviews at the time of filimg (2011) were suitably euphoric regarding the casting, and equally of the presence of the period instrument orchestra, Les Arts Florrissants, with the idiomatic conducting of William Christie. The filming itself is immaculate in its ideal mix of full stage and close-up images, while the sound quality is gorgeous.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

The music of Monteverdi is revolutionary, heralding in the Baroque era. For the first time, with Monteverdi’s compositions, deep personal emotion was being heard in sacred vocal works. This collection was released after the composers death as the Messa a Quattro voci et salmi, and was composed during Monteverdi’s time serving as director of music at St. Mark’s in Venice. The Sixteen has gained critical acclaim for their previous recordings of Monteverdi’s work, including a Grammy nomination for the ensemble’s 2014 recording of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610.

-----

REVIEW:

There is no shortage of first-rate music here, dispelling any notion that the Messa et Salmi only consists of pieces that Monteverdi himself did not think were worthy of preserving for posterity. The Sixteen’s performances have the group’s usual unfussy directness; the sound has no churchy over-resonance about it, either, so that the intricacies of the writing are always perfectly clear.

­– Guardian (UK)

STRAVINSKY, I.: Soldier's Tale Suite / Octet / Les Noces (Tianwa Yang, Virginia Symphony Chorus, Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players, Falletta) The three works on this recording were composed at a crucial juncture in Stravinsky's musical life. The Soldier's Tale, a small-scale theatrical work for instrumental septet, narrator and two speakers completed in 1918 [Naxos 8.573537]. It is performed here in the suite premi�red in 1920. The Octet marked a new element in Stravinsky's writing, inaugurating a turn to neo-classicism, whilst Les noces (The Wedding) is a ballet cantata impelled by dramatic motor rhythms, and once again saturated in his Russian background. Scored for pitched and unpitched percussion, vocal soloists, and mixed chorus, it is a pivotal work in Stravinsky's development.

Rossini Hayward, one of the most creative guitarists of his generation, has written a sequence of Christmas carol arrangements that range across the centuries and over continents. These beautiful pieces respect the original carols while bringing to them ingenious new features. Seven of the arrangements involve overdubbing by Hayward himself with voice, percussive effects or guitar, adding new colors, but showing that he always ‘understands the charm and power of simplicity’ (Classical Guitar).

Includes works by:

• Ebel, Eduard (1839-1905)
• Gauntlett, Henry J (1805-76)
•Gruber, Franz Xaver (1787-1863)
• Hopkins, John Henry (1820-91)
• Nielsen, Carl August (1865-1931)
• Nordqvist, Gustav (1886-1946)
• Schulz, Johann Abraham Peter (1747-1800)

REVIEW:

The results are delightful.

-- The Arts Desk

TOUR D'AFRIQUE

Classical Music

In November 1949, at the age of eight, Idil Biret entered the studios of ORTF (Radiodiffusion Television Francaise) in Paris and made her first recordings; these were works by Couperin, Bach, Beethoven and Debussy. In the following decades she made nearly 100 LPs and CDs, released on ten record labels (Pretoria, Vega, Decca, Atlantic/Finnadar, Pantheon, EMI, Naxos, Marco Polo, Alpha, BMP) and many recordings for radio and television stations around the world. These included the complete piano works of Brahms, Chopin and Rachmaninov as well as the Sonatas of Boulez and the Etudes of Ligeti. The Idil Biret Archive (IBA) is now bringing together her past and present recording; as the copyrights are obtained, old recordings no longer available commercially are being released together with her new recordings. The transcriptions by Liszt of Beethoven's Symphonies, originally recorded for EMI, and the newly recorded 32 Sonatas and all the Piano Concertos of Beethoven were released by IBA and also made available in a box set. All the Piano Concertos of Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Grieg and the nine LPs recorded for Atlantic/Finnadar in New York which include works by Boulez, Webern, Berg, Ravel and Stravinsky were also released. The present album features Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Pathetique, Moonlight, Waldstein, and Appassionata. IBA is distributed worldwide by Naxos.

Saint-Saëns composed many original works for the violin. He also took the art of arrangement to new heights of refinement, believing his transcriptions were independent of their models, following the precedent of composers such as Liszt. This album presents early or alternative duo versions of some of Saint-Saëns’s most popular works, in which the declamatory style of the originals – such as the ever-popular Danse macabre or the habanera-infused Havanaise–is made more intimate and subtle. Composed for the exclusive use of Queen Elisabeth of Belgium in 1918, the Airde Dalila here receives its world premiere recording.

Brahms’s complete sonatas for piano and violin (Op. 78, 100, 108 and Scherzo from the F.A.E Sonata) are the monumental works that inspire and intrigue chamber musicians as well as classical music audiophiles. With a fresh view of these important pieces, this recording puts the composer first, allowing the protagonist to meet the composer's requirements for the scores. With differentiated phrasing and tempi, Darvarova & Chen rediscover Brahms' violin sonatas in a completely different and new way. GRAMMY®-nominated, award-winning (Gold Medal at the Global Music Awards in 2017 and 2018) and a concert violinist since the age of four, Elmira Darvarova caused a sensation, becoming the first ever (and so far only) woman-concertmaster in the history of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. As MET concertmaster she has performed with the greatest conductors of our time, including the legendary Carlos Kleiber. Hailed as “brilliant” by Fanfare Magazine, multi-award winning pianist-composer Zhen Chen has performed as a soloist and chamber music artist at prominent music venues in USA and China, such as Stern Auditorium, Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall of Lincoln Center, and China National Centre for Performing Arts.

After revisiting New Orleans airs, swing, gypsy, contemporary, jazz, and classical music, Jean-Francois Foliez unveils here a first album with a powerhouse quartet. Alongside pianist Casimir Liberski, back from a long stay in New York where he deepened his playing alongside musicians such as Ornette Coleman and Brad Mehldau, we find the solid rhythm section of Janos Bruneel on double bass and Xavier Roge on drums, bringing energy and precision to the arrangements. Born in 1984, Jean-Francois Foliez began his studies at 4 years old. At 16 he began playing tenor saxophone with the big band of Liege. He has studied at the Royal Conservatory of Liege, as well as with artists such as Jean-Pierre Peuvion and Benjamin Dietels.

Symphonic thinking dominated Mieczysław Weinberg’s final decade, and these chamber symphonies are part of an interrelated sequence that reworks and cites earlier pieces. The Second Chamber Symphony draws on a string quartet from 1944, reflecting the sombre and fatalistic tone of the period. The Fourth Chamber Symphony was Weinberg’s last completed work, and uses a haunting chorale melody that he once referred to as a constant presence throughout his creativity. Weinberg’s First and Third Chamber Symphonies(8.574063) ‘blossom in vividly colorful performances’ (Pizzicato).

Classical Music

The prolific young composer Jake Runestad has won numerous awards for his music, which ranges from opera to works for chamber ensemble. He is particularly valued for his choral compositions which exemplify a desire to write expertly crafted, socially conscious and emotionally potent music. On this album, Runestad explores a profound sea/life journey in The Secret of the Sea, and projects a powerful expression of grief in Let My Love Be Heard. Nature is a recurring theme for the composer and he employs texts that exalt the natural world, as well as finding seldom heard sound combinations in the exhilarating Ner Ner. Jake Runestad is one of the youngest composers ever awarded the Raymond W. Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association in 2018- the foremost commission available to composers of choral music in the USA. He is considered ‘one of the best of the younger American composers’ (Chicago Tribune) and this is only the second album of his music to be issued.

-----

REVIEW:

Each of these 10 works by Jake Runestad, written between 2006 and 2018, has a similar reverence for texts that touch deeply but gently on human issues and benefit from his imaginatively varied toolkit of resources. That he writes well for singers is enthusiastically proved by the all-volunteer Denver-based Kantorei choral ensemble and eight instrumentalists, and some fullblooded recordings.

– Gramophone

Following on from his acclaimed Resonus debut of solo works by Bartok and Kurtag, virtuoso violinist Simon Smith returns to the label with an enticing programme of chamber works for strings by Zoltan Kodaly and Erno Dohnanyi. Joined by colleagues Clare Hayes (violin), Paul Silverthorne (viola) & Katherine Jenkinson (cello), Smith presents three seminal chamber works from the first half of the twentieth century, performed with considerable elan by this exceptional collaboration.

These songs for one and two voices come from the first four of D'India's five books of Musiche, a series containing masterpieces of astonishing originality in the style of monody (solo melody with accompaniment), which had eclipsed the polyphonic madrigal in popularity at the dawn of the 17th century. With a career based largely in Turin and Rome, Sigismondo D'India nevertheless demonstrates stylistic links to both Monteverdi and Gesualdo, and it is the latter's influence which supports new scholarship claiming D'India grew up in Naples (not Sicily) in the shadow of the great madrigalist's free thinking on harmony. That very harmonic freedom - to accentuate key emotions in the text with piquant chord changes - is the hallmark of D'India's own, self-styled 'true manner' of composing monody, adopted from Gesualdo's intense, chromatic polyphony to the solo song or duet, and it suggests a Neapolitan, rather than Roman-Florentine, musical background. In D'India's own words, he uses 'intervals out of the ordinary, moving with the greatest invention from one consonance to the next, depending on the variety of the meaning of the words' for 'greater impact and greater power to move the emotions of the soul'. It is this sense for the dramatic power of song that positions D'India as a true proto-operatic composer. In fact, his three-part setting of Clorinda's death scene from Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata (Amico hai vinto) predates by several years that of his contemporary Monteverdi: the revolutionary Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. Perhaps the young D'India's wide travels across Italy, absorbing the musical styles at each locale and acquiring a broad grasp of the varied stylistic practices throughout the peninsula in the early Baroque, gave him the conviction to claim his own style as the 'true manner'. In any case, it's originality and vision are truly remarkable.

In November 1949, at the age of eight, Idil Biret entered the studios of ORTF (Radiodiffusion Television Francaise) in Paris and made her first recordings; these were works by Couperin, Bach, Beethoven and Debussy. In the following decades she made nearly 100 LPs and CDs, released on ten record labels (Pretoria, Vega, Decca, Atlantic/Finnadar, Pantheon, EMI, Naxos, Marco Polo, Alpha, BMP) and many recordings for radio and television stations around the world. These included the complete piano works of Brahms, Chopin and Rachmaninov as well as the Sonatas of Boulez and the Etudes of Ligeti. The Idil Biret Archive (IBA) is now bringing together her past and present recording; as the copyrights are obtained, old recordings no longer available commercially are being released together with her new recordings. The transcriptions by Liszt of Beethoven's Symphonies, originally recorded for EMI, and the newly recorded 32 Sonatas and all the Piano Concertos of Beethoven were released by IBA and also made available in a box set. All the Piano Concertos of Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Grieg and the nine LPs recorded for Atlantic/Finnadar in New York which include works by Boulez, Webern, Berg, Ravel and Stravinsky were also released. The present album is a showcase of Turkish Piano Music and is made up of recordings made between 1958 and 2021. IBA is distributed worldwide by Naxos.

This singular discographic project unites the sacred pianistic work by Franz Liszt to those by Bonifacio Maria Krug, both composers and abbots. If Franz Liszt is already known to the public, Krug (abbot in the abbey of Montecassino in 1864) is an important discovery proposed by the young and talented pianist Silvia Vaglica assisted by the Benedictine father Fabrizio Messina Cicchetti. Both Liszt and Krug joined with fervor the directions that will later be outlined by the Cecilian movement regarding the issues related to music in the liturgy, and the music proposed in this recording testifies their commitment to bringing the sacred themes out of their customary borders, contrarily to what happened in the middle of the nineteenth century in Italy, when the theatrical style also spread in liturgical compositions.