When Herbert von Karajan conducted Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni at the Salzburg Festival in 1987 featuring an outstanding cast of singers, the fantastic Wiener Philharmoniker and staged by Michael Hampe, it became a legendary performance of the highest artistic level. Samuel Ramey stars as the title character Don Giovanni, alongside Gosta Winbergh as Don Ottavio and Anna Tomowa-Sintow as Donna Anna. This dream of artistic collaboration made it one of the best opera performances, which now is available for the first time on Blu-ray.

Promise of Peace is the audio recording of the full-length 2022 St. Olaf Christmas Festival, held in Minneapolis on December 2-3; 2022. Recorded live in Orchestra Hall, this album features performances from the St. Olaf Choir; St. Olaf Orchestra; St. Olaf Chapel Choir; St. Olaf Cantorei; Manitou Singers; and Viking Chorus.

A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month for July 2022!

All in all Maria Bach left more than 400 works to posterity. Most (about 80%) are Lieder and choral works, followed by smaller-scale piano works; not unlike Edvard Grieg or Hugo Wolff, she was an expert in that field, though she did also compose three ballets, made up of small, orchestral piano pieces. Her most ambitious works then, are the few excursions she made into the realms of chamber music (solo cello sonata, cello sonata, piano quartet and quintet, string quintet and two string quartets), in which she ventured a confrontation with the traditions of the grand, established genres. On the present release, Oliver Triendl, Marina Grauman, Nina Karmon, Öykü Canpolat, and Alexander Hülshoff showcase Maria Bach’s chamber works, including the Piano Quintet “Wolga-Quintet”, the Cello Sonata, and the Suite for Cello Solo.

Review

[Maria Bach's] music is infused with French and Russian elements and one can quite hear why it was so appealing to Roger-Ducasse who ensured that her 31-minute Piano Quintet was performed at the Paris Conservatoire when she visited Paris in 1930-31. Like all good music it’s clearly susceptible to strongly divergent interpretive stances. The Hänssler team is anchored by Oliver Treindl, who in my experience is probably one of the most hard-working and often recorded of players. He’s also an athletic figure who ensures forward-moving tempi.

The eminent cellist Paul Grümmer was a family friend and Bach was fortunate he liked her music and played the Cello Sonata frequently. It’s modestly structured – three movements and 19 minutes in this reading by Alexander Hülshoff and Treindl – and has a ripe Brahmsian rhapsodic feel, with a warmly curvaceous lyricism in the Romanze second movement. As with the Piano Quintet the finale is full of dextrous animation.

The final work in the disc is the Suite for cello, a crisp four-movement affair that looks back to Popper, as the notes indicate, rather than [J.S.] Bach. After a sonorous, chordal Praeludium come the registral leaps of an etude-like Scherzo, an expressive Air and then another of her favoured variations for a finale – including a Tango-like one – which call for supple bowing. It’s a deft work, all the more so in not honouring [J.S.] Bach’s legacy in any obvious fashion.

In terms of amplitude and density of sound this disc is an impressive one. The players sound firmly engaged in what must have been unfamiliar repertoire. They’ve been backed up by some classy notes. For overt expression, choose this[.]

Jonathan Woolf 

The documentary Three Tenors – Voices for Eternity tells the story of the most successful concert in the history of classical music, featuring recent interviews with José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, Zubin Mehta, Pavarotti‘s widow Nicoletta Mantovani, Lalo Schifrin, Brian Large, Mario Dradi, Paul Potts, Sir Bryn Terfel, Norman Lebrecht, Didier de Cottignies and many more. Behind-the-scenes-footage, showing the emotional highlights of the first concert and the sequel in Los Angeles offers a fascinating insight into what takes place beyond the spotlight, and includes excerpts from the legendary concert of the Original Three Tenors - José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti, conducted by Zubin Mehta at the Terme di Caracalla, Rome 1990 on the eve of the Football World Cup.

Three of these marvellous quartets for flute and string trio were composed in 1777/78 during Mozart’s first extended tour without his father. The three quartets K. 285; 285a; 285b are undoubtedly among the most outstanding works in the genre. They share a lightsome; carefree quality with the typical shades of melancholy in the slow movements. The sparkling Quartet in D K.285 is a virtuoso outing for all four instruments. Although the flute has the upper part in the lightning-fast opening concertante movement and the spirited concluding Rondeau; the string trio are also given strikingly brilliant; soloistic parts; creating a dense web of spirited; dazzling sallies and engagements. The central movement is a Romance with a melting flute melody against string pizzicatos – a sort of serenade with guitar accompaniment for his then love (future sister-in-law) Aloysia Weber; Constanze’s sister. The elegant second Quartet in G K.285a is indebted to Johann Sebastian Bach’s youngest son; Johann Christian; who wrote quartets that were very similar in concept and idiom. At the age of eight Mozart had taken lessons with J.C. Bach while in London; and as late as 1778 he wrote: ‘I love him… with all my heart and feel deep respect for him’. Following the ‘London’ Bach’s example; the quartet comprises a substantial opening Andante in sonata form and a lively minuet. The third Quartet in C K.285b is also in two movements. An effervescent movement in sonata form is followed by an elegant set of variations providing a solo variation for each of the four instruments. There follows a dreamy slow variation; before the music snaps back out of its metaphysical mood and into the here-and-now with a clownish minuet-cum-scherzo. The Quartet in G K.370; though originally an oboe quartet in F; was first published in 1801 by the Bureau de Musique; Leipzig; in the G major arrangement for flute and strings. Transposing an oboe piece up a full tone was then common practice in flute adaptations; but in this instance; we are dealing with a genuine arrangement involving substantial modifications. The Quartet in A K.298 is very different. It is of the Quatuor d’airs dialogués type; a popular Parisian form where each movement quotes an aria by a fellow composer or a tune that is widely known. The theme of the first movement is Franz Anton Hoffmeister’s song ‘An die Natur’. The central section of the ensuing minuet quotes the old French song ‘Il a des bottes; des bottes Bastien’. Finally; in the last movement; the theme is taken from Giovanni Paisiello’s opera Gli schiavi per amore. He used the aria ‘Chi mi mostra dolce amore’ (Who will show me sweet love) as the theme for the final movement. This piece completes our cycle of five Mozart chamber works; taking us from Mannheim to Vienna via Munich. Their five different conceptions and characters represent the quartet for flute; violin; viola and cello in its noblest form and set the benchmark for all subsequent quartets composed for these forces.

Recent scholarship on Luis Misón (Mataró, 1727–Madrid, 1766) demonstrates the growing interest among the musicological community in studying the life and work of one who is an essential composer in the history of Spanish music. Musical historiography has extolled Misón's contribution to the genre of the tonadilla escénica, a genre widely appreciated in his time and which must have had a notable influence on his instrumental music, about which less is known. His talent as a flautist was appreciated within the noble circle of the House of Alba, where musical academies were held in which Misón actively participated and for which he composed 12 sonatas for transverse flute and bass dedicated to the Duke of Alba. These pieces were located in the archives of the House of Alba and described in 1927 by José Subirá (1882–1980), but unfortunately they disappeared during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The discovery of the five hitherto unknown Sonatas for Flute and Bass by Misón represents a substantial contribution to the Spanish chamber music repertoire of the second third of the 18th century for this instrument, given the scarcity of pieces written by Hispanic composers contemporary to Misón in which the flute is definitely the real protagonist. Moreover, they are sonatas which, from a technical point of view, pose interesting challenges to the flautist, something that highlights Misón's mastery of the flute, in accordance with surviving documentation of the period.

Ortega explains that José Teixidor (c.1751–c.1811), vice-master of the Royal Chapel from 1778, considered his works to be no lesser than those of the best-known foreign composers and said of him that he was an unequalled performer on the transverse flute. The sonatas are found in five musical manuscripts preserved in the Lebrija Palace in Seville, a stately home dating from the 16th century, which in 1901 became the property of Regla Manjón y Mergelina (1851–1938), Countess of Lebrija. With regard to the sources, it seems unlikely that any of the five are autograph. (Although up to five different copyists have been identified, there is nothing to suggest that any of them could be Misón, himself.) Generally speaking, the sonatas are characterised by the importance of melody, regular phrases and steady rhythms, as can be seen in the elaborate seisillos of the Allegro moderato of the Sonata [No.3] in G major. Overall, the basso continuo line is simple – excepting the B section of the Allegro of the Sonata [No.4] in G major (undated) – allowing the role of the flute to stand out prominently. This recording is the culmination of a long process of recovery of Spanish 18th-century musical heritage that deserves to be disseminated, studied and enhanced. After more than two centuries of silence, Misón's music is heard again.

Over the course of more than half a century, Wolfgang Rübsam has consistently brought new insights to bear on the keyboard music of Bach, firstly in sets of the canonic organ music for Philips, then the same for Naxos. In the last few years, his musicianship and understanding of Bach enriched by those decades of experience, he has turned to the harpsichord/piano repertoire for Brilliant Classics. A series of critically acclaimed albums has shed new light on The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas and Toccatas with Rübsam’s performance of them on a lautenwerk – a ‘lute-harpsichord’ with a distinctive chime and colour which Bach himself would have been familiar with. Rübsam now returns to the organ, with new transcriptions and recordings of two Orchestral Suites and Chaconne from the D minor Partita for solo violin. While the Chaconne has attracted transcribers and arrangers ever since the 19th century, drawn magnetically to its evolving variations on a ground bass which accumulate an emotional power unusual even for Bach, the Orchestral Suites are much less often encountered outside their original garb. Yet we can be sure that Bach himself would have embraced Rübsam’s idea with enthusiasm. The Suites themselves are compilations of dances, probably not all originally designed for their eventual destination as high-class entertainment music for the concert series at Café Zimmermann in Leipzig, and Bach repurposed some of their movements as sinfonias and even choruses for his church cantatas. As in his fairly free transcription of the Chaconne, Rübsam has made full use of the instrument at his disposal, a magnificent Casavant instrument (1998) at the Church of St. Louis, in St. Paul, Minnesota. The booklet includes a full disposition for the organ as well as an essay introducing both the works and Rübsam’s uniquely imaginative approach to them. ‘If the sound of the lute-harpsichord highlights Bach’s debt to French lute music, especially in the First Prelude, the instrument clarifies that homage while Rübsam’s interpretation transcends it.’ (Fanfare, November 2018, The Well-Tempered Clavier, 96750)

The Kammerakademie Potsdam (Chamber Academy Potsdam) and it's principal conductor Antonello Manacorda will complete their new Beethoven cycle with the release of all nine Symphonies in a special 5-CD boxset out on Sony Classical on May 3. As the third and final installment in the series, the release will include their new recording of Beethoven's Third, Fourth and Eighth Symphonies as well as the composer's legendary Ninth Symphony. The release coincides with the 200-year anniversary celebrations of the premiere performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in early May. The first two installments in the ensemble's Beethoven cycle recording have been released to great critical acclaim.

The heyday of English consort music coincides with the exciting change in style from musical Renaissance to early Baroque between 1580 and 1630. William Byrd and his successors played a decisive role in shaping it with sacred and secular songs, fantasies and dances. This production on the 400th anniversary of William Byrd's death shows how diverse and colourful the repertoire of consort music is. On the one hand, the English composers impress with sophisticated compositional art, on the other hand, they take up popular music of their time. The result is musical atmospheres that reflect the deep melancholy, pious confidence and plump joie de vivre of Shakespeare's time.

The Gershwin titles included on this album are from the new Gershwin Critical Edition which seeks to publish the definitive versions of the composer’s works. All are premiere recordings. Joan Tower’s 1920/2019 is a propulsive study in rhythm and texture, while ghostly waltz evocations can be heard in Steven Stucky’s Dreamwaltzes.

Henryk Mikolaj Górecki (1933–2010) achieved an international success in the mid-1990s, with his Symphony No. 3, “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”. Since then, Górecki’s name has been associated almost exclusively with this piece. However, his music is much more than this one brilliant work. Górecki never looked at musical fashions, but consistently created his own sound universe. In the 1980s Górecki, feeling misunderstood, stepped back from the official concert life in Poland. He reached out to simple folk and church melodies, making their choral arrangements. He treated them with a great devotion and humility. In 1985, the composer drew on traditional church songs collected in the 19th-century Spiewnik koscielny (Church Songbook) by Jan Siedlecki. He first selected five songs from it, which made up the cycle of five Marian Songs, Op. 54, for mixed choir a cappella. A year later, Górecki decided to compile other church songs of various character and associated with different liturgical seasons. This led to a collection of twenty Church Songs for a cappella choir today known as his Op. 84. Apart from two, the songs were not published during composer’s lifetime. This album by the Polish Chamber Choir led by Jan Lukaszewski offers this choral gem for the first time sang in Latin.

REVIEW:

Mostly dating from 1986 but published in 2013, three years after the composer’s death, these 20 pieces range from between one and almost 13 minutes in duration. Recorded in Latin for the first time, they have a consoling lilt and occasionally (as in ‘Sicut parvi amplectamur’) dance along gently; ‘Beati qui eligunt Joseph’ is a rare example of a more striking harmonic treatment. Under its conductor of 40 years’ standing, Jan Łukaszewski, the Gdańsk-based Polish Chamber Choir produces beautifully smooth and glowing tone. The overall effect is sweet, like eating too much sernik (Polish cheesecake) and washing it down with communion wine.

-- BBC Music Magazine

The music of Grazyna Bacewicz (1909–1969) has been enjoying a revival during the past two decades. Bacewicz was an outstanding figure in 20th-century music, a major Polish composer and a versatile musician. This album by the award-winning pianist Peter Jablonski, pianist Elisabeth Brauß, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon includes some rarely recorded gems: the composer’s Piano Concerto together with the late Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in its first digital recording. Also included is the composer’s homage to Bartók, Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion, as well as the composer’s early exuberant Overture, written during the German occupation of Poland.

Justin Holland was an important African American figure in the national US anti-slavery movement as well as being a significant figure in guitar composition and methodology. As a composer he synthesized European models and embraced popular, church and parlor songs generating a rich variety of works. A master of virtuosic variations, his arrangements are witty, elegant, and colorful, culminating in Carnival of Venice, which shows the full range of his gifts, sweeping in breadth and dazzling in effect.

REVIEW:

Collectors of a certain age may remember this attractive pairing of Mozart’s 17th and 27th piano concertos through its original LP release on Vox’s subsidiary label Candide. It also turned up on CD as part of Vox’s long gone budget Prima series. Newly remastered for Vox’s new Audiophile Series, this 1978 Elite Recordings production supervised by Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz retains its vivid impact and vibrant detail.

Notice the orchestral ritornellos’ ebb and flow under Stanisław Skrowaczewski’s leadership, and how the forward woodwinds and singing strings conversationally interact. Even in loud tuttis one can take dictation from each orchestral strand. Pianist Walter Klien’s Mozart playing is a model of clarity, projection, poise, and proportion, and he never puts an unbalanced or uneven phrase forward. He’s also one of the few pianists on disc who doesn’t approach Mozart’s final concerto with kid gloves, meaning that his slow movement is full-bodied and fluent rather than ethereal and wispy, and that he doesn’t underplay the finale’s scampering thrust. Sometimes Klien’s phrasing falls into square and tinkly assembly line patterns.

You won’t find the witty inflections and dabs of color that you hear from Peter Serkin or Maria-João Pires in K. 453’s wonderful theme and variations finale. Nor does Klien’s clean yet regimented articulation in K. 595’s first-movement development section match Richard Goode’s harmonic subtlety and feeling for chamber-like repartée. Still, these interpretations won’t steer you wrong. And while I have the floor, we need a truly complete boxed set edition of Skrowaczewski’s Vox recordings!

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Richard Danielpour is one of the most decorated, frequently performed and recorded composers of his generation. His commissions include works for some of the most celebrated artists of our day. Each of the Twelve Études is dedicated to a particular pianist with its own substantial technical demands, but all are conceived as concert pieces with a self-contained narrative. The variations in the Piano Fantasy are based on the final chorale of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. All of these world premiere recordings were made in close collaboration between the composer and acclaimed pianist Stefano Greco.

REVIEW:

In the 40-minute cycle, Twelve Etudes for Piano, the composer roams through a wide variety of moods, but also presents challenges to the pianist such as playing with the left hand on the keys and plucking strings inside the piano with the right hand. Stefano Greco masters all of this with aplomb.

In addition to two miniatures, the Piano Fantasy subtitled ‘Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden’ from 2008 is also heard. It is based in continuing variations on the final chorale from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, although the theme does not appear until the end of the work. This piece also shows Greco as an excellent performer.

-- Pizzicato

SWR Big Band and Fola Dada have been successful collaborators for many years and with their new studio album As We Speak they broaden their swing repertoire to include the 1960s. In addition, there are swing classics like You Go to my Head. This way the multi-Grammy-nominated SWR Big Band is able to confirm their reputation as a fantastically swinging formation that manages to underline new aspects of traditional pieces again and again. The long, fruitful colaboration between the SWR Big Band and the jazz singer Fola Dada has already resulted in three, very successful albums: Kings of S wing (1 & 2) and SWR Big Band live at the Elbphilharmonie. Fola Dada was awared in 2022 the German Jazz Award for the best German jazz singer.

Latvian Radio Choir’s new album conducted by Sigvards Kļava marks the international debut of composer Alfred Momotenko (b. 1970). Momotenko was born in Lviv, Ukraine, in 1970. He studied at the Sochi College of Arts and later percussion at the Moscow State University of Culture and Art. In 1990, the political situation having changed, Momotenko moved to the Netherlands where he continued his studies at the Brabant Conservatory and at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. Momotenko’s timeless choral works continue the centuries old great tradition of choral works combining them with contemporary language, a blend most recently exemplified by the likes of Alfred Schnittke.

Surrounded by choral music in his youth, Momotenko has returned to the world of choral music at a relatively late period: all the works on this album have been written between 2017 and 2022. Many of his enigmatic choral works are religious and could be described as poems or chants – larger than a miniature but less extensive than a fantasy, a narrative, a ballad or a story. Often there are two contrasting musical languages that are present: the ancient, pristine Znamennyj Chant and the modern one. Besides liturgic texts, Momotenko’s choral works include settings to poems by Boris Pasternak and Joseph Brodsky. The largest work, Na Strastnoy (On the Passion), is a companion piece Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil.

REVIEW:

The recital is cleverly structured. We start on familiar ground with Creator of Angels – a setting of lines from Bella Akhmadulina (distilled here into a shorter whole) that supplicate for mercy. Threads of Znamenny chant run through thick vertical textures, always rooted in widespaced bass parts. The effect is ancient, but softening into 21st-century lyricism. We hear flickers of Silvestrov, Tavener and E≈envalds, but also of Chesnokov, Grechaninov and their ilk.

Then we start to push off from land – gently at first in the short Three Sacred Hymns, with their modal harmonies and sinuous lines that always seem to tug back to the fixed point of unison, and then more rhapsodically in Lullaby: upper voices an endless flat horizon, harp ripples and sound-bursts silhouetted against them. We’re in another world by the time we reach On the Passion. This setting of Pasternak’s poetry from Dr Zhivago (this time intended as a companion for Rachmaninoff’s Vespers) is a trove of imagery. Birdsong, bells, Holy Week processions and folk dances draw a musical ‘essay’ from Momotenko that extends the composer’s harmonic and textural vocabulary with nonsense syllables and stamping – effects as well as melodies. Voices are fragmented down to endless solo strands (the technical challenge is immense), intersecting and coming together with Ives-like sonic cinema.

Kl,ava marshals his singers with unobtrusive precision. The 24-strong group are shape-shifters, slipping imperceptibly from chorus to soloists, from knitted web to filigree strands. Balance, not dynamics, is the principal expressive force here. Kl,ava pulls details and lines forwards or pushes them back flush, creating the depth and play of light that really makes this debut sing.

-- Gramophone

The third volume in this acclaimed series features a selection of more highly original compositions from Luxembourg performed by Christoph Konig and his Solistes Europeens forces. All of the pieces are world premiere recordings.

The developmental stages of the clarinet are marked by repeated interest in improving the instrument at crucial stages in its history, definitively accomplished in an ‘accelerated’ manner during the course of the 19th century thanks to daring projects that led to an extraordinary evolution. Consequently, interest in writing aimed at probing the peculiarities of the instrument was accentuated, with French composers' attention directed towards exploring the thousands of new expressive and technical possibilities, creating a catalogue of great interest demostrating both the instrumentalists’ mastery as well as musical effects to dazzle listeners. The pieces selected for this album clearly echo that production, originating in the shadow of the Parisian conservatoire and intended to test the potential of young performers while probing the musical languages of the time, whose aesthetics were as varied as eve. Coquard's Melodie et Scherzetto, from 1904, sprang from the pen as an examination piece, a score in which technical and expressive aspects converge with a highly captivating melodic writing. In Claude Debussy's Petite pièce, the varied dynamics, combined with the near ‘improvisational’ flow of the rhythmic-melodic material, make the piece fascinating and pleasant to listen to. As is Rabaud's Solo de Concours Op.10, with its surprising texture entrusted to the clarinet right from the start in the form of a solo of considerable complexity. Messager's own Solo de Concours is rich in captivating chromaticism riven by diatonic segments. Paul Pierné's score, on the other hand, is an exercise in style, blending ‘rhetorical’ images and ‘French-style’ speculations. His cousin Gabriel’s Canzonetta of 1888 brings forth a sampler of melodies, giving rise to a path of great lyricism. The use of such sonorous imagery is in common with that of Paul Jeanjean, whose Arabesques is imbued with seductive designs aimed at enhancing the potential of the instrument, on which he was an acclaimed virtuoso. Cahuzac belongs to this category, as well, and with his Cantilène he dwells in the soundscapes of his southern France, irradiating it with a Mediterranean luminosity. Cultural belonging is a peculiar characteristic of composers living in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, as Semler-Collery demonstrates when he pilots his Rêverie et scherzo through the turbulence of early-20th-century French style. Honegger's choice for his Sonatine has a completely different origin. With its mysterious beginning founded on skillful chromaticism with vague oriental echoes, the subsequent Lent et soutenu reveals a greater rigour in that same sound path, entrusted to the woodwind, austere and mysterious. It is with the Vif et rythmique that the “restlessness” is laid to rest in order to rely on “improvisational” sonorities that wink at agile and impertinent jazz gestures.

As the progenitor of a style whose influence more or less came to define the instrumental music of the High Baroque, Arcangelo Corelli (1653 - 1713) occupies a position in music history as unenviable as it is to his great credit. Just what made Corelli’s style seem strikingly novel to his contemporaries is a tricky question. To be sure, his standardization and popularization of certain formal tropes – most notably the succession of movement types in Sonate da Camera and Sonate da Chiesa – was a significant part of what his followers considered the ‘Corellian’ manner.

But Corelli’s actual compositional style, his way of organizing musical thoughts into phrases and motives, is fundamentally derived from the expressive capabilities of his chosen instrument, the violin. Certain melodic patterns used to modulate and to effect sequences (e.g., chains of sevenths and fifths) basically derive from specificities of violin technique that amplify an instrument with origins primarily in dance music into one that in Corelli’s hands, could imitate the rise and fall of the sung and spoken human voice. This tension between idiomatically instrumental techniques and the evocation of the voice is the defining characteristic of Corelli’s style throughout all his surviving works and would establish the “Roman School” as the supreme measure of musical taste for generations.

For this exploration of the 18th century’s Corelli Craze, the dynamic star trio of Mahan Esfahani, Hille Perl and Michala Petri unite to trace the Roman’s influence, (sometimes in name only...) on the musical legacies of Bach, Händel and Telemann, and of course two works from the pen of the celebrated Italian Master, himself. Gramophone about the Petri/Perl/Esfahani Trio’s Bach recording: “While the tonal and expressive range of the recorder, viol and harpsichord may appear constrained in comparison to, say, flute, cello and piano, in the hands of foremost players such as these, even a relatively lightweight work such as the C major Sonata, BWV1033, comes over as the ideal demonstration of a particular facet of the composer’s style and the performers’ abilities.”

“Ascenso is a collection of works that have, in one way or another, a direct connection to myself. I wanted to present an album that was a representation of my current self, not just as a cellist, but as an artist. My idea is that this is not a cellist’s recording, or an album centered around the instrument, but rather a work that is meant to be experienced as you would a painting on a wall, whatever that may mean to you.”

Santiago Cañón-Valencia has been praised as one of the most promising young cellists of his generation. Born in Bogota in 1995, his major musical mentors have been Henryk Zarzycki in Colombia, James Tennant in New Zealand, Andres Diaz in the United States and Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt at the Kronberg Academy in Germany.

– A 2022 BBC Next Generation Artist and Winner of the Silver Medal and “Audience Favorite”

– A major prize winner of the Sphinx, Casals, Johansen, Cassadó, and Adam cello competitions.

REVIEW:

What the charismatic virtuoso delivers is some attractive premieres. Ponce de León’s "La ruta de la mariposa" has a poignant transparency, and is exquisitely performed.

-- BBC Music Magazine