Astor Piazzolla, the great Argentine composer and bandoneon player, was born exactly a century ago in 1921. Fascinated by the music of Bach, Mozart and Chopin, Piazzolla wanted to compose great classical music. From Alberto Ginastera he received lessons in orchestration, composition and conducting, as well as in literature and poetry. Following his studies with Ginastera, Piazzolla received a scholarship to study in Paris with the renowned pianist and composer Nadia Boulanger. Under her guidance, he began to conceive of and perfect his own style of composition. Composer and bandoneon player Omar Massa hails from Buenos Aires and has lived in Berlin since 2019. He is seen by music critics as the successor to Astor Piazzolla, whose work he has been performing from the age of six. Massa is considered to be an ambassador and champion of Argentine music as he too creates bridges to classical music with his own compositions. He combines minimalism with contemplative spaces, creates impressionistic colours, uses unusual meters and expands harmonic language without losing the inner melancholy of the true Tango Nuevo. Massa catapults the music of Buenos Aires into the 21st century. For over five decades, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra has been an integral part of Berlin's musical and cultural life, enriching the German orchestral landscape, and since 1990 has been the orchestra for all Berliners. In addition to the popular and long-established symphony concerts held in the Berlin Philharmonie, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra performs throughout Berlin and the surrounding area. With guest performances in Europe and tours to North and South America, Africa and Asia, as well as their appearances at international festivals (in France, Italy, Austria, Spain, Israel, among others), the Berlin Symphony Orchestra presents itself successfully worldwide and sees itself as a cultural ambassador for Berlin.

First Prize Winner of the 2003 Walter W. Naumburg Foundation' Violin Competition and the 2000 Hannover International Violin Competition, Frank Huang has now embarked on a major career as a violin virtuoso.

Ferruccio Busoni composed a significant number of works for two pianos throughout his life. While Bach’s pervasive influence is already evident in some of his early compositions including the Preludio e Fuga and Capriccio, it reaches its most complex and glorious expression in the definitive 1921 version of his Fantasia contrappuntistica. In the case of Schumann’s Op. 134 for piano and orchestra, Busoni simply reduced the orchestral part for a second piano. However, his skill as a master transcriber and composer is revealed in his brilliant arrangements of Mozart’s works, which also highlight the subtlety and originality of his style. Aldo Orvieto has recorded extensively, releasing more than 70 albums dedicated to composers of the 20th century on a wide variety of labels, many receiving critical acclaim. Aldo Ciccolini appeared on the Naxos release of Achille Longo’s PianoQuintet (Ciccolini’s teacher) with the Circolo Artistico Ensemble (8.572628), which was nominated for an International Classical Music Award (ICMA).Classical Lost and Found wrote that: ‘Considering Ciccolini’s intimate association with his mentor’s quintet, this would have to be considered a definitive performance.’ Marco Rapetti received his Diploma cum laude at the Accademia Perosi in Biella. Rapetti has been awarded many prizes in national and international competitions, and has released several recordings, including the complete piano works of Borodin, Liadov, Dukas and Debussy.

The present recording is taken from a live transmission of the Academy concert of May 8, 1972, from the Nationaltheater in Munich. The early death of Karl Richter in February 1981 frustrated the intention of releasing one of the great oratorios from his performing repertoire, Joseph Haydn’s “Creation”, in a studio recording. Happily it has proved possible to obtain the present sound recording from the archives of the Bayerische Staatsoper and, with the kind consent of the participants, to prepare a technically enhanced release. Despite a number of remaining technical inadequacies, such as may be considered characteristic for historic recordings of this nature, this audio document gives a particularly fine impression of the ambience and the authenticity of a live performance with conductor Karl Richter – complementing, as it were, the many available studio recordings of his wide-ranging musical repertoire. Special thanks are due to the musicians and all involved at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich. For his help in advance preparation of this project, we wish to thank by name the opera house’s former Chief Executive of Administration Dr. Roland Felber!

Fernando Suarez Paz joined the Quinteto Nuevo Tango at the request of Astor Piazzolla in 1978, and he toured with the ensemble until their disbandment in 1988. In his decade of performing alongside Piazzolla, Paz recorded 18 albums all over the world. The first track on this album, Escualo by Piazzolla, is dedicated to Fernando Suarez Paz. The New York Times gave Paz a 7-star rating after his performances alongside vibraphonist Gary Burton at various jazz festivals across Europe, Japan, and the United States. Fernando’s son, Leonardo Suarez Paz is featured on this release. Leonardo grew up alongside Astor Piazzolla and was mentored by both Piazzolla and his father. He directs tango projects all over the globe, and his productions have appeared in such venues as the Lincoln Center in New York, and the Teatro Colon Opera House in Buenos Aires.

Capella Istropolitana orchestra under the leading of conductors Wolfgang Sobotka and Harald Nerat perform MOZART's: Eine kleine Nachtmusik / Serenata Notturna / Divertimento.

The variation cycle is without a doubt one of the most important works of keyboard instrument literature, played time and again, both in the original version and in miscellaneous adaptations and instrumentations. Framed by the unforgettably beautiful aria in a form similar to a sarabande, the 30 variations are bound by the bass framework and divided in two larger parts. A French overture marks the beginning of the second part. Every third variation, composed as an interval canon and in which the parts begin in an ever-increasing interval, additionally subdivides the work into ten groups of three. This wonderful work with its plethora of possible structures and symbols concealed in numbers has kept generations of musicians and musicologists busy and will probably continue to do so for a long time to come. The best thing to do is to lean back, leave the task of hitting the right key at the right time to the musicians and let the music speak for itself! Or, as Albert Einstein once said, "What I have to say about Bach's life work: Listen, perform, love and adore it! And shut up!"

Acclaimed pianist Inna Faliks breaks new ground with REIMAGINED on Navona Records, an homage to Beethoven and Ravel which manages to do the impossible: be breathtakingly innovative while remaining respectful to the source material. Nine contemporary composers, including Richard Danielpour, Paola Prestini, Billy Childs, and Timo Andres, were commissioned to craft responses to Ludwig van Beethoven's Bagatelles, op. 126 (incidentally, the master's favorite) as well as Maurice Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit. The results are exhilarating, not least owing to Faliks's stunningly precise and sensitive pianistic interpretation: the Ukrainian-born American pianist ties together Classical, Romantic and modern pieces with disarming nonchalance and rock-solid technical skill. Defying the challenge of uniting three centuries of musical styles and social commentary, as well as producing an album during a global pandemic with the help of Yamaha's Disklavier technology, REIMAGINED proudly raises a monument not only to the genius of Beethoven and Ravel, but also to the perseverance and verve of some of today's most exciting and important composers.

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Mozart wrote his Violin Concertos in 1775 while still living in his home town of Salzburg and in service to Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. Mozart had already toured internationally and found his parochial environment restricting, but as ever he rose above circumstances to create sublime and thrillingly unconventional masterpieces filled with wit and elegant charm. The finely sustained melodic expression of each concerto’s slow center provides the perfect foil for inventive sparkle in outer movements that include a cheeky reference to the opera Il re pastore in K.216 to an exotic ‘Turkish’ moment in the finale of K. 219.

Reviews:

In the Fourth Concerto, there’s a lovely singing character to the central Andante, Kraggerud producing a variety of tone which matches the changing intensity of the line. Here, as in all the concertos, he plays his own cadenzas, which are stylish in the best sense, and show off his technique.

– BBC Music Magazine

The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra has something of a reputation for working harmoniously with guest soloist-directors, not least among them Leif Ove Andsnes in concertos by Mozart and Haydn. Their strength lies in the collaborative approach dictated by their modest dimensions and conductorless set-up. Those discs with Andsnes were conspicuously successful, both artistically and critically, and this new project with Henning Kraggerud is no less winning. While these are brisk, no-nonsense performances after the contemporary fashion, the thinking that underpins their shaping right from the very beginning makes these readings of the Third, Fourth and Fifth concertos worth returning to.

– Gramophone

Telemann’s Wedding Serenata Georg Philipp Telemann never missed the opportunity to delight those around him with countless compositions treating the subject of love and its consequences. The origins of his enormous achievement in this field are certainly to be sought in his personal disposition: in his exuberant joy in composition, combined with an open, optimistic attitude in his dealings with his environment, which in his works not rarely revealed his roguish sense of humor. And so he above all was very much in demand as a composer of wedding pieces. The texts of the wedding serenata »Liebe, was ist schöner als die Liebe« undeniably exhibit mirthful exuberance and belong to the most original and wittiest musical creations of all by this composer. The serenata has the form of a disputatio, a dramatic dialogue in which an advocate of marriage (Ametas, soprano) and a skeptic (Crito, tenor) are in disagreement about the usefulness of the institution of marriage. The album also includes the solo cantata “Lieben will ich,” in which the imponderables of love are celebrated in witty free texts, and the cantata “Der Weiberorden,” which quite clearly was composed in conjunction with a wedding feast and in lighter tones enables to join the young bride in joyous anticipation of her future married life.

To help artists develop exciting projects that are difficult to realize under existing conditions is the goal of the SWR NEWJazzMeeting. This legendary sound laboratory for jazz of the SWR was founded in 1966 by Joachim-Ernst Berendt and takes place every year. The idea: musicians who always wanted to perform with one another but who, for a variety of reasons, have so far not been able to do so, develop a concert programme in the broadcaster’s studios that the SWR then presents in several concerts in its transmission area. In the course of its fifty-year history, the SWR NEWJazz Meeting has in this way served as a driving force for new trends in jazz. “I see a particular value in exploring the music of my South African homeland and making it fit for the future.” Kyle Shepherd, born in 1987, is the most innovative and important pianist of the contemporary South African jazz scene. His sound boldly makes reference to the roots of township jazz and the Goema Beat of his hometown of Cape Town. Nevertheless, he refuses to be put into a pigeonhole; his horizon extends far beyond his beloved Cape Jazz. “It’s cool to choose the African thing in conceptual questions. But just as cool to choose something else.” Kyle Shepherd, the most innovative and important pianist of the contemporary South African jazz scene, is the curator of the 2016 SWR NEWJazz Meeting. At his wish, four young jazz musicians from South Africa and the Benin-born guitarist and singer Lionel Loueke (who since 2001 has been living in the United States) met in November 2016 at the SWR’s Baden-Baden radio studios. The musicians named their project “Sound Portraits From Contemporary Africa”. The African improvisers experimented for five days and developed a concert programme that they then presented on a tour in the SWR broadcasting area.

GOTTIORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACKMusic by Pitbull & Jorge GomezFeaturing Leona LewisSony Music proudly announces the release of GOTTI (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), starring John Travolta in the title role. The album features the film’s original score music by GRAMMY® Award-winning, multi-platinum international music icon, business entrepreneur and motivational Armando Christian Perez, aka Pitbull, and his long-time Grammy-winning producer Jorge Gomez. The project marks Pitbull’s first assignment scoring a motion picture soundtrack.The soundtrack also includes three solo Pitbull tracks, one of them being the single AMORE featuring Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Leona Lewis.“Everything about Pitbull - his style, creativity, and culture make his scoring of Gotti - the perfect marriage of the artist and the material” stated John Travolta.“It’s a true honor to be involved with this project and working with icon John Travolta on the legendary story of Gotti,” said Pitbull. “By default, we were underdogs in our own right and found ways to survive against all odds.”Leona Lewis says about the soundtrack: “I love working with Pitbull.  It’s always so much fun and his energy is just infectious. This record was really interesting to put together as it was something new for me.  Being a big movie fan, the fact that the song is in the GOTTI movie is so exciting.”ABOUT GOTTI:John Travolta (Academy Award® Nominee) stars as the legendary mobster John Gotti who was head of the largest and most powerful crime organization in North America, the Gambino Family. His flamboyant style, charm and ruthless personae made him the most famous mobster in the 20th Century. The story, told through the eyes of his eldest son John Gotti Jr., delves into the past and explores Gotti’s epic rise and fall in the mob. Gotti earned the name “Teflon Don” by the media, whom he did not shy away from, due to the FBI’s numerous unsuccessful attempts to convict him. Eventually he was sentenced to life in prison, and a young 24-year-old Gotti Jr. becomes the acting Boss of the Family. Gotti Jr. is also investigated and arrested by the FBI for his own connections to crime. Gotti Jr. ultimately rejects the legacy he was born into and walks away a “civilian.”The film is directed by Kevin Connolly and stars John Travolta in the title role, alongside Kelly Preston, Ella Bleu Travolta, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Stacy Keach, Chris Mulkey, Lydia Hull and Spencer Lofranco.            ABOUT PITBULLFrom Mr. 305 to Mr. Worldwide, Armando Christian Perez, aka Pitbull, rose from the streets of Miami to exemplify the American Dream and achieve international success. His relentless work ethic transformed him into a Grammy®-winning global superstar, business entrepreneur and motivational speaker. Landing # 1 hits in over 15 countries, 10 billion YouTube/VEVO views, 70 million single sales and 6 million album sales, Pitbull does not stop. In addition to the United States, his sold-out world concert tours have taken him to North and South America, Europe and the Far East. He has also completed headlining tours in China and Japan. Along the way in his journey, he has co-headlined with Enrique Iglesias, spoken to thousands as part of Tony Robbins’ motivational seminars, and will open for Britney Spears in the U.K. and Europe this summer. Pitbull ushered in 2018 with his fourth annual New Year’s Eve event at Bayfront Park in Miami and capped off another stellar year in 2017 that included the release of his 10th full-length album, Climate Change, a second co-headlining U.S. tour with Enrique Iglesias, the release of his first-ever Greatest Hits, and a new Spanish single. Whether it’s his Voli 305 Vodka, currently in the process of becoming available nationally and has its own signature cocktails at multiple Sugar Factory American Brasserie locations, or the fragrance line “Pitbull,” his influence has catapulted. His first Las Vegas residency, “Time of Our Lives” at the AXIS at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, has now accomplished multiple consecutive runs with spring 2018 dates recently completed at the newly renamed Zappos Theater. Pitbull has unveiled plans for the Summer 2018 opening of iLov305, a new restaurant and nightlife concept on Miami's famed Ocean Drive. In addition to his music for Gotti, starring John Travolta, Pitbull has signed on to the STX UglyDolls franchise, based on the ubiquitous pop culture Uglydoll characters. Pitbull will write and perform an original song for the film UglyDolls, slated for release in 2019, and lend his voice talent to one of the film’s key characters. Norwegian Cruise Line handpicked him as Godfather to Norwegian Escape, one of the most innovative cruise ships ever built. He recently completed his second Pitbull Cruise in March 2018. Globalization, his 24/7 commercial-free channel on Sirius XM (Ch.13), has become one of the platform’s fastest-growing channels following its 2015 launch. Pitbull also serves as ambassador to the Sports Leadership Arts and Management (SLAM!) charter schools he has helped to establish. Launched in the Little Havana section of Miami where he spent some of his youth, the SLAM! model has now expanded to Las Vegas and West Palm Beach, Florida, and has plans to launch the first student-run national radio broadcast.ABOUT LEONA LEWIS:The British singing sensation has sold over 20 million records worldwide, and reached #1 in over 35 countries with her hit single “Bleeding Love.”  A vocal powerhouse who is renowned for her vocal range and ability, Lewis is a 3-time GRAMMY Award nominee, 7 -time BRIT Award nominee,  MTV VMA and World Music Award winner and has been nominated for MTV EMAs and Billboard Music Awards. Lewis became the first British female solo artist to top the US Billboard 200 album chart in more than 20 years with her debut album Spirit.Leona is an extremely passionate humanitarian and animal rights activist working with a number of organizations including MTV Staying Alive. 2016 saw Leona nominated for a CMT Award and was recognized with the Music Pioneer Award at the United Nations Women’s Entrepreneurship Day.  Recently, Leona has made her Broadway debut in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s CATS playing the highly prestigious role of Grizabella, performing the world famous song “Memory’’. Currently Leona is back in the studio recording and most recently released a duet with Calum Scott of “You Are the Reason” in February 2018.

This selection of pieces for mandolin and guitar represents the rich variety of music from Israel. Styles range from the diaspora of Babylonian Jewry through European klezmer traditions, and Balkan Ladino songs, to contemporary influences from America. Paul Ben-Haim and Marc Lavry pioneered the use of music originating in the Jewish East, and Jan Freidlin continues the tradition, employing Oriental dance figures in his music. Oren Lok's Ahavais an homage to love, while Ittai Rosenbaum’s Duet offers a vibrant and jazzy conclusion to this wide-ranging conspectus.

REVIEW:

This a distinctive program takes us to the Promised Land and, in fine interpretations, will probably cause most music lovers to explore new musical territories.

– Pizzicato

Because Avishai Cohen’s previous outing—a 2017 album titled 1970 (Sony)—was his most commercially successful release thus far, one wouldn’t blame him for revisiting a similar artistic wellspring. Instead, for his 17th leader date, the bassist went in another direction, recruiting an entirely different set of musicians for the deeply personal, nostalgia-fueled Arvoles. Half the program here consists of trio recordings with pianist Elchin Shirinov and drummer Noam David, and on the other half, the band expands to a quintet with trombonist Björn Samuelsson and flutist Anders Hagberg. - DownBeat Magazine Editors' Pick

Click here to read the full review at DownBeat Magazine

Elena Urioste and Michael Brown formed a recital duo in 2009 and have performed together extensively ever since. For their first recording together they have selected four works which have formed part of their repertoire from the very beginning, resonating throughout their entire musical partnership. All four are early works, written by composers in their twenties or younger- Michael Brown was only eighteen when he composed his own contribution. As the performers put it in their liner notes, the pieces they have chosen are “imbued with an ardour that is unapologetically, deliciously youthful.” The disc opens with the only multi-movement work of the program- Richard Strauss’s expansively melodic Sonata in E flat major, written around the time when the composer met and fell in love with his future wife. A few years later, in Paris, Ravel made a first attempt at composing a violin sonata while still a student at the Conservatoire. The resulting piece, in one movement, had a single performance during Ravel’s lifetime and was only published in 1975, as Sonate posthume. Between these two works we hear Michael Brown’s Echoes of Byzantium, inspired by William Butler Yeats’s Sailing to Byzantium, and an attempt to portray the meaning of the poem through music alone. The disc closes with a piece by another American composer and pianist, Amy Beach (1867-1944) The first American woman to compose and publish a symphony (first performed in 1896), she was best known for her songs, and her gift for melody is evident in the 1893 Romance for violin and piano.

This new release is the eighth and final volume in this superlative cycle of the complete Haydn Piano Trios, performed by The Mendelssohn Piano Trio. Four works are featured, including Piano Trio in F Major, Hob. XV: 37, Piano Trio in E-flat Major Hob. XV: 29, Piano Trio in C Minor, Hob XV: 13, and Piano Trio in G Major, Hob XV: 32. The Mendelssohn Piano Trio was founded in 1997, and since their inception have performed more than 500 concerts in the United States, Europe, and Asia. They have also recorded an impressive fifteen albums, including the present cycle. The trio is pianist Ya-Ting Chang from Taiwan, violinist Peter Sirotin from Ukraine, and cellist Fiona Thompson from England. “…the fine young Mendelssohn Piano Trio presented a program so lush, substantial and richly flavored you wanted to eat it with a knife and fork.” (The Washington Post)

Classical Music

This CD contains Bowles' most performed score, Night Waltz, the first of the Three Pieces for Two Pianos, which opens the CD. Rhythmically, this is a complex work of polyrhythms. It's the sort of thing he may have heard in the Tangiers streets and was written in the same year as the novel. The middle Nocturne was composed fourteen years earlier but the finale with its jazzy exoticism dates from 1976.

Bowles had been an inveterate traveller even before 1947 as the Four Piano Pieces demonstrate. The first, the rather neo-classical Impasse de Tombouchtou also refers to a dingy street in Thiviers in Southern France. Café sin Nombre and Carretera de Estapona refers to Southern Spain. Estapona, now a glamorous seaside town can almost be seen from Tangiers, and is, I recall, a pleasant boat trip away. Surrounded by a dry and desert landscape it was much more basic and village-like in Bowles’ day. The opening, with its massive chords, reminds us that it is surrounded by those startlingly blue, imposing mountains. In between these pieces is an elegant and tonally ambiguous Theseus and Maldoror inspired by Greek legend.

Bowles’ travel diaries continue with the Three Latin American Pieces. It’s Mexico which is celebrated in movement 1 with its lively rhythms (El Bejuco) and Costa Rica in 3 (Sayula). Despite their brevity these pieces attract immediately. Movement 2 (Orosi) is delicate and is succeeded by a dance-like episode reminding me of Mompou’s Canço i dansa which was also composed during the mid-1940s.

In the detailed and helpful booklet notes Andrey Kasparov describes the Sonatina Fragmentaria as having “crystalline sonorities”. The tiny middle movement is somewhat Spanish in flavor while the outer ones are more thoughtful and enigmatic. All in all, this amounts to a series of attractive mosaics.

South of Morocco, in the Atlas Mountains, is Tamanar. Views from this village inspired this austere, striking and unusually dissonant mini-tone poem. Bowles went there with Aaron Copland who had just completed his equally austere Piano Variations. Bowles discovers some intriguing sonorities. It's a great shame that he did not pursue this style very often.

The Four Miniatures are practically polytonal and pointillistic but are in Bowles’ usual light-hearted manner with Reverie having a touch of Spain about it again. The Sonatina is neo-classical, almost Poulencian. There is no sense of classical development; in other words the Germanic influence Bowles so disliked is disregarded in favour of the interconnection of fragments. The middle movement is a lyrical Andante Cantabile with a long line which reaches a strong climax.

The last seven tracks are devoted to arrangements for piano duet of miscellaneous Bowles pieces. Kasparov selected four songs, apparently quite popular, originally from 1946, all in a light jazz style and called them Blue Mountain Ballades. Gold and Fizdale took three miscellaneous pieces. The first, Colloquy Sentimental is the only surviving material from a lost Bowles ballet score. The next, Caminata again betrays a Spanish influence and is part of a ballet set in Mexico. The last, Turkey Trot is a sort of wild Scott Joplin essay and brings the CD to a zany conclusion.

This disc proved more attractive and interesting than I had expected. Although Bowles may be a better writer than a composer he certainly deserves his place in the Naxos American Classics series.

– MusicWeb International (Gary Higginson)

The performances are beautifully idiomatic, capturing the brittle character, whimsicality and subtle power of the music.

– Gapplegate Classical/Modern Music Review

In ORGAN PLUS WITH W J, Wilma Jensen is heard in a variety of music recordings spanning a long and successful career, as a concerto soloist, as a choral conductor and accompanist, as a concert organ soloist and organist in combination with various instrumentalists and vocal soloists.

Note the three striking elements on this album, from the minute you press play. The first is the quality of the performances. These are top-level musicians bringing their same superlative artistry to Christmas favorites that they do to a Schubert quartet or Taverner score. The second is the sterling quality of the recording. If there is a sonic equivalent to sipping a hot toddy while curled up before a roaring fire, it is Sono Luminus’s peerless mixes and captures. Third–and in every way as essential as the previous two–this is a kaleidoscopic collection of styles and interpretations of beloved songs and carols that keeps one eager for the next number. With such a fetching variety of artists and approaches, you will find yourself going top-to-tail on this one. Simplicity is an underrated avenue when it comes to holiday releases, so the entries by Irina Muresanu & Matei Varga, Bruce Levingston, Kathryn Bates, and Skylark Vocal Ensemble are a breath of proverbial fresh air. Muresanu’s seductive playing is a glimpse into the golden age of violin technique–lush vibrato and delicious sentimentality, which infuses “White Christmas” with every bit of nostalgia one could hope for.

CONTENTS:

• Steve Nelson, Jack Rollins: Frosty the Snowman
• Tchaikovsky: The Seasons, Op. 37b XII. December "Christmas"
• Berlin, I: White Christmas
• Marks, J: Holly Jolly Christmas
• Blake, H: Walking in the Air
• Cory Hills: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas
• Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie: Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
• Guaraldi: Christmas Time Is Here (From "A Charlie Brown Christmas")
• trad: Joy to the World
• trad: Good King Wenceslas
• Martin, Hugh: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
• Gruber, F: Silent Night, H. 145

REVIEW:

This is a well-constructed program of solo piano music that valuably includes the premiere recording of Holst’s Brook Green Suite in Vally Lasker’s transcription and two pieces by Roderick Williams; one an original composition and the other his free transcription of John Ireland’s Sea Fever.

Britten’s Holiday Diary seems to be receiving more recordings and concert performances of late. I last movements from it in a highlights disc from the Husum Festival. The nippy flurries of Early Morning Bathe are finely projected by Maria Marchant, who ensures that the Sailing movement is by no means plain, though after the squalls one returns to its elysian introduction. The big contrast between the showy Fun-Fair aand the subdued Night could hardly be more potent. Ronald Stevenson tended to be more-than-somewhat dismissive of the solo piano writing of some senior British composers. His Peter Grimes Fantasy, which follows with inexorable programmatic logic, is a fugue on two subjects and Britten approved of it according to the paragraph in the booklet that preserves Stevenson’s own introduction to the piece. It’s driving, powerful music, idiomatically laid out, as one would expect of the prolific executant-composer. Maria Marchant’s metronome is set to ‘action’ when it comes to John Ireland’s Ballade of London Nights, which she takes at a real lick—the fastest recording of it yet to be set down, I think. If I happen to prefer the more insinuating tempi of, say, John Lenehan, Alan Rowlands and Eric Parkin, it’s certainly bracing to hear Marchant’s take, if only the once.

Roderick Williams’s Sea Fever transcription opens like Rachmaninov and is vividly accomplished, whilst his own Goodwood by the Sea fits the program delightfully: richly colored, rhythmically vivid, wholly delightful. Kenneth Leighton’s Six Studies are knottier by far, a sequence of so called ‘Study-Variations’, composed in 1969. The color and astringency of the writing is always exciting, the ‘e secco’ instruction fully realized here in the second study, and the way that economy of means develops gravity in the Adagio a particularly revealing example of Leighton’s skill. The garrulous quality of the capricious fourth movement and the dramatic energy of the finale study reinforce the rewarding merits of this brief but intense cycle. Holst’s solo piano music aspires to little more than charm, though the folklorically inflected Toccata is thoroughly engaging: the Brook Green Suite is similarly effortlessly charming and Lasker’s transcription—she was his assistant and ex-pupil—is fresh-faced and effective.

It ends a well selected work list that will reward close listening. Robert Matthew-Walker’s notes are very readable, though he has to strain to make connections between the works from time to time. Fine recording quality.

-- MusicWeb International (Bruce McCollum)