An instant success, Charles Hubert Hastings Parry’s oratorio Judith premiered in Birmingham in August 1888. The work consolidated his reputation as a composer of large-scale orchestral and choral writing. With its vigorous choruses and dramatic solo roles, the work is of persistent quality. Yet somehow, the work has been largely neglected for the last century. On this release, the work is presented by the Crouch End Festival Chorus and the London Mozart Players led by William Vann. Soloists Sarah Fox, Kathryn Rudge, Toby Spence and Henry Waddington round out the recording with enthusiastic performances.

REVIEWS:

Every aspect of this performance sounds like a labour of love. Rudge’s soaring, expressive singing as Meshullemeth gives the piece its real heart, and she’s accompanied with intense sympathy by the conductor William Vann, who avoids any suggestion of bombast or sentimentality, and builds Parry’s great paragraphs so eloquently and with such assurance that you’d think he’d been conducting this music all his life.

– Gramophone

You don’t have to be Parry’s champion Prince Charles to feel a thrill as the soprano Sarah Fox rings out as Judith, the Crouch Enders exult, the tenor Toby Spence sonorously conveys the vacillating king Manasseh and Parry creates sequences of stirring clamour.

– Sunday Times (UK)

•Pianist Jura Margulis recorded the present Schubert CD on a modern grand piano equipped with the built-on “sordino pedal” extension. Around the mid-19th century, this possibility of altering and extending the sound had largely disappeared from the canon of various pedal functions, but it was retained in Vienna until the early 20th century. Composers call this function “sordino” because the sound modification is related to the mutes of the string instruments.

Although for many, Antonio Vivaldi's contemporary renown may rest primarily with The Four Seasons, his legacy is steadily achieving greater and richly deserved recognition today with the help of collections such as this one abetted by the Aradia Ensemble, a fine period instrumental ensemble with an impressively robust discography. Vivaldi was astoundingly prolific composing hundreds sonatas, sinfonias and concertos, as well as more than forty operas, numerous sacred choral works and around forty cantatas. The works on this recording dedicated to his sacred music range from the virtuosic to the simple, but Vivaldi's vivid musical imagination is in full force throughout. Though his sacred music has generally received less attention than his instrumental works, they are equal to them in their originality and power.

Classical Music

Henri Dutilleaux's perfectionism resulted in a distinctive and individual musical language of rare poetry and invention. The interplay of stereophonic and polyrhythmic effects and jazzy brass writing in Symphony No. 2 "Le Double" forms, in the composer's own words, 'a musical play of mirrors and of contrasting colours', while Timbres, espaces, mouvement is Dutilleux's response to Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, a 'longing for the infinity of nature'. The series of snapshots in Mystère de l'instant evokes fleeting and almost magical moments in time, its cumulative power indicative of a consummate composer at the height of his powers.

A one-act opera, Elvida is a short “dramatic action” which in effect “has nothing historical”, as is stated in the libretto’s “topic”, it didn’t take inspiration from any drama, short novel, or previous texts by others, inventing everything and almost preferring probabilities to the truth. Closely following the instructions received, Donizetti didn’t even compose a symphony or prelude and accepted the frugality of recitative; in the manuscript, he left no sign of the tenor’s aria, the one intended for Rubini, with which he counted on pleasing the public, because he hadn’t time to write it and therefore missed the opportunity, or maybe because (as was the practice with parody, of composers borrowing from their other works, and use of “trunk” or “suitcase” arias) he didn’t write anything new, leaving the famous Rubini to insert an aria he liked (which the composer obviously liked too). Nonetheless, the 29 year-old musician committed himself body and soul to the manner, the “Rossini-ism” and the style of his maestro Mayr; and in fact sketched a small, clear and accurate score, perfectly suited to the singers’ personalities and never forgot the art of writing, the proper arrangement of the parts, classical singing and melodic invention.

The Billy Collins Suite comprises intimate chamber settings for eleven Collins poems, some sung, others narrated. (Cedille)

These performances, recorded in 2009/10, are not Delos reissues. If you’ve heard Gerard Schwarz’s Mahler recordings, you will know that his recent work reveals a distinctive and compelling way with romantic music, miles away from his stiff early recordings of Mozart and Haydn. This Dvorák Sixth is wholly personal and worth getting to know. Contrast seems to have become the name of the game. The first movement, with its exposition repeat intact, is uncommonly swift and exciting, the Adagio unusually slow—a real adagio—but still lyrical and flowing. In Schwarz’s hands the music takes on a larger aspect than it usually does.

The scherzo has plenty of the necessary fire, but the finale is also different (legitimately so) from any other version. In the coda, for example, Schwarz has the strings execute their fugato a touch slower than it typically goes, but with great precision, leading to a truly grand reading of the final pages. In every movement Schwarz varies the pulse effectively within a phrase, making effective use of slight ritards and accents to maintain interest. It’s just thoughtful, intelligent music making, with an orchestra able to follow the conductor’s every whim.

Janácek’s Idyll makes an unusual but effective coupling, dating as it does from two years before the symphony. In seven movements lasting some 30 minutes, the piece sounds a lot like Dvorák (albeit without the tunes) and wholly unlike the Janácek on which his reputation rests. Once again, the performance is warm and captivating, the string playing often luscious in sonority. This very enjoyable, well-engineered disc should excite the interest of Dvorák fans; it came as a very pleasant surprise.

– ClassicsToday.com

The libretto for La Romanziera e l’Uomo Nero was inspired by two plays performed in Paris in the 1820s: L’Homme Noir by Eugène Scribe and Jean-Henry Dupin in 1820 and Le Coiffeur et le Perruquier, also written by Scribe in collaboration with Mazères and Saint Laurent, in 1824. By basing the opera on these plays the composer created a divertissement of the Italian querelle genre, both classical and romantic.The libretto is a satyr of the sentimental-romantic daydreams which were so fashionable at that time and takes places in the poetic world of the young Antonina, who dreams of an ideal life with an non-existent “uomo nero”, the mystery man. La Romanziera e l’Uomo Nero is an “ambiguous” and complex work: it is ambiguous because it lacks a clear and decisive characterization in a comedic sense; that is to say, a clearly defined plot, complete with all the typical ingredients of a traditional opera buffa, and a precise outline and structure in this direction, from both a dramaturgical and musical point of view. It is complex because it is full of recollections and inventions, which are introduced and developed predominantly through a contrapuntal approach (all scenes invariably call for more than one soloist).

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra focuses on works by Perttu Haapanen (b. 1972), one of the most important and interesting Finnish composers of his generation. It includes a recently-written Flute Concerto with Yuki Koyama as soloist and conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk, and two other works conducted by Hannu Lintu: a song-cycle written for soprano Helena Juntunen and an orchestral work, Compulsion Island, written for the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Compulsion Island was written to a commission from the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and makes full use of the resources of a full-sized symphony orchestra. Haapanen creates a multi-layered and richly sonorous texture where extended instrument techniques play a significant and carefully considered role. Quiet, stagnant and expectant yet tense moments alternate with charged and punchy rhythmical passages that increase in force until the final culmination, followed by a subsiding, dreamlike and unreal epilogue. The Flute Concerto lasts about 25 minutes and is in a single movement divided into two halves featuring different materials, according to the composer. At the surface level, it comes across as a flexible and elastic structure consisting of several short sections in rapid succession, with contrasting moods either alternating or superimposed. The palette of sonorities is rich, augmented by extended instrument techniques and a number of rare sound sources such as a typewriter producing crisp rhythms and the absurd sounds of wheezing toys. Ladies’ Room for soprano and chamber orchestra was written to a commission from the Musica nova Helsinki festival. Originally written and premiered in 2007 by Helena Juntunen, it was revised by Haapanen in the following year. The texts come from a wide variety of sources: poems by conductor and mezzosoprano Jutta Seppinen, the Bible, Google, the archives of Scotland Yard and Paul Celan. Between them are four nonsense text settings that pay homage to Adolf Wolfli, an early 20th-century Swiss artist. The soprano part is highly demanding due to its wide range of vocal techniques which make Ladies’ Room a vocal virtuoso work where the virtuoso component is an integral part of the content.

Today, the name of Arnold Mendelssohn scarcely ranks as a footnote in most musical textbooks; however, he played a seminal role in the revival of German church music. His love of polyphony, combined with his characteristic warm, late Romantic harmonic language imbues Mendelssohn's scores with a sense of otherworldly timelessness.

V 14: MUSICA CLAROMONTANA

Classical Music

Mohammed Fairouz has rapidly become one of the most highly regarded composers of his generation, receiving wide acclaim for works such as Native Informant and his Symphony No. 4 "In the Shadow of No Towers". Setting texts from ancient times to World War II, the songs on this new album represent a decade of writing for the human voice. Refugee Blues addresses powerful social issues while sensual celebrations of being human and alive are explored in After the Revels. The theme of loss is also compellingly expressed in the intense, distilled narrative of No Orpheus, a portrait of departed family members, and Edgar Allan Poe's last completed poem, the hauntingly mournful Annabel Lee.

Frederick II, King of Prussia, was a gifted musician who built up a court orchestra noted both for its quality and its size. Great musicians such as Graun, Quantz and C.P.E. Bach were members and contributed hugely to its standing. A patron of the fine arts, Frederick was a highly accomplished flautist whose works, performed in small private concerts, show a remarkable range of forms and expressive effects with slow movements offering long-breathed arcs of melody. The pieces by Alessandro De Marchi, conceived in the spirit of improvisation, provide a revealing impression of contemporary performance practice. This new release of Frederick the Great’s flute sonatas relates to the450th anniversary of the Staatskapelle Berlin, first established as the Royal Prussian Court Orchestra by the monarch. Claudia Stein became first flute of the orchestra at the age of 23. She recorded Weinberg’s Flute Concertos for Naxos in 2019 (8.573931), which received 5 stars from Pizzicato: ‘Stein plays them absolutely ravishingly, with a touch of melancholy.’

The LaSalle Quartet was active from 1946-88; however, it's influence goes far beyond that. Violinist Walter Levine is still a vital, much sought out authority for string players. From their founding, the Quartet was devoted to the late 19th and 20th c repertoire. The works of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern were a significant part, as were the quartets of Schoenberg's teacher, Alexander Zemlinsky. This CD of studio recordings from 1965, 1968 and 1977 draws Zemlinsky together with Haydn and Brahms - a bold program for an ensemble specializing in modern to include some "early music".

Joseph Haydn's The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross is one of the most unusual and remarkable compositions of the classical period. Performed here by the brilliant Callino Quartet, the piece exists in four different versions and the edition for string quartet, which has a particular purity and intimacy, is the form in which the music is most often heard today. Suffused with profound sorrow and grief but also with strength and hope. The Seven Last Words is a work so deeply moving and contemplative that it has impassioned listeners in all its forms for over 200 years and was considered by the composer himself to be one of his greatest masterpieces. The Callino Quartet was formed at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in 1999 and has been delighting audiences ever since with its fresh, enthusiastic interpretations and engaging programmes. The versatility of the quartet has enabled it to cultivate a diverse and challenging repertoire with a thoughtful and historically informed approach to the classical quartet literature as well as develop close collaborations. The quartet has worked with numerous contemporary composers and has received many awards including prizes at the Borciani and Tromp international string quartet competitions. The group has performed in many of the world's best concert halls including Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall.

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REVIEWS:

I have listened to this over and over, each time finding it more evocative of how the music sounds in my head. If you want to replace whatever quartet version you already own, this is the time to do it.

– Fanfare

If the quartet version of the Seven Last Words convinces you, this recording certainly offers a perspective worth hearing.

– Gramophone