- Coming from a family of musicians, guitarist and composer Bruno Battisti D'Amario (Rome, 1937) received his artistic training at the Conservatorio Musicale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he studied under Maestros Benedetto Di Ponio and Mario Gangi. - In 1960, he met Ennio Morricone, who involved him in many collaborations as lead guitarist (classical and electric) in the soundtracks of his films. He also took composition lessons from him, thus creating a solid working relationship that lasted more than 20 years. He has collaborated with composers such as Nino Rota, Armando Trovajoli, Luis Bacalov, Nicola Piovani and others. - D'Amario knows the guitar perfectly, exploring all it's timbres and colours, creating fantastic soundscapes, sophisticated harmonies and flowing melodies. - Guitarist Adriano Sebastiani is a pupil and now close friend of D'Ammario, his playing shows deep knowledge and close affection for the idiom of this wonderfully original music. Riccardo Bini joins him in the works for guitar duo.

A young violinist, paired with one of the most renowned Lisztians of our day, make an illuminating and harmonious partnership in an exquisite body of modern classics for the duo. Very few 20th-century pieces have entered the canon of literature for violin and piano as universally as the Mythes of Karol Szymanowski. Alongside the sonatas of Janacek and Prokofiev, for example, the cycle embodies the style of it's composer at his most characteristic. In Szymanowski's case, the Mythes draw on a sensuous language of impressionism but also a Russian school of violin playing, and a fragrance in the melodies that is unique to him. Italian critics have been extravagant in their praise of Francesca Bonaita. Her repertoire already includes modern classics such as the concertos by Barber, Zimmermann and Schnittke, indicating the kind of affinity with modernist idioms which makes this Szymanowski disc so striking as a demonstration of her musicianship. Having graduated from the conservatoire in Milan as a student of Sergei Krylov, she furthered her studies in Lugano while attracting notice for her performances in many international violin competitions. The pianist Saskia Giorgini is well known as a Lisztian, with several outstanding albums to her credit, and as a sympathetic recital partner to outstanding musicians of our day such as Ian Bostridge and Vilde Frang. The duo have written a note for this new album of Szymanowski which both explains the background to each of the major works - the Mythes, the early Sonata and the composer's late transcriptions of three Paganini caprices - while underlining their intellectual grasp of this music as it falls under their fingers. As they note, Szymanowski was initially inspired by the examples of Franck and Brahms in writing his own, opulent Violin Sonata in 1909. Gradually he found his voice, helped along the way in particular by his friendship with the violinist Pavel Kochanski. It was Kochanski who gave both technical advice and inspiration to Szymanowski as he composed the two violin concertos and the trio of Mythes which are his culminating work in the field of chamber music: 'a mystical synthesis of the sensual and the divine', as they encapsulate it's elusive sequence of moods. Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) was one of Poland's most important and original composers. Szymanowski's style is eclectic, standing in the long romantic tradition. He imbued his works with exoticisms, impressionistic flourishes and a general sense of freedom and imagination. The works for violin and piano were composed for the famous Polish violinist Paul Kochanski. The most important works are the substantial Second Violin Sonata and the cycle Myths, both appearing regularly on concert programs nowadays. Played by rising star Francesca Bonaita with pianist Saskia Giorgini, whose Piano Classics and Pentatone recordings have won many awards (Critic's Choice) and 5 star reviews.

- An original and highly enjoyable program of works for bassoon and piano by romantic composers: the bassoon sonata Op. 9 by Gustav Schreck (1849-1918), the bassoon sonata by Anton Reicha (1770-1836), the Grande Sonate by Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870) and the brilliant Introduction & Polonaise by Jules Demersseman (1833-1866). - Strongly melodious music of great beauty, a valuable homage to that neglected but highly expressive and versatile wind instrument, the bassoon! - Played by Paolo Carlini, bassoon and Fabrizio Datteri, piano. Paolo Carlini is one of the foremost bassoon players of his generation, he recorded extensively as a soloist for labels Sony Classical, CPO, CHANDOS, Brilliant Classics, Stradivarius, Naxos, Tactus, EMA Records.

Vlastimir Trajkovic (1947-2017) studied with Olivier Messiaen and was the first Serbian composer to - from the early 70s - structurally apply elements of minimalism to what was a primarily impressionistic harmonic idiom in his music. His 10 Preludes for guitar is a work of refined melodies and subtle harmonies containing the composer's musical reminiscences of Serbian, Brazilian and Spanish traditional music, as well as jazz. Isidora Žebeljan (1967-2020) possesses a musical originality that is the product of an exceptionally authentic capability to organically fuse musical elements from various spheres of influence (from old Balkan folk traditions to rock and pop music) into new, as yet unknown sonic contexts. Her 3 Pieces for guitar are tender and filigreed, like a children's guide through a world of fairy tales, with delicious echoes of the Balkan and Mediterranean. The Intimate Letter from Judean Desert, with it's lonely, distant and almost endless melody, was written as chorale for any combination of instruments or voices. Dusan Radic (1929-2010) studied with both Milhaud and Messiaen and created an authentic integration of musical elements from folk and popular music, together with modal chant and jazz. His joyful Vignettes are derived from his earlier choral music, reusing some old, funny, almost childish folk tunes. Veljko Nenadic (b.1998) is the recipient of multiple international awards. He studied composition as a child prodigy with Isidora Žebeljan and writes music characterised by powerful energy, surprise, humour and emotional delicacy. His Festa na lua (Portuguese for 'Party on the Moon') pays homage to Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal and the generations of musicians who created post-bossa nova Brazilian jazz. Dragana Jovanovic (b.1963) composes in an eclectic, postmodern idiom, often with baroque motoric rhythms and virtuosic display. Pushc y Me ('Let me go') is her arrangement for double bass and guitar of an old traditional song from North Macedonia. Her composition Pure Energy evokes the energy in tenderness, slightly coloured by elements of blues. Dusan Bogdanovic (b.1955 has developed a personal style combining classical music, folk musical traditions, Byzantine chants and jazz. For his Preamble and Ricercare for violin and guitar he opted for the musical ambiance of the early baroque and renaissance music for lute, with it's delicate modal harmonies. Vuk Kulenovic (1946-2017) combines Balkan folk musical elements with minimalism, as well as the Byzantine modes which he also placed into the minimalistic musical context. His energetic, moving music uses the Balkans' aksak (irregular, additive) rhythms combined with repetition. Toccatina is a virtuosic miniature with a motoric and restless musical flow.

An unprecedented and critically praised series reaches it's fifth and final volume with richly evocative settings of German and Russian poets, from Pushkin to Nietzsche and beyond. Though born in Moscow, Medtner had partially German ancestry, and nearly half his songs are set to German poetry, which he knew in the original. In previous volumes of their complete survey of his songs, Ekaterina Levental and Frank Peters have concentrated on the Russians; now they conquer the peaks, as Medtner did, of Romantic German poetry, with texts by Goethe, Chamisso and Eichendorff. Rather less well known as a poet was Friedrich Nietzche, but he was a figure who fascinated Medtner, and the settings here speak of deep affinity. In the booklet, Ekaterina Levental reflects on her own sense of affinity with the composer. 'It was love at first hearing. It was as if someone whispered to me a truth for which there were no sounds before. He sounded out for me emotions and feelings, images, associations, a world of felt knowledge and experiences that I had been carrying inside me all along, but had never heard expressed in such a way. Someone from the past spoke to me in a language that I seemed to understand totally instinctively. Passing on this knowledge and wonder and sharing it with the audience became my dream.' This cycle on record has been a passion project for both artists, and Peters also passes on his own insights into Medtner's notoriously complex piano writing. Between them, they have gone further than anyone else in documenting a perennially undervalued Russian song composer, who deserves to be considered alongside Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky in this vein. This final volume closes out the cycle with the Eight Lieder Op.61, which move between Russian and German poets in a quintessentially Medtnerian synthesis. 'All in all, Levental and Peters make the strongest possible case for the repertoire... Levental continues to strike us with the beauty and purity of her voice and the rhetorical sensitivity of her phrasing, unfailingly tied to the affect of the text.' (Fanfare)

Both Beach and MacDowell were formidably accomplished pianists who wrote concertos in barnstorming virtuoso style, for themselves and their contemporaries to play, but they could also turn their hand to the lucrative domestic market for piano-duet music. In doing so they also tapped into the 19th-century, Romantic preoccupation with childhood which Schumann had encapsulated in his Kinderszenen of 1838.

MacDowell wrote his Moon-Pictures Op. 21 in the winter of 1884–5 and subtitled them ‘after H.C. Andersen’s Picture-Book without Pictures’, referring to an 1848 collection of short bedtime stories.

Published in 1901 and dedicated to the composer’s niece, the six duets of the album’s title collection, Summer Dreams by Beach, are shorter and technically simpler than the Moon-Pictures, but they are prefaced by literary quotations which once more indicate that this is not music for children so much as music for adults to play to children, and for adults to play at being children. In any case, simpler means and fewer notes need hardly imply naivety of expression, and Beach’s self-taught technique was too rigorous to allow anything less than the most deftly fashioned work to escape her desk.

Composed in 1883, Beach’s brief 3 Movements for piano duet are the work of a prodigiously talented teenager who knows her early-Romantic piano literature – including Kinderszenen – inside out, but who also understands at this stage how to emulate rather than merely copy her models.

In the following year of 1884, the 23-year-old MacDowell wrote his 3 Poems Op. 20. Strictly speaking, Hamlet and Ophelia is the outlier in this collection, since MacDowell composed it in 1894 as a tone-poem for orchestra in the Lisztian manner, and then made this two-piano transcription rather than leaving the work to the kind of professional arranger habitually commissioned by publishers for such work. Nevertheless, he took the kind of care over it that Brahms did in arranging his symphonies, and the piano-duet version retains the brooding tension of the opening and effectively transfers the violinistic surges of Hamlet’s main section to the keyboard.

The album’s final collection takes a chronological leap forward to 1952, but its nostalgia-drenched mood belongs to an intermediate age. ‘One might imagine a divertissement in a setting of the Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel’, Barber explained in a letter to his publisher, ‘the year about 1914, epoch of the first tangos. Souvenirs – remembered with affection, not in irony or with tongue in cheek, but in amused tenderness.’ Barber, it should be noted, would have been four years old at the time, and so these are ‘souvenirs’ in the manner of sepia-tinted postcards.

Gottfried Grunewald was a successful opera singer in 18th-century Germany, based at the theatre in Hamburg for many years, but a familiar figure in German courts and theatres across Germany. When he died in 1739, the composer Christopher Graupner (his colleague in Darmstadt) destroyed most of Grunewald's music, according to an agreement they had apparently made. Only seven keyboard partitas are known to have survived to modern times, and they receive their first complete recording here in the spirited hands of Fernando de Luca, who has done so much to rescue forgotten names from obscurity with his albums for Brilliant Classics. The loss of Grunewald's output becomes especially regrettable once close attention is paid to these Parititas. They reveal a deep knowledge of the instrument's technique and a refined compositional taste. Stylistically close to German composers of the time such as Kuhnau and Fischer, they also bring to mind the suites composed in Germany by the young Handel (preceding the Eight Great Suites), and the music of the young Graupner. Grunewald shows some skill as a contrapuntalist within the restrictions of the suite genre. The preludes of these partitas are not uniform in form; for example, the Prelude in D minor incorporates broad arpeggiated chords, which begin and end a strict fugue but then dissolves into free motivic play. Another is purely figurative, a third mixes movement with short imitations. Grunewald's allemandes build up like intricate etudes, including one example constructed in an organistically contrapuntal manner. The courantes are interwoven with imitative passages, the sarabandes are melodically appealing, sometimes breathing in the spirit of Handel's nobility of gesture. The doubles and minuets almost give the impression of variations. Some pieces have strongly emphasised French rhythms, others avoid it completely. Potentially incomplete, but certainly striking, is the two-movement Fourth Suite, with it's spacious Allemande followed by an imposing Chaconne, presenting a complete contrast to the nine brief dances of the Fifth Suite, which find Grunewald at his most French-accented. Reviewing the recent set of the harpsichord music by Pierre-Thomas Dufour on Brilliant, Fanfare noted: 'De Luca does a fine job in his performance, with a good sense of phrasing and registration.' - Gottfried Grunewald (1673 -1739) was a German opera singer, harpsichordist and composer. Nothing is known about his youth and training. From 1703 he was a singer and composer at the Oper am Gansemarkt in Hamburg. From the beginning of 1709, he worked as Vice-Kapellmeister at the court of Johann Georg von Sachsen-Weissenfels, where he married Johann Philipp Krieger's daughter. From 1711, he worked as vice-chapelmaster at the court in Darmstadt as Christoph Graupner's deputy. Around 1717, several journeys as a pantaleon virtuoso are documented. He remained active at court until his death. - Of his works, only seven partitas for harpsichord have survived, written in the style customary for the time. The suites consist of the usual order of Prelude-Allemande-Courante-Sarabande-Gavotte-Menuet-Gigue. - "too many performers confine themselves to the standard repertoire. Fortunately, there are artists who look beyond the obvious; Fernando de Luca is one of them and we should be thankful for him. de Luca is a good interpreter; I very much enjoyed his performances, they are as differentiated as possible, also in his treatment of the tempi. He has the advantage of a fine instrument, a copy of a Blanchet of 1754. That is as 'authentic' as one could wish for." Thus wrote Musicweb International about de Luca's recording of harpsichord works by Foucquet.

First recordings of unpublished instrumental works by a master of verismo. Several recent albums on Brilliant Classics have expanded our understanding of Francesco Cilea beyond his status as the composer of L'Arlesiana and Adriana Lecouvreur. His piano music, chamber music and songs all bear witness to a quintessentially Italian voice and aesthetic philosophy. Cilea abandoned writing for the stage after the failure of his opera Gloria in 1907, despite the presence of Toscanini in the pit, and his lyric gifts cut against the grain of the prevailing trends of modernism. He turned to teaching, but he did not entirely abandon composition. Instead, he turned back to instrumental music, and the works on this album are among the fruits of this revived inspiration. Apart from Cilea's celebrated melodic vein, the Suite for Violin and the Piccola Suite for Orchestra reveal his (perhaps un-Italian) talent for counterpoint, as well as an approach to tonal harmony that reflects his awareness of innovation, especially among French composers of the period. Cilea orchestrated the Suite in 1946 from his Suite for violin and piano of nine years earlier. The four brief movements are cast in a neoclassical vein, enclosing an elegant minuet followed by an Andante sostenuto in the very un-classical key of C sharp minor. The Piccola Suite (1931) more thoroughly absorbs the idioms of French music of the period such as the early works of Messiaen, with it's modal harmony, whole-tone scales and sequences of seventh and ninth chords: again, far from what we would expect from the composer of Adriana Lecouvreur. The arrangement, revision and scoring of the Concerto in D major for cello by Leonardo Leo (written in 1737) bears witness to Cilea's deep connection with the Conservatoire in Naples where he had studied and where he became director until his retirement in 1935. It's generous orchestration, and yet respect for the 18th-century idiom of the writing, makes an intriguing and almost unknown parallel to the Cello Concerto in D recomposed by Schoenberg in 1931 after a 1746 work by Georg Matthias Monn. Completing this unique survey of Cilea's output is a modern work, the first recording of the Canto dell'amore by Raffaele Cacciola, born in 1965. The style of this sinfonia concertante in all but name is a homage to the example of Cilea: tonally unpredictable, yet always melodic. These Milanese musicians draw out it's intrinsically Italian character in the tradition of Cilea's verismo. - Italian composer Francesco Cilea (1866-1950) is best known for his operas, particularly "Adriana Lecouvreur." However, his contributions to instrumental music should not be overlooked. Though less renowned than his operatic output, Cilea's instrumental works exhibit a melodic richness and emotional depth characteristic of the Romantic era. - Cilea's orchestral works show his mastery of lyrical themes and dramatic expression. His works are imbued with a sense of Italianate warmth and passion, reflecting the composer's deep connection to his native land. - This new recording presents the Suite for Violin & Orchestra, Il Canto dell'Amore, Cilea's arrangement of a Cello Concerto by Leonardo Leo and the Piccola Suite for Cello & Orchestra. - Played by one of the foremost cellists of Italy, Enrico Bronzi, violinist Massimo Quarta, and the Virtuosi Della Scala, conducted by Filippo Arlia.

The 'grande dame of the guitar' remembered through a new recording of her own music. Maria Luisa Anido (1907-1996) was born in Argentina and grew up in a household where the guitar was central. Her father brought home many of the great performers, whom she heard and who heard her. Miguel Llobet, himself a student of Tarrega, became one of her early teachers, though the most important was Domingo Prat. She met Andres Segovia after one of his concerts when she was about 10 and he was in his early 20s, and her own recordings rival those of Segovia's for both technical finesse and a natural feeling for the colours and rhythms of the Spanish guitar tradition. Cinzia Milani remarks, in an introduction to her new recording of Anido's own compositions, that 'there are moments when the technical essence of Anido's handing of the fretboard, especially in the higher registers, is so particular that one has the impression of knowing exactly what her hands were like.' Milani concludes her album with Anido's first and perhaps best-known piece, the Barcarola which she composed at the age of 20. Llobet lavished well-earned praise on her in response: 'I have read and played your Barcarola; the voices are carried magnificently with admirable taste of their natural characteristics; the tone colours are perfect. Bravo, very well done.' This is only the second album ever dedicated to Anido's music, making Cinzia Milani's recording a landmark contribution to guitar music on record, and to the extensive guitar library on Brilliant Classics. The most substantial collection here is a sequence of nine Impresiones Argentinas, which effectively form a survey of the folk music of her native land. Individual movements take up Indian, mestizo, pampan and North-western Creole melodies and rhythms. The Impresiones Argentinas are marvellously relaxed and earthy pieces, speaking unaffectedly of everyday experience, and no wonder that Anido charmed Soviet audiences with them during her 1960s tours, before settling for a while in Cuba. The Aire Norteño and Cancion del Yucatan equally draw on south-American roots, while a trio of Preludios Nostalgicos belong to the repertoire of many modern guitarists. Anido was a major figure on the landscape of the 20th-century guitar, and Cinzia Milani has made a devoted tribute to her art. - Maria Luisa Anido (1907-1996) was born in Moron, in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She studied guitar with Domingo Prat in Argentina and Miguel Llobet in Spain. From 1925, she frequently performed in Argentina together with Llobet. Her first London appearance was in 1952 at the Wigmore Hall, and she spent several years in the 1960s performing and teaching in Russia. Later she became professor at the conservatory of Buenos Aires. By the mid-1980s she moved to Spain, where she spent the rest of her life. - Maria Luisa Anido has been one of the few female composer-performers of her time. Her works for guitar, exquisite miniatures, are inspired by the rich folklore and music of her native Argentina. - Played with winning affection by Cinzia Milani, one of the foremost female guitarists of today, who has already issued a Tribute to Ida Presti, and Teresa de Rogatis, issued on Brilliant Classics.

A valuable CD reissue for a rare and compelling 1986 account of Mahler's great testament of faith. A Dutch tradition in Mahler performance extends beyond the boundaries of the Concertgebouw. Orchestras in Rotterdam and The Hague have often performed the songs and symphonies, and been led by directors with a typically Dutch, humanistic sympathy for the complex texture of expressions and idioms in Mahler, his appeal to the great symphonic tradition as well as his liberation from it's strictures. Nowhere is that sense of tradition and innovation more finely balanced in his output than in the Second Symphony, which underwent the longest gestation of all his symphonies. The first movement began life as a standalone tone-poem, portraying a dream-sequence autobiographical rite of death in graphically Lisztian terms. Gradually something much more ambitious took shape, and the dream which the young conductor-composer had experienced, seeing his own death as if from afar, became eventually answered by a triumphant affirmation of faith in creativity, with his setting of the Resurrection-Ode by the poet Klopstock. Hearing this poem at a funeral finally gave Mahler the inspiration he needed to complete the symphony, and it has remained one of his best-loved works ever since, coming to embody within generations of it's listeners a force of death and renewal. Yet the autobiographical, five-movement form of the symphony has it's obvious precedents in the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven and the Symphonie fantastique of Berlioz, and a successful performance such as this one underlines those connections. The Amsterdam-born Hans Vonk (1942-2004) served as Chief Conductor of the Residentie Orkest in The Hague between 1980 and 1991. Both the playing and the direction in this performance are imbued with confidence and mutual assurance; the tempi are flowing but not hasty, and Mahler's structure is held together with a compelling force. First issued as a 'private' LP set by the orchestra in 1986, this CD reissue makes a significant contribution to the symphony's extensive discography. - Gustav Mahler's (1860-1911) Second Symphony, often referred to as the "Resurrection Symphony," was composed between 1888 and 1894, marking a significant progression in Mahler's artistic development. The symphony is expansive, spanning five movements, and delves into themes of life, death, and the afterlife. - The Second Symphony is renowned for it's emotional depth and grandeur. The opening movement sets a somber tone, with brooding melodies that reflect on human mortality. The subsequent movements explore contrasting emotions, from moments of sublime beauty to passages of intense anguish. The symphony reaches it's climax in the final movement, where Mahler introduces vocal soloists and a chorus. This dramatic conclusion contemplates the concept of resurrection and ultimate redemption, culminating in a triumphant and awe-inspiring finale. - This excellent and moving recording from 1985 features the Residentie Orkest The Hague conducted by Hans Vonk, one of the most prominent Dutch conductors of the 20th century. The vocal soloists are Maria Oran Cury and Jard van Nes; the featured choir is The Dutch Theatre Choir.

Anton Rubinstein and Alexander Adolfovich Winkler represent two generations of Russian Romanticism, and their sonatas for viola and piano reveal contrasting yet complementary approaches to chamber music and to the expressive potential of the viola. Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894), one of the founders of the Russian conservatory system and a towering figure as pianist, conductor, and composer, approached chamber music with a distinctly European Romantic sensibility. His Sonata for Viola and Piano is notable for it's lyrical breadth and dramatic contrasts. Rubinstein treats the viola not merely as an accompanying voice but as a fully expressive partner to the piano, exploiting it's warm, dark timbre and vocal qualities. The sonata's sweeping melodies, rich harmonic language, and expansive formal design reflect Rubinstein's admiration for composers such as Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms. At the same time, moments of intense lyricism and emotional weight highlight his belief in music as a direct vehicle for personal expression. Alexander Adolfovich Winkler (1865-1935), a student of Sergei Taneyev and a representative of a later Russian school, brings a more refined and introspective character to his Sonata for Viola and Piano. Winkler's writing is marked by structural clarity, contrapuntal skill, and subtle harmonic color. His sonata emphasizes the viola's expressive nuance, often favoring intimate dialogue between the instruments rather than virtuosic display. The work blends Romantic warmth with Classical balance, revealing Winkler's interest in formal discipline and textural transparency. Luca Sanzò is a pupil of Bruno Giuranna. His concert career has taken him to the world's major concert halls, both as a soloist and in collaboration with leading musicians. He has collaborated as principal viola soloist with various orchestras, including those of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, and the early music orchestra Concerto Italiano. He teaches viola at the Conservatorio di S. Cecilia in Rome. He has recorded for Nuova Era, Bottega Discantica, BMG Ricordi, Opus 111, Tactus, Edi Pan, Stradivarius, Naïve, Chandos, and Naxos. Italian pianist Maurizio Paciariello, schooled by Aldo Ciccolini and Paul Badura-Skoda and prizewinner of the ARD Competition, is a champion of rare repertoire and a specialist on period instruments.

- Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) was an English composer known for his lyrical and contemplative music, often inspired by English literature and landscape. Born in London, he faced numerous hardships and personal losses early in life, which shaped much of his musical output, often reflecting themes of mortality and nostalgia. In World War II he worked to assist German and Austrian musicians fleeing the Nazis. - Finzi's works are characterized by their deep sensitivity to English poetry and their pastoral nature. His love for literature is evident in many of his vocal works, including settings of texts by Thomas Hardy, William Wordsworth, and Christina Rossetti. - The cantata Dies Natalis, composed between 1925 and 1939, is one of Finzi's most celebrated works. It is a setting of texts by the 17th-century poet Thomas Traherne, which explore themes of innocence and the wonder of a newborn experiencing the world for the first time. Scored for solo voice and strings, the work reflects Finzi's delicate and expressive style, with lyrical vocal lines and lush orchestration that evoke a sense of spiritual reflection. - Also presented is Finzi's Clarinet Concerto, a vibrant and melodious work, one of the finest in it's genre. - Performed by Susanna Rigacci, Roberta Gottardi, and the Benedetto Marcello Chamber Orchestra conducted by Flavio Scogna.

The masterpiece 'beyond Time' that is the Quatuor pour la fin du Temps first saw the light of day in Barrack 27 of the World War II prisoner-of-war camp Stalag VIII-A in Gorlitz, Silesia, performed by it's composer Olivier Messiaen on piano along with fellow prisoners Jean Le Boulaire on violin, Henri Akoka on clarinet and etienne Pasquier on cello. The unusual ensemble forces were dictated by what musicians were available in that environment of deprivation, and the prisoners' coping mechanisms in response to it played a part: Akoka's clarinet and the singing of birds during dawn watches with Pasquier inspired the 3rd movement, Abîme des oiseaux for solo clarinet. As Messiaen himself explained before the concert, it is the first six verses of the Book of Revelation Chapter 10 that inform the piece as a whole. Starvation in the camp had provoked in him vivid, colourful dreams of the Angel's Rainbow, and the End of Time represented eternity in the face of the mortality confronting the internees. The sensory deprivation he experienced while imprisoned caused (or exacerbated) his synaesthesia, such that his hearing of harmonies and his vision of colours became blended in his mind. The work's difficulty is well known; in Gorlitz, from musicians already unbalanced by Messiaen's unconventional rhythms, the composer demanded extreme and unusual instrumental effects: dynamic extremes, unheard-of force and maximum precision. Clarinettist Akoka complained about overly high notes and long phrases; violinist Le Boulaire about wide, inhumanly slow string melodies. But Messiaen's serenity at the piano instilled confidence, making the impossible possible and raising everything to a higher level. On a formal level, the eight movements of the Quatuor, linked by symbolic correspondences, reflect the biblical perfection of the number seven: the six days of Creation followed by the day of Rest, which is prolonged into Eternity becoming an eighth of indefectible light and unalterable peace. 'I composed this quartet to escape from snow, from war, from imprisonment and from myself,' Messiaen said. But the religious silence that enveloped the premiere demonstrated the Quatuor's ability to raise everyone in it's first audience along with him, above the barbarity, hunger and cold. Today, hearing this music that is 'alien to earthly beauty and pervaded by the idea of God', we perceive it's essence 'beyond Time', imbued with faith and religiosity. Other information: - Recorded February 2018, February 2019 and December 2023 in Perugia - Booklet in English contains liner notes by Donatella Meneghini and biographical information on the artists - Italian liner notes available at brilliantclassics. Com - Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) composed his Quatuor pour le fin du temps" (Quartet for the End of Time) 1940-41. The work was written during Messiaen's internment at Stalag VIII-A, a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he was held during World War II. Despite the harsh conditions, Messiaen composed this eight-movement piece for a unique ensemble: clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, which were the instruments available in the camp. - Inspired by the biblical Book of Revelation, particularly the angel's proclamation of the end of time, the Quatuor explores themes of eternity, divine grace, and apocalyptic vision. Messiaen, a devout Catholic, saw time as transcended by divine love, and the piece reflects his fascination with spiritual and mystical concepts. - The music is known for it's otherworldly beauty, complex rhythms, and innovative use of modes of limited transposition, which create a timeless, suspended feeling. The movements range from intense, fiery expressions of divine might to serene, meditative reflections on eternity. Premiered within the camp before an audience of prisoners and guards, Quatuor pour le fin du temps remains one of the most important and profound chamber works of the 20th century. - Played by Davide Bandieri, Francois Sochard, Joel Marosi and Maria-Liisa Marosi. - Davide Bandieri has already successfully released numerous recordings for Brilliant Classics, including the Complete Chamber Music Works for Clarinet by Von Weber (BC 95531) and, together with Joel Marosi and Maria-Liisa Marosi, Clarinet Trios by Fruhling and Zemlinsky (BC 95394).

Many masterpieces have been composed over the centuries for the cello, that member of the string family whose timbre is said to most closely resemble the human voice. Scores of monumental works, both in the chamber and concerto genres, have been created for this attractive instrument: from Bach to Bloch, Boccherini to Britten. Dutch composers have also shown interest in the instrument, especially in the 20th century, composing works that feature not only the cello but also the abilities of virtuoso cellists they admired, whose playing breathes life into the Dutch music of this century, adding it's melodious voice to the music history of all nations. Henriette Bosmans (1895-1952) at first studied piano with her mother, only taking up composing at the age of 17. She sharpened her abilities in this art through lessons with Cornelis Dopper and Willem Pijper. Bosmans performed in various chamber music ensembles, appeared as a soloist and gave lessons, and as a pianist she championed contemporary music. She is particularly remembered for her art songs, chamber music and concertos. Her work evolved along her career from a Germanic style to one influenced by French impressionism, her Poeme for cello and orchestra being a fine example of the latter. The work is dedicated to Marix Loevensohn, principal cellist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, with whom she often performed. Willem Pijper (1894-1947) studied composition with Johann Wagenaar, and his progress was astounding: within a few years (from 1918 to 1922) he became one of the most advanced composers in Europe, each successive composition of his going a step further. Although considered a proponent of atonality, Pijper's harmonic complexity is always in service of musical expression. His Cello Concerto is also dedicated to Marix Loevensohn, who performed it at his own retirement concert as principal cellist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Feeling that the orchestra overshadowed the soloist at times, Pijper revised the Concerto's orchestration in 1947. The pianist and composer Leo Smit (1900-1943) studied composition at the Amsterdam Conservatory with Bernard Zweers and Sem Dresden. He taught analysis and harmony at the Amsterdam Conservatory from 1924 to 1927, after which he resided in Paris until 1933. There he came under Darius Milhaud's influence, which introduced a French aesthetic to his music, and he was exposed as well to Igor Stravinsky's neoclassicism. He returned to Amsterdam in 1937, establishing himself as a music pedagogue, and remained there until he was deported to Auschwitz in 1943, where he perished. His lucid, intelligent and subdued style is most clearly apparent in his chamber music. Smit also composed several orchestral works and concertos for various instruments, among them his Concertino for cello and orchestra. Hans Kox (1930-2019) studied piano with Jaap Spaanderman and composition with Henk Badings. His debut as a composer came in 1953, and he went on to receive numerous commissions from the Netherlands and abroad, with many of his works appearing on CD. He taught at the Conservatory in Utrecht. His Cello Concerto (1969) was commissioned by the Eper Muziekkring (the erstwhile Music Society of the eastern Dutch municipality of Epe) in honour of it's fifth anniversary. Other information: - Recorded December 1993 at the Concertgebouw Haarlem - Trilingual booklet in English, German and Dutch contains liner notes on the composers and the works - The Cello concertos by 20th-century Dutch composers reflect the dynamic evolution of classical music during this period, marked by a blend of modernism, neoclassicism, and unique national character. - This CD presents 4 Cello Concertos by Dutch composers: the late romantic language of Henriette Bosmans (1895-1952), the Neo-classical and sometimes jazzy idiom of Willem Pijper (1894-1947), the vibrant Concertino by Leo Smit (1900-1943), who tragically died in 1943 in the Sobibor extermination camp, and the Cello Concerto by Hans Kox (1930-2019). - Played by 4 outstanding cellists: Heinrich Schiff, Quirine Viersen, Pieter Wispelwey and Dmitri Ferschtman. The Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra is conducted by Ed Spanjaard. Another gem from the NM Classics catalogue, the label of music from The Netherlands.