Originating in the villages and ghettos of Eastern Europe, klezmer has been played from the early middle ages. The Jews who emigrated to America in the 1880s to early 1900s brought klezmer with them. In the New World, klezmer was heavily influenced by early jazz and swing, and the style continues to evolve. Klezmer’s distinctive sound blends artistic virtuosity with numerous tempo changes, irregular rhythms, dissonance, and an element of improvisation. Eclectic and diversified, klezmer is unique, easily recognizable, and widely appreciated. KLEZTORY is a rich mosaic of cultures (Russian, Canadian, Quebecois, and Moldavian), musical training (academic and self-taught), and musical tastes (classical, contemporary, jazz, blues, country, and folk). Combining their talents, these musicians perform with an emotion and a virtuosity that is the true spirit of klezmer. Momentum is Kleztory’s 6th album, and celebrates the band’s 20th anniversary. Combining traditional tunes and new compositions, the album juxtaposes music which the band has played since it started with completely new material.

For the second volume of the music of Eric Coates, John Wilson has built his programme around three contrasting ‘major’ works. The Suite Summer Days was premiered in October 1919, shortly after Henry Wood had fired Coates from his position as lead viola in the Queen’s Hall Orchestra. An immediate hit, the suite received rave reviews and many more performances. It was recorded in 1926, Sir Edward Elgar telling Coates that he had played it so often that he had worn out the album! The Selfish Giant, from 1925, based on Oscar Wilde’s story, was the first in a series of highly successful musical retellings of fairy tales. The Enchanted Garden originated in a commission from the Swedish Broadcasting Company. Although he described The Enchanted Garden as a ballet, Coates conceived it principally as a concert work. Composed in June and July 1938, it was premiered in a BBC radio broadcast in November that year, immediately before Coates took it on tour to Stockholm. Of the other, shorter pieces on the album, Calling All Workers is arguably Coates’s best-known work, composed in the summer of 1940 and dedicated ‘to all who work’. The march was adopted by the BBC as the signature tune for their new daily radio show ‘Music While You Work’, and was heard twice daily for twenty-seven years – clocking up more than 16,000 broadcast performances.

REVIEWS:

The second volume in John Wilson’s Eric Coates edition for Chandos reprises the excellence to be found in the first. Wilson has recorded much Coates for other labels but to find him return to the repertoire in a more formalized way is especially good news.

– MusicWeb International

Wilson has been a Coates champion for decades and has the natural lightness of touch to make these works, including a substantial ballet, The Enchanted Garden, and an Oscar Wilde-based phantasy, The Selfish Giant, sparkle.

– Sunday Times (UK)

For the fourth installment in their Music in Exile series, the Toronto-based ARC Ensemble turns its attention to the music of Walter Kaufmann. Despite a very promising start in Prague and then Berlin, and friendships with Albert Einstein and with Franz Kafka’s circle, Kaufmann’s career become a casualty of the Nazi regime that forced scores of Jewish musicians to flee Germany – in his case for Bombay in India. Kaufmann’s intriguing and extensive body of work remains largely forgotten, certainly underappreciated, and perhaps most tragically, unperformed since first heard, although ironically, millions of Indians are familiar with one piece of his music – the signature tune that he wrote in 1936 for All India Radio, which is still played every morning. “The hallmark of this remarkable music,” explains the ARC Ensemble’s Artistic Director, Simon Wynberg, “is its striking originality. There are flashes of Debussy, Bartók, and Stravinsky, and hints of Bohemian and klezmer music, but the end result is a world of inventiveness and surprises. It is an extraordinary blend of Eastern and Western traditions, both adventurous and accessible, and no less compelling for the eighty-year delay since its first performance.”

The 2020 GRAMMY Award winner for Best Classical Solo Vocal Performance, honoring Sarah Brailey and Dashon Burton!

August 18th marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Constitutional Amendment, granting women in the US the right to vote. A fitting time then for our release of the World Premier Recording of Ethel Smyth’s late masterpiece The Prison. Smyth left home at nineteen to study composition in Leipzig. In the company of Clara Schumann and her teacher Heinrich von Herzogenberg, she met and won the admiration of composers such as Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Dvorák, and Grieg. Smyth was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Met, in 1903. (The second was Kaija Saariaho, whose L'Amour de loin appeared there in 2016!) Smyth later became central to the Suffragette movement in England, writing the March of the Women. Her gender politics and sexuality were cause for attacks by critics, and she famously went to prison herself for throwing a stone through an MP’s window. Composed in 1930 and premiered in 1931 in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall, The Prison is a Symphony in two parts, ‘Close on Freedom’ and ‘The Deliverance’, set for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus, and full orchestra. The text is taken from a philosophical work by Henry Bennet Brewster and concerns the writings of a prisoner in solitary confinement, his reflections on life and his preparations for death.

REVIEWS:

Ethyl Smyh's late work, The Prison (1929-30), is uncategorizable. The 64-minute “vocal symphony” for bass-baritone (The Prisoner) and soprano (his Soul), with chorus (philosophical commentary) is in two parts: Close To Freedom and The Deliverance. The heavy-ish text, by Smyth’s dear friend (and perhaps lover, though her relationships tended otherwise to be lesbian) Henry Bennet Brewster centers on the gloomy ruminations of a prisoner considering the end of his life, and his soul, which is guiding him toward peace. In Part 1, He, for instance speaks of his anxiety and inability to sleep, and wonders about immortality and if he will be emancipated; in Part 2, the Soul tells him the end of his struggle is near and he learns to “disband his ego”. The chorus has a further calming effect: immortality is everywhere, human passions remain. He finally finds peace. As you can see, a regular Offenbachian satire–not.

From the very opening moments – “I awoke in the middle of the night” – the mood is weighty with disquiet. The bass-baritone voice of Dashon Burton has both substance and gentleness, his attention to the text that of a Lieder singer. Violin and harp circle his words. Sarah Brailey’s Soul, from the start, sings with subtlety and a type of fleeting loveliness. She opens the second part with a solo on the words “the struggle is over”, intoning much of her words on one note while first a trio of winds, then a solo violin, then the full body of strings and chorus–all pianissimo–join her above and below. Chant? Hymn? Both, really. Smyth layers the orchestra; a brass choir during a passage about immortality makes a grand effect. Later, a painfully beautiful pastoral section precedes the Prisoner’s feeling of metaphysical freedom.

While much of it is gripping, its slow pacing and didacticism can dehumanize the story that the Prisoner and Soul are stuck in. The Prisoner’s “prison”, both metaphorical and real, is presented with such humanity and openness by Burton that his eventual spiritual freedom makes a glorious sound, despite–rather than due to–the orchestrally and chorally weighted underpinnings. Some Elgar shows up, and is not very welcome.

The performance, I suspect, could not be bettered. The New York City-based Experiential Orchestra and Chorus both perform with luscious tone and poise. James Blachly’s leadership brings the work’s lyricism to the forefront; it would be easy to over-emphasize passages but he works best within the dramatic arc of the narrative. Much of The Prison is gorgeous and unexpected – who does Smyth sound like? And while some moments seem inert, they are few and far between.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Robert Levine)

Smyth’s haunting music, given here in conductor James Blachly’s new edition, is beautifully constructed and highly evocative (with quotes or allusions to earlier Smyth scores). Her orchestration is limpid and masterly, rendered lovingly here by Blachly with the Experiential Orchestra. The choral contribution is relatively minor, the focus rightly on the two soloists, but again superbly performed. The only miscalculation is Smyth’s use of ‘The Last Post’ in the concluding pages, adding a martial resonance that may jar to modern ears; to Smyth, a major-general’s daughter, it may just have been an echo of (her) youth which she wanted at this point. Magnificent sound from Chandos, too. Very strongly recommended.

– Gramophone

‘Why has this intense, brilliantly orchestrated, claustrophobically gripping masterpiece been so neglected since its 1977 premiere?’ asked Richard Morrison in The Times of the concert performance in the Barbican that preceded this recording.

Miss Julie is Alwyn’s last large-scale work, written in 1973-76. Alwyn set his own libretto, based on Strindberg’s 1888 play of the same title. The naturalistic drama and lifelike characters of that play appealed to Alwyn from an early age – in fact, he previously attempted to compose an opera on Miss Julie in the 1950s. That attempt failed because of differences with his then-librettist, Christopher Hassall. Alwyn believed that in opera, the action should be self-explanatory, arias should serve a dramatic purpose (as opposed to sheer vocal display), characters should sing to each other and not to the audience, ensembles should be minimized and the text should be set to vocal lines that reflect natural speech patterns. These views were distilled over his extensive career as a film composer, which taught him that music could do more than establish characterization, suggest mood, and heighten atmosphere: in some cases it could also communicate the unspoken thoughts of an onscreen character even when these were at odds with what he or she was presenting visually.

Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra support an outstanding cast featuring Anna Patalong in the title role in this acclaimed revival of Alwyn’s neglected masterpiece.

REVIEW:

Alwyn’s orchestral writing is always characterful, his vocal lines are unfailingly singable. Though his richly coloured writing reveals a whole range of 20th-century influences – Strauss, Janácek, and Ravel especially – it’s the world of Puccini that’s most strongly evoked at the work’s dramatic flashpoints. Anna Patalong as Julie nailed her character’s dangerously unhinged brittleness from the start. Benedict Nelson as Jean, the valet with whom she is so desperate to run away, sings the role with tremendous verve.

– The Guardian (UK)

Gianandrea Noseda continues his series of recordings of the works of Luigi Dallapiccola, this time with his Danish forces. Seen by many as Dallapiccola’s masterpiece, Il prigioniero (The Prisoner) is a one-act opera composed in the late 1940s, and premiered (in a radio broadcast) in 1949. The Italian composer had first encountered serialism as a student in Florence in the 1920s, when Schoenberg visited to conduct Pierrot lunaire. The influence was profound, although it would take two decades before it demonstrated itself fully in his composition. Based primarily on a short story, ‘La Torture par l’espérance’ (Torture by Hope), by the French writer Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, the opera concerns a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition who finds the door of his cell unlocked and creeps out under the cover of darkness to the garden beyond. Hope rises to the level of ecstasy, before he finds himself embraced in the Garden by the Inquisitor, who returns him to his cell. Dallapiccola employs three twelve-note tone rows in the work, which he named ‘Prayer’, ‘Hope’, and ‘Freedom’, from which all the vocal lines are created. The album is completed by three choral works: Estate, written in 1932 for male chorus, and two settings from 1933 of poems by Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger for mixed voice chorus.

REVIEW:

Noseda’s performance is nothing if not formidable. Its impact derives largely from his ability to think in terms of cumulative span while focusing on textural clarity and immediacy of expression. The cast, meanwhile, combine lyricism with declamation. It’s an outstanding, essential album, every second of it.

– Gramophone

Our second album of orchestral works by Airat Ichmouratov features three works united by an ear for bold orchestral colour, a dramatic sense of form, and a firm dedication to tonality. The ‘Youth’ Overture was dedicated to the recording’s performers, the Orchestre de la Francophonie and its founder, Jean-Phillippe Tremblay, on the occasion of their fifteenth anniversary, and was premiered in July 2016. The ‘Maslenitsa’ Overture, premiered in 2013, portrays the week prior to Lent and represents an array of carnival-like festivities, including folk dances, disguises, troika rides, ice sculptures, and blini. First performed in 2017, the Symphony in A minor seeks to recreate the vitality of Longueuil, a city on the south shore of the St Lawrence River, from its beginnings as an outpost of New France (only the foundations of Fort Longueuil remain) to the present day. The symphony features Ichmouratov’s trademark descriptive eclecticism – especially in the second movement in which we hear children playing in parks, adults on the street engaged in boisterous debate, traffic noises, and the sound of a trumpet from a nightclub. All three works are world premiere recordings.

Following the announcement by Tasmin Little of her intended retirement from the concert platform, we wanted to create an album that would stand as both a tribute to, and celebration of, her outstanding career as a performer. What better way to do so than ask her to select her own, personal favorites from her recorded career? An exclusive Chandos artist since 2010, Tasmin has made a series of recordings that have proved a cornerstone of the Chandos schedules for a decade, and feature a range of composers and styles of quite breath-taking variety. The first album concentrates on concerti, and features both Walton’s and Britten’s concertos with Edward Gardner, along with the slow movement of her award-winning Elgar recording with Sir Andrew Davis. The second features works from Vivaldi though to Shostakovich via Brahms, and includes (among many other gems) her recording of Vaughan Williams’s iconic The Lark Ascending. It also celebrates Tasmin’s recital partnerships with three outstanding pianists: Piers Lane, Martin Roscoe, and John Lenehan. As she writes in her booklet note: ‘I am very happy that this final, double-album set should reflect so many aspects of me as a musician; and I remain full of gratitude for the tremendous opportunities I have been given to play and record with the greatest musicians of today. I hope you all enjoy this final release.’

Featuring sensitive interpretations and a dazzling orchestral accompaniment, this release includes Four Mozart piano concertos punctuated by smaller Mozart tunes. Award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet enjoys a prolific recording and international concert career. He regularly works with orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony and NHK Symphony orchestras, and collaborates with conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Vladimir Jurowski, Gianandrea Noseda, François- Xavier Roth, Nicholas Collon, Gábor Takács-Nagy and Sir Andrew Davis amongst others. Bavouzet records exclusively for Chandos and his recording of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Bergen Philharmonic under Edward Gardner has been nominated for the Concerto category of the 2018 Gramophone Awards. Together with Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy, Bavouzet has recorded several of Haydn’s Piano Concertos and embarked on the present series of Mozart concertos, which have been critically acclaimed.

Edward Gardner leads the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Schubert’s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 6 in this second volume in the acclaimed series. Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra since October 2015, Edward Gardner has led the musicians on multiple international tours, which have included performances in Berlin, Munich, and Amsterdam, and at the BBC Proms and Edinburgh International Festival. He was recently appointed Principal Conductor Designate of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, his tenure commencing in September 2021. In demand as a guest conductor, during the previous two seasons he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and Wiener Symphoniker, as well as at The Royal Opera, Covent Garden in a new production of Káťa Kabanová, praised by The Guardianas a ‘magnificent interpretation’. He returned to the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Philharmonia Orchestra, and Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano. In April 2019, he conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Lincoln Center in New York.

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)

The soprano Louise Alder has been described as 'the brightest lyric soprano of the younger generation' (The Arts Desk),'a born actress' (Opera), and as having 'a voice of sparkling beauty' (Gramophone). In this her debut recording for Chandos, she and her pianist, Joseph Middleton, have devised an unusual but rewarding programme that explores the works of six contrasting composers. As she writes in her booklet note: ‘When Joseph suggested making an album of Russian songs, including Russian composers who set poems in other languages, I jumped at the challenge. The more we discussed the repertoire, the more amazed I was to see how well it fitted with my own family history. In 1916 (the same year that Rachmaninoff composed the Opus 38 songs), huge political unrest forced my great-grandparents and family to flee, shutting up the house in Odessa, travelling 1,687 km north by rail to St Petersburg, and then by sleigh into Finland, through Norway, and back to Britain. It is my pleasure to be able to honor my family’s Russian connection with this meandering sleigh ride through Russia, with songs in Russian, French, and German, into Finland, in Swedish, and Norway, in German, back to the UK for a cycle of Britten songs in Russian.’

Continuing their series of orchestral works by Sir Eugene Goossens, Sir Andrew Davis and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra turn to the Phantasy Concerto for Violin and the Second Symphony. Goossens was born in London in 1893, into a family of Belgian conductors and musicians. He trained in Brugesand at the Royal College of Music (studying composition under Stanford), played violin in the Queen’s Hall Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood, and became Sir Thomas Beecham’s go-to stand-in because of his ability to conduct the most demanding programmes on little or no rehearsal. Goossens gave the first UK concert performance of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, in 1921, and in 1923 became the first music director of the newly formed Rochester Philharmonic, before succeeding Fritz Reiner, in 1931, as chief conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He spent nine years in Australia, as chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and was instrumental in the planning of the Sydney Opera House. Both works recorded here were composed towards the end of his life. The Second Symphony, dating from 1942–45, is a vivid and personal response to WWII. The Phantasy Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was originally promised to Heifetz, who never performed it. Having returned to London, Goossens gave the work’s premiere in a BBC broadcast in July 1959, and this was followed by a Proms performance in 1960; on both occasions the soloist was Tessa Robbins. Sir Andrew Davis and his Melbourne forces perform these rarely heard works with care and finesse, and Tasmin Little shines as the soloist in the Phantasy Concerto. The album is recorded in Surround Sound.

For his second album in this series, Barry Douglas couples Tchaikovsky’s Grande Sonata with Rachmaninov’s Six Moments Musicaux. Barry Douglas has established a major international career since winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, Moscow. As Artistic Director of Camerata Ireland and the Clandeboye Festival, he continues to celebrate his Irish heritage whilst also maintaining a busy international touring schedule. Barry is an exclusive Chandos recording artist. He recently completed recording the full works for solo piano of Brahms, the six albums of which have received much critical praise. International Record Review wrote that “this is indeed Brahms playing of the utmost integrity and authority… this cycle looks set to become a benchmark version.” The interesting programming of each release presents each album as a stand-alone recital, providing a varied and engaging listening experience. Also with Chandos Barry is exploring Irish folk music through his own arrangements, working with ancient melodies through to pieces by contemporary songwriters. The first in this series, Celtic Reflections, was released in September 2014 and was followed in 2016 by a second album: Celtic Airs.

David Childs is joined by the BBC Philharmonic and Ben Gernon for this second volume of Euphonium concertos, featuring music by Vaughan Williams, Mealor, Gregson and Ball. King Edward III once said: "If you want to train a longbowman, start with his grandfather." This adage holds just as true for British euphonium soloist David Childs, born in 1981, to a family whose name had been synonymous with brass for the last two generations. His grandfather John was a well-respected euphonium player from the Welsh Valleys who inspired his sons, Robert & Nicholas to take up euphonium. Robert began teaching his son David from an early age and in recent years David has emerged as one of the finest brass soloists of his generation. In the year 2000 he broke new ground for the euphonium becoming the first euphonium soloist to win the brass final of the televised 'BBC Young Musician of the Year’ which led to David’s highly acclaimed première performance of Philip Wilby’s Concerto for Euphonium with the BBC Philharmonic under Yan Pascal Totelier. In the same year David was awarded the coveted ‘Euphonium Player of the Year’ title, a title he won again in 2004 and still holds today. Since that time David has been instrumental in raising the euphonium’s profile in the classical world of music and has not ceased to wow audiences with his astonishing technique, extrovert musicality and engaging stage presence.

Armenian composer Avet Rubeni Terterian’s third and fourth symphonies were written in the mid-1970’s, during one of his most prolific periods as a composer. Kirill Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra make a compelling case for these rarely performed works. Terterian is regarded in his homeland as a giant of twentieth century Armenian music, and as the founder of his nation’s progressive school of composers. The backbone of his achievement is enshrined in eight symphonies, which Terterian composed over two decades from 1969 onwards; a ninth was in progress at the time of his death. In summing them up, he wrote: “We are all living on the threshold of a terrible apocalyptic judgement. It has always seemed to me that my symphonies are a cry of the soul for salvation and for the forgiveness of sins.”

Sir Andrew Davis continues to champion the lesser-known works of Sir Arthur Bliss with this coupling of The Enchantress, Mary of Magdala and Meditations on a theme by John Blow. Dame Sarah Connolly and James Platt are the soloists, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The three distinctive works by Sir Arthur Bliss (1891 – 1975) on this recording span his sixties and early seventies, from 1951 onwards, the year of his sixtieth birthday, during which he composed The Enchantress for Kathleen Ferrier.

The BBC Symphony Chorus was founded in 1928 and its early appearances included the UK premieres of Bartók’s Cantata profana, Stravinsky’s Perséphone, and Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Each year it appears regularly with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre, as well as performing at the BBC Proms, frequently at the iconic First and Last Nights. It maintains an undiminished commitment to new music, performing a wide range of challenging repertoire, often with the BBC SO, most of which is broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

REVIEW:

Here are three contrasting works of Bliss’ later years. The two vocal pieces set Greek pastoral poetry and words from St John’s Gospel. The theme in question is Psalm 23, The Lord is my Shepherd. The programming of these three pieces makes for a satisfying experience, highlighting the inventiveness and flexibility of Bliss, still an underappreciated composer.

-- Lark Reviews

Iain Quinn is joined by Arcangelo and Jonathan Cohen in this recording of organ concertos by Haydn, recorded on the Grant, Degens and Bradbeer organ of St Mary’s, Woodford. Born in Cardiff, Wales, Dr. Iain Quinn is an award-winning organist, musicologist, and composer with over ninety publications across multiple disciplines. He is Associate Professor of Organ and Coordinator of Sacred Music at Florida State University. He has received a Fellowship from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and grants from Musica Britannica, Society for American Music, The Prince's Trust, and the Music & Letters Trust. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and a Visiting Composer at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. As a composer he has received commissions from churches across the USA and UK and from the American Guild of Organists. In 2017, he was a Fulbright Scholar teaching at The Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg State Conservatory, Russia and in 2018 he was the Rudolph Ganz Fellow at The Newberry Library, Chicago.