When Lajos Lencsés learned by chance of some of Gluck's oboe quintets, the manuscript of which was in the Este Library in Modena, nothing held him back from looking at them himself as soon as possible. The delightful pieces are successful arrangements of Gluck's operatic melodies, which represent a veritable enrichment of the repertoire.

Lajos Lencses is generally considered one of the most talented oboists in Europe. He has appeared on over 30 recordings and has actively promoted contemporary music for the oboe. Lencses is not only a virtuoso oboist but is equally talented on the oboe d'amore and English horn. While he has attained nearly the level of acclaim of iconic oboist Heinz Holliger, Lencses has chosen to balance his career as a soloist by remaining the first chair oboist in the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra. His repertory is amazingly broad, taking in works by J.S. Bach, Vivaldi, Cimarosa, Handel, Rosetti, Mozart, Dittersdorf, Bellini, Koechlin, Nielsen, Françaix, Martinu, and contemporary Hungarian composers Sandor Balassa, Frigyes Hidas, and Josef Soproni. Stylistically, he is known for his ingratiating tone, lyrical sensibilities, and brilliant technique.

James Rhodes has no formal academic musical education or dedicated mentoring. The title of the debut album “Razor Blades Little Pills and Big Pianos”, hints at the suffering that dogged Rhodes’s childhood and early adult life. Classical music became his solace and key to his survival. It was Bach, Beethoven and Chopin, not Faith Hope and Charity, that offered comfort. In 1993, mental health issues stopped him taking up a scholarship to the Guildhall. Suffering further setbacks due to health issues it was not until 2008, when Rhodes met his present manager, Denis Blais, that he was encouraged to record his first album. This enabled him to bare his soul and put many of the ghosts of the past to rest. With Blais, Rhodes also created a distinctive and unique approach to how the classical piano repertoire should be presented. Uncomfortable with the austere and traditional ‘white tie and tails’ recital they decided it was time for the performer to communicate directly with the audience. Rhodes was going to introduce his own programme notes and share what it takes to perform these works of art using fascinating anecdotes about the composers and his own life experience. Delivered in his unique trademark stand-up style he creates an immersive experience that has won him and classical music a dedicated new following. His new album, presented here, shows the same no-holds-barred approach to these time-honored classics.

“The project is inspired by the moment before the realization of something that drastically changes your life, the moment of just being, existing in the moment. That moment in time is free and full, mindfulness-ish and unaffected by misery, sorrow, regret, shame, anxiety and depression. In my mind it is bright and has a sense of nostalgia. The title also refers to a daily tradition on Icelandic radio Ra´s 1, where a song, “last song before the news” would be played just before the news hour at noon. The song would typically be an Icelandic one, sometimes a lullaby, a love song or an ode to scary and gorgeous nature. Or an Icelandic traditional, sometimes an Italian canzone or a Scandinavian sorrow. Jo´runn Viðar’s piece Icelandic Suite sums up all these elements, a piece written for the 2000 years anniversary of inhabitation in Iceland in 1974. The lightness and the longing are with us throughout the program except in the title piece of mine, Last Song before the News, where apocalyptic visions are awfully obvious and take over early on. The album is dedicated to my father, Sveinbjorn Rafnsson, whose lightness and passion for music, poetry and history along with his sense of humor has been a lifeline to many people.” (Una Sveinbjarnardottir)

REVIEW:

The chief attraction of this disc is to be found in the program. There is so much interesting music for the adventurous listener to discover that I can recommend this CD on those grounds. The performances of those works are more engaging.

-- Fanfare

Yes, there was another Cleopatra! She was married to Tigranes the Great, King of Armenia, and together they created an Armenia that reached from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. The resplendent and regal voice of soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian is perfectly suited to the role of Cleopatra. Bayrakdarian shines in arias from three rarely heard operas about King Tigranes and his queen. Bayrakdarian’s multi-hued voice relates the passion, drama, and fervor of the love story of Tigranes and Cleopatra. Bayrakdarian sparkles in five arias from Il Tigrane by Baroque master Johann Adolph Hasse, famous in his day as one of the foremost composers of opera. Arias by Vivaldi and Gluck add further excitement to the album. Vivaldi, known primarily for his instrumental music, stands out as an opera composer, while Gluck, in an early opera, already shows his mastery of the form. Bayrakdarian is supported by the Grammy-nominated team of Constantine Orbelian— “the singer’s dream collaborator” (Opera News) —and his marvelous Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra.

Gluck Opera Gala is a 2-album compilation of highlights from seven previously released albums on the ORFEO label. It contains excerpts from Gluck's semi seria opera Alceste (album 1, tracks 1-7); his reformist operas Iphigénie en Tauride (album 1, tracks 8-14), Orfeo ed Euridice (album 2, tracks 1-9) and Paride ed Elena (album 2, tracks 10-16); and two works in a more light-hearted vein, Le Cinesi (album 1, tracks 15-16) and Les Pélegrins de la Mecque (album 2, tracks 17-23). All of the recordings are star-studded, featuring performances by legendary artists such as Jessye Norman, Nicolai Gedda, Thomas Moser, Ileana Cotrubas, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Franco Bonisolli and Julia Kaufmann.

Venezuelan born male soprano Samuel Mariño (*1993) presents his debut album with baroque arias by Christoph Willibald Gluck and Georg Friedrich Händel. Gluck and Händel met each other and played music together in London in 1746. For this release, the original program of that concert was expanded with arias tailor-made for male soprano. “This album is unique in every respect. It includes first recordings of works that are sensationally beautiful and that have never been heard before. And then there is a voice, a male soprano, singing for the first time in 250 years things that no man before him was able to sing. I think that this voice is suitable and has the ability to make us hear and feel the beauty of this sound and the very special art of the 18th century.” (Michael Hofstetter) “Gluck and Händel, these are my two masters. They are so important composers to me, and they have made a concert together in London. I’d say it is a wonderful idea to remake this program.” (Samuel Mariño)

When the ORFEO label was established in Munich forty years ago, surely no one with the music scene back then would have predicted that the record company would develop into a firmly established player on the classical music market. One of the label’s main priorities in the early years was vocal music, with opera rarities top of the list and since the mid 1980s the re-use of historic tape recordings. Big names featured on the label’s own productions, while ORFEO also developed into a talent factory by discovering and nurturing young artist. This “Legendary Voices” 10 album set for the anniversary of 40 years of ORFEO label history features eleven singers, who at their times upheld the art of opera singing and still uphold it in the best interpretation of nostalgia.

After five triumphs at the Paris Opéra, Chevalier Gluck, reformer of French opera and protégé of Marie-Antoinette, created his last work in 1779: Echo et Narcisse, based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. Adopting the style of a pastoral, it was spurned by the public at its premiere, but is a tribute to the splendour of the French tradition. With the support of the Fondation Etrillard, Hervé Niquet has resurrected Gluck's last opus, in which the fates of the nymph Echo, who repeats the last word she hears ad infinitum, and the proud Narcissus, condemned to love only his own reflection, intertwine: two perfectly Baroque myths!