Let's meet at the Horizon features four contemporary works. All four prominently feature the double bass, for which there is a far too limited repertoire. This album is an important contribution to the recorded bass literature. Violinist Karen Lord-Powell enjoys a varied career as soloist, chamber and orchestral musician, and teacher. She teaches violin, chamber music, and orchestral repertoire at the Frost School of Music, and is a member of the leadership team for the Experiential Music Curriculum, Frost's innovative approach to musicianship training. Formerly Principal Second Violin of the Louisville Orchestra, Karen's orchestral experience includes work with the Indianapolis and Houston Symphonies, and with renowned conductors such as Stephane Deneve, Mariss Jansons, and Leonard Slatkin. She has appeared as Concertmaster of the Louisville Orchestra, the New World Symphony, the Miami Bach Society, and has been a featured soloist with the Glenelg Chamber Orchestra, the Northwestern Chamber Orchestra, and in recital at the National Governor's Convention in Washington, D.C. Brian Powell is associate professor of Double Bass and String Music Education at the FROST SCHOOL OF MUSIC. He is a former member of The New World Symphony, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. He has also performed with the Louisville Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Florida Philharmonic, and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. In addition, he received recognition in several solo competitions, including his win at the Aspen Music Festival Double Bass Solo Competition.
Christoph Eschenbach reunites with Paris-based Thymos Quartetin Schubert’s triumphant chamber work, the “Trout” Quintet, a recording that celebrates the 80th birthday of the great pianist / conductor. From babbling brook and leaping fish, this present-day Schubertiade relocates to a 19thcentury Viennese salon, with a selection of the composer’s waltzes in unique chamber music arrangements and concludes with selected Ländler, performed by pianist Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, ranging in mood from iridescent to intimate. “vivid and high-powered ... an ensemble of exceptional musical imagination and skill” (Washington Post) “a magnificent album ... a rare example of expressiveness and distinction” (Le Monde, on Dvo?ák’sLove Songs, Cypresses, Piano Quintet in A major, AV2234)
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REVIEWS:
In this delightful recording, the limelight is shared between Christoph Eschenbach’s crystalline piano playing and the creamy string sound, underpinned by the rumbling, bouncing bass. The tempo is elastic, yielding. And there’s no rigid ensemble, either; the mood is convivial, like conversing friends who occasionally interrupt each other. Eschenbach’s solo moments have memorable rhetorical swagger.
– BBC Music Magazine
Eschenbach and the Thymos Quartet had me smiling from the very first bars of Schubert’s Trout Quintet. It’s a performance teeming with delightful incident right the way through, in fact, yet such consistent attention to detail never precludes expansive phrasing or inhibits burbling rhythmic vivacity.
The first volume (8.551400) with Vinzenz Lachner‘s arrangements of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concertos for piano and string quintet already showed that this would be quite a special complete recording of Beethoven’s piano concertos – and not just because it is the first recording to present this version for the first time ever. For the second volume, Hanna Shybayeva chose the piano trio version of the second symphony in D major Op. 36 to be added in the arrangement by the master himself. After all, this chamber music arrangement from Beethoven's pen fits perfectly with those of the piano concertos of later times. Having begun her international career at the age of eleven, Hanna Shybayeva has transformed from a child prodigy to a mature and exciting musician. She won many international prizes and performed at many festivals, as well as giving solo recitals and concert-performances with orchestras around the world. Shybayeva was awarded grants from UNESCO/New Names (Moscow), the George Soros Foundation, the Vladimir Spivakov International Charity Foundation, the Youri Egorov Foundation, Yamaha Music Europe and the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund. Her many recordings include a collection of Tango pieces on the Grand Piano label (GP794).
David Gompper is an award-winning composer and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020. His luminously orchestrated and expressive works have attracted admiration throughout the US, Europe and beyond. Opening with relentless energy, the second movement of the Cello Concerto is spectral and dreamlike, while the Double Bass Concerto explores the light effects of a solar eclipse, using the soloist to suggest shadows, auras and glimpses of sound. A partner work to Sunburst (8.559835), the multi-layered Moonburst reflects the transformational imagery of nocturnal sounds and perceptions. David Gompperhas lived and worked professionally as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer in New York, San Diego, London, Nigeria, Michigan, Texas and Iowa. In 2002-03 Gompper was in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching, performing and conducting at the Moscow Conservatory. In 2009 he received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, and a Fromm Commission in 2013. Gompper's compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Merkin Halls (New York), Wigmore Hall (London), the Konzerthaus (Vienna) and the Bolshoi and Rachmaninov Halls (Moscow Conservatory).
This is volume 3 of the complete works for flute by the noted contemporary composer Salvador Brotons. Spanish flutist Roberto Alvarez performs these works with wonderful aplomb. Diversity of styles is a hallmark of Roberto's concerts and recitals. As a matter of fact he feels just as comfortable performing classical, baroque or avant-garde music as well as Celtic, jazz or rock. He has received various international prizes, such as the Diploma of Honor in the Torneo Internazionale di Musica, Concurso Internacional de Música "Paper de Musica" de Capellades, the Ángel Muñíz Toca Award and the Ciutat de Manresa Prize. Chamber music and orchestra playing are two of Roberto's passions. He has performed with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the Asturias Symphony Orchestra, Oviedo Filarmonía, Bach-Akademie, the Algarve Orchestra, the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic, working with the most renowned conductors.
Byström, Nordin & Tubin: Back to StockHome / Stotijn
BIS
SACD
$21.99Jul 02, 2021
For the past ten years Rick Stotijn has been making Stockholm his second home, finding musical inspiration as well as new friends there. The present disc is a reflection of this, with existing and new repertoire involving the double bass by composers who have all at some point lived and worked in the city. The oldest work, as well as the best known, is the Concerto for Double Bass by Eduard Tubin, composed in 1948. Stotijn performs it here with the support of his own orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under James Gaffigan. The other concerto on the disc was composed especially for Stotijn and for the violinist Malin Broman by Britta Byström. Infinite Rooms (2016) is a double concerto – in which the violinist switches between violin and viola – with inspiration from the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. It was awarded the most important Swedish composition prize, Stora Christ Johnson-priset, in 2020, and comes with three ‘Walks’, potential encores which can also serve as bridges to the next work during the concert, be it by Schubert, Bruckner or Strauss. The orchestra heard in Infinite Rooms is the Västerås Sinfonietta, conducted by Simon Crawford-Phillips, who also appears on the disc in the role of pianist: Jesper Nordin’s Piano Trio, is an adaptation by the composer for these performers, of an earlier score for violin, cello and orchestra. Closing the disc is In memoriam by Carin Malmlöf-Forssling, a brief vocalise for soprano here transcribed for the double bass.
Some of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' most imposing and important music for solo instruments can be heard in his cycle of ten Strathclyde Concertos, composed for, and premiered by the soloists of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The ingeniously structured Seventh Concerto, for double bass, is both tense and haunting. The more conventionally laid out Eighth Concerto, for bassoon, is by turns playful and lyrical, and features an important role for timpani. A Spell for Green Corn was written to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the SCO and Maxwell Davies' 60th birthday.
Rossini: Sonatas For Strings Nos. 1-3 - Hoffmeister: Double
BIS
SACD
$21.99Jan 05, 2018
The works gathered here hail from two different sets of string quartets: the four so-called Solo Quartets by Franz Anton Hoffmeister and Gioachino Rossini’s six String Sonatas. Both sets differ from the ‘normal’ configuration in that they allow a double bass to take part, albeit in different ways. Rossini, who composed his sonatas at the age of 12, left out the viola and gave the double bass a more or less conventional bass role – albeit with occasional virtuosic outbursts. The sonatas were first published in an arrangement for traditional string quartet and are often heard performed by string orchestras. In Vienna, where he was active as a composer and music publisher, Hoffmeister chose a different solution than Rossini and gave his double bass player a leading role in the ensemble, letting it replace the first violin. It was no coincidence that this happened in Vienna – considering the amount of solo works for the double bass composed there, the standard of playing must have been exceptional. On the present recording, it is the Dutch player Niek de Groot who takes up Hoffmeister’s challenge in the company of a Finnish trio consisting of Minna Pensola, Antti Tikkanen and Tuomas Lehto. Niek de Groot has also edited the score of the first of the Hoffmeister quartets, which is here recorded for the first time.
Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 7 / Duczmal-Mroz, Amadeus Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio
DUX
CD
$21.99Jun 05, 2020
In recent years, Mieczyslaw Weinberg has become one of the most recognizable Polish composers of the 20th century, which was significantly influenced by the hundredth anniversary of the composer’s birth in December 2019. The project of the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio devoted exclusively to works by Mieczyslaw Weinberg perfectly reflects the peculiar revival related to the interest in the artist in Poland and in the world. This album is another proposal from the Amadeus Orchestra series, this time dedicated to selected symphonies of the Polish artist.
Elan Sicroff is one of the leading interpreters of the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music, which was the result of a unique collaboration in the 1920s in which the sacred and folk music of the East was arranged for piano. From 1973-75 he attended the International Academy for Continuous Education at Sherborne in Gloucestershire, England, as a student and later as Director of Music. The Academy was run by J. G. Bennett, a leading exponent of the teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. In 1974 Mr. Bennett contacted Mme. Olga de Hartmann, widow of the composer, who introduced Elan to the music that Thomas de Hartmann composed in the classical idiom. Between 1975 and 1979 Elan studied with her and performed many of de Hartmann’s works. In 1982 he made a tour of the U.S., which included performances in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Boston. Since then he has given numerous recitals in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Dirk Altmann is a master of French clarinet. The release of this music seems to point to the artist’s love for the French capital, as each track in this recital-like compilation has a connection to Paris. In his artistic manner, Altmann expresses his love for the city of love. He has even arranged some of these works himself for this combination of instruments. He is joined by a virtuosic ensemble of colleagues, which include pianist Mako Okamoto, violinist Gesa Jenne, bassist Ryutoaro hei, and accordionist Anne-Maria Holscher.
Christopher Roberts’s five intimate and virtuosic movements/pieces for a trio of double basses are here performed by the composer and two other virtuosos of the instrument, Mark Morton and James Bergman. This music, much of it inspired by the composer’s life in Papua New Guinea (where he ran off to after Juilliard to study music’s “natural prosody”), subtly extends the double bass’s standard playing techniques with such expressive elements as bowing patterns inspired by the sound of hornbills in flight. Famed bass virtuoso Bertram Turetzky called Trios “A magnificent piece! There’s nothing like it. Roberts has a truly original voice.” And composer Michael J. Schumacher declared that “Roberts has arrived at a new American music by traversing the heart of Papua New Guinea...and the result is something unique.” Writing in The Wire magazine, Julian Cowley called this recording of Trios “An elegantly reverberant, harmonically rich and gracefully delineated composition for resonant strings.” Writing in Seattle’s The Stranger, Christopher DeLaurenti proclaimed this CD “A remarkable disc.... Recommended.” And noted music critic and author Greg Sandow wrote, “Trios for Deep Voices is thoughtful music, beautifully worked out, and very absorbing to listen to. It’s wonderfully individual, both in its sound and its construction. Clear some space in your life, both literally and figuratively, and give it a listen.”
A New York Times 25 Best Classical Track Selection for 2019
Susan Narucki has worked closely with Kurtág on the interpretation of these songs, and her readings may be regarded as definitive.
American soprano and Latin Grammy-nominee Susan Narucki, one of today’s most committed advocates of the music of our time, has a deep and lasting working relationship with Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag which dates back to 1986. Susan’s luminous tone and distinctive artistry and Kurtag’s idiosyncratic fusion of poetry and music come together in this quintessential recorded collection of some of the composer’s most iconoclastic vocal works. In Susan’s words, “I have spent much of my life immersed in this repertoire, and it has become essential to the way I understand music; it is the heart of my practice as a musician.” Equally appreciative, Kurtag acknowledges Susan, “who sang so warmly, purely, so ‘integer’ these songs- with thanks and love.”
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REVIEWS:
Susan Narucki has worked closely with Kurtág, in Hungary, on the interpretation of these songs, and her readings may be regarded as definitive. She puts across how Kurtág's songs, more than embodying a relationship between text and music, constitute a heroic attempt to weld the two, through the use of extremely detailed instructions in the score, into a single unit. Small though they are, they may be regarded as virtuoso works. Recommended, although not to everyone's taste.
– All Music Guide (James Mannheim)
These seven songs, a highlight in this album of Kurtag’s vocal works, pass in just over nine minutes: dark little pools of fervor, articulated by Ms. Narucki with precision and tenderness and accompanied by just the percussive cimbalom, played here with richly pianistic resonance by Nicholas Tolle.
Chamber Avenue, another album in Marcin Wadolowski’s discography released under the umbrella of the DUX record label, is a combination of chamber sound with the freedom of jazz improvisation. For Marcin Wadolowski, the album is a tribute to great artists whose lives were strongly associated with music and who gave him so many emotions and the most beautiful sounds. It is also a bow to the classical guitar, whose sound he loves and hears on a daily basis. This album is an original combination of purely classical and strictly jazz inspirations. The album contains both arrangements of known and highly regarded pieces (including by Fryderyk Chopin) and ingenious works dedicated to distinguished guitarists and composers.
Milica Djordjevic’s compositions are musical explorations, meticulous observations and dissections. Seven such investigations of sound are presented by the Serbian composer on her portrait album in the series EDITION ZEITGENÖSSISCHE MUSIK. Primarily, Djordjevic focuses on an extreme and exhaustive exploration of the musical material. In the booklet Barbara Eckle points out Djordjevic’s specific approach: "She develops a material component further and further in an increasingly large, loud and dense wave, distorting it, perverting it, multiplying it, squeezing out of it everything it has to give – until it implodes. The rupture is sudden and abrupt, as if the plug of an electronic appliance were ripped from a wall socket." Also essential for Djordjevic’s work is an interdisciplinary perspective, which is based on a diversified aesthetic socialisation, influencing her music in different ways. Each compositional process finally creates musical figures, which, at the same time, affect psyche and ratio. All pieces have been especially recorded at Deutschlandfunk in Cologne by internationally well-known interpreters such as Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Musikfabrik and Teodoro Anzellotti.
Navona Records presents European/American composer Svjetlana Bukvich’s latest masterpiece: EXTENSION, a multifaceted collection of pieces that use technology, music, and the motions of dance to both deconstruct and reimagine ideas of genre and cultural division. In EXTENSION, listeners traverse ten innovative pieces that are both deeply personal and universal. Bukvich describes herself as aiming for a “no-genre-borderless-flow” with her music and, on a larger scale, in the structures of human society. Indeed, she captures that spirit immensely: hybridizing musical languages from American minimalism, art and progressive rock, and German classicism, to Italian polyphony, Russian romanticism, jazz, and ethnic idioms, she creates a cinematic, ‘fictocritical’ sound that is entirely unique but at once familiar. From the opening whispers of the electric violin in The Beginning to the evocative title track Extension which mingles both voice and synth, the album is a sweeping conversation between the natural and technological, the language of sound and the language of numbers. The piece Once You Are Not a Stranger appears in three iterations: instrumentally, vocally, and as an orchestral reprise. The meditative return of the piece emphasizes the expression of its title — in the acceptance of profound loss and the redemptive possibilities that extend out of it, there is no division, and no one is a stranger. The composer herself knows the world’s need for connection all too well — her past includes an escape from her home in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina in the midst of the Civil War before finding her way to America where she continued her pursuits in media arts. In her youth Bukvich has lived in Ethiopia and Scotland, experiences which also influenced her sonic ideas. EXTENSION offers an opportunity for reconnection through dismantling, rebuilding, and exploring concepts of time, style, and musical history.
In 2015, Wies de Boevé because the first double bassist to win Germany's National Music Competition, one of the world's most renowned instrumental competitions. Boevé played with passion and it can be heard for the first time here, on this album. With his piano partner Tomoko Takahashi, Boevé performs literature by Gliere, Bottesini Piazzolla and several others.
Marcello: Psalms And Sonatas / Lydia Cevidalli, Ensemble Salomone Rossi
Dynamic
CD
$12.99Jan 22, 2021
Benedetto Marcello was born in Venice in 1686 and died in Brescia in 1739. His vast musical output remains largely unexplored, but his most famous work is the Estro poetico-armonico – a collection of fifty psalms, including eleven ancient Jewish songs – called Intonazioni – and two sacred hymns from Greek classicism. Marcello acknowledged the importance of Jewish and classical music heritage, and by blending these different styles, he sought to underline their universal value. This album features Psalms Nos. 21 and 42, as well as the Sonata for Violin and Basso Continuo in E minor Op. 1, No. 1, and the first movements of Sonatas No. 5 in F major and No. 4 in G minor for solo harpsichord.
Molino: I Molinisti - Complete Works for Flute & Guitar / Álvarez, Loh
Centaur Records
CD
$17.99Aug 06, 2021
In the early 19th-century, a rivalry existed between two of Italy's greatest guitarists/composers, Francesco Molini and Ferdinando Carulli. This album features not only the complete Molino works for flute and guitar, but also the Carulli Concerto for Flute and Guitar. Both composers are wonderful, as are these performances. Diversity of styles is a hallmark of Roberto Alvarez’s concerts and recitals. As a matter of fact he feels just as comfortable performing classical, baroque or avant-garde music as well as Celtic, jazz or rock. He has received various international prizes, such as the Diploma of Honor in the Torneo Internazionale di Musica, Concurso Internacional de Música “Paper de Musica” de Capellades, the Ángel Muñíz Toca Award and the Ciutat de Manresa Prize. Born and raised in Singapore, Kevin Loh is a recipient of the Fellowship of the Royal Schools of Music, the 2018 Goh Soon Tioe Centenary Award and the 2010 HSBC Youth Excellence Award for Musical Excellence. He was talent-scouted by The Yehudi Menuhin School via his YouTube channel when he was only 12 years old and was awarded a grant by The Rolling Stones to study at the prestigious music school as their first Asian guitarist.
