On the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Ives - acclaimed by his champion Leonard Bernstein as the "first great American composer", who, "all alone in his Connecticut barn, created his own private musical revolution" - Sony Classical presents the most authoritative recording collection ever released of works by this eccentric, prophetic genius.
The 5-CD box set Charles Ives - The Anniversary Edition is a unique and provocative introduction only released previously 50 years ago on LP by Columbia Masterworks under the art direction of Henrietta Condak to celebrate Ives's centenary.
The first disc examines "The Many Faces of Charles Ives" through eight diverse works recorded between 1964 and 1970: Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic in The Fourth of July and The Unanswered Question; General William Booth Enters into Heaven, one of Ives's towering achievements, and The Circus Band are performed by the Gregg Smith Singers; baritone Thomas Stewart sings the moving song In Flanders Fields; organist E. Power Biggs plays Ives's Variations on "America"; composer Gunther Schuller conducts The Pond for chamber orchestra; and the Largo cantabile Hymn is performed by the New York String Quartet and double bass player Alvin Brehm. CD 2, "The Celestial Country", offers Ives's early cantata by that name, composed in 1897-99 for his conservative Yale composition teacher Horatio Parker. It is sung by the Gregg Smith Singers (accompanied by the Columbia Chamber Orchestra), who also perform arrangements of four of Ives's most powerful patriotic songs with the American Symphony Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski conducting. "The Things Our Fathers Loved", CD 3, contains 25 of Ives's songs, delivered by the soprano Helen Boatwright, who specialized in American song. She is partnered by John Kirkpatrick, who studied and worked closely with Ives and is still regarded as the most authoritative interpreter of his piano music. Gramophone in 1974 praised this famous recording as "the finest selection ever to appear" on LP of "what may well turn out to be considered his most important, characteristic and consistently inspired body of music."
Bacewicz: Orchestral Works / Jablonski, Collon, Finnish Radio Symphony
Ondine
CD
$9.49$18.99Save 50%May 05, 2023
The music of Grazyna Bacewicz (1909–1969) has been enjoying a revival during the past two decades. Bacewicz was an outstanding figure in 20th-century music, a major Polish composer and a versatile musician. This album by the award-winning pianist Peter Jablonski, pianist Elisabeth Brauß, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon includes some rarely recorded gems: the composer’s Piano Concerto together with the late Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in its first digital recording. Also included is the composer’s homage to Bartók, Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion, as well as the composer’s early exuberant Overture, written during the German occupation of Poland.
The love for the Latvian landscape is audible in the piano works of Latvia’s greatest living composer, Peteris Vasks (b. 1946), especially in his Seasons, the composer’s most frequently performed piano work. For this album pianist Reinis Zarinš has brought two other piano works alongside The Seasons as first recordings: Vasks’ early piano work Cycle (Zyklus) from the 1970s, and a new piano work, Cuckoo’s Voice. Spring Elegy (2021), written by the composer for Reinis Zarinš during the pandemic.
Ever since his concerto debut at the age of ten, Reinis Zariņš has performed as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician throughout Europe and North America. He has participated in prestigious music festivals including the Lucerne Festival, the Bath International Music Festival, and the Scotia Festival of Music. His thoughtful virtuosity has delighted audiences at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow. Reinis has collaborated with leading orchestras including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, and the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, and with conductors Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Pablo Heras-Casado, and Andris Poga, among others.
REVIEWS:
Alongside the world premiere recording of Vasks’ first-ever piano piece Cycle (1976) and the epic, complete The Seasons — four freestanding works composed between 1980 and 2008 — Cuckoo’s Voice—Spring Elegy (2021) serves to reinforce a sense of the importance to Vasks of his ongoing calling ‘that he must, until his last breath, glorify God’s world and people and his fatherland’, as Zariņš puts it. Yet, while Cycle especially is a welcome reminder of Vasks’ more astringent youthful style, and his writing is never less than intensely felt, there’s little trace here of the outright anguish that has often characterized his better-known string pieces. It’s as if Vasks is writing from inside nature as opposed to merely observing it: there’s an overarching stillness and acceptance within the sometimes dramatic push-pull of growth and decay explored throughout—and the contrasting moods he traverses ultimately nestle within that bigger process, albeit to varying degrees of comfort.
Zariņš’s impeccable pianism is hugely to thank for this, and his capacity to trace cohesive narratives through often lengthy, apparently free-wheeling but rigorously composed, works. Most satisfying is ‘Autumn Music’ (1981) which looks stylistically backwards and forwards even as it rounds The Seasons and the album itself.
-- BBC Music Magazine
This has the premiere recordings of Zyklus (Cycle) from 1976 and Cuckoo’s Voice. Spring Elegy from 2021. Cuckoo’s Voice is improvisatory and generally meditative, though it does have a few clamorous climaxes. Then Cycle bursts in with notes firing as if from a machine gun, taunting and acerbic. Its pauses are foreboding. Zarins brings out some impressive sounds from the insides of the piano: gradations of pizzicato and a pulsing, ringing “wub-wub-wub” from some low frequencies at the end of the ‘Prologue’. Most string-plucking from pianists sounds awkward, but Zarins gets loveliness out of it, even evoking a zither in the ‘Nocturne’. The repetitive rumblings and clattering chords of ‘Drama’ are too close to pompous avant-garde pounding for my taste, though I have to admit that Vasks manages to preserve his own Baltic voice through it all. The ‘Epilogue’ ties the preceding movements together and ends with what sounds like bricks dropping onto the strings.
The Seasons clocks in at 52 minutes. ‘White Scenery’ is a somewhat minimalist reverie, while ‘Spring Music’ goes for nearly 20 minutes, rippling and ringing and shaking the whole world by the collar with vernal urgency. This spring is the opposite of the English pastoral type and more like a tempered, transparent version of one of Messiaen’s bird-song pieces. The harmonies of ‘Green Scenery’ veer closer to England, but the repeated chords soon turn to tedium. Irritation turns to exasperation in ‘Autumn Music’ and its unending strings of repeated notes similar to tremolo on a guitar. It is more bearable when I concentrate on it (rather than, say, listening to it in the car), but rarely has a piece driven me up the wall so quickly.
Zarins’s playing is superb, and any Vasks fan will want this.
-- American Record Guide (Stephen Page)
Pianist Reinis Zarinš impresses with evocative music-making. In coaxing beautiful colors from the piano, he renders well the more subtle as well as the more immediate moods of the music.
The start of a major new series on Brilliant Classics – historically informed accounts of the violin sonatas by a Classical-era master of Rococo charm and invention.
Luigi Boccherini, still in his mid-20s, dedicated his Op. 5 violin sonatas to the Parisian keyboard soloist Mme. Brillon de Jouy. As a result, the keyboard is more than an equal partner with the most showy writing, in the style of the sonatas ‘for piano and violin’ by both Mozart and Beethoven. Boccherini himself thought well enough of these works to draw from them many times throughout his career. Movements from these sonatas appear in reworked guises in other chamber works and symphonies.
The other sonatas here came into being later in Boccherini’s career as arrangements of other works by Boccherini made by publishers eager to capitalise on the fame and industry of a composer renowned throughout Europe for his attractive melodic fluency Several of them are transcriptions of his cello sonatas, though whether the arrangements were made by the composer himself remains a mystery. Other sonatas were skilfully put together from his many string quintets; they made Boccherini’s music accessible to those who could not perform the ensemble works in their original versions. Brilliant Classics has produced the largest ever collection of Boccherini’s works on record with its 37CD edition, which won stunning reviews in the international press. This new set of violin sonatas becomes a vital addition to the Boccherini library of collectors. Each new album by the period-instrument violinist Igor Ruhadze has likewise attracted critical praise, not least in his regular partnership with the Russian-born pianist and harpsichordist Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya. Their recording of F.Geminiani Violin Sonatas op.1 received warm critical praise.
REVIEWS:
The Six Sonatas Op. 5 for harpsichord with violin accompaniment, published in Paris in 1768, constitute the only authentic examples intended by Boccherini for this instrumental combination. The keyboard style, highly idiomatic with its scales, triplets and broken octaves, the pre-Romantic atmosphere of the slow movements as well as the quality of the melodic and rhythmic elements, excited Europe. If Boccherini did not entrust anything else to this instrumental combination, then editors remedied this by generating several transcriptions. It is this unprecedented wealth that Brilliant intends to explore here – other volumes are expected.
The pianoforte of Alexandra Nepomnyaschchaya does not dethrone, in Opus 5, that of Franco Angeleri (Tactus, 1990) who followed the autograph manuscript of Parma in the company of Enrico Gatti. The chiseled refinement like the incisive dynamic of the touch, the expressive restraint of the violin expressed in the two Italians an unequaled feeling and sharing. Among the newcomers, the seduction is more demonstrative, the contrasts more accentuated, the sensuality and the feeling more showy, as in the Allegro maestoso of No. 6 or the Allegro molto of No. 5. Above all, the Andante of No. 4, just whispered by Angeleri and Gatti, gains an indescribable beauty.
The movements of trios, quartets and quintets reduced by Mlle. Le Jeune (Vénier, Paris, 1782) are a happy surprise. The distribution of voices is skillful. The infinite delicacy of the Andante sostenuto of Sonata G 51 is truly worthy of Boccherini. Certainly, the Amoroso of the G 52 and the Allegro con spirito of the G 53 have charm. No repeat being forgotten, some movements seem a little long. Sometimes a simple foil to the pianoforte, Igor Ruhadze takes his revenge in the Six Sonatas for violin and basso continuo (La Chevardière, Paris, 1775). The Sonatas for cello and basso continuo G 20 are the most emblematic of Boccherini. It is magnificent in places (Largo de la no 5) but above all exotic (no 6, after the famous G 4). The violin, with sober and clear diction, is supported by a balanced bass entrusted to the cello continuo and the harpsichord. Looking forward to the sequel!
Within this album the “Insolito 8cento” duo (Angelo de Magistris, violin and Rosaria Dina Rizzo, piano) is rediscovering a little-known feature of the great Belcanto master Gaetano Donizetti: his chamber works dedicated to the violin, an instrumental production little mentioned and often completely ignored. In fact Donizetti never ceased to deal with the composition of instrumental chamber music, giving life to brilliant works that, same as for his vocal works, testify his extraordinary creative vein in which one can recognize great inspiration, almost like a continuous improvisation, yet always refined and elegant as well as completely devoid of those formal negligence typical of the ‘utility music' or composed for mere exercise or pastime.
:"Crepuscolo" is the final song in Ottorino Respighi’s song cycle Deità silvane (‘woodland deities’), but as an album title it also stands for the twilight during the interwar years of everything that Respighi represented, as various trends such as atonality, spiky neoclassicism, and Italian futurism flourished. In reaction to these developments, Respighi in 1932 famously signed a manifesto calling for music with a ‘human content’ – in other words, a continuation of Romanticism. His songs certainly live up to this: as Elsa Respighi, the composer’s wife, once said, it was to his songs that he ‘entrusts his heart’s hidden secrets, when he lets his soul sing freely.’ From L’ultima ebbrezza, composed when Respighi was only 17 years old, to the Four Scottish Songs from 1924, the songs recorded here attest to the variety of his musical interests, influences and styles, and are at turns lyrically operatic, expressionist, impressionist or symbolist. Respighi’s love of the Renaissance is also manifest in the Cinque canti all’antica, settings of poets including Boccaccio.
Timothy Fallon and Ammiel Bushakevitz have previously released a Liszt recital described as ‘superb’ in Gramophone. They have now devised a varied program which takes in three complete groups as well as a selection of individual songs, including Respighi’s most popular songs (Nebbie, Stornellatrice) as well as less well known ones.
REVIEWS:
With every new exposure to Respighi’s vocal music – whether opera or song – I find that his much better-known orchestral works fade in significance, especially with this new cross section of the composer’s songs...this newcomer makes a great case for a single-disc collection thanks to a smart sense of musical variety in the sequencing plus the passionate, elegant performances by lyric tenor Timothy Fallon and his longtime collaborator, pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz.
Fallon is no newcomer...but maintains a youthful sensibility that takes the poems at face value, never looking outside of them, aided by a warm, Italianate tone that lends itself to the musical simplicity of the Scottish folk songs as well as the operatic histrionics of ‘Stornellatrice’ (‘Balladeer’)...Bushakevitz’s sonority and sense of comprehension suggest the lilac-scented, silk-upholstered parlours seen in Luchino Visconti movies, but make such a good case for the more distilled piano versions that, at least for the moment, you wouldn’t want to hear the music any other way.
Stokowski: Philadelphia Rarities / Stokowski, Philadelphia Orchestra
Signum Classics
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Feb 04, 2022
The Golden Age of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra" describes the 25 years from 1912 during which a London-born church organist took a provincial American ensemble and built it into one of the finest orchestras in the world, noted for its precision, virtuosity, and splendid tone-color. With the advent of the microphone during the 1920s, Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra made an enormous number of 78rpm discs that would become landmark recordings. For much of this time Stokowski concentrated on basic repertoire – including Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Debussy, Mussorgsky and many others. However, side-by-side with familiar pieces went a number of works which no-one else had recorded before or, indeed, has recorded since! Although Stokowski was to record certain compositions several times over during his long career, there were a number which he recorded only once – on 78s made with the Philadelphia Orchestra. This unique collection of restored recordings brings together just those items which fall into this "rarities" category, and it demonstrates Stokowski's incredibly wide-ranging musical sympathies. It covers many periods and styles, from melodies centuries old to colourful Iberian and Oriental works, together with music of 20th-century America.
Masterpieces of Baroque piano literature, in critically acclaimed recordings by pianists with a fine sensibility for the 18th century. Recordings made between 2005 and 2023; new booklet essay; an ideal budget introduction to the world of the Baroque keyboard, full of elegant dances and virtuoso playing. This survey of Baroque composers ranges from the high-point of 18th-century keyboard writing, the Goldberg Variations of Bach, to little known gems such as the sonatas by Espona, Galuppi and Giustini. It places the three great masters of the Baroque - Bach, Handel and Rameau - in the context of their influential predecessor, Sweelinck, and then those composers such as Galuppi and Espona who write in a new, galant style which overlaps with the Classicism of Mozart. Some of the artists on these recordings are still in their 20s, having grown up with a culture of historically informed performance practice which they then bring to their handling of a modern piano. Others, such as Yuan Sheng and Wolfram-Schmitt Leonardy, have been playing these pieces for many decades, and bring to them a career's worth of experience in teasing out the meaning and rhetoric of 18th-century phrasing and harmony on an instrument which none of the composers ever encountered. Handel is represented not by the familiar Eight 'Great' Suites but by an imaginative collection of earlier suites. Scarlatti's fertile invention is generously celebrated with 35 of his sonatas. Bach predominates, naturally, with the Six Partitas and the Italian Concerto as well as the Goldbergs, thus representing the stylistic range of his output. Keyboard styles from all over mainland Europe make an appearance, in the Dutch/Italian nobility of Sweelinck, the Hispanic-Italian flavour of Scarlatti, the French accents of Bach and Handel, and native French of Rameau, and the exuberantly Italian flourishes and proto-operatic gestures of Galuppi and Giustini. There is something here for everyone.
Ichmouratov: Piano Concerto; Viola Concerto No. 1 / Sylvestre, Misbakhova, London Symphony
Chandos
SACD
$21.99Jun 16, 2023
Volga-Tatar-born Canadian composer and conductor Airat Ichmouratov conducts the London Symphony Orchestra for this recording of two of his major works, Chandos’ third album dedicated to the works of this outstanding composer. Both concertos are recorded here by the soloists who premiered each work. Ichmouratov’s first viola concerto was conceived in 2004, whilst he was a conducting student at the Université de Montréal. His fellow Ph.D. candidate, the violist Elvira Misbakhova, wanted something new for her doctoral performance, preferably a concerto that combined lyrical impulses and virtuoso challenges. The resulting work is a large-scale piece in three movements that exploits and celebrated the naturally sombre character of the instrument. The Piano Concerto was written in six months in 2012 – 13 and then lingered in a drawer for almost a decade awaiting a soloist who could both do it justice and add finishing touches to the solo part. Jean-Philippe Sylvestre, a Montrealer with a fondness for the virtuoso tradition, was himself looking for a new concerto to champion. Ichmouratov gratefully acknowledges the contributions made to the solo part by Sylvestre, the concerto’s dedicatee.
What would it mean to 'compose like a woman'? The present collection answers the question, in a literal sense, while undoing the premise on which the question was asked in the first place. In social and historical terms, it means enjoying privileges of upbringing, education, and/or wealth that were historically denied to the vast majority of women. It means, on the part of the women represented here, a single-minded determination in pursuit of their vocation, helping them to overcome prejudice and sexism in a cultural, social and political milieu that has consistently denied women the opportunity to find and express their own voice in music. Only with movements of emancipation in the last century, and much more rapidly in the last 50 years, has this situation begun to be addressed and corrected. What composing like a woman does not mean - as the music in this collection makes clear - is a definable set of qualities or characteristics to the music itself which would distinguish the work of female composers from the music composed by men.
This remarkable set gathers many individual recordings of music by women composers, which Brilliant Classics has quietly yet actively championed in their catalogue for decades, uniting it with exciting new outings, so that a comprehensive historical picture of the highly varied struggles and successes of women composers through the ages to our present time are chronicled and celebrated.
Other information:
- Recordings date from 1994-2024
- Booklet in English contains liner notes by Peter Quantrill
- The revival of interest in female classical composers reflects a growing recognition of their overlooked contributions to music history.
For centuries, women composers were marginalized, their works overshadowed by their male counterparts. However, recent efforts by musicians, scholars, and institutions have brought these composers into the spotlight, highlighting the richness and diversity of their compositions.
- This renewed focus stems from a broader movement toward inclusivity in the arts, challenging traditional narratives that have historically excluded women. The rise of feminist musicology has also played a key role, offering fresh perspectives on these composers' lives and works.
- This comprehensive box set offers a wide spectrum of works by female composers, from the Medieval mystic Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179), through the Renaissance Isabella Leonarda (baptized 1620-1704), Francesca Caccini (1587-1640) und Barbara Strozzi (baptized 1619-1677), traversing the Baroque and Classical eras, and arriving in the contemporary field, with composers such as Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) and Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969).
- A long due homage to the art and voice of female composers, spanning nearly a thousand years!
Haydn: The Complete Piano Sonatas, Vol. 11 / Bavouzet
Chandos
CD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Aug 05, 2022
"Bavouzet’s Haydn is unmatched in its zest and its wit. But it is also substantial, informed and deeply rewarding."
--The New York Timeson Bavouzet's Haydn Sonatas cycle, 2022
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s survey of Haydn’s piano sonatas reaches its conclusion with this 11th and final volume. As with the previous releases, the acclaimed pianist has included repertoire from different periods of Haydn’s career to create a recital of interest in its own right, as well as the completion of the series.
Jean-Efflam notes: ‘It has been eleven years since the launch of this project to present Haydn’s sonatas, not in their chronological order, but as collections juxtaposing works from different periods. The program for this final album was actually the first one to be devised: I wanted to place side by side the very first and the very last sonata. Then the idea of fleshing out the sonata cycle with other major pieces began at volume four, with the addition of the famous Variations in F minor, and finally this last volume is made up of as many sonatas as other types of works. The complete series is thus able to offer music lovers all the sonatas identified to date, together with the other major keyboard works.’
REVIEWS:
Five stars & editor's choice |Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, this last volume hits new heights. --Gramophone (Michelle Assay)
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This album concludes Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s epic and scintillating cycle of the complete Haydn Piano Sonatas. Sandwiched between the first and last sonatas – the former delightfully without a hint of angst, the latter richly expressive and exploratory – lies a wealth of contrasts…As on previous occasions [Bavouzet] makes it difficult to imagine Haydn presented with greater gusto, precision and charms[.] --International Piano (Bryce Morrison)
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A project that began in 2011 is completed; what a journey it has been. Bavouzet’s gifts of insightful exposition and revelation are matched by the wisdom of his curation… A triumph. --The Sunday Times (Dan Cairns)
J. Mendelson & Bacewicz: Chamber Works / Silesian Quartet
Chandos
CD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Jul 07, 2023
The award-winning Silesian quartet present a new album featuring two composers from Warsaw – Joachim Mendelson and Graznya Bacewicz. After completing his music studies in Warsaw and Berlin, Joachim Mendelson moved to Paris in 1929, where he joined the Association des Jeunes Musiciens Polonais, a society founded in 1926 to facilitate the study, publication, and promotion of the works of young Polish composers. Bacewicz also received support from the Association, and from Paderewski, and studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. The associations’ aims included re-establishing a national musical life at the highest level back in Poland (after more than a century of joint occupation by Russia, Prussia, and Austria), and both composers returned to Warsaw and worked there until 1939. Mendelson taught at the Institute of Music, and Bacewicz became leader of the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and continued her career and a composer and soloist. Mendelson was imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto until 1943 when he was murdered by the Gestapo. Five of his works survive, thanks to the French publisher Max Eschig, including the quartet and quintet recorded here. Both Bacewicz works on this recording were rejected by the composer, and never included in her catalogue of works. It is extremely lucky that the manuscripts have survived, preserved at the National Library in Warsaw. Half a century after her death the Royal String Quartet prepared performing scores and gave the first performances.
Bruce Heim was the Horn Professor at the University of Louisville from 1999-2021. He is an active recitalist, soloist, chamber musician, orchestral musician, and pedagogue. He has performed in Mexico, Venezuela, Poland, Belgium, Japan, Brazil, Taiwan, and throughout the United States.
Boris Giltburg, the Russian-born Israeli pianist who won the 2013 Queen Elisabeth Competition, is that genuine rarity: a pianist whose Rachmaninov is entirely idiomatic yet intensely personal in a way that yields fresh perspectives on this well traversed repertory.
His sense of rhythm is impeccable, with a chaste application of rubato that is organically derived from the life of the phrase. He is a master of the great surges and retractions of energy so specific to the composer. Giltburg’s pellucid sound is never forced; his large dynamic range has a soft spectrum, between mezzo-piano and ppp, which is infinitely calibrated and shaded. His eloquence derives from a poise and restraint that, while uniquely his own, is not unlike the aristocratic delivery that was the hallmark of Rachmaninov’s playing.
Without ostentation or fuss, he has examined these scores in every kind of light, lived with them and come up with a vision that, without being wilfully contrarian, is nevertheless something beyond received wisdom. I suspect that before long this vision will place him among the truly memorable Rachmaninov interpreters, an elect including Moiseiwitsch, Horowitz, Kappel, Richter and Cliburn. His originality stems from a convergence of heart and mind, served by immaculate technique and motivated by a deep and abiding love for one of the 20th century’s greatest composer-pianists.
The largest collection of piano nocturnes on CD, celebrating the art of the romantic piano song without words. Over a century of repertoire in all modern recordings, plus a new booklet essay exploring the history and context of the nocturne. Composers of the 18th century such as Haydn and Mozart wrote notturnos as serenades to be sung and played at night time, both on an operatic stage and as independent pieces for entertainment. The early 19th century saw a rapid evolution in the technological, the cultural and the musical development of the piano - as an instrument of longer sustaining power and greater volume than before, offering a broader palette of tone-colours, presenting composers with the potential to write quasi-orchestrally for a single instrument, as Baroque composers had done for the organ. At the same time, musical forms were becoming looser, more shaped by extra-musical inspirations in literature, poetry and the natural world. The Irish composer John Field was the first to publish nocturnes for the solo piano as standalone works, rather than as poetic interludes within larger pieces such as suites or sonatas. Having inherited the form from Field, Frederic Chopin then raised the nocturne to new heights of inward expression. As much as the salon became a place for pianistic display of technique, it also became a space for quiet soliloquy through the course of the 19th century, accessible to the rapidly expanding bourgeoisie with access to an instrument at home and to the education required to play it. Thus publishers commissioned nocturnes from both greater and lesser composers to satisfy an ever-growing market. The nocturnes in this box cover all the great names of Romantic-era piano writing, and many lesser-known ones too. Many of the performances are played on instruments of the period, enabling listeners to immerse themselves into a 19th-century world of softer and more gentle colours and expression. This new box also features an essay by Peter Quantrill outlining the history of the nocturne and it's lasting hold upon our affections and imaginations.
This recording by Ciconia Consort, Couleurs de France, offers a rare and evocative journey through four lesser-known works for string orchestra by three prominent 20th-century French composers: André Jolivet, Jacques Castérède, and Daniel-Lesur. Jacques Castérède's connection to his French predecessors is evident in his use of modal, chromatic, and diatonic scales. A student of Olivier Messiaen, Castérède nonetheless forged a highly personal harmonic style within an extended tonal idiom, characterized by melodic clarity and accessibility. His compositions seem to harmoniously blend the various French styles of the 20th century. In his work, we hear the sonic fingerprints of Arthur Honegger, Daniel-Lesur, and his teacher Messiaen - all woven into a coherent, lyrical whole. Throughout his life, André Jolivet aimed to "restore to music it's original, ancient meaning, when it served as a magical, incantatory expression of the religious beliefs of human communities."* His later compositions continued this exploration, seeking music's original function as an emotional, ritualistic, and celebratory form of expression. His Symphonie pour cordes, commissioned by French radio and television, was composed in 1961 and premiered on January 9, 1962. The symphony demands exceptional technical skill from all performers. It is written in a freely atonal idiom and is characterized by intense dissonance. Daniel Jean Yves Lesur (1908-2002) was a French composer, organist, and teacher, closely linked to the group La Jeune France, alongside Olivier Messiaen and André Jolivet. His music often reflects a balance between tradition and modernity, combining rich harmonic language with a sense of spiritual depth. Lesur's output includes choral works, chamber music, and orchestral compositions, yet he remains less widely known than some of his contemporaries. Among his instrumental works is the Sérénade pour cordes (1949), a luminous piece that highlights his lyrical style and refined craftsmanship. Written for string orchestra, it embraces classical clarity while exploring colorful modal harmonies, characteristic of Lesur's personal voice. This recording is the fifth CD on Brilliant Classics by the Ciconia Consort (The Hague String Orchestra), a Dutch string orchestra conducted by Dick van Gasteren, an internationally active conductor who was Bernard Haitink's assistant during the Mahler Festival Amsterdam in 1995.
This recording of orchestral works by Karol Szymanowski form part of the Polish Music series on Chandos, and is performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Edward Gardner. These performers have impressed in their Lutoslawski survey, which is part of the same series; in a review of volume 1, Gramophone described them as a veritable ‘dream team’.
Symphony No. 2 by Szymanowski is a work of great power and ingenuity, with many passionate and varied contrasts in its use of solo instruments. Composed in 1909 – 10, it is widely considered the greatest orchestral work of the composer’s early period, not to mention one of the most important Polish symphonic compositions to date. Szymanowski himself thought very highly of it, and in August 1911 wrote in a letter to his fellow Polish composer Zdzis?aw Jachimecki: ‘How happy I am that this Symphony impressed you as I had wanted. I will frankly admit that I feel somewhat proud about its value. In some miraculous way I have managed during my work on it to resist all those garish phantoms which seduce “young and inexperienced” artists and to produce pure and uncompromising beauty in the way I personally understand it.’
The internationally acclaimed pianist Louis Lortie joins the orchestra and conductor in Symphony No. 4 of 1932, which the composer subtitled ‘Symphonie concertante’ in recognition of the near-soloistic role played by the pianist. Whereas Szymanowski’s early and middle works clearly reflect Wagner, Strauss, and Scriabin, this work is strongly influenced by Prokofiev, particularly in the finale, an agitated and daring movement reminiscent of the Russian composer’s Piano Concerto No. 3, composed about a decade earlier.
Written in 1904 – 05 in a style recalling Wagner and Strauss, the Concert Overture is characterised by enormous expressiveness and gusto in the way it handles the expanding themes. Szymanowski inscribed the original score with part of the poem Wite? W?ast by his friend Tadeusz Mici?ski: ‘I will not play you sad songs, O Shades! but will give you a triumph proud and fierce…’. This vivid imagery is perfectly in keeping with the music’s exuberant and vivacious character.
British pianist Imogen Cooper has studied with some of the finest in the piano world, including with Kathleen Long in London, with Jacques Fevrier and Yvonne Lefebure in Paris, and with Alfred Brendel, Jorg Demus and Paul Badura-Skoda in Vienna. She is widely recognized for her interpretations of Schubert and Schumann. This release follows her three very successful recordings of Schumann. For this album, Cooper has chosen some of the greatest works of Chopin. The album programme makes up an outstanding recital. Coopers virtuosity and emotional wisdom creates a new lense through which to view this frequently performed repertoire. Following this release, Imogen Cooper will embark on a world tour, performing recitals that will include the repertoire included here, and visiting several of Europe’s most prestigious venues before venturing to other continents.
