The central thread linking all the works featured in this recording is their assimilation of various elements of Jewish music, whether directly stemming from Chassidic folk traditions, or relating to material directly associated with religious worship. Each composer responds to this music in different ways, attempting in varying degrees to integrate it within the structural conventions of a Western European musical mainstream. By doing so, the music projects a multitude of emotions and feelings.

“There is not enough music which highlights and celebrates the diverse background of composers and the fact that this album focuses on Jewish musical traditions makes it a hugely important progression in how the classical music industry is moving into a more culturally representative industry.” -- Jocelyn Lightfoot, Managing Director of the LCO

After many acclaimed releases on BIS, most recently ‘Sounds and Sweet Airs – A Shakespeare Songbook’ (BIS-2653), Carolyn Sampson’s latest recital with Joseph Middleton lives up to its name: it is an eloquent testimony to the English soprano’s love of her art. This programme artfully blends well-known and lesser-known lieder by German and Austrian masters such as Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf with French songs by Gounod, Poulenc and Franck, as well as works by Anglo-Saxon composers such as Hubert Parry, Samuel Barber and Ivor Gurney. Female composers are not forgotten, with rarely-performed songs by Rita Strohl based on slightly risqué poems by Pierre Louÿs, music by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Kaija Saariaho – who has recently passed away – and Deborah Pritchard, whose song presented here was composed especially for Sampson. And while Leonard Bernstein’s comically cheeky song ‘I hate music’, appears to be a call not to let music take itself too seriously, Errollyn Wallen’s ‘Peace on Earth’, which concludes the album, invokes calm and encourages us to find peace, a message that seems more relevant today than ever.

After the six Op. 18 quartets, the much-acclaimed Chiaroscuro Quartet now turns to two masterpieces from Beethoven’s middle and late periods. String Quartet No. 10 in E flat major, Op. 74, nicknamed ‘Harp’ because of the abundant pizzicati in its first movement, comes across as a genial and unproblematic work that was very well received immediately upon publication and has remained one of the composer’s best-loved quartets. String Quartet No. 13 in B flat major, Op. 130, is in a very different vein. Belonging to the series of so-called ‘late’ quartets composed between 1824 and 1826, it is a six-movement structure modelled on an eighteenth-century divertimento, adding two movements to the traditional four-movement scheme: an Alla danza tedesca and a Cavatina. Despite its evocation of an archaic dance, the Alla danza tedesca is typically Beethovenian, with its original treatment of dynamics. The Cavatina, which moved the composer to tears during its composition, is a lyrical and moving piece. Beethoven had intended to conclude this imposing work with a large-scale fugue, but its boldness baffled his first listeners and, at the request of his publisher, he resorted instead to a more approachable movement presenting a mixture of laconic dryness and, in places, tender lyricism.

REVIEW:

Though there’s no shortage of recordings of the Beethoven quartets, versions by groups taking an historically informed approach to these works, such as these from the Chiaroscuro Quartet, are still relatively rare. The ensemble's sound world is warmer, more expressively flexible and transparent than we have become so used to in this familiar music. The wonderfully paced opening of the E flat Quartet Op 74, grows steadily in insistence, until it blossoms into melody in a totally unforced way, setting the tone for everything that follows; there seem to be no preconceptions in these performances, everything comes from the music itself.

The challenges of the B flat Quartet Op 130 are on a different level, and not every decision the Chiaroscuro make in that work is convincing – the great slow movement, the Cavatina, is taken just a fraction too fast, for instance, but the finale that follows (the replacement that Beethoven composed in 1826, not the original Grosse Fuge) has a wonderfully clipped character that, like a lot in these performances, seems perfectly appropriate.

-- The Guardian (Andrew Clements)

CORO Welcomes The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, to the label.

In their first recording for CORO, The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, under the direction of Mark Williams, explore the repertoire that has provided the bedrock of the college’s musical life for the last 500 years, all of which was written for the end of the day.

Much music associated with evening time is naturally calm and soothing, satisfying those seeking transcendental beauty in the form of unchallenging ‘sound baths’. However, this collection also seeks to challenge, contrasting contemporary settings with music from the 16th century. We hope, through this range of works, to capture something of that liminal space between day and night characterized by Evensong and to lead the listener into that ‘peace that passes all understanding’.

The album showcases works by composers from John Sheppard to Joanna Marsh and features much-loved pieces such as Hubert Parry’s Lord, let me know mine end and John Tavener’s The Lord’s Prayer, as well as new additions to the Evensong repertoire such as Grayston Ives’ In pace and Piers Connor Kennedy’s O nata lux.

The performers write: ‘Selecting the repertoire for our album Path to the Moon, we wanted to explore a number of possibilities for binding together a programme. To place different works alongside one another is a wonderful way of bringing out new and unusual qualities in each piece. William T. Horton’s fantastic image The Path to the Moon immediately inspired a flurry of ideas, including works on the subjects of both night and the moon, as well as pieces which invoke the exploratory nature of humankind’s voyage to the moon. Britten wrote his Sonata for Cello and Piano only two years after the first object made by humans had touched the surface of the moon, in 1959. Humans throughout history and from all cultures have been drawn to and taken inspiration from the moon and we have tried to reflect this in our eclectic choice of song repertoire: from Toru Takemitsu to Nina Simone and from Lili Boulanger to Florence Price. As we hope you will hear on this album, Walker’s Cello Sonata rings with echoes of the sound-worlds of blues and jazz and is infused with a beautiful lyricism. We really believe that Walker’s Cello Sonata deserves to become a staple of the chamber music repertoire and are absolutely thrilled to offer you a recording of it in the context of our own exploration of a path to the moon.’

Franco Alfano possessed an innate melodic facility combined with a talent for unexpected timbres. From the neo-Classical Divertimento to the noirish post-war Nenia, the lightness of touch of Amour… Amour… to the impressionistic Una danza and luxuriously orchestrated Suite romantica, each work reveals a different aspect of this multifaceted composer. This release of world premiere recordings features the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano conducted by Giuseppe Grazioli who makes his Naxos début.

REVIEW:

Franco Alfano (1875–1954) remains a marginal figure in musical life despite a fair degree of coverage in record catalogs. Yet he is a thoroughly original composer, one who possessed an innate melodic gift combined with a talent for unexpected timbres, as can be heard in the lavishly orchestrated Suite romantica. The half-hour work is heard on this album in a very colorful and expressive, excellently performed interpretation.

With Una danza, completely different colors are expressed and one may hear an influence of Debussy. This is followed by Nenia, a somewhat melancholy solo piece for accordion, sensitively played by Davide Vendramin, which finds its counterpart in the Aria of the Divertimento, even if the outer movements are very lively and playful.

The program, pleasing and excellently played, ends with the Waltz Amour… Amour…, originally composed for piano in 1901 and orchestrated in 1928.

-- Pizzicato

In November 2021, even before taking up his post as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle began a cycle of Mahler symphonies with a performance of the Ninth (BR-KLASSIK 900205). The Sixth followed in September 2023 (BR-KLASSIK 900217), and the conductor is now tackling the composer’s Seventh Symphony. This cycle marks the beginning of a new chapter in Mahler interpretation, as Rattle is just as passionate a Mahler admirer at the helm of the orchestra as his predecessors Jansons, Maazel, and Kubelík.

Simon Rattle gained his international reputation during his 18 years as Principal Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (1980–1998), which he made world famous. In 2002 he was appointed to succeed Claudio Abbado as Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, a position he retained until June 2018. In March 2015 the London Symphony Orchestra elected him as their new Chief Conductor for the 2017-2018 season, a position he retained until summer 2023. Simon Rattle also maintains close ties with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestras, as well as the Vienna Philharmonic.

The present collection commemorates the long-standing cooperation between Gary Bertini, born in today’s Republic of Moldova, and the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, beginning in 1978 with Hector Berlioz’ 'Symphonie fantastique'. Their last recording featured on this box was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, performed in 1996 in Tokyo. Bertini conducted several Israeli orchestras for many years. Even though he had never wanted to set foot in Germany, he was convinced to travel to Hamburg by the offer to conduct the 1971 premiere of the opera Ashmedai by Josef Tal. He later became chief conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne, then director and highest-ranking conductor at the Frankfurt opera and in 1998 went on to serve as artistic director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.