REVIEW:

In the early 1730s Bach revised his E flat major Magnificat of 1723, transposing it to D major and omitting the interpolations peculiar to Christmas performances in Leipzig. (Recent research suggests such richly scored Latin Magnificats could be performed in Lutheran churches at some 15 annual festivals, not just the three – Xmas, Easter, Ascension – previously supposed.) The D major was apparently Bach’s preferred version and is the one commonly played today, as on this latest instalment of Masaaki Suzuki’s acclaimed survey of Bach’s sacred vocal music. Suzuki’s Magnificat, like his earlier Bach recordings, is sharply focused and performed with engaging conviction. My benchmark disc, by Philippe Herreweghe, grips with its palpable air of excitement. Suzuki’s reading is cooler, more nuanced and has a clearer acoustic; yet Herreweghe’s soloists retain a slight edge – few could match Barbara Schlick and oboist Marcel Penseele in rapt duet on ‘Quia respexit’. Herreweghe’s coupling is the splendid Cantata, BWV 80; Suzuki offers a trio of fascinating rareties. The Magnificat by Kuhnau, Bach’s predecessor at Leipzig, resembles Bach’s in instrumentation and division of text: it’s a lively, attractive piece, trumpets ringing out boldly in the bright opening chorus. Two shorter Magnificats by Bach’s Dresden-based contemporary Zelenka represent a very different and highly individual approach, the C major’s tripartite structure creating an almost concerto-like framework for soprano soloist. Suzuki’s excellent, scrupulous performances should provoke greater interest in Kuhnau’s and Zelenka’s church music – the latter’s Missa Dei Filii, by Tafelmusik/Frieder Bernius (DHM), is also highly recommended. Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Graham Lock, BBC Music Magazine

For the first time with naïve, the counter-tenor Andreas Scholl joins the Accademia Bizantina and Alessandro Tampieri to present a Neapolitan programme, centred on the Virgin Mary.

Andreas Scholl and the Accademia Bizantina have for several decades enjoyed a successful musical partnership, encompassing the whole Baroque repertoire. As usual, this new album together includes both renowned and less well-known vocal and instrumental pieces. The figure of Mary, which has inspired a huge repertoire, both sacred and profane, runs through this Easter programme of exquisite affliction, virtuosic for both voice and orchestra. “Neapolitan music has a unique melodic vein and a great capacity to communicate emotion profoundly," says Alessandro Tampieri.

Thus, Vivaldi’s iconic Stabat Mater, which the German counter-tenor has enjoyed singing for many years, is placed alongside lesser-known airs from oratorios by Nicola Porpora and Leonardo Vinci, which had the character of the Virgin sung by a castrato. “I endeavour to place humanity before gender," says Andreas Scholl, “and I interpret the role of Mary with the greatest sincerity, without the slightest notion of 'travesty’. Love, despair and pain transcend the notion of gender."

We also find a Salve Regina by Pasquale Anfossi, requiring a particularly participative orchestra, a sonata by Angelo Ragazzi and a violin concerto by Pergolesi, both strongly echoing Pergolesi’s famous Stabat Mater. The solo violin parts are played by Alessandro Tampieri, first violin of the Italian ensemble, who conducts here from his instrument in the purest tradition of the Baroque orchestra.

Wonderland is full of magic and myth. Containing exclusively works commissioned by The King’s Singers across their 55 years, the album celebrates their trademark musical storytelling, with no shortage of comedy. György Ligeti’s six Nonsense Madrigals, each setting playful children’s poetry or extracts from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, provide a musical spine to the album, commemorating 100 years since the composer’s birth in 1923. From just over 50 years ago, the fairytale The Musicians of Bremen (1972) – set to music by the Australian composer and Master of the Queen’s Music Malcolm Williamson – sits alongside Time Piece (1972) by Paul Patterson, which tells an eccentric alternative creation story. These myth-based works have recent companions such as Judith Bingham’s extended work Tricksters (2019), which unearths what could happen if miscreants from different world mythologies could come together for the first time, and Ola Gjeilo’s A Dream within a Dream which questions the very nature of perception and reality. The album also features the legendary Japanese film and game composer Joe Hisaishi’s first ever choral work, I was there (2022), focussing on the cultural memory of tragic events such as 9/11 and the 2011 Japan Earthquake. Themes of hope and positivity, centred on the natural world, emerge in Makiko Kinoshita’s Ashita no uta (Song for tomorrow) (2020) and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ Alive (2022).

The Amsterdam-based recorder quintet has done it again: an original concept, featuring several first recordings, and superb performances which confirm them among the top-tier of today’s early-music chamber ensembles. The present album arises from a concert devised in 2018 for a festival in Bruges celebrating notable female figures from history.

Seldom Sene chose to focus on Margaret of Austria (1480–1530), who was governor of the Habsburg Netherlands for almost 20 years. Margaret had grown up with the benefits of a first-class education afforded to very few of her female peers: she was adept in all the humanities, and her library of books was reckoned one of the most extensive and learned at the time, a fit place to welcome distinguished guests such as Albrecht Dürer. From around 1515, one of the volumes in Margaret’s library was her newly commissioned personal songbook: a collection of 55 chansons and motets, richly decorated with high-quality miniatures and initials.

Many of the song texts speak of loss, sorrow and loneliness, perhaps reflecting her status at the time as a noble widow, following the death of her second husband, Philibert II of Savoy, in 1504. Margaret herself seems to have written several of them, and may also have been involved in their musical setting. Marian devotion is another theme of the songbook reflected in this selection made and transcribed and recorded by Seldom Sene. Sacred hymns are balanced out by secular laments, but also lighter and more cheerful numbers such as ‘Brunette m’amiette‘ and ‘La jonne dame’. Many of the composers are now lost to us and effectively anonymous, but the names that survive are worthy of Margaret’s elevated status, including Josquin and Pierre de la Rue.

‘Like Margaret,’ concludes María Martínez Ayerza in her booklet note, ‘like her courtiers and visitors, we see and hear the music and texts in this songbook and we are moved, stirred. These artworks make us change, as we relate the texts, even the titles, and the rather abstract beauty of the music to ourselves.’ Ayerza and her colleagues in Seldom Sene bring this music and Margaret’s world back to life with intense sympathy. The album is sure to receive the glowing reviews accorded to the group’s discography on Brilliant Classics. ‘Commitment, technical versatility, unanimity of ensemble and near-immaculate tuning on display.’ (Gramophone) ‘An excellent release from an ensemble I hope we’ll hear a lot more from in the future.’ (Fanfare)

Also available: Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 1 / Zimmermann

Since the mid-1980s, Frank Peter Zimmermann has earned recognition as one of the world’s leading violinists, admired not only for his technical skill and interpretive intelligence, but also for his versatility in a wide-ranging repertoire. His extensive discography ranges from Bach concertos and Beethoven sonatas to works by composers such as Martinu, Ligeti, Magnus Lindberg and Brett Dean. He waited until the fourth decade of his career, however, to take on Bach’s Sei solo a Violino senza Basso accompagnato, the six sonatas and partitas for solo violin. The first disc (BIS-2577) dedicated to this absolute pinnacle in the repertoire for the instrument was released in February 2022 to great critical acclaim. Now comes the much-awaited conclusion to this collection. Zimmermann compares these works to ‘a mighty tree, which protects me and crushes me at the same time’, the music giving him hope and strength at the same time as it confronts him with his limits as a violinist. On this new release, he now offers us the Sonata No. 1 in G minor, as well as the B minor Partita No. 1 and the Sonata No. 3 in C major.

Imitation is the ultimate compliment. To take inspiration from someone else’s work, to borrow and rework it to form another piece…what could be more flattering? This technique, known as ‘parody’, was hugely popular in late 16th-century Europe and Orlande de Lassus was one of its most famous advocates. The Sixteen’s programme showcases the master of parody at work and also features a new commission from the extraordinarily inventive composer Bob Chilcott parodying one of Lassus’ finest secular madrigals.

Also included are two mini masterpieces by Maddalena Casulana - the first female composer to have had a whole book of her music printed and published in the history of western music and whose work was widely admired, not least by Lassus.

Saxophonist Pat Posey goes to extremes for his solo debut album, they/beast. Introducing the tubax – a German-invented, modified version of the contrabass saxophone – Pat plays deep, dark renditions of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3, Melodies for Saxophone by Philip Glass, Bach-inspired Mo’ingus by Brooklyn-based composer-saxophonist Shelley Washington, and Pat’s own Hymn.

REVIEWS:

Pat Posey’s solo album they/beast displays the Tubax›s incredible sound with a wide variety of materials, from Bach cello suites to Philip Glass› Melodies for Saxophone. If listening to Paul Desmond’s alto sax is like sipping a fine white wine, Posey’s Tubax is like drinking a delicious porter. Its lows are glorious and Posey dexterously wrestles it through some very complex material. they/beast is a unique and sonically adventurous treat.

-- The Whole Note

The growling, guttural timbre and harmonic timbre and harmonic overtones are perfectly showcased…Posey displays colossal lung power and technique…fiendishly virtuosic…a dazzling, unsettling spectacle by a musician pushing the creative envelope.

-- BBC Music Magazine

The tubax has an amazing low register, and in the hands of a player like Pat Posey, it can be nimble and produce astonishing multiphonics … Posey’s own Hymn (2022), a real tour-de-force of inspiration, beauty, quirkiness, and earblowing sounds. Fantastic album.

-- American Record Guide

As the progenitor of a style whose influence more or less came to define the instrumental music of the High Baroque, Arcangelo Corelli (1653 - 1713) occupies a position in music history as unenviable as it is to his great credit. Just what made Corelli’s style seem strikingly novel to his contemporaries is a tricky question. To be sure, his standardization and popularization of certain formal tropes – most notably the succession of movement types in Sonate da Camera and Sonate da Chiesa – was a significant part of what his followers considered the ‘Corellian’ manner.

But Corelli’s actual compositional style, his way of organizing musical thoughts into phrases and motives, is fundamentally derived from the expressive capabilities of his chosen instrument, the violin. Certain melodic patterns used to modulate and to effect sequences (e.g., chains of sevenths and fifths) basically derive from specificities of violin technique that amplify an instrument with origins primarily in dance music into one that in Corelli’s hands, could imitate the rise and fall of the sung and spoken human voice. This tension between idiomatically instrumental techniques and the evocation of the voice is the defining characteristic of Corelli’s style throughout all his surviving works and would establish the “Roman School” as the supreme measure of musical taste for generations.

For this exploration of the 18th century’s Corelli Craze, the dynamic star trio of Mahan Esfahani, Hille Perl and Michala Petri unite to trace the Roman’s influence, (sometimes in name only...) on the musical legacies of Bach, Händel and Telemann, and of course two works from the pen of the celebrated Italian Master, himself. Gramophone about the Petri/Perl/Esfahani Trio’s Bach recording: “While the tonal and expressive range of the recorder, viol and harpsichord may appear constrained in comparison to, say, flute, cello and piano, in the hands of foremost players such as these, even a relatively lightweight work such as the C major Sonata, BWV1033, comes over as the ideal demonstration of a particular facet of the composer’s style and the performers’ abilities.”

Discover songs to connect, heal, and inspire on the U.S. Navy Band Sea Canter Chorus’ recording “Safe Harbor”. These musicians have played a vital role in comforting America in times of mourning, and this recording follows in those footsteps

The harpsichord concertos of J.S. Bach form the origins of the keyboard concerto genre that was to continue to flourish through the music of his sons, C.P.E. Bach and J.C. Bach, and onwards. Here, celebrated keyboardist Steven Devine is joined by members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in this recording that features the Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052, Concerto in A major BWV 1055, and the Concerto in D major BWV1054, together with a new reconstruction by Steven Devine of the Concerto in D minor BWV 1059.

Five of the best brass players in the world united in a chamber music ensemble: The Reinhold Friedrich Brass Quintett was founded in 2022 and presents here its first CD, UNITY.

For this brass quintet's lifelong dream, world-renowned trumpeter Reinhold Friedrich has brought together the best players in their respective fields, musicians who not only get along extremely well with one another in a musical sense but also on a personal level. In their playing, one can feel their mutual appreciation and their joy in making music together, and, coupled with their unique technical and musical skills, as well as their chamber music experience, this enables the musicians to merge into a single unit.

The players that form this top-class quintet come together from a variety of European countries: Jeroen Berwaerts hails from Belgium and as a former principal trumpeter of the NDR Symphony Orchestra is a much-sought-after soloist who now teaches at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. The Dane, Lasse Mauritzen, who was knighted to the Order of Dannebrog by Queen Margarethe II, is first principal horn of the Copenhagen-based Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra (DRSO). Although Ian Bousfield is British, he now lives in Switzerland and is accustomed to performing around the world as a former principal trombonist with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as being a soloist and a conductor. Fundamental to the quintet is the Norwegian Thomas Røisland, who now lives in Sweden and is principal tuba in the DRSO, as well as playing in other renowned European orchestras.These five musicians are united by their desire to set new standards in brass chamber music for their audiences and to present premiere recordings and commission arrangements of classics that have not yet been recorded at a world-class level.

Klaus Mertens had long been wanting to record the ‘Geistliche Lieder’ by Johann Sebastian Bach from Schemelli’s Musicalisches Gesangbuch (1736). Ton Koopman had been looking for the right program to showcase the beautiful Teschemacher chamber organ in Oosterland and realised it would actually be an ideal match with the program his friend Klaus Mertens had in mind. So in early 2023 Mertens and Koopman spent some (rather cold but) inspired days in Oosterland to record this selection of 24 songs, interspersed with six organ works.

The Neave Trio's program Rooted features a range of works based on folk music. Smetana's distinctive nationalistic style was largely based on the inclusion of bohemian rhythmic and melodic elements, and he was acclaimed in his native Bohemia as the father of Czech music. His Trio in G minor was composed in 1855 as a response to the death of his four-year old daughter and shows the influence of Liszt. Josef Suk was a favorite pupil of Dvorak's, and his early Piano Trio, whilst shorter in length and less intense than Smetana's, is embedded in that Czech tradition. Also deeply influenced by Dvorak, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was inspired by his African heritage, as well, and his Twenty-Four Negro Melodies for Piano was a prime example of his research. He subsequently arranged five of these pieces into the suite for piano trio that we hear on this album. The program concludes with Frank Martin's Trio from 1925, which is based on traditional Irish melodies.

REVIEWS:

These four chamber works explore music of a definitive national identity. The members of the ensemble brandish their considerable skills in the service of otherwise neglected composers and scores, with astonishing brilliance in their recorded sound.

— Audiophile Audition

The program's characteristically eclectic mix of works nurtures the Trio's well-upholstered warmth, attention to detail, and compelling rapport.

— BBC Music Magazine