Valentin Silvestrov is Ukraine’s leading composer and one of the most distinctive musical voices of our time. This album brings together the two superlative works of Silvestrov’s early maturity – Postludium for Piano and Orchestra and the Symphony for Violin and Orchestra ‘Widmung’. Recorded in the presence of the composer. The Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christopher Lyndon-Gee can also be heard on 8.574123 in Silvestrov’s Symphony No. 7, Ode to a Nightingale and Piano Concertino.

REVIEW:

If you don't know [this] 86-year-old composer's music, a new album by conductor Christopher Lyndon-Gee and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra makes a sonically satisfying place to start. It contains a pair of symphonic works that embody two recurring ideas for Silvestrov: that an end can also be a beginning, and that sweet, nostalgic music can thrive alongside concussive eruptions.

In Postludium for Piano and Orchestra, the composer essentially offers an ending, a "postlude," that becomes something brand new by mixing the avant-garde with old-school romanticism. The piece convulses in orchestral earthquakes of low brass (complete with aftershocks), but eventually gives way to delicate music that yearns for the long-ago beauty of Mozart.

The more expansive work on the album is a 44-minute symphony for violin and orchestra titled Dedication. Who's it dedicated to? Lyndon-Gee, writing in the album's booklet, treats it as an homage to the "life-force" of the human race — which encompasses not only tragedy, but also love and renewal. And yet for Silvestrov, he says, "Everything is a postlude to that which is slipping, inevitably and unceasingly, from between our fingers."

In Dedication, the violin — played with unwavering detail by Janusz Wawrowski — is not battling against the orchestra for domination, as in a typical concerto. Instead, the two protagonists complement each other, breathing as a single organism in Silvestrov's colossal exhalations of sound. Great waves of percussion crest over a spiky violin, a reminder that Silvestrov's early works from the 1960s were considered too avant-garde for Soviet-era officials.

Silvestrov has created his own sound world, charged with turbulence and bittersweet fragments of melody that can seem like quotes from other composers, but aren't. Near the end of Dedication, an elegiac theme, reminiscent of Mahler, emerges in the strings, struggling to rise ever higher through a dark cloud of roiling harmonies.

-- NPR Classical (Tom Huizenga)

Violinist Movses Pogossian continues his admirable advocacy for the work of Armenian composers with this extensive 4 disc collection of new works, a follow up to his Modulation Necklace release in 2020 (FCR244). Divided into four volumes that focus on instrumental chamber music, art song, and solo piano music, Serenade with a Dandelion is an invaluable resource to explore 20th and 21st century Armenian repertoire, performed with the utmost sensitivity and commitment by Pogossian and his colleagues.

This album features Christmas music for the piano in a timeless journey through the decades and centuries. These songs have been through a remarkable evolution over the course of several centuries, with the changes they have undergone reflecting the shifting musical styles and cultural influences that prevailed in various times.

This album marks the culmination of two special Hallé collaborations and includes four major pieces from one of the most distinctive of current British compositional voices. Delyana Lazarova (Hallé Assistant Conductor 2020-23) and composer Dobrinka Tabakova (Hallé Artist in Residence 2022-23) were both born in the historic city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Working together for the first time during their time with the orchestra they formed a strong musical connection in which the Hallé musicians displayed a close understanding of the intricacies and dialect of Tabakova’s musical language. This album contains two of Tabakova’s major orchestral works. The three-part Earth Suite, which the composer says was inspired by ‘the overwhelming force of Nature’, recently drew ‘exquisite playing’ from the Hallé (Bachtrack, April 2023).

Orpheus Comet features fast rhythmic material combined with atmospheric transparent orchestrations and a glorious climax featuring quotations from Monteverdi. The two significant concertos for strings and soloists included on this album solidified Tabakova’s reputation as an outstanding contemporary voice and display the composer’s close affinity with string instruments. Ukrainian-British Maxim Rysanov, is one of Tabakova’s longest collaborators who premiered the Concerto for Viola and Strings in 2004, a piece described as being ’saturated with an inner, captivating and natural energy’ (Culture Magazine, Nov 2004). The Concerto for Cello and Strings (whose score was described as ‘gorgeous’ by the Daily Telegraph, Australia) is here performed by Guy Johnson, one of the most exciting British cellists of his generation.

For nearly 20 years, Seraphic Fire’s Christmas concerts have heralded the change of seasons for our audiences in South Florida, and there is no piece more associated with these yearly musical celebrations than Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. Written by Elizabeth Poston, English composer and purported World War II spy for the Allies, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree takes a Federal-era American text and clothes it in music so simple, that it could easily be an 18th-century colonial hymn. With its elegant treble-voice verse and luxurious ending canon, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree has become an indispensable part of Christmastide for thousands of our friends in our hometown of Miami, FL, and beyond.

With Poston’s masterpiece as our polestar, this new holiday recording by Seraphic Fire celebrates the simple and the authentic. From Praetorious’s double choir setting of In dulci jubilo and Gottfried Wolter’s spine-tingling Maria durch ein Dornwald ging, to familiar American carols arranged by composer contemporaries of Seraphic Fire (including Susan LaBarr, Edwin Fissinger, Timothy Takach, and Seraphic Fire’s founder Patrick Dupre Quigley), this new recording hopes to introduce new settings of old melodies that will hopefully become instant classics in your Christmas soundscape. Each Seraphic Fire Christmas program is special, and we hope that The Apple Tree: Christmas with Seraphic Fire will continue our tradition of bringing peaceful, tuneful contemplation to our beloved audiences, near and far. – James K. Bass

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)