For all its traditional ties, Stravinsky's music continues to have a shockingly modern effect on many listeners even today. In his music, praise of God is formulated in tones entirely different from those expected by music lovers schooled in the romantic tradition. Stravinsky did not compose "emotional" or "expressive" religious music but sought objectivity, archaic prototypes, and traditions of timeless value, presenting these elements as if under microscopic enlargement.

The English composer-pianist Freda Swain (1902–85) left behind a huge legacy of music that was largely unknown even during her own lifetime. Her compositions – hundreds of them, in a series of large boxes – found their way to the Swiss pianist Timon Altwegg, who begins his survey of her piano music with these three mighty sonatas. They are astonishing discoveries: big-boned, virtuosic pieces, full of wild energy, crossing from late Romanticism to a more modern idiom – from Rachmaninov to Bartók, so to speak – and with Bax’s fondness for Celtic seascapes and a hint of Debussyan Impressionism.

REVIEW:

Freda Swain studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford, married New Zealand pianist and mentor Arthur Alexander, with whom she formed a successful piano duo, and devoted her life to composing, teaching, and performing. Some of her 450 compositions were performed with success, but her refusal to bend to post-war musical trends meant she fell into obscurity.

Altwegg’s recording of three sonatas and three short pieces should go a long way to reinstating this remarkable composer with a highly individual voice. The most fascinating work is the three-movement Sonata Saga that Swain left unnumbered and which Altwegg found in a box of unsorted loose pages. He has painstakingly worked it into a performance version, and it is an impressive and powerful debut work from a 22-year-old.

The gem of the collection is the Sonata No 1 in A Minor, nicknamed “The Skerries”, written in 1936 and inspired by the Scottish landscape. Altwegg gives a memorable performance. The Sonata No 2 in F Sharp Minor dates from 1950 and shows how Swain advanced in her approach to form and harmony. The short pieces are delightful.

-- Limelight

The Russian-born Mischa Spoliansky (1898—1985) became one of the major names in cabaret in 1920s Berlin and then, as a refugee from Nazi Germany, in London, he became one of the best-known composers of film scores. He also wrote a handful of orchestral works, which have remained unknown until now. His Boogie is a witty, tongue-in-cheek piece of orchestral jazz, and the Overture to My Husband and I, one of his stage shows, has a Mozartian sparkle and wit. But it is his only Symphony, an epic statement composed over a period of nearly three decades, that constitutes his real achievement as an orchestral composer – the fourth of its five movements apparently offering Spoliansky’s own musical commentary on the Holocaust.

REVIEW:

Some may recognize Spoliansky’s name as the composer for a host of British films from the 1930s onwards, including Sanders of the River, The Ghost Goes West, King Solomon's Mines, The Happiest Days of Your Life , Saint Joan and North West Frontier. That he wrote this marvelous symphony during his ‘time off’ is quite something – tuneful, richly orchestrated, cleverly planned and gloriously uplifting, it remains one of the biggest surprises I have come across for a long time.

-- MusicWeb International

With its roots in the tradition of Borodin and Mussorgsky, the music of the Ukrainian-born Soviet composer Yuri Shaporin (1887–1966) sits between the late Romanticism of Scriabin and the harder edges of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, blending a mastery of counterpoint with an acute sense of Russian keyboard color. In Shaporin’s piano music his fondness for the epic – expressed in two large-scale sonatas and a mighty passacaglia – is contrasted with a number of gentle, almost whimsical miniatures.

Kirill Kozlovski is a Finnish-Belarusian pianist, harpsichordist and researcher. He holds a doctoral degree from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki for his research into the music of Dmitri Shostakovich (2017). His present research interests include Soviet music and cultural history, as well as performance practices within the Russian piano school.

REVIEW:

Shaporin is a composer of greater interest and merit than I had hitherto suspected, and it has left me wanting to hear more of his music. I strongly recommend this release to those interested in the Russian piano repertoire and those who would like to discover an unfamiliar but worthwhile Soviet-Russian composer.

-- Fanfare

A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month for July 2022!

All in all Maria Bach left more than 400 works to posterity. Most (about 80%) are Lieder and choral works, followed by smaller-scale piano works; not unlike Edvard Grieg or Hugo Wolff, she was an expert in that field, though she did also compose three ballets, made up of small, orchestral piano pieces. Her most ambitious works then, are the few excursions she made into the realms of chamber music (solo cello sonata, cello sonata, piano quartet and quintet, string quintet and two string quartets), in which she ventured a confrontation with the traditions of the grand, established genres. On the present release, Oliver Triendl, Marina Grauman, Nina Karmon, Öykü Canpolat, and Alexander Hülshoff showcase Maria Bach’s chamber works, including the Piano Quintet “Wolga-Quintet”, the Cello Sonata, and the Suite for Cello Solo.

Review

[Maria Bach's] music is infused with French and Russian elements and one can quite hear why it was so appealing to Roger-Ducasse who ensured that her 31-minute Piano Quintet was performed at the Paris Conservatoire when she visited Paris in 1930-31. Like all good music it’s clearly susceptible to strongly divergent interpretive stances. The Hänssler team is anchored by Oliver Treindl, who in my experience is probably one of the most hard-working and often recorded of players. He’s also an athletic figure who ensures forward-moving tempi.

The eminent cellist Paul Grümmer was a family friend and Bach was fortunate he liked her music and played the Cello Sonata frequently. It’s modestly structured – three movements and 19 minutes in this reading by Alexander Hülshoff and Treindl – and has a ripe Brahmsian rhapsodic feel, with a warmly curvaceous lyricism in the Romanze second movement. As with the Piano Quintet the finale is full of dextrous animation.

The final work in the disc is the Suite for cello, a crisp four-movement affair that looks back to Popper, as the notes indicate, rather than [J.S.] Bach. After a sonorous, chordal Praeludium come the registral leaps of an etude-like Scherzo, an expressive Air and then another of her favoured variations for a finale – including a Tango-like one – which call for supple bowing. It’s a deft work, all the more so in not honouring [J.S.] Bach’s legacy in any obvious fashion.

In terms of amplitude and density of sound this disc is an impressive one. The players sound firmly engaged in what must have been unfamiliar repertoire. They’ve been backed up by some classy notes. For overt expression, choose this[.]

Jonathan Woolf 

Maasai Footsteps is a project that reveals the evolution of the Maasai culture and shows the value of their traditions in the world today. To illustrate this development, Anuang’a brings modern choreography to the traditional performance of song and dance. Anuang’a describes it as “a show that travels to the ancient times and connects to the present, while revealing how much of the present-day culture is influenced by the past... This is a show that brings out the beauty of the Maasai culture and the unique rhythm of powerful voices and dance.” Anuang’a explains that the dancers are not professionals, and that he wanted to demonstrate the raw talent that exists in the local villages, those who sing and dance as part of their daily routine. The three clans involved are Purko from Maasai Mara, Loodokilani from Magadi and Kisonko from Amboseli. Each of the three clans bring their own combination of rhythm, voices and movements to traditional Maasai songs. While the groups perform a cappella, the contemporary dance that Anuang’a displays is a tribute to the Maasai community.“Tradition is what makes people who they are. If you lose it, you lose your identity.” – A.F.

Mediņš (1890–1966) was one of the pioneers of Latvian music. His was a conductor, teacher, and wrote the first Latvian opera. The 24 Dainas were written over a period of 4 decades, and show influence of Rachmaninoff, Grieg, and Scriabin. This is the first complete recording on CD.

REVIEW:

The Latvian composer Janis Medins (1890–1966) studied piano and string instruments as a child and claimed he was exclusively selftaught as a composer. His 24 Dainas (short character pieces drawing from a rich poetic and musical tradition with subjects based on folklore) are similar in some respects to other cycles of Preludes by Rachmaninoff and others (and the term is rendered “Prelude” in English for the CD). Medins has a fine ear for tonal harmony heavily colored by chromatic voiceleading, and the works, like No 17, usually balance virtuosic brilliance and full-voiced, quasiorchestral textures. Powell, who is a composer as well as a pianist himself, furnishes a careful but highly expressive reading. The recording replicates a concert-like acoustic.

-- American Record Guide

A vibrant mix of creole heritage. The music of Sakili is from the island Rodrigues, a small volcanic island just east of Mauritius. The island’s European and African influences - waltzes, polka, mazurka, Scottish - all blend harmoniously with the ségadrum rhythms to intertwine the past musical traditions of African slaves with the western world. The three members of Sakili (Francis Prosper, Vallen Pierre Louis and Ricardo Legentil) had their own solo careers and were put together in 2019 by Mauritian artistic director Percy Yip Tong. The purpose of the group’s formation was for a European tour to introduce the rarely heard music of the Rodrigues island.