After four volumes exploring 20th century British works for cello and piano, the Watkins brothers come together again turning their attention across the Atlantic ocean and the American contribution to this repertoire spanning four decades of seminal compositional activity in the United States. The inspired performances of the Welsh sibling duo, both highly acclaimed in their musical endeavors further illustrate the confluence of the unique American influences with the development of early 20th century classical repertoire.

Although most widely remembered for his operettas in partnership with W.S. Gilbert, Sir Arthur Sullivan was the most famous of all British composers of the nineteenth century. He was revered as a composer of oratorios, and was urged by Queen Victoria to compose a grand opera. The result, Ivanhoe, achieved 155 consecutive performances (in an opera house especially built for it). Achieving equal success in his lifetime, his substantial legacy of songs fell into neglect in the twentieth century, but as this album demonstrates Sullivan's endlessly fertile melodic gifts withstand comparison with those of any other song composer. David Owen Norris and his quartet of outstanding young British singers deliver this fascinating programme with terrific style and panache.

The New Year´s Eve Concert 1988 was one of the last concerts that Herbert von Karajan gave with the Berliner Philharmoniker in Berlin. For this concert he invited the 17 year old Evgeny Kissin to his debut with the orchestra. After the concert the press did raving reviews about Kissin´s musicality and technical skills and he proves till today that he is one of the best pianists of our time. The New Year´s Concert from the Golden Hall of the Musikverein Vienna with the Wiener Philharmoniker is always one of the best-selling classical albums each year. In 1987 Herbert von Karajan conducted his only performance of the New Year´s Concert performing famous pieces from Johann Strauss I, Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss. As soloist in one piece you can hear the legendary soprano Kathleen Battle.

His parents, Italian immigrants to Brazil, named Radamés Gnattali after the male lead in Verdi’s Aida, and his mother began to teach him the piano at the age of six. But even though he did become a highly skilled pianist, performing Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto in B flat at Rio de Janeiro’s Teatro Municipal at the age of 23, it was as a composer (and arranger) of music of a distinctly Brazilian cast that he would make his name. Gnattali developed an individual style, which today might be called cross-over, by infusing inflexions of popular music into a classical framework, over a fluid harmonic technique. Jaunty rhythms and striking melodic lines appear in a wholly uncontrived manner: they formed his everyday working material, as an arranger of popular music for record companies and radio stations. When composing concert music Gnattali usually did so for musicians that he collaborated with in popular music, such as the guitarist Laurindo Almeida, as well as for himself. A large production includes works for a great variety of scorings, but for this disc Franz and Débora Halász have chosen to present chamber and solo works for guitar and piano, inviting the cellist Wen-Sinn Yang to join in for the composer's Sonata for guitar and cello. As reflected in some of the titles, Brazilian dance forms (samba, batuque, choro) play an important role in this music, which for a long time was disregarded by a musical establishment suspicious of its great fluency and popular appeal; music which in every bar expresses the soul of Brazil – Alma brasileira.

Così fan tutte is Mozart's third opera to a Da Ponte libretto. It is in opera buffa style and has only six characters, two couples and an elderly philosopher and a trusted maid. In this recording Lesley Garrett sings the part of the maid, Despina, and the celebrated veteran Sir Thomas Allen the philosopher, Don Alfonso. Despite the somewhat cynical storyline this opera contains some of Mozart's most memorable and sublime music. The conductor, Sir Charles Mackerras, has spent many years researching performance practice of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and is a noted authority on Mozart's operas. He writes of this recording, 'it is indeed a pleasure having the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment lending its expertise in tonal colour, phrasing and rhythmic impulse to Mozart's wonderful score...I have chosen to record this English version of Così fan tutte with the traditional cuts, thus making it closer to a staged performance'. The English translation, by the Rev. Browne, was first used in London at a performance conducted by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford in 1890.

One of Europe’s finest Baroque ensembles, Ensemble Meridiana is an award-winning group who is regularly asked to perform at all of the most prestigious early music festivals. The theme of this new release is love through Baroque France. The compositions travel through the venues where music was performed in this era: the salons, the countryside, and even the royal courts. Hailing from four different countries, the members of Ensemble Meridiana met during their time at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland. “…some bravura playing… the players show an exciting sense of ensemble that doesn’t crimp their expression as individuals. May we hear more from this wonderful new group!” (Audio Video Club of Atlanta)

Ivan Ilic came across these transcriptions, scarcely known at all, through the most unlikely and serendipitous sequence of events. Carl David Stegmann (1751 – 1826) was a tenor, keyboard player, conductor, and composer, who worked mostly in the field of opera. Employed by the Court Theatre in Mainz (where he sang in the first German-language production of Don Giovanni), he also gave a number of acclaimed performances in Frankfurt. Trained as an organist, he made transcriptions of string quintets by Mozart and Beethoven’s Trios, Op. 9 as well as keyboard transcriptions of twenty-five of Haydn’s symphonies. Ivan Ilic writes: ‘It is unclear to me whether these transcriptions were ever meant to be played as concert repertoire, in public. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm I have encountered wherever I have played them has persuaded me to make this recording, to allow more people to hear Stegmann’s idiomatic arrangements.’

Having begun their collaboration in 1997, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and its conductor laureate Thomas Dausgaard have developed an unusually tight partnership. Nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in their cycles of the symphonies of Schumann, Schubert and, most recently, Brahms – performances which have been characterized by reviewers as variously ‘fresh’, ‘vivid’, ‘transparent’ and ‘invigorating’. Of Mendelssohn the team has previously recorded the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a release described as ‘capturing Mendelssohn’s inimitable spirit’ on the website Crescendo. The same disc included The Hebrides, and now the SCO and Dausgaard return to Scotland, with Mendelssohn’s ‘Scottish’ Symphony. This was begun in 1829, after a stay in London during which the composer conducted his Symphony No. 1, also included on this disc. Mendelssohn’s imagination was often fired by impressions from nature, and Scotland was the Romantic landscape par excellence, celebrated for its rugged Highland scenery and melancholy tunes. ‘I think that today I found the beginning of my ‘Scottish’ Symphony’, he wrote to his parents after a visit to the ruined chapel at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. It took more than a decade for him to complete the symphony – but ever since its first performance, in 1842, it has been a staple of the symphonic repertoire.

REVIEW:

With the 38-member Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conductor Thomas Dausgaard here offers an ensemble probably quite similar in size to that which played Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56. The size fits Dausgaard well, for his readings are crisp and restrained, without a lot of vibrato (as is his trademark with this group) or big emotional climaxes. Dausgaard's quick, high-tension approach works well here. BIS contributes fine engineering from the Örebro Concert House in this fresh Mendelssohn release.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

In their liner notes for this string of estrellitas (‘small stars’), Elena Urioste and Tom Poster admit to a shared love for ‘an old-world, golden sound and for melodies that tug at the heartstrings’. This has resulted in a deeply personal collection of miniatures full of winks, sighs and tears aimed at transporting the listener to bygone eras of fireside salon concerts. With a few exceptions, including Elgar’s Chanson de Nuit and Salut d’amour, the pieces are arrangements by the great violinists of that bygone, golden age: Auer, Kreisler, Zimbalist, Heifetz … while the originals they are based upon range from Gluck’s Melodie from Orpheus and Euridice and Liszt’s Consolation No. 3 to Beau soir by Debussy and Estrellita by Manuel Ponce. In a closing section Elena Urioste and Tom Poster also pay their respects to the Great American Songbook, with new arrangements, signed Tom Poster, of ‘Moon River,’ ‘When I Fall in Love’ and ‘Over the Rainbow.’

The music of Michael Jarrell has been said to “examine states of dream and unreality, searching for a moment of truth” – a truth which is often found in the lowest sonorities and slowest tempi, a place where time stands still. His works are often interrelated, not only by a certain sensitivity or a distinctive tone, but also by the recurrence of particular features that he reworks in different contexts. The present disc combines two recent concertos, each of them performed by its dedicatee. In July 2019, three years after they gave the first performance of Émergences-Résurgences, Tabea Zimmermann rejoined l’Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and Pascal Rophé in order to record the work. In the liner notes Jarrell describes his method in the concerto in visual terms: ‘Curves, colors, chiaroscuro or strong lines; I tried to integrate a pictorial dimension into the scheme of this piece…’ Jarrell’s fourth violin concerto, 4 Eindrücke, is even more recent, and was first performed in 2019 in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall by Renaud Capuçon and Pascal Rophé conducting. As suggested by its title, the work is in four contrasting movements, of which the second stands out in that the soloist plays only pizzicato throughout. Framed by the two concertos is an orchestral work from 2009 which takes its title from Lucretius: ‘the sky, recently so clear, suddenly becomes horribly murky’. Although the work lacks a programme as such, the title paints in words the abrupt contrast between what the composer describes as ‘great expressive violence’ and an atmosphere that is ‘gentle, calm and full of inwardness’.

In June 1995, a virtually unknown group of Japanese musicians embarked on the monumental task of recording the complete sacred cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Almost eighteen years later, on 23rd February 2013, the Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki – by then household names in the international music world – reached their goal when they finished recording the 55th release of a series which, in the meantime, had been met with overwhelming acclaim worldwide. Made in conjunction with the final cantata recording, this film commemorates the occasion. Besides performances of the three last cantatas – Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV191, Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, BWV69 and Freue dich, erlöste Schar, BWV30 – the film includes interviews with Masaaki Suzuki and key members of Bach Collegium Japan as well as behind the-scenes footage.

REVIEWS:

This disc is essentially Volume 55 of the Bach Sacred Cantata series with an extra chorus and added video. At least two reviews are elsewhere on the Music Web International site. The addition of 25 minutes or so of interviews with the soloists, chorus members, players, engineers and Suzuki himself make this celebratory issue fascinating to watch and hear. A secondary bonus is the presence of subtitles during the four performances, making it far easier to stay with Bach’s religious message. The air of dedication hanging over all the activity is actually quite inspiring, and rightly so, for this series is a landmark in recording history, up there with the Solti Ring. Not only has a complete set of the sacred cantatas been committed to disc but they are in period style, in SACD surround and they are superbly well documented. Reviewing this has cost me money because I realised that I could no longer resist buying the recently released, complete remastered set on BIS SACD9055, not only for the missing few dozen cantatas I gained, but also for the old CD-only issues being newly minted as SACD surround. And, I might add, for the useful indexes to help navigation around the 55 discs!

The performances of the three cantatas on this Blu-ray are of course superb; from the most prominent soloists to the back desk of the violins, all are now seasoned performers, and it shows. Each cantata appears to be a single performance with only the audio and video team and the microphones as audience. The singers move smoothly out of their place in the chorus to the front to sing their solos and then walk back into place. It is all impressively smooth and unfussy. The addition of the great Dona Nobis Pacem chorus from the B minor Mass acts as a wholly appropriate closing tribute. The surround sound, unusually not in DTS Master Audio but LPCM Surround 5.0, is excellent as always. Even those who have purchased the final volume of the series should obtain this too. You might even be tempted to raise a glass to the series as you watch the performers and engineers do just that on your screen.

-- MusicWeb International

As a pupil of Mozart and contemporary of Beethoven, Hummel was esteemed for the elegance of both his playing and his music. The opus numbers of these appealing quintets are misleading. The Op. 87 belongs to his early period, much more Classical and Mozartian in manner than the powerful Op. 74 which opens with a powerful D minor statement and continues in turbulent fashion as a work belonging to 1815, by which time the composer had achieved both fame and security.

A quartet of Dutch string players, experienced in the early-music scene, forms the core of the Nepomuk quintet, named after the composer on this album; they are joined by the pianist Riko Fukuda, who contributes an authoritative essay on Hummel and his piano quintets to the booklet.

REVIEW:

This is a very valuable release… The manner in which all five musicians construct musical phrases throughout is quite impressive. And their sound blends superbly … The refinement with which these musicians rediscover this relatively unknown music is simply astonishing … The sound of this recording is quite impressive too; the level of detail is amazing, and the spatial depth is compelling.

-- Fanfare

In 1986, the legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz, who left his homeland 61 years ago, announced that he would return to the Soviet Union for the first time since 1925 to give recitals in Moscow and Leningrad. This sensational historic recital from Moscow includes works by Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, whom Horowitz knew both, Domenico Scarlatti, W.A. Mozart, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann and Moritz Moszkowski. The disc too contains additional documentary footage with Horowitz. “Horowitz, playing with a clarity and dynamic range that friends said he had not matched in many years“ (New York Times) made an outstanding performance of musical, as well as political, significance.