This is a program of great choral works, including one work from the 1500s, works from the 20th Century, and one work, Black Pierrot that was commissioned by R. Paul Crabb for the ensembles on this album. R. Paul Crabb, University of Missouri's Director of Choral Activities, earned degrees in Music Education, Vocal Performance and Choral Music Education. His ensembles have performed at state, regional and national conventions and have traveled extensively in Mexico, Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Russia, Bulgaria and Australia. Crabb served as assistant conductor at the Russian/American Choral Symposium for two years where his choir was invited as the resident American choir at the Moscow Conservatory. He served for one year as a visiting professor in Salzburg, Austria, where he taught and worked with the choir of the Salzburg Cathedral. He has taught conducting in Taiwan, eighteenth-century music in England, and studied sixteenth century polyphony in Italy with the renowned Peter Phillips. More recently he served as Guest Visiting Choral Professor at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary - the first American selected for that position.

A self-critical composer, Tchaikovsky once said “‘I listened to the Delibes ballet Sylvia... what charm, what elegance, what wealth of melody, rhythm, and harmony. I was ashamed, for if I had known of this music then, I would not have written Swan Lake.” It is ironic that Tchaikovsky’s own words should actually be applied to Swan Lake itself; “what charm, what elegance, what wealth of melody, rhythm, and harmony.”

In the 2019/20 season Santtu-Matias Rouvali continued as Chief Conductor of Gothenburg Symphony and as Principal Conductor Designate of the Philharmonia Orchestra, where he succeeds Esa-Pekka Salonen as Principal Conductor in 2021/22. Alongside these posts he retains his longstanding position as Chief Conductor with Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, close to his home in Finland. His international profile continues to flourish. He debuted the season with the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic and Royal Concertgebouw orchestras in wide-ranging repertoire. He conducted the New York premiere of Bryce Dessner’s Wires, and at the Concertgebouw he conducted the world premiere of Ariadne by Theo Verbey, as well as Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. He has built a loyal following internationally after successful tour concerts last season with Gothenburg Symphony in Vienna, where he returned in December to conduct the Wiener Symphoniker and Nicola Benedetti. In 2019/20 he returned to several orchestras across Europe, including the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

REVIEW:

Rouvali is a most agreeable Tchaikovskian, shaping the Act I Valse with a danceable lilt, and bringing rhythmic verve to the Dance of the Cygnets, and flamboyance to the Spanish and Neopolitan Dances.

– Sunday Times (UK)

Almara is an early music ensemble which was founded by Elisabeth Pawelke during her studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. The ensemble's musical focus is on the secular repertoire of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Around 1500 Hartmann Schedel (1440 - 1514) was one of the most important polymath of his time. Grown up in Nuremberg as son of a wealthy Nuremberg merchant, Schedel studied liberal arts and medicine in Leipzig and Padua from 1456 to 1566. Being a polymath and a conscientious archivist of his time Schedel collected the contemporary knowledge by compiling a vast collection of books with more than 600 volumes. One of these surviving books is the Song Book bearing Schedel's name. According to sources, Schedel showed no great interest in music. It seems that he wrote down the songs of his compendium primarily out of documentary interest and that with a lasting success as two thirds of the lyrics have been surviving for posterity until today.

The provocative and beguiling Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE) comprises the crème de la crème of the San Francisco Bay Area’s musicians. Their motto: nothing is out of bounds, and anything is possible. Presenters of all types of music including small ensemble, vocal, orchestral, multi-media and operatic, a select group comes together for this recording of Olivier Messiaen’s seminal chamber work, Quartet for the End of Time. Written during the composer’s confinement in World War II, he maintained hope, expressing, “The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite … our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.” LCCE co-founder and prize-winning composer Kurt Rohde echoes this sentiment in his Messiaen-inspired one wing for violin and piano, heard here in its world-premiere recording.

REVIEW:

I’ve gone from having two or three recordings of this eerie but emotionally powerful work, one of them being Tashi’s, to just having one, and that is the EMI recording made under the composer’s own supervision and featuring his wife, Yvonne Loriod, as the pianist. (Interestingly, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s son Manuel is the cellist in this performance.) But after listening to the Left Coast Ensemble’s new recording, I’m tempted to add it to my collection.

Their performance is a bit brisker and tauter than either Tashi’s or Messiaen’s but not lacking in emotional intensity. Although I felt that the Left Coast Ensemble’s more linear approach gave a more “streamlined” profile to the music, this is sometimes to its favor as it brings out the structure of the work better. And as I say, the individual members of this quartet clearly get the music’s message. Indeed, I found clarinetist Jerome Simas’ long solo in the third section (“The Abyss of the Birds”) to be as forlorn as that of Wolfgang Meyer on the Messiaen-Loriod recording, and better than that of Stoltzman with Tashi.

– Art Music Lounge

Award-winning composer Chang Ping’s Oriental Wash Painting is a set of four concertos that showcases traditional and ancient Chinese instruments, each performed by renowned and influential soloists. The ‘wash painting’ of the title implies a relationship between music and Chinese ink paintings- masterpieces which are magnificent and unconstrained, revealing a noble personality and character. This recording captures the world premiere concert of these remarkable works at the China National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. Chang Ping’s works feature a large variety of musical forms, including opera, symphony, concerto, ballet, chamber music and solo works among others. A prolific composer, his works are performed frequently both international and domestically, winning numerous prizes as well as garnering worldwide critical acclaim.

These two concertos show the increasing importance of the guitar duo on the world’s concert stages. Leo Brouwer, one of the foremost Latin American composers, has written many admired guitar concertos but The Book of Signs is his first for two guitars, a double concerto of great virtuosity, with a majestic, songful theme in its central movement. A crucial figure in the global promotion of Brazilian rhythms for the guitar, Paulo Bellinati deploys luxurious harmonies and brilliantly effective techniques to pay tribute to the country music of Sao Paulo State in Concerto Caboclo.

Wife of Robert Schumann, Clara Wieck Schumann was a great piano virtuoso. She also was a wonderful composer of piano works. Korean-born pianist Junghwa Lee brings these works to life with vital performances. Junghwa Lee performs actively in solo recitals, chamber concerts and lecture recitals, and has frequently appeared in concerto performances as a soloist including those with the Korean Symphony Orchestra, Salina Symphony Orchestra, Hutchinson Symphony Orchestra and Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra among others. Lee has presented solo performances in Korea, Holland, France, Hungary, Romania, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Chile, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, China, the United Kingdom and the United States, including appearances at the Arts Center Concert Series at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, Shenyang Music Cultural Exchange Exhibition Between China and Foreign Countries Festival in China, Beethoven 32 Sonatas Recital Series in Singapore, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series at the Chicago Cultural Center and her New York debut recital at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall as a winner of Artists International’s Special Presentation Award.

The Norwegian vocal ensemble Edvard Grieg Kor is the resident a cappella ensemble at Troldhaugen, the home of Edvard Grieg. Displaying versatility across all musical genres, they perform regularly with Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and also form the core of the Chorus for Bergen National Opera. They have had numerous works and arrangements written specially for them by leading composers including Jonathan Rathbone, and David Lang, both of whom are represented here on this the choir’s debut recording. Greig’s Fire Salmer, (Four Psalms) after Norwegian folk tunes (his final opus) and his shorter Ave Maris Stella (performed here in an a cappella arrangement made by the composer) are two rare examples of religion in Greig’s output. Works by fellow Norwegian composers Ole Bull and Agathe Backer Grøndahl, and a sensational and virtuosic arrangement of Greig’s Holberg Suite complete the programme.

The history, legends, culture, art and music of Naples were constant companions to composer Angelo Gilardino in his formative years. Never attracted as a composer to pictorial music, he does feel that the impressions derived from the experience of places and literary works leave profound imprints on the emotions and the intellect, which can provide the impulse to write music associated with a particular place. A project to create music based on the mythical Parthenope (precursor of modern Naples) began with a conversation between Gilardino and two Neapolitan masters of the guitar: Aniello Desiderio, virtuoso guitarist acclaimed throughout the world; and Lucio Matarazzo, who embodies the forthright Neapolitan style so typical of the school of Eduardo Caliendo (the guitarist who collaborated in the performances and recordings of Roberto Murolo). Having joined forces in a new duo, the two guitarists asked Gilardino to compose a concerto for guitar and orchestra, and he replied with the Concerto del Sepeithos for two guitars and orchestra in 2013. The river Sepeithos (Sebeto) flowed through ancient Neapolis, and Gilardino was drawn to accounts of the raging current making its way through the city and into the sea at today’s Piazza del Municipio. The duo’s response to the Concerto del Sepeithos was another request: for Gilardino to write a Sonata for two guitars for them, as well. In 2014 they were rewarded with Riviera di Chiaia – Passeggio reale, a piece evoking an imagined Naples informed by impressions ranging from Cimarosa to Anna Maria Ortese, Leonardo Leo to Nicola Pugliese. In particular, the composer was reading Pugliese’s novel Malacqua (Four Days of Rain in the City of Naples) while writing the second movement, ‘Pioggia’ (Rain).

Despite his tragically short life, Nikos Skalkottas has now become recognized as one of the most important Greek composers of the 20th century. The modernist style of his earlier period is balanced by the four important mature neoclassical works presented here. Both the Sinfonietta and the Classical Symphony are expressions of the deep regard Skalkottas had for traditional forms blended with his unique musical language. Skalkottas was a violinist with the Athens State Orchestra, who are honoring his memory with this and future recordings of his works.

Gaudete Brass, a quintet devoted to presenting serious brass chamber music and commissioning new works, brings a fresh perspective to music of John Corigliano with an inventive album of brass works by the prolific American composer and his protégés. “The excellent Gaudete Brass” (Gramophone) honors Corigliano, winner of Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Pulitzer Prize, with world-premiere recordings of his groundbreaking Fanfares to Music for on- and off-stage brass choirs, his stately Antiphon for double brass quintet, and a new arrangement of the Rossini-esque Overture from his popular Gazebo Dances. Gaudete commissioned the title track, Steven Bryant’s sevenfive, in honor of Corigliano’s 75th birthday, and the numbers seven and five figure prominently in its musical architecture. David Sampson’s boisterous Entrance opens the program, while his surprisingly restrained Still is luxuriously lyrical. Jonathan Newman’s Prayers of Steel evokes the Midwest landscapes in Carl Sandburg’s poetry. Jeremy Howard Beck’s ROAR exploits the brasses’ ability to do just that. Conrad Winslow’s The Record of a Lost Tribe summons an imaginary, bygone civilization. All works except Entrance receive their world-premiere recordings on the album.

This second volume of Trombone Travels (Volume 1 is on 8.574093) continues with Matthew Gee’s exploration of three great cycles of early 20th-century British song. Elgar’s Sea Pictures evoke lullaby and turbulence alike, Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel chart a wanderer’s lonely journey through the landscape, and in Songs of the Sea Stanford’s music embraces both the somber and the exhilarating, with Gee joined by a trombone chorus to emulate the male voice choir. Throughout the recital Gee lavishes coloristic effects, the use of mutes, and subtle inflections that reinforce the trombone’s unique ability to mimic vocal techniques.

On her second volume of Polish violin works, Jennifer Pike presents works by Bacewicz, Poldowski, and Szymanowski. Renowned for her “dazzling interpretative flair and exemplary technique” (Classic FM), violinist Jennifer Pike has taken the musical world by storm with her unique artistry and compelling insight into music from the Baroque to the present day. (Chandos)