William Mathias was one of the most significant and prolific Welsh composers of the 20th century. His flexible and highly approachable style can be heard in the holiday mood of the Suite Parisienne, the brilliance and lyricism of the Capriccio for flute and piano and the wonderfully rhapsodic Sonata for Harp. Mathias’s songs are among the most communicative settings of their kind, including Pan Oeddwn Fachgen (‘A Dream of Youth’), considered by the composer to be ‘one of the finest lyrical poems in modern Welsh.

Marko Topchii, winner of the 2017 Michele Pittaluga Guitar Competition, has selected a rich and varied repertoire ranging from neo-Romanticism to serialism, each work offering a unique vision of the instrument’s technical and expressive capabilities. Antonio Jose’s Sonata is remarkably inventive, bringing a new language to ancient dance forms, while Frank Martin’s Quatre Pieces breves, written in the same year, offers the flourish and vigor of contemporary harmonic vocabulary. Ronald Dyens’ Libra Sonatine is one of the most virtuosic and brilliant of late 20th-century guitar works. Ukranian-born guitarist Marko Topchii, has been the winner of more than 40 international guitar competitions. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Salle Cortot, Yamaha Ginza Hall, and at the Tchaikovsky Hall. He often performs with orchestras, having performed more than ten concertos for guitar and orchestra. He is sponsored by the D’Addario Strings Company and records with a guitar made by Jim Redgate.

Victoria Bond is a distinguished force in contemporary music. She is known for her melodic and dramatic flair, and her orchestral works, chamber pieces and operas have been lauded by The New York Times as “powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding.” This collection of world premiere recordings by Grammy Award-winning ensemble Chicago Pro Musica provides an essential overview of Bond’s multi-faceted inventiveness- from a musical interpretation of tarot cards in Instruments of Revelation, to descriptive and dramatic images of the tragic city of Pompeii in Frescoes and Ash. Leopold Bloom’s Homecoming expresses in music what is left to our imagination in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and the mathematics of Binary turn the digits 0 and 1 into variations on a Brazilian samba.

In 2005 Igor Levit and Xiaohan Wang performed, together with the Kolner Kammerorchester under Helmut Müller-Brühl, as outstanding talents of the semi-final of the “International Beethoven Competition for Piano Bonn”. The competition had been initiated in the same year by the then President of the Federal Republic of Germany Horst Kohler. The young pianists, today successful all over the world, performed on that occasion Beethoven's piano concertos nos. 1 and 2. On this recording, Igor Levit performs the First Concerto, and Xiaohan Wang the Second.

Long regarded by Danish musicians as their secret treasure, the songs of Peter Heise perfectly represent the unique qualities and achievements of the Danish Golden Age. Though mostly not in direct contact with each other, these artists and writers shared a profound interest in exploring and understanding their personal life and experience, and left a body of introspective work which has had a huge impact on European culture. No longer a secret, these songs can now take their rightful place alongside the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Christen Kobke, Soren Kierkegaard and so many others.

REVIEW:

The Danish composer Peter Heise 1830-1879 composed about 300 songs, most of them on Danish texts, a few also on German poems. Dacapo now presents the complete recording of those songs. Anyone loving lieder will appreciate these romantic and melodically fine songs in consistently good interpretations. The producers must be given credit for always finding the right voice type for the songs with a variety of male and female voices.

– Pizzicato

The richest single source of Tudor polyphony, preserving almost 170 works many of which survive nowhere else, is a set of manuscript partbooks copied between about 1575 and 1581 by John Baldwin, a lay clerk at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. This album is the third and final installment in a series of recordings by Contrapunctus exploring contrasting aspects of this remarkable treasure house of sacred music covering much of the sixteenth century. Owen Rees is both performer and scholar, his scholarship consistently informing his performances. Through his extensive work as a choral director, he has brought to the concert hall and recording studio substantial repertories of magnificent Renaissance and Baroque music, including many previously unknown or little-known works from Portugal and Spain. His interpretations of these repertories have been acclaimed as ‘rare examples of scholarship and musicianship combining to result in performances that are both impressive and immediately attractive to the listener’, and he has been described as ‘one of the most energetic and persuasive voices’ in this field.

For the sixth volume of his Chopin project, the Canadian pianist and exclusive Chandos Artist Louis Lortie has built a programme that includes works from the earliest to the latest periods in the composer’s life, all of which have connection with or focus on Chopin’s Polish identity. The Hommage à Mozart, Op. 2 is a brilliant set of variations on ‘Là ci darem la mano’ from Don Giovanni. Chopin composed it originally for piano and orchestra, in 1827, when he was just seventeen, and later made this arrangement for solo piano (a common practice at the time). The two Polonaises, Op. 40 date from the late 1830s, and contain some of his most openly nationalistic writing. The first – nicknamed ‘Military’ – evokes sentiments of national identity and pride, whilst the second, more melancholy work portrays feelings evoked by Poland’s vanished statehood. Lortie concludes the album with Chopin’s Fantaisie, Op. 49, from 1841. This work exemplifies the brilliant improvisatory style of Chopin’s writing for piano. These works are interspersed with four sets of Mazurkas, Opp. 6, 24, 41, and 67. Chopin almost single-handedly introduced the Mazurka to Paris when he arrived there in the late 1820s, and continued to compose them throughout his life, transforming the Polish dance form into some of his most dazzling and memorable compositions.

REVIEW:

At moments on this disc, a seasoned sort of beauty takes hold of our ears, wherein a keyboard’s conjuring casts an airy, aural spell. In the battle of dark and light, Lortie’s own brand of luminescence wins out every time.

– The Whole Note (Canada)

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

These live performances from Snape Maltings Concert Hall present some of the most popular classical works for younger audiences. Their perennial appeal is a result of vivid melodies, witty instrumental characterisation, and in three works, the use of spoken texts to illuminate the narrative. Whether composed to amuse, entertain or educate, each possesses marvellous vitality, lyricism and bravura. The performances are conducted and narrated by Marin Alsop, one of the world’s most inspirational musical communicators.

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REVIEW:

The chamber orchestra used for Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals, with two solo pianists, is of excellent quality. By far the most frequently played section, The Swan, is beautifully performed by the principal cello of this student ensemble.

The video was made in 2017 and 2018, the young people having had the good fortune of working with the conductor, Marin Alsop. The resulting concerts were filmed with Alsop acting as narrator, that narration becoming more serious as she takes us through The Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra, a searching test for the young players who give a very creditable performance. As one would expect from the Snape Malting's venue, the sound quality is excellent, the result being a highly desirable gift for the children in your life.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Two-time Grammy Award-nominated harpsichordist Jory Vinikour plays historically groundbreaking works by François Couperin (1668–1733) on an album comprising three inventive Couperin suites — the composer called them “Ordres” — combining traditional French Baroque dance movements with witty and atmospheric character pieces — miniature tone poems for solo harpsichord. Couperin’s suites “are elegantly composed, concealing a complex, allusive and varied emotional world behind their highly wrought surface” (Norton Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music). Chicago-born, French-trained harpsichordist Vinikour is especially enamored of Couperin’s Ordres Nos. 6, 7, and 8, calling them “remarkable” for their harmonically driven melodic invention and atmospheric unity within each suite. Highlights include the celebrated Les Baricades Mistérieuses from Ordre No. 6, which England’s The Guardian calls “shimmering, kaleidoscopic and seductive, a sonic trompe l’oeil.” The compelling Les Amusemens from Ordre No. 7 is irresistibly sweet and melancholic. Order No. 8 offers masterful examples of established forms, culminating with a dramatic Passacaille.

REVIEWS:

L’Unique presents all the wit and melancholy of Vinikour’s distinctive interpretations of the sixth, seventh, and eighth suites.

– BBC Radio 3 Record Review Extra

Playfully and decorously brought music to life by American harpsichordist Jory Vinikour. The recording places the instrument in a really lifelike perspective.

– BBC Record Review

This is a program of 20th Century trumpet music by some of the greatest composers of the first half of the 20th Century. Roderick MacDonald, trumpet, and Mikyung Kim, piano, bring these great works fully to life in mesmerizing performances. Roderick MacDonald was born outside Providence, Rhode Island. Since 2014 he has served as Music Director of the New England Symphony Orchestra, and is an Associate Professor of Music at the State University of New York in Fredonia. Pianist Mikyung Kim has performed across the globe as a collaborative pianist and soloist. An advocate for music in higher education, she has also held faculty positions at New York University, Montclair State University, and Concordia University in Austin (also as adjunct violin professor).

Uri Caine and Stefan Winter met for the first time in New York 30 years ago. A musical adventure begins, there is no goal, but a path. Two outstanding jazz albums are created on JMT, then Caine breaks through the boundaries between jazz, classical and new music like no other artist on Winter & Winter. New, exciting, groundbreaking things are emerging. Caine embodies sound, composition and improvisation merge, Bach and Monk meet as in a completely new duo drama and conduct a dialogue. Caine: “When Stefan Winter asked me to choose music from the past to put on an album, I hesitated. The selection of works is as difficult as if someone asked you which of your children is your favorite child." Caine made a completely surprising choice: worth hearing, enlightening, remarkable!

With its unique combination of instruments, the Vienna Reed Quintet creates a new and refreshing sound that differs significantly from that of the conventional wind quintet. This programme opens up three very special keyboard works to these exhilarating sonorities, starting with the virtuoso dances of Rameau’s descriptively titled suite La Triomphante. Mozart’s Fantasia has all the stately grandeur of a Bach fantasia, while Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin is a tribute both to his great musical ancestor and to friends who fell during the First World War. The Vienna Reed Quintet is a first on the Austrian chamber music scene with its combination of single and double reed instruments in a chamber ensemble. With Heri Choi on oboe, Heinz-Peter Linshalm on clarinet, Alfred Reiter on saxophone, Petra Stump-Linshalm on bass clarinet and Sophie Dartigalongue on bassoon, five strong musical personalities present a fresh and unusual wind ensemble.