This is already our third encounter with the great Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin – an encounter, in fact, that is as unusual as his music, which has delighted people around the world for over one hundred and fifty years. In Fryderyk’s day, not everybody was able to listen to his works. To hear one of his concerts they would have had to travel to where he lived – in his early years that meant going to Warsaw, and later even further, i.e. to Paris. Today, all we have to do is listen to one of his albums and imagine that the genius composer is playing especially for us.

Singing together binds us together. From the Protestant Reformation in Europe during the 1500s to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, there have been countless moments in history when songs have united nations, cultures and causes. This is still the case in today’s world. Finding Harmony is evidence that music has always been our common language. A unique collection of pieces that span the globe – including music that’s too often forgotten – each song is the key to a powerful true story about who we are and how we’ve got here. Together, Finding Harmony proves how deeply we can be moved by all kinds of stories when songs connect us to them, and to each other.

REVIEW:

For the most part, this album is a virtuoso piece of work. The Singers' vocal inflections and scoops are adaptable to a wide variety of styles, and they push themselves in that respect here, connecting pop sounds to the classic folk of Malvina Reynolds and to Eastern European traditions. In the main, it all holds together, and it is very much of the moment.

– All Music Guide (James Manheim)

It was in 1842, his ‘year of chamber music’ that Robert Schumann took on the combination of violin, cello and piano for the first time. He seems to have decided against releasing the resulting Fantasiestücke as a fully-fledged piano trio, however, but later returned to the work, revising it for publication in 1850. The model here is not the large-scale, quasi-symphonic trios of Beethoven or Schubert – instead Haydn’s characteristic trio textures spring to mind, especially in the first two movements where the cello largely follows the piano’s left-hand bass line. By the time the Fantasiestücke was published, Schumann had already written two ‘proper’ piano trios, No. 1 in D minor and No. 2 in F major. According to the composer the second of these ‘makes a friendlier and more immediate impression’ but it is in fact the D minor trio that has long been the more popular: passionate, mainly extrovert and bursting with fine thematic material it is the easiest to grasp on one hearing. Both works are filled to capacity with imitative writing, sometimes conspicuously so but often subtly as if on a subconscious level – an aspect that the members of the Kungsbacka Piano Trio, with more than 20 years of playing together, are able to make the most of.

Grammy Award-winning chamber choir The Crossing brings to life the striking works of six contemporary composers in this Navona Records release, with performances that are unique and awe-inspiring. The Crossing is a professional chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally and dedicated to new music. It is committed to working with creative teams to make and record new, substantial works for choir that explore and expand ways of writing for choir, singing in choir, and listening to music for choir. Many of its over seventy commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues.

Nicole Cabell and Alyson Cambridge, acclaimed sopranos and close friends, record together for the first time on an album of opera duets by Mozart, Offenbach, Humperdinck, and Delibes and specially commissioned duet arrangements of classical songs, folk tunes, and African-American spirituals. Cabell, 2005 winner of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, is “a faultlessly gleaming soprano” (Financial Times). Cambridge is “radiant, vocally assured . . . and artistically imaginative” (Washington Post), known for her “revelatory, sensual, smoky readings” (Opera News). Joining them in the “Soave sia il vento” trio from Mozart’s Così fan tutte is the “mellow-voiced and charismatic” (New York Times) baritone Will Liverman. They’re accompanied on their Cedille debut by the Lake Forest Symphony under 2015 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award winner Vladimir Kulenovic. Inspired by opera stars Kathleen Battle & Jessye Norman’s spirituals recording from the early 1990s, the sopranos describe their album as a “dream project” that’s “uniquely us,” reflecting their multi-ethnic heritages and showcasing songs that profoundly influenced them both. Composer-arranger Joe Clark, whose music has been performed by Renee Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, and jazz singer Kurt Elling, among other classical, jazz, and pop artists, created arrangements expressly for Cabell and Cambridge’s distinctive voices.

The music in this album spans a forty-year period from 1948 to 1988 and reflects Dutilleux’s stylistic development as a composer. He considered the Sonata to be the first main work in his catalogue and it represents a turning away from tradition and embraces the transformative musical explorations of the day. The Three Préludes are pieces of concentrated atmospheres, ‘a kind of study of timbres’, in the composer’s words, and each are dedicated to a renowned pianist: No. 1 to Arthur Rubinstein, No. 2 to Claude Helffer, and No. 3 to Eugene Istomin. Dutilleux’s lively music for the ballet Le Loup (‘The Wolf’) is heard here in a première recording of the original piano solo version.

REVIEW:

The pianist here is the veteran Jean-Pierre Armengaud, who has recorded a great deal of French piano music and also works as a musicologist. He studied under Geneviève Joy and was also given advice by Dutilleux and, not surprisingly, his performance is much like hers. If it sounds rather more full-blooded that may well be because the excellent new recording is rather better than that provided for Joy in her own recording of 1988 on Erato. Dutilleux also approved of his performances of the Prèludes. His performance of the piano version of Le Loup is sparkling and convincing and sounds like idiomatic piano music. The sleeve notes, in English and French are really helpful and this is a valuable issue.

-- MusicWeb International

This album pays homage to the guitar. While the casual listener may recognize many of these works as favorites from the guitar canon, the majority of the repertoire wasn’t originally written for the instrument.

Only the Sor and the Brouwer were originally guitar compositions. The other works started life in a different form, and stand testament to the strength and versatility of the guitar to not only play such a diverse range of repertoire, but to truly embrace it. With its polyphonic capabilities and roots in popular music around the world, the guitar is singularly capable of such a traverse of styles. This album is not, as the title may imply, a collection of the most beloved or greatest hits from the classical guitar repertoire, but instead a demonstration of the power and ability of the guitar to perform and assume ownership of such beloved repertoire.

New York-based Australian classical guitarist Rupert Boyd has been described by The Washington Post as “truly evocative”, by Gramophone as a “fine guitarist”, and by Classical Guitar Magazine as “a player who deserves to be heard”. He has performed across four continents, from New York’s Carnegie Hall, to festivals in Europe, China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, New Zealand and Australia. Active as both a soloist and chamber musician, Rupert Boyd regularly performs throughout the world in Boyd Meets Girl, with cellist Laura Metcalf, and as part of the Australian Guitar Duo with guitarist Jacob Cordover.

REVIEWS:

The sheer versatility of this instrument comes to the fore in a really eclectic selection, which traverses centuries of music from Bach to The Beatles in a sunny 60 minutes.

– BBC Music Magazine

Boyd is a very fine musician. His sense of line is beautifully showcased in Bach’s Suite, while his rhythmic acuity enlivens from the onset of Jobim’s Felicidade, performed here in Roland Dyens’s masterly arrangement. The final item, Boyd’s own technically assured arrangement of John Lennon’s ‘Julia’, makes for a quiet, slightly downbeat encore.

– Gramophone

Distinguished international pianist Jorge Federico Osorio brings his flair for French music to works of the Baroque, Romantic, and early 20th century eras by Jean-Philippe Rameau, Emmanuel Chabrier, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel. Fittingly, Osorio opens The French Album with Fauré’s exquisite Pavane and concludes with the ever-popular Pavane pour une enfante défunte by Fauré’s student, Ravel. The Mexican-born, European-trained pianist offers eight of Debussy’s pictorial Préludes, each with its unique sound world, including the mystical La Cathédrale engloutie, one of the most stunning pieces ever composed for piano. Another audience favorite is Debussy’s evocative Claire de lune from his Suite bergamasque. Providing contrast, Rameau’s whimsical Les Tricotets conjures the back-and-forth motion of knitting needles. A set of Spanish-flavored works include Chabrier’s Cuban-inspired Habanera; Debussy’s lively La Puerta del Vino, depicting sailors carousing and enjoying their wine, and La soirée dans Grenade, where the piano imitates the sound of a guitar; and Ravel’s Alborado del gracioso, brimming with Iberian rhythms.

REVIEW:

What appears to be a hodgepodge of French pieces actually emerges as a carefully crafted program. Pianist Jorge Federico Osorio begins with Fauré’s famous Pavane, where his elegant phrasing and fluid “walking” tempo assiduously segue into a well-contrasted Debussy group. He brings a strong rhythmic profile and dry-point clarity to works dominated by rapid passagework such as Les collines d’Anacapri, Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest, and Feux d’artifice, as well as Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso.

While Osorio certainly embraces the sensual undercurrents in Clair de lune, Voiles, Feuilles mortes, and La cathédrale engloutie, the climaxes have plenty of backbone. The pianist similarly integrates curvaceous lilt and unsentimental grit in Chabrier’s Habanera and Debussy’s habanera-like La Puerta del Vino and La soirée dans Grenade. Three selections from Rameau’s G major Suite stand out for Osorio’s care over ornaments, although his slightly heavy way with the final selection, Ravel’s Pavane, misses the animation and flexibility of the old Gieseking and Casadesus recordings. All told, an enjoyable and well-put-together recital.

– ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

When the ORFEO label was established in Munich forty years ago, surely no one with the music scene back then would have predicted that the record company would develop into a firmly established player on the classical music market. One of the label’s main priorities in the early years was vocal music, with opera rarities top of the list and since the mid 1980s the re-use of historic tape recordings. Big names featured on the label’s own productions, while ORFEO also developed into a talent factory by discovering and nurturing young artist. This “Legendary Voices” 10 album set for the anniversary of 40 years of ORFEO label history features eleven singers, who at their times upheld the art of opera singing and still uphold it in the best interpretation of nostalgia.

Mozart himself saw the advantages of creating more accessible versions of his concertos in reduced instrumentation. Ignaz Lachner followed common 19th-century practice by leaving the piano parts of these concertos intact and making splendid transcriptions of the orchestra parts using only a string quartet with added bass. K. 488 and K. 491 are two of Mozart’s greatest and most popular piano concertos. These chamber versions throw an intense and intimate new light on familiar music. Alon Goldstein is one of the most original and sensitive pianists of his generation, admired for his musical intelligence and dynamic personality. His career as a soloist has taken him all over the world, working with leading orchestras and conductors. The Fine Arts Quartet ranks among the most distinguished ensembles in chamber music today, with an illustrious history of performing success and an extensive legacy of over 200 recorded works.

Alessio Bax plays an Italian inspired programme, picking his favourite pieces taken from a rich history of music from one of the most romantic countries in the world.

He opens the programme with a J.S. Bach transcription of a oboe concerto by Venetian composer Alessandro Marcello, which reveals a deep insight into Bach’s mind. This is followed by Rachmaninov’s last ever work for solo piano, which is incredibly eloquent, introspective and personal. The Dallapiccola continues this eloquent theme, showing some beautifully crafted dodecaphonism. The recording is rounded off with two pieces of Liszt, which take the listener on a multi-legged journey through hell, purgatory and heaven, with beauty and drama along the way.



REVIEW:

This Italian’s salute to his home country is inspired indeed. The standout performance is a spellbinding account of the Dante Sonata in which Bax masterfully combines scrupulous observation of Liszt’s agogics and dynamics (trusting the composer here really does pay dividends) with quite thrilling bravura in which he throws caution to the wind. Few accounts of the first two pages are so filled with menace and mystery.

– Gramophone