The Lithuanian Vladas Jakubenas (1904–78) is one of a lost generation of Baltic composers. A student of Schreker in Berlin, he returned home to help build the musical culture of his country. But the Nazi invasion and Soviet occupation drove him into exile and, after five years in refugee camps in Germany, he settled in Chicago, playing an important role in the Lithuanian diaspora in North America. These choral songs show the deep identification of his late-Romantic style with the folk-music of the land he was forced to leave behind.

The Russian composer Grigori Frid (1915–2012), whose long life encompassed the entire existence of the Soviet Union, is best known for his 1969 chamber opera The Diary of Anne Frank. His sizable output, which has yet to be properly explored, includes three major works for viola and piano, their dignified restraint and emotional honesty taking the late works of Shostakovich as their stylistic starting point. They are followed by In Memoriam Grigori Frid, a touching tribute by Alexander Vustin (b. 1943) to his former teacher.

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Grigori Frid’s long life was marked by political turbulence and unease. His father had been sentenced to a five-year period in a vicious labor-camp in 1927 but the family survived intact. Frid was a teacher and educator, a disseminator of contemporary music and a composer of wide gifts whose portfolio includes three symphonies, numerous chamber works, and choral music as well as a raft of incidental, theater and radio works.

His complete viola music is the subject of this disc. Frid admired the instrument for its qualities of ‘reflection and contemplation’ as he related to the violist in this disc, Elena Artamonova, who gave the British premiere of the Viola Sonata No.1 in 2011. The work dates from 1971. The viola opens solo, and muted, revealing a Fridian fusion of lyricism and austerity with hints of March elements too. The central movement is a fast one, opening attaca, toccata-like and full of verve. The slow finale – the ground plan is vaguely Prokofiev-like – opens with a free cadenza, the piano cushioning or commenting quietly on the viola’s inexorable ascent to its highest register and silence.

The Sonata No.2 followed in 1985. Its subject matter is the Greek myth of Phaedra and it’s cast in four movements. There is appropriately somber tolling embedded in the work, and a heavily oppressive atmosphere, though Frid also embraces polystylism, introducing a stylized Baroque dance into the second movement, Music in a Palace, which is then subjected to much development and fragmentation. The Catharis movement takes the viola very high and introduces an element of equilibrium before the tolling finale of the Epilogue leads the viola to meander amidst the lament and reiteration of the opening movement. Some elements here suggest Shostakovich’s influence but this stoically aloof piece need not be seen as part of that lineage; it stands on its own feet. The Six Pieces (1975) are little character sketches, strong on sul ponticello, off-kilter dancing, interrupted dialogues, some tart dissonance and a highly developed sense of introversion, perfectly exemplified by the concluding Lento.

Talking of conclusions, that marks the end of Frid’s viola music. The disc is rounded out with his pupil Alexander Vustin’s In Memoriam Grigori Frid, composed in 2014. In two movements it builds strongly, through a quietly complex structure, to produce a work of weighted gravity whose lyricism formulates into a kind of somber refraction. It’s a fine salute from student to teacher.

Both Artamonova and Christopher Guild have recorded before for Toccata. She recorded Grechaninov and Vasilenko, whilst Guild has recorded Ronald Center and Ronald Stevenson. Together they make a fine team, though the violist has in the past more usually been paired with Nicholas Walker, who accompanied her in the two discs just mentioned. The recording is well-balanced and the notes – by the violist – are full of important biographical and musical information.

– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

These orchestral songs by the English composer Michael Csanyi-Wills - best known for his film music - all deal with the subject of loss. In Three Sogns: Budapest, 1944 Csanyi-Wills uses documentation from his own family history to shadow the fat of Hungary's Jews under the Nazis. One of them, "The Last Letter", sets a text written by his great-grandmother before she disappeared. Mortality is an omnipresent theme in A.E. Houseman's Shropshire Lad poems: Csanyi-Wills sets six songs, three for baritone and three for tenor. Elegy for Our Time sets an anguished lament by Jessica d'Este, sparked by death of her granddaughter in a car crash. Csanyi-Wills responds to the stimulus of these dark texts with music that is hauntingly lyrical and elegiac.

Born in 1934, the Czech jazz composer Milan Dvořák, no relation to his better-known classical composer namesake, has been active since the 1960s leading big bands and swing ensembles and remains active today. This is the debut recording of his 45 Jazz Piano Etudes which combine transcriptions of popular songs with classical influences and features the pianist Milan Franěk.

Toccata Classics continues its exploration of the music of Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas (1905–2000) with this selection from his huge choral music output. It ranges in mood from the folk-like simplicity of the Missa Secunda in honorem Sanctae Margaritae and his bright carol settings via the astringency of some late a cappella pieces to the fresh and buoyant Christmas Cantata. This recording is also the first by the new London-based chamber choir Ascolta founded in 2015 by Peter Broadbent, one of Britain’s leading choral conductors, known for his consistent commitment to contemporary music.-- S

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Ferenc Farkas (1905–2000) was a beloved professor at the Budapest Academy of Music and a composer whose music had eluded me up to now. I am glad to make his acquaintance because he wrote classy, charming fare that doesn’t have to work overtime to make its points. Several of these works are accorded their first-ever recordings by Maestro Broadbent’s Ascolta Ensembles, and we are the better for their efforts.

Farkas’s 12-minute Mass is an affectionate, straightforward take on the liturgy. (I’d love to sing it someday.) The carols and ‘Ave Maris Stella’ are the true charmers of the set. The Emmaus Cantata after St Luke is made of sterner stuff and is also worth getting to know.

-- American Record Guide

The composer Fernando Lopes-Graça (1906–94) was something of a Portuguese Shostakovich: as a committed socialist, he faced repression from Portugal’s rightist military dictatorship; his works were banned and he was stripped of his official positions. Lopes-Graça responded in music, evolving a feisty, wiry Bartókian style that drew on Portuguese folk-music. This recording features Lopes-Graça’s own Bechstein piano, played by Olga Prats, who worked closely with him. Reviewing Vol. 1, Fanfare stated: “… the disc should be heard by 20th c. music lovers… a strong, individual voice”.

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Lopes-Graça’s First String Quartet won the Rainier III Composition Prize in 1965 and the composer then began to receive some of the public recognition he deserved. Eventually, some of his symphonic works were recorded. In the 1970s his writings were published and he was honored for his contributions to Portuguese culture. He composed a great many pieces during the last 20 years of his life, one of which is his Second String Quartet. The second movement contains a folk dance that extends into a rhythmic dialogue with dramatic overtones and a propulsive undercurrent. The third movement, “Cavatina,” is an aria with a long melodic line but without the cabaletta that would follow it in a bel canto opera. The finale includes material from the first movement as well as new music in a memorable whirl of interesting textures. This disc is a must for connoisseurs of 20th-century music and those who love unusual string quartets. I really enjoyed it and expect others so inclined will too.

-- Fanfare

This collection of Gabriel Fauré’s mélodies is the first recording to be conceived for a bass voice. It juxtaposes some of the composer’s best-loved songs with some of his lesser-known works. This recital program draws out connections of poets and poetic themes, some of which restore the composer’s own original groupings. This is also the first recording to be based on the new Peters Edition, which eliminates countless errors in older publications. The young American bass Jared Schwartz received the 2013 ‘People’s Choice’ Award in the American Traditions Vocal Competition.

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There are a total of 25 songs on this disc and each of them has been recorded with care and affection for the music of this wonderful French songwriter. Schwartz’s excellent new recording on Toccata gives us pristine sound; it is a recording that should be in the collection of everyone who loves French song.

-- Fanfare

A member of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St Petersburg, Russia, Leo Zeitlin (1884–1930) was known almost exclusively for Eli Zion, a classic of Jewish art-music. Zeitlin died only seven years after emigrating to New York, still a young man, and his reputation languished until the recent discovery of a trunk full of scores brought his music back to light. This album attempts to remedy decades of neglect, especially for his charismatic Yiddish song-settings for voice, strings and piano, powerful declamations of spoken Yiddish and Russian poetry underscored by Romantic piano music, all of which points to a once popular but now forgotten genre. The Festival musicians of the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival are the highest-caliber local professionals; players for the orchestral and chamber-music concerts include members of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Pittsburgh Opera and Ballet Orchestras, and university faculty members. In its eleven seasons since its founding by cellist Aron Zelkowicz the PJMS has programmed over 130 pieces of classical chamber and orchestral music inspired by Jewish traditions. The recordings on this CD series represent a six-year project devoted to the St Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music and its affiliated Russian composers.

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The performances of Leo Zeitlin’s music are first-rate from start to finish, as is the recorded sound. The liner notes by Paula Eisenstein Baker (a key figure in the resurrection of the Zeitlin’s music) and Robert S. Nelson provide detailed information on the composer’s life and the featured works. Original language texts (Cyrillic script for Russian, and transliterations for the Yiddish poems) and English translations are provided for each of the songs. While the repertoire on this disc may have a less broad appeal than the Stutschewsky release, I think anyone at all curious to explore the work of Leo Zeitlin will not be disappointed.

-- Fanfare

Adolfo Fumagalli (1828–56), one of four musician brothers from Inzago, near Milan, made a name for himself across Europe as ‘the Paganini of the piano’, astonishing audiences with dazzling technique and acquiring a reputation for performances using his left hand alone. Fumagalli composed a large body of piano music – over 100 opus numbers – many being operatic fantasies and virtuosic studies of the type presented in this anniversary recital given in his home town. The CD also features several virtuoso studies from the set of 24 in Fumagalli’s École du pianiste modern, published in Paris in 1854.

The Australian-British Sadie Harrison is no ordinary composer: she is also an archaeologist and a professional gardener. So it is hardly surprising that a fascination with historical artifacts and biological processes filters into her music. The instrumental miniatures on this recording are both slow and brutal, some of them mirroring ancient worlds and natural phenomena and others taking their starting point in the paintings of Brian Graham and Peter Sheppard Skærved, expressing visual and textural ideas in sound. All are first recordings.

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Australian-born and UK-based, Sadie Harrison took some time out from composition to work as an archaeologist and professional gardener, activities which nourish these new works, mostly written in the past four years. Her fascination with fragments, minutiae and painted miniatures has resulted in five groups of tiny pieces each lasting around three minutes or less. The shortest is 24 seconds! Gallery (Rooms I and II) for solo violin—19 musical glimpses to be played in any order—takes the paintings of the versatile violinist Peter Sheppard-Skaerved as a starting point. Hidden Ceremonies, for piano, explores prehistory as depicted through paintings by Brian Graham. Musical echoes, from Vaughan Williams to Stravinsky to Aghanistan and beyond, are woven into Harrison’s works, each glittering in their intensity.

-- The Guardian