THE TWO PIANISTS featured here were contemporaries, both English. Both made a small number of recordings for Columbia between 1926 and 1930 and today are largely forgotten. Howard-Jones was of an academic nature whose interpretations were described as having ‘scholarly and fastidious profundity’. He excelled in Bach and Brahms and his ‘Well-Tempered Clavier’ recordings in particular offer playing of rare spirituality and beauty. As a friend of the composer and dedicatee of five of the piano pieces, his Delius recordings, which comprise the complete meagre published output for solo piano by the composer, have a unique authority. Edward Isaacs, who revelled in the repertoire of Chopin and Liszt, was described as ‘a kindly genial companion and a witty charming raconteur’. His recordings radiate brilliance and joie de vivre. This is the first time most of these discs have been reissued since the days of the original 78s. An added bonus is the discovery of a wonderful previously unpublished Howard-Jones recording of Beethoven’s Rondo in G major.

This album features folk songs from the Tajik and Russian ethnic minority groups living in the western and northwestern areas of Xinjiang, China. These folk songs have an earthy beauty that is theirs alone. Many of the Tajik songs featured here are accompanied by the Rewap – an ancient stringed instrument made from mulberry trunks. The sound is similar to that of an acoustic guitar, but the tone is brighter and more elastic. Many of the Russian songs feature the Bayan (a type of accordion) and the Balalaika.

A collection of well-known hits ("Schlager") made famous by singers like Joseph Schmidt, Richard Heuberger or Mischa Spoliansky, many of them composed for popular movies of that time. They maintained their popularity until nowadays and are performed on this album by the young rising star from Austria, the tenor Martin Miterrutzner, accompanied by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under the baton of Christoph Poppen, who has already established his reputation with original and innovative repertoire. Mitterrutzner is an extraordinary gifted tenor with a wide repertoire from Bach to Britten, whose voice is also perfectly equiped for an exquisite rendering of the emotive hits of the 1930’s.

Stories about Wunderlich's meteoric rise to success, his incredibly heavy workload or his seemingly effortless acquisition of new repertoire have been told again and again – sometimes painting an idealized and sometimes a distorted picture of the artist. The nine installments of the SWR retrospective that have been released by SWR CLASSIC to this day feature Fritz Wunderlich as a singer of songs, (an unequalled) Mozart tenor, a brilliant interpreter of the greatest tenor hits, a fascinating singer of operettas and as a tasteful interpreter of light music, to name but a few of the genres that made up his repertoire. Though Fritz Wunderlich remains until today a widely appreciated and admired singer, there are some facets to his artistic side that are still relatively unknown. The tenth and last installment presents Fritz Wunderlich as an interpreter of the big works of sacred music, an aspect that has to be considered as an essential part of his artistic profile.

The name Hitchcock not only stands for the most famous of all British film directors, but for an important family of English instrument makers from England as well. Only a few of these sonorous and extravagant keyboard instruments have survived. The multi-stringed spinet No. 1379 from the Telemann Museum in Hamburg, with its black keys elaborately set in white ivory, can now be heard for the first time in a recording. The Hitchcock Trio invites you to a typical middle-class salon concert as was customary throughout Europe at the end of the 18th century. Selected London compositions by Burney, Geminiani, Abel, and Loeillet (a celebrated harpsichordist of his time), as well as works by the famous Hamburg composers Telemann and Mattheson, are featured. The trio, whose members include Anke Dennert (London spinet from 1730), Gabriele Steinfeld (South German baroque violin), and Simone Eckert (Hamburg Tielke gamba from 1685), allow the expressive sounding Hitchcock spinet to shine, both as a solo instrument and in a chamber music setting.

This carefully selected program by the multi award-winning Mare Duo presents some of the best original music written for mandolin and guitar, showing both instruments as equal chamber music partners in works both challenging and beautiful. The Duo’s surprising range and variety of timbre can be heard from Funk Pearson’s highly atmospheric Mountain Moor, and the intercultural sketches by Thomas Allen LeVines, to Guido Santórsola’s lyrical SonataNo.6.Ernst Krenek’s Suite is a late masterpiece that embraces virtuosity, intimacy and quirky wit, with a dramatic mini-opera as its finale, while Monk Feldman depicts an elusive ocean landscape in ThePaleBlueNorthernSky.

The sublime Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge return with the second volume in their Advent series - celebrating the advent season from within the Christian tradition; a season celebrated since at least the sixth century. This splendid live recording, from within the Chapel of St. John’s College itself, features Christmas favorites, including Britten’s Deo Gracias from A Ceremony of Carols as well as gorgeous performances of lesser known works by modern composers including Jonathan Dove, Arvo Pärt and Paul Manz. The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge (link is external) is one of the finest collegiate choirs in the world – known and loved by millions from its broadcasts, concert tours and over 90 recordings. Founded in the 1670s, the Choir is known for its rich, warm and distinctive sound, its expressive interpretations and its ability to sing in a variety of styles. Alongside this discipline, the Choir is particularly proud of its happy, relaxed and mutually supportive atmosphere. The Choir is directed by Andrew Nethsingha following in a long line of eminent Directors of Music, recently Dr George Guest, Dr Christopher Robinson and Dr David Hill.

REVIEW:

‘Advent Live, Vol 2’ is a real album, the mystery and expectation of Advent coursing through a repertoire that never stoops below this ensemble’s judicious idea of what constitutes high-quality music, whatever the century. There is unhackneyed Telemann, Wolf, Goldschmidt, Britten and some poised works, new to me, by McCabe, Milner and Manz. Cecilia McDowall’s A Prayer to St John the Baptist brilliantly unifies otherwise autonomous organ and choir. Judith Bingham’s introduction to Hark, the glad sound! is like a modernist narthex to an ancient cathedral. The qualities of the choir hardly need repeating. It sounds like a string quartet flexing as much as an organ breathing, with no room for show or antiquated ‘look at us’ habits.

– Gramophone

Idil Biret’s chamber music performances are relatively rare. Most importantly, she played Beethoven’s violin Sonatas Nos. 5, 7 and 9 with Yehudi Menuhin at the Istanbul Festival in July 1973. In 1975, she played all the five Beethoven cello sonatas with Maurice Gendron. With the London String Quartet, in 1980, Biret played the Schumann and Brahms Piano Quintets at the Queen Elisabeth Hall in London, later at the Istanbul Festival and then recorded the Brahms Quintet as well as the Mahler Piano Quartet with the LSQ. In 2011, she played in concerts and recorded Berlioz’s Harold in Italy in Liszt’s piano transcription and Brahms’ 2nd Viola Sonata with Rusen Gu¨nes. In 2014, she played in concerts and recorded the Schumann Piano Quintet with the Borusan Quartet of Turkey. The same year, she recorded the two cello sonatas of Brahms with Roderic von Bennigsen. Finally, in 2019, Biret played and recorded Mendelssohn’s 1st Piano Trio and the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio with Irina Nikotina and Julya Krepak. These are some of the memorable chamber music performances of her career.

Even a quarter of a century after the end of his active career as a singer, nothing has changed concerning Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s preeminent status in the history of performing song. It is above all the Lied performer Fischer-Dieskau who set standards that have remained valid far beyond his time. The anthologies compiled in Vol. 3 of the Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau Lied-Editon testify to the singer’s never-waning curiosity and to his responsibility towards the history of the present genre. In conjunction with Hartmut Höll, his favorite accompanist in later years, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau presents a highly attractive program to the songs by Maurice Ravel, which only sporadically appear in concert halls outside France. In the overall œuvre by German composer Paul Hindemith, too, the song does not play a dominant role. In this recording, a major role in the both natural and haunting interpretation of the songs is played by accompanist Aribert Reimann, who had composed the four-movement cantata Unrevealed for Fischer-Dieskau only a few years earlier. It was also in co-operation with Aribert Reimann, who headed a song class in Berlin, that the song anthologies devoted to Hermann Reutter and Wolfgang Fortner were compiled and that complete our edition.

Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra explore the music in Ireland from the 1750s to 1770s. Following a live performance, The Irish Times wrote that ‘Whelan and the IBO are lively guides to this repertoire’ which marks a revolutionary moment where the structures of Baroque music break down and we see the emergence of the Classical style. Many trailblazing early classical composers visited Ireland during this time including van Maldere, Pasquali and Giordani (some even incorporate Irish traditional melodies into their symphonies).

Perhaps the most famous visitor to Ireland at this time was the superstar castrato, Giusto Tenducci, who had works especially written for him by Mozart, Haydn and J. C. Bach. To tell his swashbuckling tale, IBO is joined by present-day superstar Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught, performing works which would have been sung by Tenducci in Ireland. This programme also includes modern-day premieres from the collection at the National Library of Ireland including van Maldere’s Sinfonia in G, known as the ‘Dublin’ Sinfonia, Giordani’s much-admired Overture and Irish Medley to the entertainment of The Isle of Saints and The Braes of Ballenden by J. C. Bach.

REVIEWS:

Whilst in Dublin...Tenducci also arranged operas for the Smock Alley Theatre. We hear two arias from the opera. First the virtuoso ‘Amid a thousand racking woes’ which Erraught sings with warm tone and engaging bravura, well supported by the orchestra in what is quite a substantial instrumental accompaniment. The second aria is the simpler lament, ‘Water parted from the sea’ which understandably became the hit number, so much so that Dublin street boys sang a song about him which was quoted and parodied by James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake.

Johann Christian Bach was in fact another of Tenducci's friends...When Tenducci visited Edinburgh in the 1760s for the Scottish premiere of Artaxerxes, he got Bach to arrange some Scottish songs for him which were included in the production(!). Two have been lost, but we are able to hear Bach's version of The Braes of Ballenden.

In 1778, Bach was in Paris auditioning singers for the production of his opera Amadis de Gaule and Tenducci was with him. Also in Paris at the time was Mozart, to whom Tenducci taught singing. Mozart wrote to his father ‘Tenducci is here … He is Bach’s bosom friend. He also was greatly delighted to see me again … I am composing a scena for Tenducci, which is to be performed on Sunday; it is for pianoforte, oboe, horn and bassoon’ (27 August 1778). Frustratingly, the work is now lost, so the performers complete the programme with another work by Mozart written in the 1770s for another star castrato, sacred motet Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165[.]

Here Whelan and his forces have created an engaging and fascinating recital which draws a number of threads together.

-- Planet Hugill

Violeta Vicci is a multifaceted, contemporary artist and musician. Of Catalan - Swiss descent, based in London, she feels comfortable genre-crossing from Classical to Improvisation, Ethno Avantgarde, Ambient, Multilayered Electronics, her influences ranging from traditional to pop. The original idea for the album stems from the reflection of elements between Bach’s E Major Partita and Ysaÿe’s second Solo Sonata. A journey not only through time, but to the most unusual of spaces. The album opens with world premiere recording of Ragnar Söderlind’s natural and mystical Elegie for solo violin, balanced out by the serene expression of the Vocalise for solo voice, seeped in orientalism, by Jean-Louis Florentz. Violeta Vicci isn’t just an accomplished violinist and singer, but plays the viola, present in both the folklore inspired world premiere recording Suite by British composer Imogen Holst, and the closing piece of the album, the Sarabande in C Minor by Bach. Between the compositions, are improvisations, some solo, some two voices intertwined as “overdubs”, acting as transitions and woven into the very fabric of the album. Violeta Vicci’s “Mirror Images” is one of the most surprising and contemporary Solo-Albums of our time. A concept album beyond intellectual reasoning, an album of all encompassing, spellbinding dramatic art.

A glorious choral Christmas collection of music from around the world! Through Chris de Silva’s incredible choral writing and inspired instrumental scoring, the themes of Christmas are exquisitely retold – those of light, darkness, shepherds, angels, heaven, earth, fear, wonder, peace, joy, silence, and sound. Chris de Silva’s formal, classical composition training shines through on each piece. From the joyfully powerful “Singing, We Come Singing” to the regal “The Child Is Born in Bethlehem” and the dance-like “Shepherds on to Bethlehem,” each of these eight pieces work beautifully as stand-alone choices for your choir’s Christmas celebrations. Together, the pieces would work well as part of a well-rounded lessons and carols service. For choral music lovers, the Mysterium recording will become one of your seasonal favorites!

100 YEARS or, "The Country at One Hundred" is a large suite, a collective work of the Prague Six, the composers concentrated around the Concept Art Orchestra big band. The composition originated as a tribute to the one hundredth anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 2018 and consists of six parts in which the authors allude to various periods in the history of the Czechoslovak and later Czech Republic, with originality and energy typical of the big band. Štepánka Balcarová, Jan Jirucha, Luboš Soukup, Martin Brunner, Tomáš Sýkora and Vít Krištan each have authored one of the six movements in which they make full use of all the orchestration possibilities offered by a big band, expanding these with non-traditional instruments such as Ondes Martenot, the chimes or Moog synthetizer. The individual compositions also include sensitive references to period music and samples and citations from political speeches. The fourth movement, dedicated to the period of the so-called normalization in the 1970s and 1980s and based on the motives of a song by The Plastic People of the Universe, features a special guest, the saxophonist Vratislav Brabenec. This, already third recording by Concept Art Orchestra on the Animal Music label confirms the indisputable place of the band (the holder of the 2015 Andel Award for the best jazz album of the year) on the current big-band scene and testifies to their capacity to create original works rooted in the current musical and historical context as well as perform them to the highest professional standards.

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.