Search results: Search results
118 results
Products
-
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleAmerican Classics - Carter: String Quartets No 1 And 5
CD$19.99$13.99Naxos
Jan 29, 20088559362 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleAmerican Classics - Carter: Symphony No 1, Etc / Wait, Et Al
CD$19.99$9.99Naxos
Mar 01, 20048559151 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleAmerican Classics - Lees: String Quartets No 1, 5 & 6 / Cypress String Quartet
CD$19.99$13.99Naxos
Jul 28, 20098559628 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleAmerican Classics - Carter: String Quartets 2, 3 And 4 / Pacifica Quartet
CD$19.99$13.99Naxos
Feb 24, 20098559363 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleAmerican Classics - Anderson: Orchestral Music Vol 4 / Slatkin, Criswell, Dazeley
CD$19.99$9.99Naxos
Sep 30, 20088559381 -
American Classics - Sousa "On Stage" / Brion, Razumovsky SO
$19.99CDNaxos
Oct 01, 19998559008 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleDanielpour: String Quartets Nos. 5-7 / Delray String Quartet
CD$19.99$9.99Naxos
Jan 12, 20188559845 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleElfman: Violin Concerto - Hailstork: Piano Concerto No. 1 / Cameron, Goodyear, Falletta
CD$19.99$13.99Naxos
Mar 10, 20238559925 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleTower: Strike Zones / Glennie, McMillen, Miller, Albany Symphony
CD$19.99$9.99Naxos
Jul 23, 20218559902 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleThe American Spirit: Roots and Transformations
CD$53.99$37.99Naxos
Oct 30, 20128505233 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleKernis: Color Wheel & Symphony No. 4 / Guerrero, Nashville Symphony
CD$19.99$9.99Naxos
Jun 12, 20208559838 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleCowell: Homage To Iran, Piano Pieces, The Banshee / Continuum
CD$19.99$13.99Naxos
Feb 22, 20058559193 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleFuchs: Piano Concerto "Spiritualist", Poems of Life, Etc / Falletta, London Symphony
CD$19.99$9.99Naxos
Aug 10, 20188559824 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleIVES, C.: Songs, Vol. 3
CD$19.99$13.99Naxos
Aug 26, 20088559271 -
On SaleHovhaness: Wind Music, Vol. 3 / Central Washington University Wind Ensemble
CD$19.99$13.99Naxos
Mar 09, 20188559837 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleFuchs: An American Place; Out of the Dark / Falletta, London Symphony Orchestra
CD$19.99$13.99Naxos
Aug 16, 20058559224 -
On SaleGlass: Violin Concerto, Etc / Yuasa, Anthony, Ulster Orchestra
CD$19.99$13.99Naxos
May 01, 20008559056 -
On SaleCastelnuovo-Tedesco: Cello Concerto & Transcriptions / Smith, Chen, Yamada, Houston Symphony
CD$19.99$9.99Naxos
Jun 08, 20188573820 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleBermel: Intonations - Music for Clarinet & Strings / Bermel, Otto, Wijmans, JACK Quartet
CD$19.99$9.99Naxos
Aug 26, 20228559912 -
![]()
-
![]()
-
On SaleBoyer: Balance of Power - Orchestral Works / Boyer, London Symphony Orchestra
CD$19.99$13.99Naxos
Jul 08, 20228559915
American Classics - Carter: String Quartets No 1 And 5
This album received the 2008 Grammy Award for "Best Chamber Music Performance."
American Classics - Carter: Symphony No 1, Etc / Wait, Et Al
It’s very good news that Naxos has added Elliott Carter to its American Classics series, beginning with a strong programme of rarely heard pieces, and juxtaposing Carter in early populist vein with Carter the 1960s’ avant-gardist in full cry.
The wartime muscularity of the Symphony No 1 (completed in 1942 but heard here in its 1954 revision) is clearest in passages which echo, or anticipate, Copland’s more extrovert orchestral scores of the same period. But that triumphalist spirit is most productively on show in Carter’s splendidly brash Holiday Overture (1944). The Symphony as a whole is less straightforward, more varied in style and character, and the slow movement in particular moves from hymnic meditation into more ambiguous regions of expression in a manner that might not be completely convincing. It is certainly distinctive, however, and fits well with the balance between restraint and exuberance that typifies the work as a whole.
By the mid-1960s, when the Piano Concerto was composed, Carter’s language had shed its tonal roots, and his forms were far more distant from those traditions that are still traceable in the Symphony. Textures are immensely elaborate, yet the music is uninhibitedly dramatic, depicting all kinds of conflicts and attempted reconciliations while subjecting the basic concept of the concerto to penetrating critical scrutiny.
The power of the drama emerging from the constantly fluctuating confrontations between soloist, main orchestra, and a mediating concertino-group of seven players is rather muted in this recording, which (I suspect) is not the result of a preparatory series of public performances. Ursula Oppens, with Michael Gielen, managed to convey rather more of the music’s inherent fire and tumult. But Mark Wait shows a finely gauged technical command, and although Kenneth Schermerhorn and his Nashville players are occasionally underpowered and inclined to play safe, the jubilant conclusion of the Holiday Overture sweeps any interpretative reservations aside. With the symphony not otherwise available, this disc is a thoroughly recommendable addition to the Naxos American canon.
-- Arnold Whittall, Gramophone [3/2004]
American Classics - Lees: String Quartets No 1, 5 & 6 / Cypress String Quartet
Lees was born in China, brought up and educated in California. From 1949 to 1954 he studied with George Antheil who acted as a largely unpaid tutor out of respect for Lees’ abilities. From the mid-1950s onwards his works began to be performed quite widely and by distinguished performers, without his ever perhaps becoming a ‘major’ figure in American music. A Guggenheim fellowship enabled him to spend much of his time in Europe in the second half of the 1950s. Never a composer who aspired to be thought of as especially ‘American’, these European years were important for Lees, years when he could evolve his own voice without direct involvement in the style wars of American music. Prokofiev, Bartók and Shostakovich became important exemplars for Lees.
In a 1987 interview with Bruce Duffie, when the interviewer enquired “in a great number of your own works, you have used the traditional approach - Slonimsky calls it accessibility - which makes your music attractive to conductors and soloists. Is this something you have consciously built in to your pieces, or is this an outgrowth of what you wanted to write innately?”, Lees answered as follows: “The accessibility, I suppose, comes from something that George Antheil told me when I was studying with him. He put it very succinctly, and it was one of those catch words which stuck in the memory. He said, “Music must have a face. A theme must have a face, something which is really recognizable, both to you and to the listener.” And again, it matters not what style a person writes in, but it cannot simply be amorphous. It cannot be really formless and it cannot be merely notes spinning”. Certainly Lees’ music never seeks to exclude listeners, or to make their life needlessly difficult by the flaunting of the composer’s ‘cleverness’. Nor, on the other hand, does he write down, or write to please some lowest common denominator of taste and demand. Like any substantial composer, Lees seems always to have been true to himself, to have been serenely unworried, so far as one can judge, by matters of mere fashion or popularity. Honesty, indeed, has always struck me as one of the hallmarks of his work, a directness of communication. It seems appropriate that he should once have said that “there are two kinds of composers. One is the intellectual and the other is visceral. I fall into the latter category. If my stomach doesn’t tighten at an idea, then it’s not the right idea.”
Most attention - and perhaps rightly so - has been paid to Lees’ orchestral works, not least his five symphonies. But, as this disc demonstrates well and clearly, he also had plenty to say in that other ‘classical’ form - the string quartet, of which he wrote six. This rewarding Naxos disc contains three of them in fine performances by the Cypress Quartet, for whom the fifth and the sixth were written.
The Cypress Quartet begin their programme with Lees’ first quartet, written in 1952, and premiered the following year in Los Angles - and in 1954 played in New York by the Budapest Quartet. In three movements (moderato-adagietto-allegro vivo) it has an appealing grace, at its most obvious in the adagietto, a lovely moment that exudes a simplicity - created by considerable art - and only slightly troubled lyricism that has a more or less pastoral quality. In the movement that precedes it some crisp and dynamic writing alternates with more reflective passages. In the last movement - essentially a rondo - the writing is engagingly animated, seeming to speak out of a mind full of ideas and eagerness. A quartet well worth hearing - especially when so well performed - but not yet fully embodying the composer’s mature voice.
The two ‘late’ quartets give us that voice in abundance. The four movements of the fifth quartet (measured - arioso - quick, quiet - explosive) form a musical argument of considerable density, marked both by striking moments and a sense of larger design. The writing for cello at the opening of the first movement, and the ensuing dialogue with the other instruments is one of those striking moments. Another comes in the second movement when an aggressive intervention by the cello disrupts the meditative conversation of the two violins. The more one listens, the more such moments one discovers. The third movement is a miniature delight (it lasts less than two minutes), music of evanescent beauty. The contrast with the fourth movement could hardly be more marked - full as it is of musical contention and turbulence, of assertion and annoyed counter-assertion, a conflict not so much resolved as serving to fuel a still angry ending.
Where the sixth quartet is concerned the composer’s markings for its four movements say most of what the mere reviewer might want to say about the work: “measured, dolorous - calm, steady - quiet, eerie - unhurried”. And they are! The use pizzicato passages is a particular feature of this quartet - notably at moments in the first and third movements. Without any wilful oddity or eccentricity, Lees creates some fresh and interesting effects at more than one point in this quartet. To say that one can ‘hear’ his respect for Bartók and Shostakovich is not, repeat not, to belittle his work as derivative. It is merely to recognise that, like 99% (or more!) of all artists, Lees was not a toweringly inventive figure. He was a highly accomplished craftsman who had listened to, and learned from, the music of the past and the present; a composer who refused to be merely modish or to chase the fashionable at the cost of fidelity to what he felt to be right for him.
It is, I hope, timely to celebrate Lees’ achievement, immediately after his death. Not a composer of spectacular fame, he worked with a seriousness and truth that some more famous fall short of.
-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International
American Classics - Carter: String Quartets 2, 3 And 4 / Pacifica Quartet
CARTER String Quartets: Nos. 2–4 • Pacifica Qrt • NAXOS 8.559363 (74:15)
In Fanfare 31:6, I wrote of the Pacifica Quartet’s release of Carter’s First and Fifth quartets: “A great release, which I can only hope is matched by the sequel.” Prayers are answered, though I have slight reservations this time, but based on the music rather than the performances.
Carter’s three middle quartets have distinct personalities, based on the fact that they are about “distinct personalities.” Specifically, the Second gives each instrument a prescribed character, and the piece becomes a chamber drama of individuals who interact in a variety of manners and situations. (Ives’s Second Quartet comes to mind as a predecessor, though Carter’s characterizations tend to be more subtle, concentrated, abstract, and involved.) The Third takes a similar idea, but now applies it to two duos (violin/cello and violin/viola), which have a separate set of movements that overlap with each other in a sort of macro-counterpoint. The Fourth is by far the most “classical”—indeed of the entire cycle, not just these three. While its first movement features a rhapsodic, almost wild violin cadenza against which the remaining instruments construct a continuous commentary, it becomes a far more coordinated texture of democratic equality between the voices as it progresses.
While I wrote with unrestrained enthusiasm about the music of Quartets No. 1 and 5, my reaction is more qualified here. No. 2 is many people’s favorite, and there’s no doubt it exudes great wit, virtuosity, and an idea of polyphony never really heard before. That said, I’ve always found the characterizations less perceptible than many, partly because Carter’s highly chromatic pitch language (despite the fact that the different instruments concentrate on different melodic intervals and rhythmic patterns) tends to homogenize the differences. Going back to Ives, I think more stylistic contrasts would make the point better. But I also know that’s anathema to Carter’s aesthetics.
No. 3 on the other hand, is the point where many folks gave up on the composer, but where I was (and still am) blown away. The Third is one of the greatest monuments of High Modernism. Yes, it’s unbelievably complex, but it has an intensity, breadth, and passion unlike almost anything else in the Carter output. One really hears the interaction, indeed the collision, between its worlds as they revolve around one another.
And then No. 4: I wrote earlier I hoped the Pacificas could convince me at last of its value, but while they push me to the edge, I still can’t make the leap. I do realize now that the first movement is one of those rare birds in Carter’s music, a piece based on the rigorous, almost obsessive development of a single motive. Likewise, the slow third movement and the increasingly fragmented alternation between outburst and silence of the concluding Presto have a memorable profile. But it still sounds forced, and I’m sorry to say, relatively empty to me in comparison to the other works in the cycle. I feel that Carter reached a point in the early 1970s where he understood his technique and was able to write large-scale works fluently, but he’d lost some of the reason and drive to do so. Several works that, again, people I know are passionate about, such as Night Fantasies for piano, Penthode for chamber orchestra, and this Quartet, seem to be going through the motions, but don’t reach the transcendent state one senses in other pieces. The good news, though, is that by the mid 1980s Carter began writing a series of brilliant miniatures (one can trace perhaps to the 1984 Riconoscenza for solo violin), which led him to his “late late” style, where a greater degree of clarity, concision, and wit has combined to produce more music of more delight than he ever produced before (we’re talking here about a composer working in the age range of 80–100!). The Fifth Quartet is one of the masterpieces of this period.
As for these performances, once again the Pacificas take the crown on several fronts. The Ardittis have the only other cycle (on Etcetera), but it does not include the Fifth. Also, the Pacificas have far more extensive indexing of movements, which allows one to follow Carter’s formal argument much more closely. Their interpretations are Olympian, yet also suitably driven, catching both the abstraction and expressionism of Carter’s music. To take just one example, their performance of the Fourth, which seems quite intense and fast, is seven minutes longer than the Arditti’s (27:00 vs. 20:00). Listening to the latter, their version of the first movement is the proverbial bat-out-of-hell, and while exhilarating, it sounds as though they’re in a hurry to get it over with. My only quibble with the Pacificas is that their performance of the Third, while staggering in its control and attention to detail, doesn’t deliver the sort of emotional wallop at its ending that I came to know from the Juilliard’s premiere LP recording on Columbia. (Boy, do I fear that dates me!)
But this is overall a triumph of adventurous and stunning music-making, both in the composer’s creation and the performers’ realization. My critique of Carter’s quartets doesn’t dim my overall admiration, or my sense that this is likely the greatest quartet cycle we’ve had since Bartók’s. Add in the budget price for both discs, and this is by far the best way to get a monument of its era, and the single best introduction to Carter’s world one could imagine.
FANFARE: Robert Carl
American Classics - Anderson: Orchestral Music Vol 4 / Slatkin, Criswell, Dazeley
The vocal items (see work list above) are fetchingly sung by Kim Criswell and William Dazeley, and here receive their world premiere recordings. The program ends with one of Anderson's larger works, the dazzling Christmas Festival. Leonard Slatkin, an old hand in this music, conducts with unassuming mastery, and the BBC Concert Orchestra sounds entirely at home in the idiom. Very good engineering completes this delectable package. Like the rest of this series, this is definitely worth collecting.
– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
American Classics - Sousa "On Stage" / Brion, Razumovsky SO
Danielpour: String Quartets Nos. 5-7 / Delray String Quartet
This sixth Naxos American Classics album of the music of Richard Danielpour presents world premiere recordings of Richard Danielpours' last three string quartets. No. 7 includes the appearance in the finale of soprano Hila Plitmann. Each of these three quartets is informed by a particular theme: String Quartet No. 5, subtitled ‘In Search of La vita nuova,’ reflects Richard Danielpour’s relationship with Italy over the decades, conveying a sense of journey and discovery expressed in its ultimately elliptical trajectory. Concerned with the quartet as a metaphor for family, String Quartet No. 6 explores ideas of distance, time and ultimately, leave-taking. String Quartet No. 7, subtitled ‘Psalms of Solace,’ pursues the search for the Divine, successive movements taking intellect, the force of will, and romantic love as their subject before the appearance in the finale of a soprano voice.
Elfman: Violin Concerto - Hailstork: Piano Concerto No. 1 / Cameron, Goodyear, Falletta
This recording presents brand new concertos from two vibrant and contrasting American composers. Adolphus Hailstork’s First Piano Concerto draws on his African American heritage to create a work brimming with energy and high spirits. The Violin Concerto “Eleven Eleven” by Danny Elfman – renowned for his many film scores including Batman – has its roots in the composer’s rock, film and television background, but also illustrates his love for the music of Shostakovich and Prokofiev.
REVIEW:
Two major works from contemporary American composers sit side by side here in this latest American Classics production from Naxos. Well-known for his prolific film score output Danny Elfman’s Violin Concerto “Eleven Eleven” has echoes of his early Batman. There is an interesting note about the subtitle in the accompanying words – apparently the number 11 has special meaning for the composer. Alongside this we have Adolphus Hailstork’s Piano Concerto No 1. This has influences from his Afro-American heritage. Both are in fine new live recordings here.
-- Lark Reviews
Tower: Strike Zones / Glennie, McMillen, Miller, Albany Symphony
Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of today’s most important American composers. The works heard here in their world premiere recordings are part of a growing legacy that one pundit has described as “The Power of Tower.” Strike Zones is tailor-made for percussionist Evelyn Glennie’s dazzling technique and impeccable musicianship. The work’s orchestration is crafted to enhance a stage filled with percussion instruments – while in Small they are contained on a single table, the soloist working like a brilliant chef. The piano concerto Still/Rapids was inspired by the glistening beauty and powerful force of water, and Ivory and Ebony, written as a test piece for an international piano competition, is infused with Tower’s “high-energy” signature.
REVIEW:
Another American Classics release features the music of contemporary composer Joan Tower. These fabulous premiere recordings give a good representation of the range of music Tower has been producing over recent years. It is particularly good to hear performances from Evelyn Glennie as one of a cast of top rate musicians here. The earliest work, Strike Zones, dates from 2001 and the latest, Small from 2016. Both these feature percussion. Still/Rapids combines piano and orchestra with the final piece, Ivory & Ebony being a test piece for an international piano competition.
-- Lark Reviews
The American Spirit: Roots and Transformations
Kernis: Color Wheel & Symphony No. 4 / Guerrero, Nashville Symphony
Pulitzer Prize recipient and GRAMMY award-winner Aaron Jay Kernis is one of America’s most performed composers. Both works on this album exemplify his creative approach to orchestral composition, sharing elements in common, such as virtuoso percussion writing and the use of variation form. Color Wheel is an exuberant miniature concerto for orchestra with a wide array of contrasts, while Symphony No. 4 ‘Chromelodeon’ explores the coexistence of opposing musical forces to powerful, pensive, and touching effect. Champions of new American music, the Nashville Symphony and its music director Giancarlo Guerrero had premiered numerous works, and received 13 GRAMMY Awards including two for Best Orchestral Performance. Among their award-winning recordings include works by Michael Daugherty, Stephen Paulus, and Jennifer Higdon.
-----
REVIEW:
Passing through many moods, Color Wheel often employs orchestral virtuosity that explores every department in depth, the strings providing the bed-rock around which the wheel revolves. It is a sizeable score of some twenty-two minutes, that gives a showpiece for the fine Nashville Symphony and their conductor, Giancarlo Guerrero, the final passage a climax of monumental proportions. The recordings come from 2016 and 2019 but match one another perfectly, the extent of detail in the densely scored passages of Color Wheel is an achievement for the sound team. Those collecting the ‘American Classics’ series will be delighted.
– David's Review Corner (David Denton)
Cowell: Homage To Iran, Piano Pieces, The Banshee / Continuum
Henry Cowell was one of the most remarkable figures in American music. A startlingly innovative composer, an inimitable piano virtuoso who outraged or delighted his audiences, a brilliant writer, teacher, lecturer and organizer, Cowell almost single-handedly laid the foundations for American compositional life. This second Continuum Portrait of Cowell’s music ( Volume 1 is available on Naxos 8559192) includes further examples of his most experimental piano pieces, calling for strumming and plucking the strings, as well as using forearms to produce tone clusters. Other compositions fuse Asian and Western idioms in striking new blends. Yet, however advanced his ideas, or multifaceted his output, Cowell’s music remains immediately accessible.
REVIEW:
This is even more fascinating than the first volume. As previously, there is both commitment and panache from the performers and a decent recording. A well-documented and worthy addition to the American Classics series. Cowell was a prolific composer who wrote twenty symphonies and much else besides. Hopefully Naxos will give us the opportunity to explore his music further.
-- Patrick C Waller, MusicWeb
Fuchs: Piano Concerto "Spiritualist", Poems of Life, Etc / Falletta, London Symphony
Kenneth Fuchs is one of America’s leading composers. He celebrates his unique fifteen-year recording history with conductor JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra with this stunning release of three new concertos and an orchestral song cycle. Kenneth Fuchs has composed music for orchestra, band, voice, chorus, and various chamber ensembles. His music has achieved significant global recognition through performances, media exposure, and digital streaming and downloading throughout North and South America, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Australia. The London Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of JoAnn Falletta, has recorded five discs of Fuchs’s music for Naxos American Classics. The first, released in August 2005, was nominated for two GRAMMY® Awards (“Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra” and “Producer of the Year, Classical”).
-----
REVIEW:
Now stretching back over the past fifteen years, JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra have been recording the major works of Kenneth Fuchs.
All of the present disc comes from the past six years, the most recent, Poems of Life, completed in 2017. The opening Piano Concerto, in the conventional three movements, was composed at the request of Jeffrey Biegel, who is the soloist on this disc. Often testing his technical virtuosity, the finale calls for prodigious dexterity in the fast flowing finale.
We can admire the London Symphony for the multitude of colours they provide, just as if the play the music regularly, and our gratitude to the conductor, JoAnn Falletta, the composer’s unstinting champion.
– David's Review Corner (David Denton)
IVES, C.: Songs, Vol. 3
Hovhaness: Wind Music, Vol. 3 / Central Washington University Wind Ensemble
-----
REVIEW:
The value of the Naxos label’s ongoing American Classics series has never been so aptly demonstrated as with the success of this release from the able but hardly well-known Central Washington University Wind Ensemble. A few pieces here have gained exposure: October Mountain is a fixture of percussion ensemble concerts in the U.S., at least, but several are world premieres. This is all to the good, and there’s not a dull moment to be had here. This is both a wide sampling of Hovhaness’ music and a valuable close focus on his music for winds.
– All Music Guide (James Manheim)
Fuchs: An American Place; Out of the Dark / Falletta, London Symphony Orchestra
REVIEW:
Kenneth Fuchs' An American Place is a bright, big-hearted, neo-romantic work in the style of John Adams' Harmonielehre. Adams' finale is an unmistakable influence as both works open with motor rhythms chugging along in the strings while woodwinds and high percussion chirp and tingle above as the music builds to a spirit-lifting sunrise. Fuchs pretty much goes his own way from there as the piece travels through a series of engaging episodes--some featuring wonderful brass writing--and closes in a similar atmosphere to its opening. Eventide is a concerto for English horn, harp, percussion, and strings inspired by Negro spirituals such as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Mary Had a Baby", though Fuchs does not quote them directly, at least not in a manner that's easily recognizable. The work is reminiscent of the pastoral mood-music of Vaughan Williams, though the English horn writing occasionally brings to mind jazz saxophonist Kenny G--a tribute perhaps to the free spirited, highly virtuosic playing of soloist Thomas Stacy.
The pleasantries end with Out of the Dark, which is a set of three pieces based on works by expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler. Heart of November begins in thorny string paroxysms, while Out of the Dark moves somewhat away from the gnarly harmonies of the previous piece. Summer Banner gradually reintroduces consonance, and the work ends in a blissful, subdued atmosphere (with fine solo work by hornist Timothy Jones). Jo Ann Falletta leads first-rate performances with the London Symphony Orchestra, captured in excellent sound--another fine addition to Naxos' American Classics series.
--ClassicsToday.com (Victor Carr Jr.)
Glass: Violin Concerto, Etc / Yuasa, Anthony, Ulster Orchestra
Naxos' exciting and important American Classics series now includes music of the present day, in this case three recent works by Philip Glass. The Violin Concerto, a work that (surprisingly) adheres to classical conventions, lures us in with beautiful, seductive harmonies. Glass relies both on his trademark arpeggiated technique (sounding in the first movement somewhat like Vivaldi's "Winter" concerto) and on his favorite harmonic progressions to suggest a sustained melodic line. In the first two movements Glass' carefully timed harmonic and rhythmic shifts keep you in a happy daze. He breaks the mood in the finale, however, leaving the soloist to practice arpeggios at length until the quiet, serene coda steals in. Adele Anthony, who plays with the kind of skill and grace we would expect in a Mozart concerto, brings off Glass' work with consummate, convincing musicianship. Company (music for Becket's prose) for string orchestra is in four movements, characterized by stimulating changes in time signature and rhythm. The Prelude and Dance from Akhnaten, Glass' third opera, sound exceedingly repetitious without the opera's spoken dramatic narrative, but of course, this won't bother committed Glass fans who will find much to cherish in this recording. Newcomers, too, will enjoy this tuneful if unchallenging music, which benefits from the characterful playing of the Ulster Orchestra under Takuo Yuasa's keen leadership. The sound is excellent. Another home-run from Naxos.--Victor Carr, ClassicsToday.com
Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Cello Concerto & Transcriptions / Smith, Chen, Yamada, Houston Symphony
-----
REVIEW:
There’s a cinematic feel and scope to the Cello Concerto, primarily during the first movement, with plenty of expressive lines and passages that Brinton Averil Smith projects with aplomb.
The other pieces and arrangements on this CD are a pleasure to hear, most particularly Brinton Averil Smith’s own arrangement of Figaro, from the Barber of Seville, with Evelyn Chen on the piano. Their playing well projects the comical elements of this famous opera aria.
– Classical Music Sentinel
Bermel: Intonations - Music for Clarinet & Strings / Bermel, Otto, Wijmans, JACK Quartet
Twice GRAMMY-nominated composer and performer Derek Bermel studied with Henri Dutilleux, Dutch avant-gardist Louis Andriessen, and ragtime revivalist William Bolcom. In his music, seemingly antithetical qualities – classical and vernacular, comic and serious – merge and transform each other unpredictably, their inspiration ranging from theatre (Ritornello), to gestalt psychology (Figure and Ground), to meditations on cosmology (A Short History of the Universe). Thracian Sketches explores and reimagines Bulgarian folk music, while the Violin Etudes distill Bermel’s intellectual creativity into its purest form. The widely celebrated JACK Quartet has maintained an unwavering commitment to its mission of performing and commissioning new works, giving voice to underheard composers, and cultivating an ever-greater sense of openness toward contemporary classical music.
REVIEWS:
The JACK Quartet plays with great clarity and athleticism; and the group is wholly comfortable in any context, from hushed moments to driving climaxes and raucous special effects. Hijmans executes his concerto grosso with flair and virtuosity; and Otto renders the etudes with marvelous skill and artistry. As expected, Bermel contributes his superb fingers, wide dynamic range, and mind-blowing sonic manipulations that should not be possible on the clarinet.
-- American Record Guide
Part of Naxos’s esteemed ‘American Classics’ series, Intonations is a composer-based collection with a difference: Derek Bermel not only wrote its five works, he plays on two also. His clarinet isn’t the only distinctive sound on the nearly seventy-minute release, either. Dutch electric guitarist Wiek Hijmans plays on one piece, and the renowned JACK Quartet appears too, generally as a group but with violinist Christopher Otto playing solo on Violin Etudes. Intonations is marked by many things, including variety, and in featuring five world-premiere recordings, the release is an invaluable addition to the award-winning composer’s discography.
Intonations speaks flatteringly of Bermel’s gifts as a writer but also instrumentalist. To call his clarinet playing impressive hardly does it justice. He’s appeared as a soloist alongside Wynton Marsalis, has performed his clarinet concerto Voices around the world with dozens of orchestras, and is the founding clarinetist of Music from Copland House. His playing is so credible, Bermel could easily fill a personnel spot in an ensemble such as Oregon or The Silk Road Ensemble were the opportunity to present itself...That Bermel’s classical creations often exhibit a pronounced jazz, blues, and/or world flavour shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, given such diversity of experience.
Intonations is an arresting portrait, not only for its kaleidoscopic range but for the sheer breadth of Bermel’s imagination and interests. That no other recording sounds quite like it is one of the better compliments one could pay to its creator. There’s nothing, it seems, he can’t do and no musical subject matter he’s incapable of tackling.
-- Textura
This showcase of music for different forms and instrument combinations is united by Bermel’s musical curiosity and creative showmanship. Elements of folk and blues permeate traditional classical forms in masterful ways, resulting in a joyous listen. Characterful.
-- BBC Music Magazine
Boyer: Balance of Power - Orchestral Works / Boyer, London Symphony Orchestra
This album presents eight of the most recent works by Peter Boyer, one of the leading American orchestral composers of his generation. Balance of Power was commissioned for the 95th birthday of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, while Fanfare for Tomorrow was composed for the inauguration of President Joe Biden in 2021. Each of these pieces displays Boyer’s vivid soundscapes and tuneful American sensibilities, from the cinematic sweep of Rolling River to Radiance, composed especially for this album. Boyer’s GRAMMY-nominated Ellis Island: The Dream of America (8.559246) has received over 250 performances and was televised by PBS.
REVIEW:
Boyer's description of [the London Symphony Orchestra] as “one of the world's greatest orchestras” isn't hyperbolic but rather accurate. It shouldn't be overlooked either that as conductor he was directly responsible for coaxing from the ensemble the inspired performances the recording features.
The fourth album by Boyer (b. 1970) and his third in the Naxos American Classics Series presents eight works, six of them world premiere recordings. The tone is often celebratory, even triumphant, as exemplified by the stately Fanfare for Tomorrow, commissioned for President Biden's January 2021 inauguration; but melancholy is also present in affecting settings such as Rolling River (Sketches on “Shenandoah”) and, naturally, Elegy. As performed by the LSO, the material packs a visceral punch that ensures no listener's attention will drift as the music plays. The orchestral sweep one hears in John Williams' music finds its place in Boyer's too.
All of the material on Balance of Power is of recent vintage, the earliest work dating back to 2014 but most from the last two to three years. It opens rousingly with the aptly titled Curtain Raiser, as ear-catching and exuberant an overture as one could ask for. Boyer's gift for orchestration is immediately apparent, as is the effervescence of the LSO's execution. Strings, percussion, and horns combine for a dynamic, five-minute exercise in uplift, the result a thrilling start to the album.
The evidence at hand suggests Boyer's name might be mentioned in the same breath as those of Barber, Bernstein, Ives, Adams, and especially Copland. Like them, he writes works that have popular appeal and engage with immediacy. They're also, however, impeccably crafted and in no way lacking in integrity. Boyer isn't calculating: while he's one of the most frequently performed American orchestral composers of our time (his Grammy-nominated Ellis Island: The Dream of America is now one of the most-performed American orchestral pieces), his writing is sincere, honest, and authentic[.]
--Textura
