The collaboration between composer Philippe Leroux and the husband-and-wife team of Claude and Odile Delangle began in the early 1990s and has grown ever closer over the years. In October 2019 the three met up again for a few intense days, in order to record Noûs, a programme of works for soprano saxophone and for solo piano. The album is bookended by two duos for the instruments – the opening SPP a reworking by the composer of an earlier score, and the closing Noûs that Leroux wrote for the Delangles only a few months before the recording. In both of these – albeit in different ways – the composer explores a couple of his favorite principles, namely those of continuity and transformation. Between them we hear works from the past decade, beginning with AMA for solo piano, from 2009. The other two piano works, Répéter… Opposer and Dense… Englouti are both tributes to Claude Debussy, a composer who occupies an important place in the musical universe of Philippe Leroux. At the centre of the disc, finally, is the highly virtuosic Conca Reatina for soprano saxophone. Loosely inspired by the contours of the mountains surrounding the Rieti Valley (Conca reatina), the piece is a dizzying sonic Möbius strip which keeps returning the listener to his point of departure.

In the spring of 2020, the Covid pandemic caused turmoil in the concert diaries of most musicians, including the conductor Andrew Litton and his wife Katharina Kang Litton, principal violist of New York City Ballet. To find an outlet for their musical expression they began to explore the repertoire for viola and piano together. Having played the sonatas by Brahms they came across the music by two other Viennese composers, Brahms’ near-contemporary Robert Fuchs and his student Egon Kornauth. Fuchs – who the less-than-effusive Brahms called ‘a splendid musician’ – had a long and distinguished career at the Vienna Conservatory where his other students included such composers as Mahler, Wolf, Sibelius, Zemlinsky and Korngold. That the sonatas recorded here were composed around the same time as Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet can be hard to believe – as is the fact that Fuchs’s Phantasiestücke (composed in his 80th and final year) was contemporary with Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 1. But if they are not in any way pioneering, all three works are beautifully achieved: formally both strong and flexible, with a subtle, deeply-felt emotional coloring of their own. The Litton Duo close the recital with a piece that has a personal significance for the two – an arrangement of the Korean folk song Arirang which they received as a wedding present from Stephen Hough.

Born in Russia, Victoria Borisova-Ollas has lived in Sweden since 1993. In the international music press, she has been described as ‘a composer with a sparkling individual voice’ and an ‘orchestrator of the greatest virtuosity’. This is borne out by this well-filled album which features five works from 2003 to 2013, in performances by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (RSPO) with which Borisova-Ollas enjoys a long-standing collaboration. Angelus was composed for the 850th anniversary of the city of Munich and takes the listener on a walk through the city and its many clock towers. Angelus is conducted by Andrey Boreyko, who has championed the music of Borisova-Ollas for many years.

Renaissance music from Spain has come to mean the works of composers such as Tomás Luís de Victoria or Francisco Guerrero rather than their predecessors. But composers such as Francisco de Peñalosa – who died in 1528, the same year that Guerrero was born – were musicians of genuine imagination and skill, whose work often shows a formidable individuality. The most recent edition of Peñalosa’s oeuvre lists 22 works as genuine: masses, lamentations, hymns and motets. From these, New York Polyphony have selected two highly expressive Lamentations, intended for services held during Holy Week and setting biblical texts bemoaning the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC.

Besides two brief motets, Peñalosa is also represented by sections from his Missa L’homme armé, one of the many examples from the 15th to the 17th century of cyclic masses based on secular melodies. These pieces by Peñalosa are brought into relief by shorter works by his near-contemporary Pedro de Escobar – a deeply haunting setting of the beginning of the hymn Stabat Mater – and the aforementioned Francisco Guerrero. Guerrero is represented by Quae est ista, a setting of words from the Song of Songs which have inspired the composer to ecstatic cascades of notes. In contrast his Antes que comáis a Dios, with a text in Spanish, is simple but effective, in a propulsive triple time.

REVIEWS:

Francisco de Peñalosa is the link between the great Flemish composer Josquin des Prez (his senior by 15 or 20 years) and the full flowering of Spanish Renaissance music, represented by Alonso Lobo, Tomás Luís de Victoria and Francisco Guerrero. This new disc from New York Polyphony presents two Lamentationes by Peñalosa, along with a number of his Mass segments.

The superb singing, impressive acoustic space (of the Princeton Abbey in the former site of the Saint Joseph's Seminary in Plainsboro NJ), and perfectly captured audio all come together to provide an experience that is both timeless and completely in the moment. Another impressive project from New York Polyphony!

-- Music for Several Instruments

It’s wonderful to hear more music from Francisco de Peñalosa (1470-1528), and particularly pleasing that it comes on this stylish release from New York Polyphony complete with superb booklet notes by Ivan Moody.

-- Gramophone

At the age of 20, Henry Purcell entered his 14 Fantasias and two In Nomines into an autograph bearing the title ‘The Works of Hen; Purcell, A.D. 1680’. Despite his youth Purcell was already making his mark as a composer, writing music for the London theatres and holding posts at Westminster Abbey and at court. But unlike his works for the theatre and the church, which were intended for specific occasions, very little is known about the impulse behind fantasias. Composed for between three and seven parts they are a consciously anachronistic distillation of an old style at a time when the reigning taste was for more modern sounds – for dance-based music with lively rhythms and hummable tunes. It isn’t even clear what kind of ensemble they were intended for: given the association with older music, one might assume that Purcell had viols in mind, but the distribution of the parts is not always in keeping with the standard sizes of the viol consort – nor for that matter those of the violin consort.

Were the fantasias in fact ever performed? None of these questions has a satisfactory answer, and in this respect the Purcell Fantasias resemble Bach’s The Art of the Fugue, because of their quality and inventiveness but also owing to the mysteries that surround them. The collection is here performed by Chelys Consort of Viols, following up on three previous and acclaimed releases on BIS featuring the music of Michael East, John Dowland, and Christopher Simpson.

REVIEW:

The Chelys readings, clean and rather circumspect, merit strong consideration for those interested in these youthful and intellectual Purcell works. Nicely recorded by BIS at Girton College Chapel, Cambridge, they don't overdo the mystery: the sound is clean and the polyphony clear. The pungent dissonances scattered through these works, which were a feature of the tradition (not just of Purcell's pieces), emerge with the proper emphasis, but the Consort does not lean into them unnecessarily.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

It's an initially disorientating experience to hear Sea Pictures in a version with choir. The Rodolfus Choir are an elite SATB group and have a wonderfully smooth and often lulling sound; there's a lot of that mood in Sea Pictures. The choir's diction is a marvel although the sung words are in any event at the back of the booklet. The singers are attentive to dynamic contrast and register some superbly poetic effects. Open-minded Elgarians who can get over the heresy of unfamiliar forces will find much to enjoy here. Where Corals Lie is a delight and works exceptionally well with choir.

A lazy unobservant glance at the details of this disc had me assuming that the Piano Quintet had been re-engineered into a Piano Concerto to join the Elgar/Walker. No such thing. What we have here is something of symphonic proportions and character. While there are some dark and dramatic moments and even some hints of the Second Symphony this now comes across as reflective and in the same territory as Falstaff. The first movement has an air of halting even fearful uncertainty. It's all very smooth though, suave even. A Viennese lilt at 10.00 is one of several instances where things become quite Brahmsian. The second movement is almost Finzian as details entwine much as they do in the woodland Interludes in Falstaff. The finale has its exciting moments but is overall quite nostalgic, philosophical, and regretful.

These two works in new colors should give many more opportunities to hear this music although ironically each requires a greater number of performers than the originals. Of the two Sea Pictures strikes me as the more attractive.

– MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)

Modernism. Multiculturism. Multi-tuning. Lockdown. These are among the elements that bind the works on The Solo Album by award winning cellist Christoph Croisé, who took the opportunity of 2020’s coronavirus isolation to work intensively on a variety of solo works and also turn his hand to composition. At the heart of the album is Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály’s epic Sonata, the first major work for solo cello after the suites by Johann Sebastian Bach which were written two centuries earlier. The virtuosity demands of the soloist re-tuning two of the cello’s strings, double-stop trills and simultaneous bowed and plucked passages, all of which Christoph dispatches with aplomb. Framing Kodály’s Sonata are works by two compatriots, György Ligeti’s two-movement Sonata which draws inspiration from Béla Bartók, and the more recent Stonehenge by cellist, composer and pop-music producer Péter Pejtsik which includes intimations of electric guitar. A “sandwich filler” is Christophe’s first composition for solo cello, Spring Promenade, which is infused with boogie-woogie, reggae, swing and techno. He took inspiration from Sicilian composer-cello virtuoso Giovanni Sollima whose Concerto Rotondo incorporates electronics and extended techniques. Closing out the album, Sollima’s short work Alone gives way to the album’s “encore”, the exuberant Some like to show it off by Croatian cellist-composer Thomas Buritch.

Having begun their collaboration in 1997, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and its conductor laureate Thomas Dausgaard have developed an unusually tight partnership. Nowhere is this demonstrated more clearly than in their cycles of the symphonies of Schumann, Schubert and, most recently, Brahms – performances which have been characterized by reviewers as variously ‘fresh’, ‘vivid’, ‘transparent’ and ‘invigorating’. Of Mendelssohn the team has previously recorded the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a release described as ‘capturing Mendelssohn’s inimitable spirit’ on the website Crescendo. The same disc included The Hebrides, and now the SCO and Dausgaard return to Scotland, with Mendelssohn’s ‘Scottish’ Symphony. This was begun in 1829, after a stay in London during which the composer conducted his Symphony No. 1, also included on this disc. Mendelssohn’s imagination was often fired by impressions from nature, and Scotland was the Romantic landscape par excellence, celebrated for its rugged Highland scenery and melancholy tunes. ‘I think that today I found the beginning of my ‘Scottish’ Symphony’, he wrote to his parents after a visit to the ruined chapel at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. It took more than a decade for him to complete the symphony – but ever since its first performance, in 1842, it has been a staple of the symphonic repertoire.

REVIEW:

With the 38-member Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conductor Thomas Dausgaard here offers an ensemble probably quite similar in size to that which played Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56. The size fits Dausgaard well, for his readings are crisp and restrained, without a lot of vibrato (as is his trademark with this group) or big emotional climaxes. Dausgaard's quick, high-tension approach works well here. BIS contributes fine engineering from the Örebro Concert House in this fresh Mendelssohn release.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Tolstoy’s War and Peace – those works of art that are truly part of the canon of global culture are few and far apart. In music, one work that holds significance for people all over the world is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and especially its choral finale. Even today, as we are getting ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of its creator, the sheer size and complexity of the symphony is daunting. There are some eyewitness accounts from the first performance, at the Kärntner-Tor-Theater in Vienna on 7th May 1824: we know for instance that Beethoven was on stage himself throughout the performance, but that owing to his deafness he did not notice the audience’s overwhelming enthusiasm. What the Ninth sounded like that evening in Vienna is something we will never know, however – which is why hearing it in a historically informed performance on period instruments is all the more interesting. With impeccable credentials from their 65-album series of Bach’s complete cantatas, and acclaimed recent recordings of Mozart’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki now give us their rendering of Beethoven’s last and greatest symphony, joined by a fine quartet of vocal soloists.

Jennifer Kloetzel’s lifelong journey with Beethoven began early: she was eight years old when her teacher placed the composer’s second cello sonata on her music stand, opening the door to an odyssey of intrigue and, ultimately, obsession with the composer’s music. Since then, rarely has a day passed without Beethoven being a part of Jennifer’s life. She has studied and performed all of the composer’s duos and trios. As founding cellist of the Cypress String Quartet, she spent 20 years rehearsing, performing and recording the string quartets. Jennifer now arrives at a career milestone with this recording of Beethoven’s Complete Works for Cello and Piano. Views vary as to what comprises Beethoven’s “complete” works for cello and piano. Jennifer’s discerning choice includes the five Sonatas for Cello and Piano, three sets of variations – based on arias from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus – and the Horn sonata for which the composer also wrote a cello part. Jennifer spares no attention to detail across the entire spectrum of this significant recording project. Her performing partner Robert Koenig plays on a 19th century Blüthner concert grand piano. The illuminating liner notes are penned by Beethoven scholar William Meredith who boldly states, “if there were only the five cello sonatas of Beethoven left of all his music, these alone would have cemented his place in history.” The recording was made in the stellar acoustic of Skywalker Sound. The 3-album set is lavishly packaged in a deluxe digipack. The title track, “The Conquering Hero” – from the opening set of variations from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus – evokes everything for Jennifer about Beethoven’s music, coming from a place of triumph and joy.

After two stylistically diverse anthologies – In Motion and Renewal – the United Strings of Europe and their director Julian Azkoul have chosen to devote their latest project to a single composer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. They open with the composer’s Serenade, a tribute to Mozart’s divertimentos, but infused with Tchaikovsky’s characteristic pathos and melancholy. It is one of his most popular works, with the especially beloved Waltz as its second movement, and a finale featuring Russian folk songs. The other works included on this recording are arrangements tailor-made for the ensemble by Julian Azkoul. Andante cantabile, the slow movement of Tchaikovsky’s First String Quartet, is a piece of great emotional power, based on an old folk song which Tchaikovsky reportedly heard in the Ukrainian town of Kamenka. Composed following a stay in Florence, the Sextet is brooding in temperament and despite its title arguably more Russian than Italian in character. Like the Serenade, it makes use of classical forms and devices but also includes passages evoking traditional Russian music. After completing the work, Tchaikovsky – who was otherwise his own harshest critic – wrote: ‘it’s frightening to see how pleased I am with myself’. The album closes with At Bedtime, an early composition for mixed choir with a meditative quality reminiscent of Eastern Orthodox chant that lends itself well to the string orchestra textures.

Born in 1972, Albert Schnelzer belongs to the most widely noticed Scandinavian composers of his generation. He has written in all genres, and the present album includes a concerto as well as both orchestral and chamber works. Schnelzer’s orchestral output has attracted great attention, with A Freak in Burbank belonging to his most often heard works. Inspired by Haydn as well as by the filmmaker Tim Burton, it has been played more than 70 times to date, in venues such as the Berlin Philharmonie, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Royal Albert Hall. It here appears on album for the first time, performed by the Västerås Sinfonietta conducted by Simon Crawford-Phillips. The same team has also made the premiere recordings of two other works: Burn My Letters – a commission for Clara Schumann’s 200th anniversary – and the violin concerto ‘Nocturnal Songs’, composed for Ilya Gringolts. Interspersed with these are three chamber works – Dance with the Devil, Apollonian Dances and Frozen Landscape – performed by some of Sweden’s foremost instrumentalists.

REVIEW:

A Freak in Burbank is an exciting and vivid work, full of insistent rhythms, quixotic harmonies, and colorful orchestration. There is a capricious spirit in it that grabs the attention of the listener, much as, for example, Haydn’s music does.

Dance with the Devil is for solo piano, and also grabs the attention of the listener from its very first notes. The opening, in fact, is cut from the same musical cloth as is Bartók’s Allegro Barbaro, and like that seminal work Dance never lets up in its energy level. The notes aver that the piece is influenced by heavy metal music.

Burn My Letters—Remembering Clara is scored for chamber orchestra and depicts in music the voluminous correspondence between Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. In this rather neo-Romantic work, the composer has attempted to capture something of the energy and lust for life of Clara Schumann, in addition to representing the hectic life she lived as a touring pianist. In this work, he has attempted to assimilate (successfully, I think) the frankness in which Schumann writes about her doubts, fears, and sorrows. Despite such heavy concepts, the piece has a lightness and airy quality about it that I find most attractive.

The program turns back to the realm of chamber music with Apollonian Dances for violin and piano. Violinist Cecilia Zilliacus and pianist David Huang are both clearly masters of their respective instruments, and the work simply couldn’t be in better hands.

Frozen Landscape remembers a vivid experience from Schnelzer’s youth when he was up in the mountains of northern Sweden. This piece’s unrelenting quiet dynamic level sustains interest throughout its seven-and-a-half-minute duration. Both cellist Jakob Koranyi and pianist Huang pull off exquisitely what must be a difficult work to bring across.

The concert concludes with Schnelzer’s Violin Concerto No. 2, “Nocturnal Songs,” a 25-minute work from 2018.

The work was written for violinist Ilya Gringolts, who performs it at the highest level here, even the finger-busting finale. First-class orchestral support is supplied in the pieces that require it by Simon Crawford-Phillips and the Västerås Sinfonietta, an ensemble of which I’ve been previously unaware but glad to have become acquainted with.

This CD is splendid in every parameter, and I am truly delighted to become familiar with the work of such a talented member of the newer generation of Swedish composers.

-- Fanfare

Beethoven wrote in his diary that he wanted “to show the British what a treasure they have in God Save the King”, a reference to his set of variations on the national anthem, composed in 1803. Sarah Beth Briggs recorded the virtuoso set precisely one month before the passing of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, and the recording heralds the coronation of King Charles III in May 2023. The lesser-known Variations on an Original Theme in F major (1802) represent Beethoven the revolutionary. Uniquely, each variation was written in a different key which would have jarred the ears of the composer’s contemporaries. Sarah Beth Briggs’ collection of Variations underlines a lineage of the genre through the classical and Romantic eras. Opening the program is 9 Variations on a Minuet by Duport by Mozart, whom Beethoven greatly admired. The work takes a theme by cellist Jean-Pierre Duport, chamber music director of the court of the Prussian King, Friedrich Wilhelm II, from whom the composer hoped to gain favor. Mendelssohn’s Variations Serieuses was written as a tribute to Beethoven, and was included in an album of works that raised funds for the now famous bronze statue of Beethoven in Bonn. Mendelssohn’s near contemporary Brahms paid tribute to his troubled friend Robert Schumann, using a melody from Bunte Blätter (“Colorful Leaves”) in his poignant Variations on a Theme by Schumann.

REVIEWS:

Briggs’ execution is fluidly graceful and well-modulated. She approaches this repertoire with a studied care that betrays a love for the period and composers.

-- Wild Mercury Rhythm

All nine of Mozart’s Variations on a Theme by Jean-Pierre Duport, K 573 are quite delicate, sounding here almost as if they were played on a toy piano. Only the finale includes authoritative sounds. Beethoven’s 7 Variations on `God Save the King’ is sturdier; I especially enjoy the lively, witty, chordal IV. Also included is Beethoven’s 6 Variations on an Original Theme. In Variations Serieuses, Mendelssohn managed to write 17 imaginative ones. That number only slightly outdoes Brahms, who came up with 16 Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann. Lovely music, elegant playing.

-- American Record Guide

The critically acclaimed Italian composer Vito Palumbo has had works performed all over the world by leading orchestras. He began his career with postmodern experimentation, going on to different forms of music theatre. In recent years Palumbo has focused on works for full orchestra, exploring the possibilities of colors and textures – sometimes with the help of electronics – and putting the concept of ‘historical memory’ at the centre of his own composing.

With echoes seemingly coming from Alban Berg’s violin concerto, Palumbo’s own Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (2015) displays bittersweet lyricism. Characterized by a dramatic language and driven by a strong and varied rhythmic impulse, the single-movement work also offers transitional moments of static beauty typical of the composer’s usual finesse in the scoring. With its title echoing the past, Chaconne for 5-string electric violin and electronics (2019-20) highlights the different ways in which the electronics intertwine with the live electric violin, within a conception animated by a strong theatrical sense, like a script for a play that does not reject emotional gestures. About this work, the composer has remarked ‘I want the meaning of my music to be apparent from listening, without the need for verbal justification.’ Both works are championed by the violinist Francesco D’Orazio, a close collaborator of the composer and the dedicatee of the Chaconne.

REVIEWS:

Cast in a single movement of around 30 minutes, the Violin Concerto (2015) starts out with sepulchral stirrings that gradually open out texturally and dynamically on to an evocative backdrop for the soloist to pursue a mainly lyrical and often imaginative discourse. While the violin is very much first among equals across what unfolds, its contribution stands out owing to the fastidiousness of Palumbo’s orchestration; notably during those later stages (of a piece in several arclike sections) when other instruments come briefly if tellingly to the fore to extend the music’s expressive remit. A final and evidently defining climax precedes its dying down towards the musing and even mystical serenity with which this work closes.

Francesco D’Orazio is the assured soloist both here and in Chaconne (2019-20), its scoring with electronics testament to the scrupulousness by which Palumbo approaches the medium. In the initial ‘Woven Lights’, a five-string electric violin is heard in the context of sampled sounds whose gestural immediacy decreases as these are drawn into a sonic continuum as unpredictable as it is imaginative. A long and often plangent cadenza makes way for ‘The Glows in the Dark’, the violin now surrounded by 30 pre-recorded variants of itself as this music assumes a rarefied while also capricious quality typified by tangible weightlessness.

Francesco Abbrescia has realised the electronics with audible sensitivity, and the London Symphony Orchestra respond with equal finesse to the astute conducting of Lee Reynolds. Warmly recommended[.]

-- Gramophone

Palumbo himself has mentioned Berg’s 1935 Violin Concerto as an inspiration for his own concerto of 2015, and connections are clear in the more recent piece’s sumptuous harmonies and deep lyricism (a wonder-filled section near the end even sounds uncannily like a John Williams movie score). There’s a sense of ever-expanding melody that soloist Francesco D’Orazio captures excellently in his warm, generous playing, with an expressive, finely controlled vibrato and abundant character across the rhapsodic writing; the London Symphony Orchestra provides spirited support under Lee Reynolds.

D’Orazio swaps his Guarneri for a five-string electric fiddle in Palumbo’s two-movement Chaconne, which first pits the soloist against a shimmering electronic backdrop, and later against 30 mirror images of himself. It’s a volatile, sometimes elusive piece that blends fantasy and sonic adventurousness, and D’Orazio responds with far harder-edged, sometimes astringent playing that stands out beautifully against the composer’s washes of sound. The massed, high-pitched violins set microtonally apart in the Chaconne’s second movement make for a rather headache-inducing, if impressive, sonic texture, but it’s the piece’s uneasy relationship with more traditional tonality and playing, and its joyful celebration of the wild unpredictability of sound that make it particularly striking. Recorded sound is close, warm and clear throughout.

-- The Strad

Of the two scores the first is a Concerto for violin and orchestra. This is in a single-tracked 30-minute movement. A solution of tense foreboding and beetling catastrophe are the order of the day. The violin evokes thoughts of Ifrits rising like evocations of flame and driven upwards by superheated thermals. Palumbo embraces some ferociously stropped violent dissonance but weaves in a romantic style: Walton/Berg. It is as if a sky-soaring Ariel is gripped by a mystical pilgrimage. There are moments of appeasing calm (8.40), hesitant wispy writing deep in the undergrowth (18.11). Pizzicati and precipitous slides recall Hovhaness with the solo instrument slipping frictionless and free. (28.00). All ends in silence. This work will appeal to those who warm to the Violin Concerto by Missy Mazzoli – also on BIS.

A change of instrumental cams and gears comes with the other work: a Chaconne for five-stringed electric violin and electronics (2019–20). There’s no orchestra this time. The music is in two substantial movements: Woven Lights and The Glows in the Dark. The first of these has the soloist juxtaposed with sampled sounds and electronics. The second has D’Orazio’s solo plus 30 pre-recorded electric violin parts. Like the more conventionally scored Concerto this work is intricate and delicate: a jangling and twangling Prospero’s Island. It’s another impressively virtuoso piece – a thing of wonder.

As is BIS’s practice these days, the CD comes with a supportive essay and other written material. It’s all in a cleverly contrived card sleeve.

-- MusicWeb International

The year 2023 has served contemporary music rather well on record. Among its many highlights, Vito Palumbo’s new album Woven Lights burns bright indeed. Coming five years after the composer’s first BIS Records release, the second volume brings together two notable scores focusing on the violin – in its acoustic and electric raiments – featuring Francesco D’Orazio as soloist.

The album opens with Palumbo’s thirty-one-minute Violin Concerto (2015) in one movement, followed by the twenty-seven minute Chaconne (2019–20) for electric violin (five strings) and electronics. Cast in two movements – which can also be performed separately – the latter features sampled sounds, electronic soundscapes devised by Francesco Abbrescia and up to thirty pre-recorded electric violin parts.

Documented on microphones at Abbey Road Studio 1, London on 17 September 2016, with D’Orazio joined by the London Symphony Orchestra under Lee Reynolds, the Violin Concerto is given an immersive workout on the new album. Although conceived as extended monolith, one hears traces of more traditional concerto scheme embedded within its awe-inspiring arch. Scored for solo violin and [orchestra], the violin concerto is awash with formidable instrumental writing, giving rise to an enthralling sequence of soundscapes.

Emerging from nowhere, the music begins to take shape in various orchestral noises; tam-tam pulses, low drones, Tibetan bowls and ascending vibraphone patterns. Out of the string fabric, violent orchestral pulses are drawn as the introduction draws to its close, paving the way for the solo violin to enter the soundstage. Accompanied by glockenspiel and strings, soon joined by woodwinds, the soloist begins to unfold an endless melody – to put it in Birtwistlesque terms – colorized by muted brass. This leads to rousingly kinetic section with virtuoso violin figurations and percussive orchestral interjections, contrasted some pages later by cloud-like arpeggios.

Cooling down, the concerto flows into its meditative central section of dazzling color, where the soloist’s candle-lit musings are echoed by translucent orchestral chiaroscuro. Here, Palumbo draws some astounding textures from the solo instrument and the symphonic ensemble alike. However, the music does not linger. Jagged soundscapes re-emerge some four minutes later in a passage of splendid unrest. This, in turn, leads to astounding near-stasis of utmost sonorous focus. Almost imperceptibly, the textures grow increasingly volatile, channeling all their repressed energy into an inevitable burst of instrumental electricity. Out of the rumors, a shadowy section remains, marked by loose melodic threads hanging mid-air between the orchestral instruments and the solo violin – a high-point in the concerto’s musical subtlety.

Rippling figurations mark the transition into a toccata-like tour-de-force passage, featuring hyper-kinetic instrumental singing from the soloist, answered by fluid orchestral propulsion. Cooling down to a riveting hall of mirrors, characterized by slowly-rotating melodic arches and dream-like woodwind pulses, the music crossed the threshold back to the surreal realm from whence it first emerged. Transformed by its journey, the concerto fades into tangible silence.

Given in dream-of-a-performance by D’Orazio and the LSO with Reynolds, the Violin Concerto is served with full spectrum of timbral nuance. Unraveled in ever beautifully aligned layers, the interplay between the soloist and the orchestra comes off admirably throughout the entire musical quest. Embraced with absolute control over the musical narrative, D’Orazio’s take on the solo part is nothing short of remarkable. Peerless in their studio work, the members of the LSO deliver a wonderful take on the orchestral score. Guided by Reynold’s attentive podium sensibilities, the musical discussion between the LSO and their soloist are always spot-on, their sonorous clarity being enhanced by sensitive engineering and post-production.

A concerto for the focused listener, Palumbo’s score keeps unlocking its sonorous secrets in the course of repeated iterations, lending itself marvelously even to the most zealous close examination.

The title track of the album, the eighteen-minute Woven Lights first movement of the Chaconne seems to stem from some realm interrelated – somewhat – to the pensive central sections of the Violin Concerto. An ever-permuting interplay between the fully written-out electric violin part and its real-time computer-processed echoes, interwoven with sampled sounds of glass and metal, the movement is perhaps best described as the musical equivalent of northern lights – if one is to resort into simple analogies. Sonorous aurora of gorgeous blues and greens, the tapestries of Woven Lights call forth a plethora of associations related to time and space, yielding to transformative listening experience.

Bridged with a cadential passage, the music is carried over into The Glows in the Dark second movement. An intricate web of live and pre-recorded parts, the eight-minute soundscape gazes into the open space and nebulae beyond, zooming in and out of musical cloud-formations resulting from multiples of the solo instrument. A quest into the unknown, aural apparitions travel across the resulting contrapuntal network, to a dazzling effect. Disappearing beyond our scopes, the music dissolves into interstellar space, calling forth the listener’s mental theater to complete its narrative.

A superlative rendition from D’Orazio and Abbrescia, the fused creativity of solo instrumental performance and its electronic reimaginations yields to veritable sonic discovery, exploring strange new worlds through shared musical ritual. Fabulously realized on the new album, the Chaconne is a milestone score.

-- Adventures in Music

Signum Classics is proud to present Romanian-born soprano Angela Gheorghiu’s first album on the Grammy award winning label. Described as “the world’s most glamorous and gifted opera star” (New York Sun), Ms. Gheorghiu’s magnificent voice and dazzling stage presence have established her as a unique international opera superstar.

Her new album, released to mark the anniversary of celebrated composer Giacomo Puccini, brings together a collection of well-known arias and songs spanning many years of his career. The album features a World Premiere Recording of the recently rediscovered aria “Melanconia”, which is most probably from 1883 and not 1881 as previously thought. Other notable works on the recording are “Salve Regina” from Le villi, “Storiella d’amore” as well as the title track “A te,” composed by Puccini at just 16 years old.

‘The fantastic thing about art and music is that one can pose questions and conjure up visions at the same time.’ The words are those of the Swedish composer Jesper Nordin, who does exactly that in Emerging from Currents and Waves. A large-scale work for orchestra, clarinet soloist, conductor and live electronics, Emerging… is a collaboration between Nordin, Martin Fröst and Esa-Pekka Salonen. All three are interested in how new technology can – and will – influence art and artistic expression, and in exploring the intersection of mankind, music and technology. Emerging from Currents and Waves is in three parts, with the clarinet concerto "Emerging" at its center. In the work the electronic and the acoustic world meet on an equal footing. The sound of the live orchestra is recorded in real time, sampled, treated and played back, in processes that are controlled by both soloist and conductor with the help of motion sensors. The technology used for this is Gestrument (from ‘gesture’ and ‘instrument’), originally invented by Nordin as a tool for composition, but which here is used rather as an instrument.

The present recording was made at the first performance of the work, in Stockholm’s Berwaldhallen during the 2018 Baltic Sea Festival. In concert a visual element was added as images generated by the electronic music-making were projected onto several layers of transparent fabrics forming a specially designed sculpture that hovered above the orchestra.

Between 1803 and 1968, the Grand Prix de Rome marked the zenith of composition studies at the Paris Conservatoire. In Maurice Ravel’s time the competition included an elimination round (a fugue and a choral piece) followed by a cantata in the form of an operatic scena. The entries were judged by a jury which generally favoured expertise and conformity more than originality and Ravel’s growing reputation as a member of the avant-garde was therefore hardly to his advantage, and may explain why he never won the coveted Premier Grand Prix, and the three-year stay at Rome’s Villa Medici that went with it.

The present set brings together all the vocal works that Ravel composed for the Prix de Rome – five shorter settings for choir and orchestra and three cantatas, each with three characters taking part in a plot which followed a more or less fixed sequence of introduction, recitative and aria, a duet, a trio and a brief conclusion. First published more than half a century after Ravel’s death, these test pieces for the Prix de Rome have never acquired the popularity of his other early works, such as Pavane pour une infante défunte, Jeux d’eau or the String Quartet. They are worth more than their reputation as academic exercises might suggest, however, and deserve to be better known, especially when performed by Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and Pascal Rophé and a team of vocal soloists including Véronique Gens and Michael Spyres.

REVIEWS:

This two-disc set brings together all of these rare vocal pieces by the composer: five shorter settings for choir and orchestra, and three cantatas, each with three characters taking part in the plot, which followed a more or less fixed sequence of introduction, recitative and aria, a duet, a trio and a brief conclusion. First published more than half a century after Ravel's death in 1937, these test pieces for the Prix de Rome have never acquired the popularity of his later and more mature works, but they are no mean pieces and are worth more than their reputation as academic exercises might suggest. These are compositions that are deftly crafted, full of attractive melodies, harmonically refined, and very often deeply sensitive. Indeed, they encapsulate all of the future Ravel hallmarks that were to make him one of the twentieth century's leading French composers.

Pascal Rophé draws some convincing performances and, in his hands, the music has an immediacy that keeps it consistently fresh and vivid. More than a collector's item which should attract the interest of all music lovers - Ravel aficionados in particular. Sonics and booklet notes are first-rate.

-- Classical Music Daily



Billboard chart-topping violinist Rachel Barton Pine releases her 36th album and fourth for AVIE with her first recordings of two repertory staples, violin concertos by Edward Elgar and Max Bruch. The two works – Elgar’s only concerto for violin and Bruch’s first – straddle the turn of the 20th century but have in common a Romantic hue which Rachel probes with her rich, soulful tone.

The album is dedicated to “the memory of a musical hero and generous friend, Sir Neville Marriner,” who was to have reunited with Rachel on this album. She was fortunate to work with him on the scores, with Sir Neville vividly relating accounts of his teacher Billy Reed, former leader of the London Symphony Orchestra, who collaborated with Elgar on the creation of his violin concerto. Grammy Award-winning conductor Andrew Litton brings his own Romantic pedigree to the recording, as does the BBC Symphony Orchestra and celebrated producer Andrew Keener who himself has overseen award winning versions of the Elgar and Bruch concertos.

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REVIEW:

Pine’s interpretation of the Elgar is as emotionally satisfying as it is dazzling. The slow movement is mysteriously veiled and luminous, providing a palpable sense of the music’s darker undercurrents. She is most impressive, perhaps, in the finale, where her easy virtuosity sends sparks flying, though never at the expense of the long line.

Her performance of the Bruch is wholly persuasive in its mittel-European heartiness. The outer movements abound with snap and spice, and the Adagio has a warm solemnity that, one might argue, offers a foretaste of Elgarian nobilmente. The recorded sound is glorious, with a near-ideal balance between soloist and orchestra.

– Gramophone

Grammy Award-winner Alex Klein, former principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, performs sonatas that signify the oboe’s 20th-century reemergence as a brilliant solo instrument. One of the world’s most famous oboe players, Klein says he waited to acquire a professional lifetime’s worth of experience before putting his stamp on the six sonatas heard here. With pianist Phillip Bush, Klein plays works that he says “define the modern oboe”: Camille Saint-Saëns’ jovial, late-Romantic Sonata for Oboe and Piano, Op. 166; York Bowen’s lushly beautiful Sonata for Oboe and Pianoforte, Op. 85; Henri Dutilleux’s emotionally wide-ranging Sonata for Oboe and Piano; Petr Eben’s youthful, inventive Oboe Sonata, Op.1; Francis Poulenc’s late, philosophical Sonata for Oboe and Piano, FP 185; and Eugène Bozza’s Sonata for Oboe and Piano, an ethereal, rarely heard tour de force. Klein possesses a “tone so unique and beautiful that musicians from around the globe would flock to [Chicago’s] Symphony Center to hear him play” (Chicago Magazine). He won a Grammy Award in 2002 for Best Instrumental Solo Performance (with Orchestra) for his recording of Richard Strauss’s oboe concerto with conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

REVIEW:

Oboe playing simply does not get any better than this. The collaborative support of pianist Phillip Bush could also not be bettered, nor could the recorded sound offered by Cedille. This recital, then, is nothing less than an essential acquisition for any fan of the oboe or superlative wind playing in general.

– Fanfare

This release features the works of Gywneth Walker, one of the most important composers of our modern day. Widely performed throughout the world, the music of Gwyneth Walker is beloved by performers and audiences alike for its energy, beauty, reverence, drama and humor. Dr. Walker is a graduate of Brown University and the Hartt School of Music. Walker's catalog includes over 300 commissioned works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, chorus, and solo voice.

“There's a certain nakedness to a jazz duo. Everything is out there and exposed - no crashing cymbals to hide behind, or bass lines to get lost in. It often brings out a different side of your playing, a brutal honesty that is left after everything else is stripped away. Here is where we ended up...” Kevin Jones recently joined the Florida State University College of Music faculty as Assistant Professor of Jazz Trombone in 2016 after previously holding teaching appointments at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of South Carolina, Lander University, and Presbyterian College. As a performing artist, Dr. Jones toured with James Brown, Kenny Loggins, the Ringling Bros. Circus, and Princess Cruise Lines. He has numerous performing credits with jazz and commercial artists including the Temptations, Bucky Pizzarelli, Aretha Franklin, Joshua Redman, David Sanborn, Bill Holman, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Jim McNeely, Burt Bacharach, and Barry Manilow. Bill Peterson began his career in Chicago as a pianist and conductor/arranger/contractor for many celebrity artists, sharing the stage with celebrity greats including Ramsey Lewis, Diane Schuur, Patti Labelle, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, Smokey Robinson, Red Buttons, Suzanne Somers, Steve Allen, Joan Rivers, Morey Amsterdam, Kathie Lee Gifford, Mary Hart, Bob Newhart, Tony Bennett, George Burns, Danny Thomas, and Las Vegas sensation, Danny Gans.

Classical Music

Music friends, that’s how trumpet player Jan van Duikeren puts his relationship to drummer John Engels. Inspired by their friendship, Jan started writing tunes for John and asked him for his favorite compositions to record. Their chemistry lead to the establishment of the quartet JvD4 in 2015 and to the recording of Dear John. Even before the recording of Dear john started in June 2015, the quartet was invited to play at Tokyo Jazz festival and some other Japanese venues. Both Jan and John love Jan. Jan performs in Japan almost every year, with Candy Dulfer, Trijntje Oosterhuis or Jazzinvaders. John, who turned 80 this year, experienced one of this career highlights in Japan in 1987, when he recorded a live record with Chet Baker.

Classical Music

After a highly successful recordings of works by Brahms, the Schumanns, and Chopin, Imogen Cooper plunges into the world of another great romantic, Franz Liszt, and places him alongside that other giant, Richard Wagner. This is an evocative programme of original compositions and intimate transcriptions, ranging from poetic movements from the Années de Pèlerinage: Italie to dark and deeply elegiac pieces, including Liszt's La lugubre gondola I and Wagner's Elegie. It also features a transcription by Zoltán Kocsis of the intensely passionate prelude to Tristan und Isolde. The famous pianist and conductor died prematurely in November, 2016. It was his work that inspired this recording to begin with, and Imogen Cooper dedicates the album to his memory. Breathtaking music in unique interpretations: romanticism without melodrama, virtuosity without fuss.