Almost 2 hours of relaxing, easy listening classical music drawn from masterpieces by the world' greatest composers.

Schoenberg' polyphonic tone poem Pelleas und Melisande is often compared to Debussy' opera based on the same text by Maurice Maeterlinck. According to the composer, "The first performance, 1905, in Vienna, under my own direction, provoked riots amo.

Brahms' lifelong preoccupation with the solo voice can be heard to great effect in this sixth volume of his complete songs. The ghostly and dreamlike opening of the Four Duets, Op. 28 and moods of desolation and loss in the Nine Songs, Op. 69 are linked by the unusually disparate subjects in each set, while the playful spirit of southern Italy and Spain forms part of Op. 58. The programme ends with great musical beauty, depth, and even touches of crude humour in Five Songs, Op. 72.

1883 was a fruitful year for cello composition as Christoph Croisé’s new recording reveals. That year marked Edvard Grieg’s return to composition after a period of conducting the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, with the Sonata in A minor, his only work for cello and piano. Also that year, Richard Strauss was writing for the same combination at the age of just 19, producing his Sonata in F. Gabriel Fauré embarked on a cello sonata in 1880; only the slow movement transpired and was published and premiered as the stand-alone piece Élégie in 1883. Christoph’s regular performing partner, Oxana Shevchenko, joins him in this beautifully balanced recording of works for cello and piano.

2006 Grammy nominee for Best Classical Crossover Album.

Includes work(s) by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Paris discovered Massenet's Griselidis at the Opera-Comique on 20 November 1901. The work is based on a medieval folktale retold by Boccaccio and Perrault, among others, and already set to music several times in the Baroque era. It gave Massenet the opportunity to handle the 'Gothic' colouring of which the early twentieth century could not get enough. The inventive libretto by Armand Silvestre and Eugene Morand explores unusually contrasted registers: the religious, the fantastical, the sentimental and the warlike. Above all, the presence of a scene-stealing Devil, saddled with a cantankerous wife, offers the possibility of contrasting the serious (or sublime) and the comic (or grotesque). Massenet thus produced a rare example of cross-genre equilibrium, a jewel of French demi-caractere, typical of the Opera-Comique repertory. Although the opera renounces spoken dialogue, theatrical declamation nevertheless creeps into a few particularly successful scenes. Two magnificent baritone roles - the Marquis and the Devil - oppose each other with the full trappings of Romantic vocality, while Griselidis makes a noble and introspective heroine, the perfect model of the French soprano.

Tchaikovsky has long maintained his position as among the most popular of all composers, his unequalled gift for melody and colorful orchestration given added depth through a rich Russian soulfulness. The Second Piano Concerto has always lived under the shadow of the famous First but, played here in the composer's original version, is full of life-enhancing character and emotion. Both this and the Concert Fantasia also contain beautiful chamber music sections allowing unique interaction between soloist and orchestra.

-----

REVIEWS:

Nebolsin opts for a reading that is refreshingly mellow, almost intimate and, above all, profoundly lyrical. His focus is on the shape of the phrase, inflected with the most delicate rubato. Stern and the New Zealanders mirror this rhetorical flexibility with great skill and subtlety. The finale has a fleet lightness, heightening the overall golden bravura of the concerto.

– Gramophone

Nebolsin hardly puts a foot wrong, and Michael Stern secures rhythmically vibrant playing from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

– BBC Music Magazine

PLAY! Is Henning Ull�n's second album under his own name. Together with Mauritz Agnas on double bass and Nils Agnas on drums, the trio offers music with a melancholic undertone, yet infused with a joy of playing. The title of the album, also the title of the second track urges us to play, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and improvisation in it's simplest form. On the other hand, the music is rich, oscillating between well-composed, sometimes complex passages and freer sections that leave room for improvisation. The album is infused with a driving high-energy vibe. At times, the boundaries blur between what is composed and what is improvised. In addition to the trio format, the album also includes some shorter solo improvisations where Ull�n for the first time on record presents his solo-playing. Henning Ull�n is an award-winning pianist and composer primarily active in jazz and improvisational music. He studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Berklee College of Music, and the conservatory in Paris (CNSDMP). Henning Ull�n was one of Sweden's most promising and acclaimed young jazz trumpeters when he had to end his trumpet career in 2019 due to a rare disease that caused dizziness and headaches in connection with playing the trumpet. He then quickly transitioned to the piano and released his first album, Debut, in 2021.

Having completed the entire trilogy of Handel's Concerti grossi, the Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin presents a recording of the first six Concerti grossi, Op. 6 by the composer, ensemble leader and violin virtuoso Arcangelo Corelli, who received the almost cult-like reverence during his lifetime. The composer had been experimenting with this one of the most distinctive forms of instrumental music of the Baroque era since the late 1670s, but it was only towards the end of his life that he sought to publish these compositions and selected only twelve exemplary pieces from what was probably a much larger collection. He laid the foundations of this instrumental form for future composers such as the aforementioned Georg Frederic Handel, who paid tribute to the Italian Baroque master with his two opuses. The Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin and it's two concertmasters, Mayumi Hirasaki and Georg Kallweit, who demonstrate their extraordinary virtuosity, only prove why they are regarded as one of the most influential period-instrument ensembles of today. The Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin has a substantial PENTATONE discography, including the Diapason d'Or awarded CANTATA with Bejun Mehta (2018), Handel's Concerti grossi Op. 3 and 6 (released in 2019 and 2020), Telemann's Miriways (2020), Handel's Messiah (2020), Haydn's L'isola disabitata (2021), La Passione with Christina Landshamer (2022), a recording of Mozart's Paris and Haffner symphonies and the Oboe Concerto with Xenia Loffler (2023), Telemann's Ino (2024), and a recording with Mozart's symphonies Nos. 29 & 33 and the Clarinet Concerto with Ernst Schlader (2024).

Wind Takes Flight began with a simple yet powerful idea: to reimagine the music of Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century mystic and composer, through the lens of modern electronic soundscapes. The title, drawn from one of Hildegard's sacred poems featured on the album, also reflects her love of birds and the natural world. These have been enduring sources of inspiration for us throughout this creative journey. As collaborators, we, - Julia Sinclair, an English soprano soloist, and Marijn Cinjee, a Dutch electronic musician - were drawn to the timeless spirituality and beauty of Hildegard's work. The idea of bringing together our two musical worlds to create something new and transformative felt both exciting and inevitable. In April 2023, we debuted an experimental live improvisation inspired by Hildegard's hymn O ignis Spiritus paracliti at Stone Nest in London, in an immersive listening experience using more than 40 loudspeakers driven by the 4DSOUND spatial sound system. The audience's response to the soaring vocal lines and immersive electronic textures confirmed that we were onto something special, and that performance became the foundation for Wind Takes Flight, the album's title track. Over the next eighteen months, we poured ourselves into this project, crafting what would become Wind Takes Flight. The album is a conversation across time - beginning with Hildegard's chants and evolving into a love letter to her music, merging her sacred compositions with contemporary sound design while remaining true to the deep spirituality and reverence of her music. Premiering the album live in spatial sound at Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam was an unforgettable experience, captured in the drama and beauty of Ekstasis, a piece created for that performance. Now, we're thrilled to share Wind Takes Flight with you. This album is more than music; it's a bridge between past and present, an invitation to step into a space where ancient echoes meet modern innovation, and where the spirit of Hildegard of Bingen - artist, composer, and pioneer - soars anew.

Embarking on a series of recordings of classical originals for symphonic wind band is an adventurous quest. On their second volume, the Marine Band of the Royal Netherlands Navy and Major Arjan Tien decided to compile German-Austrian gems. From Beethoven (1810) to Hindemith (1951), this program illustrates the development and expansion of the symphonic wind band across nearly 150 years.

Colorful, original, whimsical, and adventuresome, this collection of musical short stories from one of America’s most diverse composers has something to please every ear.



SCHICKELE A Year in the Catskills. Gardens 1. What Did You Do Today at Jeffrey’s House 2. Dream Dances 3. Diversions • Blair Wind Qnt members; 1,2 Melissa Rose (pn); 3 Felix Wang (vc) • NAXOS 8.559687 (52:03)


The Blair Wind Quintet is a faculty ensemble of the Blair School of Music of Vanderbilt University. Though a woodwind player myself, I am not familiar with their work, so this release, the second on which this ensemble appears, is a pleasant introduction to these fine musicians. Their performances here are mostly solo and in smaller groupings, with only the title work, A Year in the Catskills, played by the whole quintet. This last is one of a trio of works for resident ensembles funded by the Blair Commissioning Project. Peter Schickele’s quintet was joined by a piano trio from Susan Botti and a string quartet by György Kurtág; one can but imagine what a wildly incongruent faculty recital that could have made.


Schickele is, of course, best known in his persona of the researcher and exhumer of works by “the youngest and oddest of J. S. Bach’s 20-odd children.” Since 1965, the year of his first public concert, he has created a body of entertaining musical parodies of familiar musical forms for his fictional P. D. Q. Bach. There is another aspect of the composer, though, as many will know. Under his own name, he composes concert works for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, and vocalists, as well as scores for film, theater, and television. This disc presents a nice sampling of pieces for wind instruments, written over a 46-year period. They cross boundaries of genre and style with consummate skill, and are uniformly clever, lightweight, and charming. Even when fleetingly serious, they are never more than melancholy. They are more often humorous. In fact, minus the more obvious burlesquing that goes on in a P. D. Q. Bach pastiche, his serious works sound remarkably akin to his comedic bread and butter. The unexpected instrumental colors are a bit more subdued, the odd cadence more integrated, and the stylistic incongruities less outrageous. What is played for laughs when acting The Professor is quirky and playful in the realm of the serious composer, but the singular identity can never be in question.


Consider the four seasonal portraits of A Year in the Catskills (2009), presented in Baroque canons and a fantasy, and rounded out with a fifth movement called “Fast Driving,” which bebops the listener back to more modern urban surroundings. Or What Did You Do Today at Jeffrey’s House? (1988) for horn and piano, which remembers childhood games (one is relieved to learn, given his compositional credits for O! Calcutta! ) with a piano-stride parade and a boogie-woogie carnival with dancing bears framing a very brief compulsory nap. Finally, there is Dream Dances (1988), a suite for flute, oboe, and cello, which juxtaposes a not very Baroque minuet and sarabande with a jitterbug, a demented French gallop, and a waltz that only needs John Ferrante and some silly lyrics to become one of the Diverse Ayres on Sundrie Notions.


The two remaining earlier works give some idea of where Schickele might have headed if the fictional “minimeister of Wein-am-Rhein” had not been such a huge success. In these we hear a composer still working in academia, creating works that reflect seriously (well, all right, more seriously) on relatively contemporary styles. Gardens (1968) for oboe and piano is an atmospheric triptych with overtones of Messiaen, though this is more obvious in New York Philharmonic oboist Joseph Robinson’s recording on Cala. Diversions (1963) for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon channels neoclassical Stravinsky in portraits of the bath, a game of billiards, and a New York bar. It is all very engaging, and wonderfully presented by musicians and engineers. Naxos has a winner here, and I hope we hear more from the Blair Wind Quintet. Meanwhile, woodwind fanciers are hereby alerted to a must-buy release.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames


-----------

It is a good and joyful thing to see a nice collection of Peter Schickele’s concert music. Not that he is unduly famous for his P.D.Q. Bach character, but as a composer of serious music he shines as one of the most original voices of his generation. Schickele has not invented a new wheel, rather he has managed to take traditional musical gestures and season them with his own invention with the skill of a master chef. This collection of chamber music, deftly rendered by members of the faculty of Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, is a showcase of the composer’s unique wit and creativity.

Commissioned by the Blair Quintet, A Year in the Catskills was brand new at the time of this recording. It is a picturesque work; full of the kind of interesting twists of melody that make Schickele’s music so fascinating. He is prone to shifting one or two notes in a tune by a semitone here or a semitone there to make what could sound quite ordinary into something that is unique and quirky.

The brief triptych Gardens, for oboe and piano is a study in colors. One of Schickele’s outstanding features is his ability to say so much in a very short time. I wouldn’t call him a miniaturist, but he can get his point across with little fuss. Such are these elegant little pieces that depict a garden at the three parts of the day. Jared Hauser plays with a sweet unforced tone, and is sensitively accompanied by pianist Melissa Rose.

What Did You Do Today at Jeffrey’s House? is a bit of nostalgia based on memories of the composer’s playtime with a childhood friend. These are whimsical pieces, pulling from a number of styles including a rollicking boogie-woogie ending. Scored for horn and piano, Leslie Norton and Melissa Rose find all the charm of these brief episodes. I can’t say that I was completely in love with the pieces themselves, as they came across to these ears as a bit contrived.

The outstanding work in this recital is the lovely set of Dream Dances. Scored for flute, oboe and cello, Schickele combines the old and the new by creating a suite that is reminiscent of a Baroque partita, but just for fun he throws in the semi-modern by replacing the Courrant with a Jitterbug and the Allemande with a Waltz. It is pretty much genius really, and Jane Kirschner, Jared Hauser and Felix Wang deliver an elegant performance full of wit.

Diversions, scored for oboe, clarinet and bassoon are again whimsical, and depict three specific scenes, a hot bath, a billiard game, and a New York bar. Although I felt that the composer captured his scenes well, I can’t say that I was particularly moved by these little snapshots, in spite of their being very well played.

Peter Schickele is reported to be one of the most performed composers in America, and it is easy to see why. The term accessible gets too much airplay, but his music is almost always captivating, mainly due to his double ability to color within the lines while choosing shades that don’t come from just any box of crayons. A good listen.

Colorful, original, whimsical, and adventuresome, this collection of musical short stories from one of America’s most diverse composers has something to please every ear.


-- Kevin Sutton, MusicWeb International

This disc is a double tribute. The first work, Pictured Within, is a collective effort conceived as a major project to mark the 60th birthday of conductor Martyn Brabbins, whose reputation in new music and British music is beyond reproach.

Following the pattern of Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Pictured Within is a series of 14 variations on a theme, each of which takes up the character of the equivalent variation in Elgar’s work, the difference being that here 14 different composers have each contributed a variation in tribute to Brabbins.

Also on the SACD is Jaakko Kuusisto’s Symphony, a fitting tribute to the composer, conductor, and violinist who passed away in 2022. Illness left Jaakko no time to complete his work, so it fell to his brother Pekka – who conducts here – and Jari Eskola to finish it. The result is a powerful piece, full of familiar themes and melodies derived from Jaakko’s existing compositions, to which are added autobiographical extra-musical elements. The moving conclusion is a collage of fragmented phrases inspired by the signals emitted by lighthouses and ships, as if Kuusisto’s spirit had been sent out to sea.

From the early days of the twentieth century until the Anschluss forced him into American exile, Richard Stohr (1874-1967) was one of the more prominent personalities in Viennese musical life, as composer, teacher and author. Earlier releases in this series of recordings revealed him to have an individual voice, somewhere between Bruckner, Mahler, Korngold and Strauss. It can be heard in it's full glory in his Chamber Symphony of 1912, a sunlit score modest in it's orchestral demands but expansive in it's ambit and generous in it's ceaseless flow of gorgeous melody.

The orchestra relishes Delius’s contrasts.

It is a delight to welcome performances of two of Delius’s American-inspired works by forces from Florida, where Delius lived from 1892 to 1895. Although Sea Drift, a setting of a poem by Whitman, is overtly about an American subject, the music is more universal than specifically American. While the initial drafts of Appalachia were made in Paris the year after Delius left Florida - Marco Polo, Naxos’s sister label, once had a recording (8.220452) of this earlier version in their catalogues under the title of American Rhapsody - the work was very substantially expanded to the form we have it here some eight years later, long after Delius had returned to Europe.

I first heard Sea Drift in the original Beecham recording issued on a limited edition Delius Society release of four 78s (now on Naxos) - I still have them. Beecham’s account of the score remains a marvel of sympathetic identification with the spirits of both Whitman and Delius. Unfortunately all of his recordings - and there are a good many of them, from studio and live broadcasts, not all currently available - are in mono. This is a score which absolutely demands the atmosphere of stereophonic sound. Similarly Beecham never recorded Appalachia in stereo, and his last (mono) LP (reissued by Sony) suffered from a baritone who had seemingly been chosen for his ability to sing Danish for the coupled recording of the Arabesque rather than any ability to sing sympathetically in English for the closing ‘negro spiritual’ section of Appalachia. One cannot possibly accuse Leon Williams of sounding un-American, but the tone of his voice is nevertheless rather English and rather too polite. He is not helped by the rather close proximity of the microphone, which brings him closer than the rest of the performers rather than blending him into the whole. Bryn Terfel, in his Chandos recording of Sea Drift with Richard Hickox (coupled with the Songs of Sunset and Songs of Farewell), digs far more deeply into the meaning of the words than Williams does here. The emotion of the latter is too generalised, and his voice lacks the light and shade of Terfel or John Shirley-Quirk on Hickox’s earlier Decca recording.

Appalachia fares rather better in this reading. The orchestra relishes the contrasts in Delius’s set of variations, with a nicely winsome touch in passages such as the waltz variation at 19.57; Beecham allowed a very gusty breath of the ballroom to intrude here. Earlier they are beautifully atmospheric in the passage from 17.01 which recalls Delius’s Florida opera The magic fountain. The chorus is nicely distanced in their brief interjections in the earlier variations, and come into their own with the own variation at 27.50, when they appear to move closer. Unfortunately the close microphone placement given to Williams at 31.52 serves only to emphasise how precisely English is his diction, and the choir are now very far forward indeed, which brings a sense of stridency which is entirely foreign to the Delius idiom. The passage at 33.28 sounds uncomfortably like the closing titles for a Hollywood Western - not at all the area of America that Delius had in mind.

This Naxos disc duplicates exactly the contents of one of Richard Hickox’s earliest recordings of British music, issued originally on an Argo LP in 1980, with Shirley-Quirk at the peak of his form in the baritone solos, which is certainly a reading which deserves to be in any Delius collection - it remains available from Arkiv Music . The Naxos recording is more immediate in general sound than the analogue Hickox, but the latter has plenty of atmosphere and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - many of whose members must have played this music under Beecham - respond with affection to Hickox’s somewhat slower tempos. Indeed Sanderling could sometimes be accused of hurrying, as at the baritone entry at 2.58 where the soloist sounds a bit hustled. It is important to keep Delius’s music moving, not allowing it to stagnate, but the flow can be maintained without undue haste; Sanderling shaves nearly four minutes off Hickox’s speeds in his earlier recording, almost a fifth of the whole duration of a fairly short work. Beecham, even with the constraint of 78 sides, was slower than this, and Delius always expressed his conviction that this conductor understood his music better than anyone else.

It is always a suspicion that when one knows a particular performance well one might be allowing nostalgia to colour reactions to a performance. To test this I played the recording of Sea Drift to a friend of mine who, although he knew and loved the poem, did not previously know the music at all. He like me vastly preferred Hickox, observing that although that performance was noticeably slower, it at the same time had a sense of purposeful motion that Sanderling lacked. He also actually preferred the more integrated sound of the older recording.

Naxos’s cover photograph by Giorgio Fochesato is particularly beautiful and appropriate, and the booklet commendably includes the complete texts of both works. The orchestra and chorus both perform superbly; it is nice to hear a really big choir sing this music - 137 singers are listed - as Delius would have expected in his earlier performances. They maintain pitch even in the most exposed passages of Sea Drift.

-- Paul Corfield Godfrey, MusicWeb International

Internationally established musicians Hanna Shybayeva (piano), Utrecht String Quartet and Luis Cabrera (double bass) present on this album the rarely performed and even more rarely recorded chamber music transcriptions of Beethoven's piano concertos Nos. 3 and 4 by Vinzenz Lachner. Hanna Shybayeva started her international career at the age of eleven as a "child prodigy." She recorded for several labels, bringing out repertoire by Ravel, Prokofiev, Chopin, Takemitsu, Shostakovich, and the complete Etudes-Tableaux of Rachmaninov. Since 2008 she has been a member of the New European Ensemble, one of the most innovative, vibrant, and versatile ensembles for New Music. Since 2013 she has been a professor at the International Anton Rubinstein Music Academy in Dusseldorf and at Conservatorio Giacomo Puccini La Spezia.

Peter Donohoe's first album devoted to Busoni was enthusiastically received by the critics, and nominated for a BBC Music Magazine award. This second volume offers playing and musicality of the same high standards. His programme opens with two of Busoni's finest Bach transcriptions, widely seen as a pinnacle of the repertoire for pianistic virtuosity, and much more widely played than Busoni's own compositions. This is followed by the Variations on Chopin's Prelude in C minor - a work in which Busoni demonstrates his innate skill of re-interpretation, and his mastery of counterpoint, and a piece he reworked several times. The following works are 'all Busoni' - the first and second sonatinas, and the Fantasia contrappuntistica, in the composer's later adaptation for two pianos. The first Steinway Artist of Indian origin, Karl Lutchmayer is equally renowned as a concert pianist, a lecturer, and a broadcaster. He joins Peter Donohoe in the Fantasia, and also performs the Second Sonatina.

Winner of the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, the British mezzo-soprano Katie Bray has become known for her magnetic stage presence and gleaming, expressive tone. Katie writes: 'Youkali, It is the land of our desires, It is happiness, it is pleasure... But it is a dream, a folly, There is no Youkali! This song was my first encounter with Kurt Weill, more than twenty years ago, and that yearning, mesmerising tango has been a constant companion ever since. The sentiment behind 'Youkali' touched me deeply, and seemed to echo Weill's own search for a place of personal and artistic freedom, a German Jew forced into exile in 1933 owing to the rise of the Nazi regime. He moved around the world, and with each new country came a reinvention of himself and some more miraculous musical shape-shifting. 'Youkali' is Weill's 'Somewhere over the rainbow', an idea that resonates strongly with me, and seems painfully relevant to us all as I write this, in 2025, yet again living in a world at war. My performances of Weill's songs have always centred around 'Youkali' and Weill's search for a place to belong and to be free. I have wanted to make this album for many years, and am thrilled finally to have had the chance to do so with such a special team of collaborators and friends. It is my tribute to Kurt Weill, the chameleon, in all his glory, and a tribute to us all in our search for kindness, love, and peace.'

Remembered today for the Olympic Anthem, Spyridon Samaras was the most distinguished Greek composer of his day and the first to gain international recognition. By the time Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle was produced, Samaras was a well-established and much-admired opera composer in the Italian Romantic style. The narrative of the opera sees the mischievous plans of the Duke of Richelieu descending into a complex tangle of amorous deceptions, tests of faithfulness and the perils of dueling. The score for this world premiere recording has been painstakingly restored by Byron Fidetzis.

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

I sure hope the folks in Buffalo know what a prize they have in JoAnn Falletta. Her Naxos discography has few peers in terms of imaginative programming and quality of results. The city couldn’t ask for a more positive or alluring cultural calling card, and the present release offers a case in point. There have been many fine recordings of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, but this one stands with the best: for clarity, elegance, distinguished solo work (superb oboe, William Preucil’s solo violin), you name it. Although scored for a chamber orchestra, it’s amazing how congested and fussy so many performances sound. Not here. Just listen to the opening processional of “The Dinner,” with its bold horns and transparent textures. Great stuff.

However, the real item of interest is the “Symphony-Suite” arranged by D. Wilson Ochoa from Ariadne auf Naxos, the original companion work to Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Arranging suites from Strauss’ operas is a trend that can only be encouraged. Strauss did it himself, of course, but mostly without much enthusiasm or imagination. So here’s a case where the intervention of more caring hands is clearly called for.

This suite, forty minutes in all, contains three chunks from the prologue and four from the opera itself. It is gorgeous. Even those who know the opera well may be surprised at how much lovely material slips by without notice in stage performances, such as the “Intermezzo” music on the second to last track here (sound clip). You do get some of the more famous bits (“Es gibt ein Reich,” for example, and the closing scene), but it really is astonishing how much care Strauss lavished on sections that flit by as mere accompaniment–never mind the thematic interest that they contain. Here, thanks to Falletta and the folks in Buffalo, in this luminously played and recorded performance, we can savor them afresh. So what are you waiting for? Go for it.

- ClassicsToday

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) was an Italian composer and pianist, widely admired for his melodic gift, refined craftsmanship, and versatility across genres. Although best known for his large output for guitar, his works for solo piano reveal a distinct and highly personal voice that bridges tradition and modernity. Castelnuovo-Tedesco studied composition with Ildebrando Pizzetti and was influenced both by his Italian heritage and by the French Impressionists, particularly Ravel and Debussy, whose colors and textures often echo in his keyboard writing. His style is influenced by Neo-Classicism, vivid, brilliant, with the occasional odd dissonance, strongly rhythmical and full of catchy melodies. He fled Anti-semitism before WWII and settled in Hollywood where he successfully composed film music for more than 200 films. Apart from his importance as a guitar composer Castelnuovo-Tedesco created a small but appealing oeuvre for piano solo. This new recording presents a selection of these evocative and tuneful works, which deserve to be played more often in the concert halls. Excellent performance by young Italian pianist Adriano Murgia. He has participated in masterclasses with internationally renowned pianists, including Aldo Ciccolini, Maurizio Baglini, Artur Pizarro, Boris Petrushansky, Boris Berman, and Roberto Prosseda, with whom he earned his Master's Degree in Piano Performance at the Venezze Conservatory in Rovigo.

Who on this planet has never seen KING KONG and heard Max Steiner’s powerful innovative music more than once? Here’s a treasure trove of classic scary music that these 20th-century composers gave their best and probably never thought would ever be heard again and especially newly recorded! Film fans and scholars in every future century will continue to discover and study this music art form and give the composers their unexpected and rightful immortality!
— Craig Spaulding, Screen Archives Entertainment

If Massenet is best-known as the champion of French opera, his contribution to the genre of the m�lodie merits reassessment - as is demonstrated by this programme of exquisitely orchestrated songs, all of which have remained in manuscript form. The Expressions lyriques form the pinnacle of these experiments, blending speech and song. The cycle Chansons des bois d'Amaranthe is also notable for the originality of it's scoring: a quartet of singers in dialogue with an orchestra animated by a voluble piano part.

Sean Shibe returns to the classical guitar on Profesión, bringing together works by Agustín Barrios, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginastera. The album derives its name from Barrios’s “Profesión de Fe” (profession of faith), a poem which he often used as a preface to his concerts. The poem references indigenous mythological deities, and praises the power of the guitar as the ultimate conduit to the secrets of the divine South-American destiny. Barrios’s La Catedral and Julia Florida are combined with Villa Lobos’s 12 Études, while Ginastera’s Sonata completes the program.

These works by South American composers begin with homage and pastiche in reverence of the Old World, but build towards a totally original idiom - musical magical realism. The repertoire is voluminous, indulging in excess, and narcotic, and as such creates a counterweight to the reserved and introspective nature of Shibe’s acclaimed classical predecessor album Camino.

This will be Shibe’s first-ever album focusing on repertoire that was originally written for the classical guitar, and he plays a Hauser copy built for Julian Bream. It was considered one of the best instruments of the 1930s, and fits the sound world of this program like a glove.

REVIEWS:

It’s an extraordinary account [of the Villa-Lobos], bursting with nuance and personality and easily rivaling Julian Bream’s classic, late-1970s version.

— Gramophone

This is a gleaming and brilliant album that doesn’t fail to awaken the senses to the exhilarating world of un-adulterated acoustic sound.

— BBC Music Magazine