A FAMILY CHRISTMAS

A Family Christmas - Songs and Music for the Festive Season

Leroy Anderson (1908-1975); John Rutter (b.1945)Victor Herbert (1859-1924); Englebert Humperdinck (1854-1921)Robert Chilcott (b. 1955); Cesar Franck (1822-1890); et al Eton College Chapel ChoirRalph Allwood, conductorDavid Goode, organ Anderson: A Christmas Festival; Musical Sleigh Ride; Traditional:Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; Victor Herbert: March of the WoodenSoldiers; Bob Chilcott: Hey Now!; Cesar Franck: Panis Angelicus;John Rutter: Twelve Days of Christmas; Humperdick: Sandman's Song; Evening Prayer; John Williams: Somewhere in my Memory;Waldteufel: Skater's Waltz; Meakins: Penguin Song; Lane: Sleighbell Serenade; Britten: This Little Babe; Harrison: Christmas Hope;Koschat: Scheewalzer; etc.

The Lark Quartet brings its stellar 30 year career to a close with this celebratory album. On it, Lark Quartet performs premieres by John Harbison, Kenji Bunch, Anna Weesner and Andrew Wagoner, all composed for the occasion. Assisting Lark Quartet are Yousif Sheronick, percussion (Bunch), Romie de Guise-Langlois, clarinet (Weesner) and the Lark's four founding members (Waggoner). The Lark Quartet continues to delight audiences with its energy, passionate commitment and artistry since its inception in 1985. The Lark has performed in many of the world’s great cultural centers including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Library of Congress, London’s Wigmore Hall, L’Opéra de la Bastille in Paris, and appeared at international festivals including Lockenhaus, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Mostly Mozart, Istanbul Festival, Wolftrap and the Beethoven Festival in Moscow. Promising to deliver “a performance of grace, proportion and burnished brilliance” (The Washington Post), The Lark Quartet offers audiences new insights into the art of chamber music through programs that begin with the ensemble virtuosity of the western tradition and continue into recent music from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, all while regularly sharing the stage with dynamic collaborators.

This anticipated release is the first volume in a new series devoted to the music of Gabriel Faure, which is spearheaded by Louis Lortie. Lortie states in the booklet notes: “this album purposely travels through Faure’s various creative periods, from easily appealing early pieces such as the Pavane and the melodie “Apres un reve” through to the late and unjustly neglected Preludes, a masterpiece of condensed harmonic and melodic audacity.” Lortie’s previous series dedicated to Chopin has garnered critical praise. BBC Music called the series “an exceptionally high order of playing.” The same kind of praise is expected for this new series. French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie tours extensively across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He has won widespread acclaim for his Chopin and Ravel interpretations, and has performed all five Beethoven concertos and all of the Mozart concertos. The London Times described his playing as “ever immaculate, ever imaginative.”

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REVIEW:

Lortie understands the type of discretion needed to make this music sing, knows the veiled colours it requires, and has the sort of technique to project Fauré’s signature elusiveness. Above all, he identifies fully with Fauré’s chromaticism and understands its use to create space and light.

– ClassicalSource.com

Louis Lortie’s second volume of Fauré features Nocturnes, Barcarolles, and the Theme and Variations in C sharp minor, along with transcriptions of the ‘Pie Jesu’ and ‘In paradisum’ from the Requiem.

For over three decades, French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie has performed world-wide, building a reputation as one of the world’s most versatile pianists. He extends his interpretative voice across a broad spectrum of repertoire, and his performances and award-winning recordings attest to his remarkable musical range. In demand on five continents, Lortie has established long-term partnerships with orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France and Dresden Philharmonic in Europe, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, San Diego Symphony and St Louis Symphony in the US. In his native Canada he regularly performs with the major orchestras in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and Calgary. Further afield, collaborations include the Shanghai Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, and the Adelaide and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. Regular partnerships with conductors include, among others, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Edward Gardner, Sir Andrew Davis, Jaap Van Zweden, Simone Young, Antoni Wit and Thierry Fischer.

REVIEWS:

Louis Lortie plays every work on the album with detailed tonal color and a fine sense of appropriate rubato. The use of rubato is one of the most difficult aspects of Fauréan performance; Claire Croiza, a singer who performed with composer in concert, once said that Fauré had a metronome in place of his heart. Interpreters who lavish Chopinesque rubato on Faure’s phrases can make the music seem cheap and sentimental, a trap into which Lortie never falls. I should note that Lortie’s Fauré is not the weak, sickly Fauré of the drawing room; these are very much concert performances, with significant core to the sound and a wide range of dynamics. Although the entire album features beautiful playing, I will single out two pieces: the Ballade and the Thème and Variations.

The performance of the Ballade is particularly striking. Although a successful rendition can make it come off as a gorgeous yet fairly relaxed piece, the Ballade is in fact satanically difficult. The work’s prickly technical nature stems in part from its key signature (F# Major – six sharps!), but also from Fauré’s multi-layered texture that demands careful voicing of a melodic line that is often combined with myriad scales and arpeggios in the accompaniment. Liszt himself threw up his hands after attempting to sightread it, and Fauré later transcribed it for piano and orchestra, lessening the difficulty of the piano part to some extent. In Lortie’s hands, the solo version is enchanting, a veritable fairyland full of half-tints and sparkle.

Also remarkable is Lortie’s reading of the Thème et variations. This piece is a Gallic version of the Schumann Études symphoniques; it is elegant and moving at times, but lacks the obvious virtuosity of the older piece. As a result, few pianists tackle the Fauré, given the apathy it provokes in most audiences. Lortie is fearless in the thornier variations, playing at a breathless pace with much shape and detailed articulation. In the introspective variations, he plays with sensitivity and warmth.

– MusicWeb International

Lortie more than meets the pianistic and musical challenge of Fauré’s unshowy virtuosity, his riding of each dappled ebb and flow of the Barcarolles reflecting a mature mastery. Nor is there just the rarefied Fauré on show, his insouciant charm and playfulness being to the fore and captured perfectly in the Theme and Variations. Lortie provides an object lesson in pacing of the Nocturnes.

– BBC Music Magazine

The second volume of Louis Lortie’s series of Fauré recitals offers the kind of solace that repays repeated hearings, with the prospect of enjoyment increasing with each one. It is Lortie’s sincerity and naturalness, infused with the utmost sensitivity and a wide colouristic palette, that makes him a star shining only a fraction less brightly than the uneclipsed Thyssens-Valentin.

– Gramophone

A FEELING FOR SOMEONE

Ben van Oosten numbers among today's best-known organ virtuosos. His complete recordings of the organ works of Marcel Dupré, Louis Vierne, and Charles-Marie Widor are nothing short of legendary. It is thus not surprising that his invitation for a portrait of the grand Stahlhuth/Jann organ in Luxembourg's Dude-lange resulted in a "Festival of French Organ Music." This full CD program extending over almost eighty minutes captures a fascinating performance on a his-torical instrument of supreme tonal beauty.

Thirty years after having recorded Dvorák’s complete Symphonies on Chandos, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and its laureate conductor, Neeme Järvi, tackle another romantic Czech composer, Julius Fucík, famous for his more than 400 polkas, marches, and waltzes, a mouth-watering selection of which is featured here.

Fucík studied violin in his early years, switching later to the bassoon, with a subsidiary in percussion and timpani. Playing in Austro-Hungarian regiments, he gained invaluable experience of writing for military band and became a very prolific composer of marches. The most famous of these is of course Entry of the Gladiators, completed in 1899 and soon performed throughout the world. Full of energetic, effervescent Bohemian cross-rhythms, tuneful brass melodies (often now associated with a circus atmosphere), but also more lyrical expressions, this album is a festival in itself. - Chandos

Classical Music

A FESTIVAL OF ROMANIAN MUSIC

Classical Music

The composer Dominick Argento wrote that he would "like for the listener to be reminded of their own humanity. I want an emotional reaction, anywhere from joy to despair... something that reminds us that we're human." The sets of songs and cycles included in this brilliant recording all speak to this artistic goal and include settings of Olga and Anton Chekhov, Petrarch, Walt Whitman, Walter de la Mare, Alun Lewis, and Argento himself. Mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala, baritone Jesse Blumberg and pianists Martin Katz and JJ Pena join forces to present this tribute to a great American composer.

Dan Andersson died at the age of 32 in 1920, more than 100 years ago. His poetry is still relevant and beloved. Many can still recite his poems and sing many of the compositions. He is one of Sweden's most important poets, a romantic working-class poet who gave voice to the poor in the country, depicted areas and conditions in Sweden that had hardly been illuminated before. One of the great strengths of his poetry is that it is universal, human and beautiful. Nature, love and the conditions of life play the biggest role.

Classical Music

A Forest Unfolding is a collaborative work inspired by recent scientific research into the rich communication and subterranean connectivity between trees. Four writers-the environmentalists Bill McKibben and Joan Maloof, along with the novelists Richard Powers and Kim Stanley Robinson-selected prose passages and poems on the relations among people and trees. They presented these selections to four composers-Eric Moe, Melinda Wagner, Stephen Jaffe, and David Kirkland Garner-who set these words into a linked sequence of recitatives and arias. The resulting whole traces a narrative arc beginning with human estrangement from nature and ending with a glimpse of the endless cooperation that knits a forest together.

A Frauta de P�, released in 1975 when Carlos Walker was only 19, stands as a cult masterpiece of 1970s Brazilian music. An album where MPB (M�sica Popular Brasileira) sophistication meets jazz-fusion virtuosity and psychedelic imagination. Featuring an all-star cast of musicians including Jo�o Bosco, H�lio Delmiro, Jos� Roberto Bertrami (Azymuth), Gilson Peranzetta, and Roberto Quartin, the record delivers a rich, orchestral sound that continues to captivate collectors and DJs worldwide.

The ferment of the Enlightenment, the early signs of the Revolution and the intellectual debate on colonialism fuel this French odyssey. During the Age of Exploration, France experienced an unprecedented cultural fervor. Trade routes and distant cultures enriched it's identity. Exotic sounds and rhythms shaped both noble salons and concert halls. In this quest for new sonorities, by the mid-18th century, the cello finally gained prominence in France, replacing the viola da gamba, which had dominated European music for centuries. The emphasis on deep sonorities is the culmination of this recording, featuring compositions by Louis-Francois-Joseph Patouart and Martin Bertin. The latter's story is particularly significant, embodying the spirit of �the recording: he founded the French cello school, despite having started �his career with the viola da gamba

The album also contains additional tracks by Francois Couperin that are identified by generic Baroque era dance titles without specific details: Allemande, Sarabande, Sicilenne, Gavotte.

Marco Marazzoli was a composer, harpist, and singer, and as such moved in the highest circles of the clergy. This was certainly not only due to his own priesthood, but above all to the extraordinary quality of his creations. He was born around 1602 in Parma and died in Rome in 1662. He was successful with large-scale works and in the field of chamber music cantatas. Towards the end of his life, he composed a series of experimental vocal works for six voices and a small instrumental ensemble that even satisfied the demands of Christ's representative on earth. After all, in these miniature dramas, the composer and his poets celebrated the Pope as a man of peace, through whose mediation the Franco-Spanish War had ended in 1659. This recognition can still be felt today.

REVIEW:

Çedille’s collection of German violin sonatas opens with Johann Schop’s brief  Noblemen , a set of “divisions” influenced, according to the notes, by the English style. It offers Rachel Barton Pine an opportunity for engaging in the kind of brilliant rapid passagework that characterizes pieces of this kind. Throughout the program, Pine plays with a sound that falls a bit on the nasal, pinched side of the spectrum, yet without the timbral (or technical) mannerisms in which earlier period instrumentalists with similar timbral predilections used to indulge. The repertoire provides for a kind of collegiality in which the Trio revels in this varied program, and the engineers have balanced the performers in an ambiance that’s just reverberant enough to enhance the sound of their ensemble. Strongly recommended for its exuberant, virtuosic music-making, elegant yet without a trace of slickness and serious without a trace of ponderousness. 

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

The pieces on this album originate largely from the Christmette by Michael Praetorius. In addition, nativity hymns by a range of different composers from the same era have been compiled. In Lutheran style the compositions on this album include solo pieces, choir arrangements, double choral motets, instrumental pieces and of course the church organ repertoire. The listener can also hear pieces, which were not necessarily meant for Christmas, but fit the program very well. The function of some of the pieces is liturgical, like “Gloria,” “Our Father,” or the mighty Entrance-Prelude. Two other pieces are meditative moments about the name of Jesus. Many of the songs are well-known. However, the arrangements for soloists and/or choir from Praetorius and his contemporaries are rarely performed. The Early Music ensemble Margaretha Consort was founded in 2009. The ensemble is based in the Netherlands, but the singers and instrumentalists are from all over Europe.Over the years a very skilled team has been created, where knowledge, musicality, and congeniality go hand in hand.

The Hanseatic wealth of North Germany in the 17th century is reflected in its magnificent cathedrals, and the enormous grandeur of its church music was composed to fill the rich acoustics of these spaces. This programme presents a wide range of Easter music that displays the wealth of inventiveness in this period, enhancing the texts and finding different colors and surprising effects through improvisation and adaptation of the manuscripts. This early music is brought vividly to life by the acclaimed Margaretha Consort.

REVIEW:

This recording offers an excellent overview of the kind of Lutheran Church music one would have heard in the major cities and noble courts of northern Germany in the 17th Century. Jacob Handl’s ‘Ecce, Quomodo Moritur Iustus’ stands out as the only Latin motet on the program. Otherwise, it consists of German sacred concertos of varying dimensions. For instance, ‘Jesu Meines Lebens Leben’ by Dietrich Buxtehude sounds like a polychoral concerto, and Schütz’s ‘O Süsser, O Freundlicher’ sounds more like a sacred cantata, scored for solo tenor and continuo. Some pieces sound as though they replicate the timbre of a church congregation performing a strophic chorale melody to Sietze De Fries’s improvised organ part. Between the choral works, De Fries offers further improvisations, for example on the chorale melody ‘Jesu, Meine Freude’.

I am very taken with this recording, both for the selections and for the quality of the performances. Most of these works exhibit hallmarks of the stile moderno and indulge in the expressive properties of chromaticism and unusual harmonic juxtapositions. The notes are in English, but one will have to look elsewhere for the texts.

-- American Record Guide

A Ghetto Lullaby

Countless wealthy people in eighteenth-century Europe developed a passion for botany. This passion went far beyond the simple pleasure of gardens, reflecting rather a growing fascination with the natural world. German composer Georg Philipp Telemann shared this passion and energetically cultivated his collection, often begging friends and correspondents to send him specimens. The creative landscape of Telemann's life was undoubtedly filled with floral and musical colour. Ensemble Hesperi, a period ensemble based in London, presents a programme that celebrates Telemann's botanical passion. His published correspondence shows that he often wrote to his musician friends abroad, asking them to send him plant specimens. Among these friends were George Frideric Handel and Johann Gottlieb Graun, each of whom is represented here by a trio sonata, and there is also music by Telemann himself: one of his difficult 'Paris Quartets', a raucous sonata in G minor and a haunting fantasia for solo recorder. In a letter to a friend, Telemann spoke of his passion for hyacinths, tulips, ranunculi 'and especially for anemones'. The composer of four instrumental collections containing floral musical miniatures, James Oswald had to be part of this programme, and so we are treated to 'The Hyacinth', 'The Anemone' and 'The Tulip' from his 'Airs for the Spring'.

A Gogo

It often takes one man to encourage excellence in the arts and in the flourishing Portugal of the 1600s, at the forefront of world exploration; Dom Joao IV was very much that man. In his court, his favoured composers developed a unique style within the European heritage of sacred music, distinctly and devotionally Portuguese. Resplendent ... The Sixteen bring a wonderfully intense sense to this music. "All the music is of a high quality, and it is excellently performed... The singers are quite superb... one of the best and most interesting discs by The Sixteen in recent years, and the sound is excellent." Gramophone

Danish jazz pianist Jacob Christoffersen unveils his latest album, A Good Day, showcasing a seamless collaboration with fellow veterans Thomas Fonnesb�k on bass and Rasmus Kihlberg on drums on September 6 on Storyville Records. This recording marks a significant milestone in their collective careers, combining their individual expertise into a compelling musical narrative. On A Good Day, Christoffersen, known for his diverse musical journey and extensive contributions to the Danish music scene, presents eleven original compositions alongside reinterpretations of classics like legendary Danish rock band Gasolin's Hva' gor vi nu, lille du and Danny Boy. The album's eclectic mix traverses various moods, from introspective ballads to energetic funk-infused tracks and soulful Brazilian rhythms, capturing the trio's dynamic range and improvisational spirit. Jacob Christoffersen is a prominent Danish jazz pianist known for his inventive compositions and captivating performances, including his long running collaboration with famed Danish jazz singer Sinne Eeg. With a career spanning over more than 25 years, Christoffersen continues to push the boundaries of modern jazz expression. Thomas Fonnesb�k is one of Denmark's foremost jazz bassists, recognized for his virtuosic playing and dynamic style across numerous acclaimed recordings, and Rasmus Kihlberg, renowned for his versatile drumming style, contribute richly to the album's depth and cohesion. Their synergy is evident throughout, reflecting their intuitive musical dialogue and mutual respect as performers. This recording maintains a balance between studio precision and the spontaneity of live performance, offering listeners an immersive experience into the trio's musical camaraderie and creative exploration. A Good Day shows that they deserve to be celebrated anywhere creative modern jazz is enjoyed!

Classical Music

A Gospel Two-Fer: Precious Lord & God Is Here