There's no stopping the Price/Johnson bandwagon just now. Here is yet another profoundly enjoyable and well-considered offering from the pair. With Johnson to devise intelligent, logical programmes, Price and himself to interpret them, a remarkable unanimity of thought and confidence of manner is being achieved, the delights there for the taking.

Here we begin with six contrasted settings of Heine, all reasonably familiar songs, each given with a nice balance between breadth of phrasing and warmth of feeling, on both sides admirably tailored to the Brahms ethos and melos in the matter of song-writing. Some of these pieces appeared some years ago on an Orfeo recital by Price (2/87): the readings have matured like a good wine and now-as in Sommerabend-go to the very heart of the matter with a marvellous intertwining of voice and piano. The account of its companion-piece, Mondenschein, not before recorded by the soprano, fully realizes its autumnal melancholy in phrases that seem to linger endlessly in the air. As an emotional relief comes the charm and lightness of Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze!.

The judicious choice of Volkslieder settings once more indicates Brahms's deep understanding of the originals and just how to clothe them in appropriate harmonies, as in the antique Dorian mode of Sehnsucht and Vergangen ist mir Gluck und Heil, both sung and played here with an exquisite sense of longing. The singer changes colour, brightens her tone, for the bantering duologue of Spannung. Then there is the Schwung given to the repeated lines at the end of Madchenfluch, characterizing the girl's spite and frustration. Da unten im Tale is entirely free from the sophistication, admittedly effective, brought to it by Schwarzkopf on so many occasions: here the sad little plaint is allowed to speak for itself, but the verdict goes the other way in Vergebliches Standchen where Price is a trifle too staid.

Finally, the partnership lavish a winningly uninhibited elan on the Zigeunerlieder. If we are occasionally aware of a momentary strain on Price's present resources, we are consoled by the passionate spontaneity of the results. The recording is ideally balanced, intimate yet open.

Price must surely now be placed in the royal line of female Lieder singers that runs from Gerhardt and Lehmann, through Seefried, Schwarzkopf and Ludwig, to Ameling. The length of her actual discography of Lieder must now at least rival theirs. Being greedy, I wish she and Johnson would now turn their attention to Hugo Wolf.

-- Alan Blyth, Gramophone

Toto and session drummer Phillips and Kimmel keyboardist Babko are featured performing lots of great jazz music. This disc has Multiple 5.1 surround mixes plus HD stereo.

Emma Johnson is one of the few clarinetists to have established a busy career as a solo performer which has taken her to major European, American and Asian venues as well as to Africa and Australasia. She is one of the UK’s biggest selling classical artists, having sold over half a million albums worldwide. Her recent recording of sonatas by Brahms and Mendelssohn with John Leneham was described as definitive and triumphant. “The great thing about the clarinet is it can take you anywhere- any country, any style, any era- and accordingly Clarinet Goes To Town journeys from Brazil to China encompassing styles from Classical to jazz. It’s basically me letting my hair down with my favorite musicians in party pieces we’ve honed in concert over the past few years.” (Emma Johnson)

Includes song(s) by Roger Quilter.

La Bella Stella is the fifth release in the critically-acclaimed Celebrate Earth series from Recess Music. This album of children's music features many contrasting styles and teaches kids about galaxies, solar systems, and other wonders of our universe. These songs were chosen for La Bella Stella because they engage, educate, entertain, and encourage children to think about the natural setting of their lives to balance the 'virtual' world they live in. Just like the other discs in the Celebrate Earth series, La Bella Stella features engaging, fun tunes enjoyable for kids and parents alike!

Classical Music

Also available on Blu-ray

Glyndebourne has a proud association with the operas of Benjamin Britten, however until 2010 had never staged Billy Budd. The all-male opera with a libretto co-written by EM Forster, is based on the battle between pure good and blind evil, and is set on a British man-‘o-war ship. Michael Grandage, Artistic Director of the Donmar Warehouse, chose this work to make his long-awaited operatic debut. Sir Mark Elder returned to conduct the production, marking the 100th opera production in his illustrious career.



Benjamin Britten
BILLY BUDD

Captain Vere – John Mark Ainsley
Billy Budd – Jacques Imbrailo
Claggart – Phillip Ens
Mr. Redburn – Iain Paterson
Mr. Flint – Matthew Rose
Lieutenant Ratcliffe – Darren Jeffery
Red Whiskers – Alasdair Elliott
Donald – John Moore
Dansker – Jeremy White
Novice – Ben Johnson
Squeak – Colin Judson
Bosun – Richard Mosley-Evans

The Glyndebourne Chorus
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Mark Elder, conductor
Michael Grandage, stage director
Bonus:
- Introducing Billy Budd
- Designs on Billy Budd

Picture format: NTSC 16:9 Anamorphic
Sound format: LPCM Stereo 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Menu language: English
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish
Running time: 200 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

Classical Music

Classical Music

Commissioned in 2009 to celebrate the restoration of Trinity Cathedral in Columbia, South Carolina, John Fitz Rogers's Magna Mysteria is a seven-movement, 45-minute work for soprano, chorus and children's chorus, and chamber orchestra that delves into "great mysteries" (magna mysteria). Weaving together Latin biblical texts and poetic verse from the sixth-century philosopher Boethius, the composition explores ideas of home and the seeking of home, the elevation of home to a metaphorical or spiritual realm, and the nature of time. Magna Mysteria is at once complex yet accessible, rooted in tradition (from Brahms and Faure to Britten and Stravinsky) yet wholly contemporary. This encore performance recorded in 2014 features soprano Martha Guth, first prize winner at the 2007 Wigmore Hall Int'l Song Competition, as well as the combined adult and children's choirs of Trinity Cathedral, under the direction of conductor and choirmaster Jared Johnson.

Sir John Dankworth was inspired by Benny Goodman' playing to study clarinet at the Royal Academy: his delightful Suite for Emma was composed for Emma Johnson, former BBC Young Musician of the Year, who performs it on this disc.

Includes song(s) by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Somervell's four songs on poems from William Blake's Songs of Innocence were written in 1889, dedicated to Dolly and Gwen, and simple and child-like in form and appeal, perfectly crafted examples of such work. The song cycle based on Tennyson's monodrama Maud dates from 1898. There are thirteen songs in the whole work that traces the story from the memories of the suicide of the protagonist's father, ruined by unfortunate speculation, making his son's match with Maud, daughter of his father's closest friend, and his betrayer, impossible. Three of these are included here. Maud's family return to the Hall and gradually the young man at the heart of the drama falls in love with her again. In the fifth song of Somervell's cycle, Birds in the high Hall-garden, the lovers meet, before Maud returns to the house, with the flowers she has picked. The verses that tell of the arrival of another to woo her are omitted. The seventh song, Go not, happy day, expresses the love of the couple. The first part of the poem ends with the words that provide the ninth song of Somervell's cycle, Come into the garden, Maud, words perhaps more familiar in the setting by Balfe. The singer calls Maud to the garden, as he hears the sound of music from the Hall, where he has not been invited. As she approaches, he is in ecstasy, but the song does not tell how their meeting is to be interrupted by Maud's brother, his quarrel with her lover, and her brother's death in the dreadful hollow, where the drama had started. In the remaining songs Maud's lover seeks exile abroad and goes out of his mind, while Maud, in his absence, dies. The cycle ends with the singer's resolve to meet his fate in war for his country. The song cycle derived from Robert Browning's James Lee's Wife was published in 1907 with a dedication to Marie Brema, a Liverpool-born singer of German-American parentage who, in 1894, was the first English-born singer to appear at Bayreuth, where she sang Ortrud in Lohengrin and Kundry in Parsifal. James Lee's Wife first appeared, under the title James Lee, in 1864 in Browning's Dramatis Personae and from the original nine poems Somervell takes five. The first version has an orchestral accompaniment, but the songs were later arranged for an accompaniment of piano quintet, and then simply with a piano accompaniment. As in other dramatic monologues by Browning, the woman of the title reveals her story, telling first of changing love, more dramatically in the second song, By the Fireside, as she tells of the rot and rust, run to dust, of a ship seemingly safe in port, as she and her husband had seemed. The same idea continues in the third song, In the Doorway, from which the middle two verses of the original poem are omitted. In the fifth of Browning's poems, On the Cliff, she sings of the parched vegetation on the rock and how from this may come color and life, as with the minds of men. The cycle ends with the seventh of Browning's poems, Among the Rocks, in which she proclaims her message that If you loved only what were worth your love, / Love were clear gain.

Classical Music

Recess Music is proud to present Celebrate Earth, the start of a children's music series with an environmental message. The fourteen songs on the disc display quality and commitment to making our planet a better place. Celebrate Earth is sure to entertain and educate kids of all ages. The album also has special features for your computer, including a sing-along, profiles of the musicians, and more!

Syncopated music has been played across the United States since the early 20th century, but swing first appeared in New Orleans. The unique style of its jazz bands, becoming a veritable trademark, was a major stepping-stone in the artistic history of America. World War II was followed by a surge of freedom as well as the search of jazz in its original form and America rediscovered this gem embedded in its history. This was the period of the New Orleans Revival and its riches are revealed by Dan Vernhettes. This vast panorama, interpreted by the greatest artists, portrays the gumbo jazz of New Orleans: ragtime, blues, marches, dance music, lighter tunes and religious hymns.

Sound and space are two elements that emerge at the heart of Jane O’Leary’s THE PASSING SOUND OF FOREVER. The collection showcases O’Leary’s compositional gifts through a variety of her chamber compositions. O’Leary’s string writing soars in THE PASSING SOUND OF FOREVER, and demonstrates her remarkable sensitivity to the instruments’ sonic palette and expressive potential. Every color, from ethereal natural harmonics to frenetic bowing, is at O’Leary’s disposal, and is exploited beautifully to produce evocative and compelling soundscapes.O’Leary is imaginative and creative in her string writing, resonating the instruments’ strings in a wide variety of ways. Harmonics and arpeggiations create vast open spaces.  In the case of A Winter Sketchbook, violin sounds are integrated with those of the alto flute, matching colors and creating new blends of sound. A Winter Sketchbook resonates profoundly as it casts the indelible image of deep winter.THE PASSING SOUND OF FOREVER’s title track is composed for string quartet, which makes it a shining and exemplary representation of O’Leary’s expressive string writing. The Passing Sound of Forever, originating from a motif found in a Beethoven quartet, plays with fragmentary gestures which emerge and disappear, echo and reflect. The work is filled with a deep yearning, which is communicated by the accumulated gestures and sounds of the quartet’s four string instruments. The Passing Sound of Forever epitomizes O’Leary’s unique ability to evoke vivid emotions from the simplest aspects of string instruments’ sound.Not every work on THE PASSING SOUND OF FOREVER features strings, but all seem to engage with the same themes of space and sound. O’Leary’s clarinet and piano duo Murmurs and Echoes, for example, creates the sense that its two instruments are communicating across great time and distance, most notably so in its last movement.  When their respective gestures mirror one another’s, they do so with the distortion of an echo crossing a vast space. In this way, Murmurs and Echoes reminds of A Winter Sketchbook, as both works use modest forces to generate a surprisingly resonant musical space.

Finnish composer Jaakko Mantyjarvi (b. 1963) has written some of the finest choral music of the past 50 years. To date, this semi-professional musician, whose output consists mostly of choral works, has had over one hundred of them published. Founded in 2009, the chamber choir Cor Cantiamo’s mission objective is to perform and promote contemporary choral music and foster new composers for the art form. Eric A. Johnson D.M.A. is Cor Cantiamo’s Founding Artistic Director.

Marty Walker performs music for clarinet and bass clarinet written for him by composers Daniel Lentz, Peter Garland, Jim Fox, Michael Jon Fink, Rick Cox, and Michael Byron. Performing with Walker are noted new music stalwarts William Winant, Wadada Leo Smith, Amy Knoles, and others. The music runs the gamut from a lush work for ten pianos and ten clarinets to a technically thorny solo and includes just about everything in between. Although the individual pieces are on their surfaces quite different from one another, they share a certain commonality—an embrace of music’s inherent sensuality. Critics have described Walker’s playing as “masterful,” “flawless,” and “true artistry.” Minnesota Public Radio’s Michael Barone called this album a “mild-mannered, soul-filling collection of contemporary ‘meditations’. . . think Satie and Morton Feldman, and you come close to the overall mood. Delicate textures prevail…the thinking-listener’s slow lane.” 21st Century Music magazine wrote, “If people are best known by the company they keep, then clarinetist Marty Walker is blessed indeed. He keeps wonderful company with an excellent series of composers…. Both the playing and the recording quality are sparkling.”

A 2021 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Choral Performance!

The wonderful Conspirare chamber choir, known for its interpretive depth and other-worldly sonic lushness, offers another of its captivating programs — this time joined by three superb guitar quartets — in a program remarkably relevant for our time. The choir is joined by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, the Texas Guitar Quartet, the Austin Guitar Quartet, and cellist Douglas Harvey for this release featuring compositions by Reena Esmail, Craig Hella Johnson, Nico Muhly, and Kile Smith. Conspirare is a virtuoso choir. The Grammy-winning ensemble comprises distinctive solo artists who are also committed to the highest level of ensemble performance. These professional singers travel to Austin from around the country to perform together, providing their audiences with a rare level of choral music making.

REVIEW:

Conspirare’s new recording featuring the Austin-based choral group and three guitar quartets bookends impressive large-scale works by Nico Muhly and Kile Smith with small jewels by Reena Esmail and founding conductor Craig Hella Johnson.

Smith’s The Dawn’s Early Light features only one guitar quartet but the most beautiful texts, from Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins’s 1883 autobiography, one of the earliest books by a Native American woman.

The participation of three guitar quartets from LA and Texas adds texture and warmth to Muhly’s How Little You Are, a thoughtful 40-minute meditation on the words of American pioneer women in the 19th century, its lovely solos sung by Estelí Gomez.

Esmail’s When the Guitar—inspired by a 14th-century Persian lyric, ‘When the guitar can forgive the past, it starts singing’—uses the intriguing sounds of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet as one of the layers of a fabulous wrap for the chorus. Johnson’s serene The Song That I Came to Sing, which sets a Rabindranath Tagore poem for cello and treble voices, was composed as a framing piece for the program ‘which would reflect aspects of unfulfilled purpose and a longing for intimacy with the Divine’.

-- Gramophone

The Conspirare chamber choir, known for its interpretive depth and otherworldly sonic lushness, offers another of its captivating programs—this time joined by three superb guitar quartets—in a program remarkably relevant for our time. Conspirare’s debut album on Delos, The Hope of Loving, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance in 2020. Here, the combination of guitar quartet and chorus is so successful that one wonders why more composers have not written for it. The works on this album were written by four of America’s greatest living composers: Nico Muhly, Reena Esmail, Kile Smith, and Craig Hella Johnson.

-- WFMT Chicago

Composers do not usually make conscious choices about the music they write: they write in accordance with the talents given to them. For this reason I do not write complex or experimental music: I have no gift for such things. Instead, my music is lyrical, rhythmic, economical, clear cut in texture and, as far as I can make it, direct of utterance. This incisive assessment by Georffrey Bush of his own output is indicative of his lucidity on the printed page as well as on the stave, both accomplishments the result of a compulsive urge to communicate effectively. (Geoffrey Bush) Though composition was foremost among his many gifts, Bush was something of an all-rounder. He performed as both pianist and organist, made regular broadcasts for the BBC and was also a successful writer. His eminently readable guide to music, Musical Creation and the Listener, first appeared in 1954. His wide-ranging catalogue includes music for the stage, choral works, church music, orchestral pieces, chamber music and songs. Of his two symphonies, the first, which has at its core an elegiac blues in memory of Constant Lambert, was premiered at the Cheltenham Festival in 1954 and performed at the Proms four years later, whilst the second, subtitled "The Guildford", was commissioned for the 700th anniversary of the City of Guildford in 1957. He wrote a number of works for chamber orchestra in which his understanding of the intimacy and inherent reciprocity of the medium resulted in scores that are eloquent and conversational, epitomising his credo quoted at the head of these notes.

The major work here is the suite The Seven Heavens, for choir and chamber ensemble; also we have seven pieces for unaccompanied choir. All are brilliantly performed by Cor Cantiamo, the accomplished and acclaimed professional ensemble which is the current Choir in Residence at Northern Illinois University, USA, under its founder and conductor Eric A Johnson. Since its inaugural concert with Morten Lauridsen in 2010, Cor Cantiamo has developed a mission to work with contemporary composers resulting in many commissions and recordings. James Whitbourn is a Grammy-nominated composer and ‘a truly original communicator in modern British choral music’ (The Observer). His works are admired for their direct communication to performers and audiences. This is the seventh album devoted entirely to his choral music. His eclectic inspirations include C.S. Lewis (The Seven Heavens), Anne Frank (the very popular Annelies), notable individuals, NASA space missions and liturgical texts. In all, his music is altogether delightful.

“From one piece to another, the language surprises with its variety, even if it remains suggestive, accessible, consonant, generous. James Whitbourn knows how to communicate. Remarkably interpreted… speaks to the heart and will conquer you.”
– Christophe Steyne (Crescendo)

“Imaginative…attractive… deeply moving. The performances could hardly be improved upon. Diction is clear, the choral sound is very well blended, and the music-making is both musically and dramatically satisfying. In sum, this release is one of the most enjoyable collections of new choral music that I have encountered in quite some time.”
- Henry Fogel (Fanfare)

Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony return to the intoxicating orchestral music of Karol Szymanowski in their third disc devoted to the composer. Ben Johnson, a tenor whose star is rapidly rising, joins Gardner and the BBC SO here as a soloist in two works. Symphony no 1 (1907) belongs to his early period, heavily influenced by German late-Romanticism. The exquisite Love Songs of Hafiz (1911), marked by fascination with oriental themes, and the ‘Song of the Night’, scored for huge orchestra with choir and tenor soloist, both feature Persian poetry set to sensuous and emotionally-charged music.

Reviews:

The performances are particularly cosmopolitan. And why not? The works here reflect influences from many nationalities. Johnson, whose relatively lean voice (in contrast with the Eastern European sopranos sometimes heard in this piece) is very much responsive to the text's meaning.

– Gramophone

“The BBC Symphony Chorus sings with languid exaltation, yet it is the orchestral detail that impresses most here, right from the still, mystery-laden opening. Gardner conducts with such conviction that it is impossible not to find beauty in [Love Songs'] potentially dense Reger-meets-Scriabin soundworld.

– BBC Music Magazine

Classical Music

This re-release of Herbert Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi and A Kent Yeoman’s Wooing Song forms part of the new Hickox Legacy series commemorating the life and career of that great conductor. Mestro Richard Hickox’s lifelong commitment to British music in general is well-known, as is his work with the challenging, intricate music of Howells. This disc displays extremes of Howells’ emotional language - from the intense and powerful Hymnus to the sprightly and rather flirtatious Wooing Song – communicated masterfully by Hickox and his associates.