The four works gathered here belong to what could be described as the secret garden of twentieth-century French music. They remind one that, next to the handful of composers of the post-Debussy-Faur� generation that have found a secure place in posterity, such as Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel, Francis Poulenc, and Olivier Messiaen, there were many others whose names may be less familiar, but who have also made outstanding contributions to the music of their time. Written over fewer than fifty years, the four works also testify to the pioneering role played by twentieth-century French musicians in reviving and promoting the flute as a solo instrument. Ransom Wilson, flutist and conductor has performed in concert with major orchestras the world over. As a flutist, he has recently launched an ongoing series of solo recordings on the Nimbus label in Europe. Conductor Perry So most recently made his European operatic debut at the Royal Danish Opera in Mozart's Die Zauberflote. He is known for his wide-ranging programming, including numerous world premieres on four continents and works from the Renaissance and the Baoque.

The Intimacy of Creativity is a first of its kind, an annual partnership devoted to promoting an intimate dialogue between composers and performers. Distinguished composers, together with selected composer fellows from Hong Kong and around the world, present and revise their compositions after in-depth discussions with world-renowned performers during public open discussions. The revised compositions are presented at preview concerts on the campus of HKUST and world premiere concerts in downtown Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is recognized as Asia's foremost classical orchestra. Jaap van Zweden, one of today's most sought-after conductors, has been the orchestra's Music Director since the 2012/2013 concert season.

Roland Wilson enjoys great esteem as a trumpeter and a cornett player who performs with his own ensemble, and as a musicologist his name stands for the rediscovery of many an early music rarity. On our new recording we hear two highly interesting works that once were (and today still are) ascribed to George Frideric Handel. Johann Mattheson, who was working on the setting of the same libretto in 1723, wrote a detailed review of this Passion probably first performed in 1704 and published anonymously. Although Mattheson does not mention the “world-famous” man by name, his choice of words repeatedly offers clear references, for example, when he states that the inscription Pilate had put on the cross caused him “new business” (“neue Händel”). Mattheson doubtless knew exactly who the composer was, and everything that he describes is a perfect match for Handel. For me, there is a lot in the score that recalls the mature Handel while sounding very much like a young man who was then in quest of his individual style. The same applies to the chorale cantata “Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder,” a work certainly suggesting an even earlier date of composition. This new recording by the early music specialists of Musica Fiata and an ensemble of soloists brings this wonderful music to life with fantastic tonal homogeneity and balance, technical finesse, and historical knowledge.

While little is known about Dario Castello (before 1600-1644), we are left with his Sonate concertate in stil moderno. This work by Castello, published in two books in 1621 and 1629 enjoyed great popularity, and were continually reprinted. Castello’s music is known for its virtuosic solos. The Musica Fiata performs these works with grandeur.

Best-known today as the librettist of Verdi’s final Shakespearean masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff, the multitalented Arrigo Boito was also a fine composer in his own right. Hugely ambitious in scope, and some 20 years in the making, his first (and only completed) opera, Mefistofele, sets out to encompass nothing less than the whole of Goethe’s vast poetic drama Faust (parts I and II), and is considered the very central work of his phase between Verdi and Puccini. Making his debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper, director Roland Schwab (a protégé of the legendary Ruth Berghaus) plays devil’s advocate by setting the opera in a nightmarish atmosphere. The exceptional cast features Rene Pape, Joseph Calleja, Kristine Opolais, and Karine Babajanyan. “[Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais’s Margherita] shines with understated Grace Kelly elegance” (Opera Today). “[Conductor Omer Meir Wellber “holds all the musical textures together with admirable control” (BR Klassik).

"Record companies seem not, as yet, to have done very much to celebrate this year's 400th anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth I, so this delightful collection of music by her favorite lutenist deserves a particularly warm welcome....Since lute-players were strongly represented in the court musical establishment, to have earned the queen's special preference was no small distinction. It is clear from this selection of pieces for one or two lutes that Johnson fully merited it...The duets, in which Christopher Wilson is joined by Shirley Rumsey, include such attractive items as the Flat Pavan, with its distinctive melancholy flavour [sic], and sets of virtuoso variations on ground basses or popular songs, whose increasingly elaborate figurations are so perfectly coordinated that it is hard to believe that there are two players involved. Both here and in the solo pieces, however, the emphasis in these crisply elegant performances is not so much on virtuoso display as on creating an atmosphere of refined and courtly intimacy." - Elizabeth Roche, Daily Telegraph, 5/17/03

"With impressively executed divisions, charming music and a lustrous over-all ambience, this recording is a tonic to those who might otherwise think that lute music pre-Dowland is all hey nonny cuteness." - Anna Picard, The Independent, April 27, 2003

Includes ricercare(s) for lute by Francesco Spinacino, Franciscus Bossinensis. Soloist: Christopher Wilson.
Includes work(s) by Vincenzo Capirola, Anonymous. Soloist: Christopher Wilson.

John Wilson is probably best known for his light-entertainment orchestral work, especially his restorations of classic film scores – a background which, it turns out, equips him well for this anthology of British musical landscapes. Most celebrate an idealised pastoral view of rustic Avalon...George Butterworth's Two English Idylls", based on Sussex folk songs, and the title of Arnold Bax's "The Happy Forest" aptly conveying its excessively cheerful tone, which seems to derive from some pre-Wordsworthian Edenic paradise. But Vaughan Williams is the king of this domain: "The Lark Ascending" was recently voted Britain's favourite classical piece, and is airily rendered here by James Clark." - Andy Gill, The Independent

Gaspard Le Roux belongs to the very first rank of clavecinistes of the seventeenth century, on a par with Louis Couperin. For sustained invention, refinement of ornamentation and profundity of expression, Le Roux' Pies de clavecin.

Double vinyl LP pressing. 2015 album by the jazz vocalist/musician/songwriter. Coming Forth By Day is a musical homage to legendary jazz vocalist Billie Holiday on the 100th anniversary of the singer's birth. The album was produced by Nick Launay, known as Nick Cave's producer for the last decade among many other adventurous credits. Wilson recorded the music at Seedy Underbelly studios in Los Angeles at Seedy Underbelly studios, accompanied by an A list musical team including producer Launay, guitarists T Bone Burnett and Nick Zinner of the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, string arranger Van Dyke Parks and rhythm section The Bad Seeds (drummer Thomas Wydler and bassist Martyn P. Casey). Wilson is a leading American Jazz has who has received many awards and accolades, including: two Grammys (1996, Best Jazz Vocal Performance; 2009, Best Jazz Vocal Album);Down Beat's Female Jazz Vocalist of the Year (1994-1996); the Montreal International Jazz Festival's Miles Davis Prize (1999); named "America's Best Singer" in Time magazine (2001); honorary doctorate in the Arts from Millsaps College (2003); added to the Mississippi Blues Trail (2010); and taken home the BET Soul Train Award (2011, Best Traditional Jazz Album).

The legendary R&B/Soul singer Charlie Wilson continues to be a mainstay in urban music with back to back chart topping singles. Uncle Charlie is set to release his 4th solo album with RCA Records LOVE, CHARLIE on his birthday, Jan. 29th 2013. LOVE, CHARLIE features 12 tracks including "My Love Is All I Have".

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Adam’s Passion is the moving first collaboration between two “masters of slow motion who harmonize perfectly with each other” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). In the spectacular setting of a former submarine factory, American director and universal artist Robert Wilson creates a poetic visual world in which the mystical musical language of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt can cast its meditative spell. Three of Pärt’s major works – Adam’s Lament, Tabula rasa, and Miserere, as well as Sequentia, a new work composed especially for this production – are brought together here using light, space, and movement to create a tightly-woven Gesamtkunstwerk in which the artistic visions of these two great artists mirror each other.

Arvo Pärt
ADAM’S PASSION

Lucinda Childs
Michael Theophanous
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
Tõnu Kaljuste, conductor

Robert Wilson, stage director, set and lighting designer

Recorded from Noblessner Foundry, Tallinn, 12 May 2015

Picture format: 1080i Full-HD
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Latin, Russian (orig. sung languages), German, English, French, Korean, Japanese
Running time: 94 mins
No. of Discs: 1 (BD 25)

Milan / Narvaez: Music for Vihuela

The hugely successful US soul star Al Wilson has been largely ill served by the CD era despite enjoying a dozen or more R&B and Pop chart hits between 1968 and 1976. His recordings for the independent Rocky Road label are featured on this 20 track CD including the No 1 pop hit "Show And Tell". with a style similar to the late O. C. Smith (who also enjoyed a hit with "La La Peace Song") Wilson enjoyed much crossover popularity and continues to perform regularly at nightclubs and theatres across the USA. Fully illustrated booklet traces his career from it's Doo wop origins to the present day.

The penultimate release in the Naxos Seattle Collection, featuring internationally renowned soprano Susan Graham.

Following the success of their previous album, English Music for Strings, John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London turn their attention to the music of Henri Dutilleux. His ballet Le Loup was composed as a commission for Roland Petit’s dance company and premièred in Paris in March 1953. Rarely recorded – this is the first recording by a non-French orchestra – the work unfolds in three tableaux and tells a convoluted tale of a bridegroom who jilts his bride (to run away with a gypsy) by persuading her that he has been changed into a wolf. Over time she discovers that the wolf is real, but her feelings turn from terror to love and when the alarmed villagers hunt the wolf, she defends him and dies at his side. The album is completed by three world première recordings of new orchestrations (by Kenneth Hesketh) of wind solos written for the Paris Conservatoire in the 1940s. Both the Sarabande et Cortège and Sonate pour hautbois are virtuosic tours de force for their soloists, as is the Sonatine pour flûte, which displays the lyricism, agility, and sparkling incisive qualities of the flute in what became Dutilleux’s most-performed work.

A mid-price reissue of the popular 'Fancies' album, collecting together John Rutter's best-known concert works. As well as the virtuosic 'Suite Antique' (for flute, harpsichord and strings), this disc contains the three choral song-cycles 'Five Childhood Lyrics' (for unaccompanied choir), 'When Icicles Hang' and 'Fancies' (both for choir and orchestra).

Classical Music

He is the most performed contemporary composer in the world. And yet he rarely ventures out in public, prefers to keep quiet about his music, feels at home in the forests of Estonia and generates therewith - perhaps involuntarily - the impression of a recluse, which is attributed to him again and again: Arvo P�rt. Adam's Passion is the moving first collaboration between two "masters of slow motion who harmonize perfectly with each other" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). In the spectacular setting of a former submarine factory, American director and universal artist Robert Wilson creates a poetic visual world in which the mystical musical language of the Estonian composer Arvo P�rt can cast it's meditative spell. The Lost Paradise: In The Lost Paradise, we follow Arvo P�rt over a period of one year in his native Estonia, to Japan and the Vatican. The documentary is framed by the stage production of Adam's Passion in which the artistic visions of Arvo P�rt and Robert Wilson mirror each other. Tracing their creative process, the film offers rare and personal insights into the worlds of two of the most fascinating personalities in the international arts and music scene.

It was only recently that the world of classical music began to rid itself of its obsession with great names and great places. There of course can be no doubt that Claudio Monteverdi was a great composer and that he wrote many a magnificent work for St. Mark’s Cathedral. Yet, after many long years, we are now gradually coming to the realization that the Venetian musical universe was not limited to San Marco. Without wanting to diminish Monteverdi’s genius, we have to admit, as is clearly audible on this recording, that this master was a member of a gifted, innovative circle of composers whose creative production was also of benefit to him. On the present new release we hear sacred works, including rare Psalm settings, not only by Monteverdi himself but also by Giovanni Rovetta, Antonio Rigatti, and Dario Costello. The musical language employed by Monteverdi in his later sacred works displays a theatrical character, rich affections, and a predilection for strong contrasts that can hardly be distinguished from the style of his late madrigals and operas. His substitute Giovanni Rovetta and his pupil Giovanni Antonio Rigatti used the very same language. They more clearly combine the instruments with the singers, at times have them imitate the song lines, and in other places fill out the textures of the tutti segments with them. With their four vocal parts, two high instruments, and the plenum sound of the organ, the homophonic passages create the illusion of a much larger ensemble. Thirteen years after Monteverdi had settled in Venice, Giovanni Rovetta’s Dixit Dominus and Magnificat were published (1626). These are the mature works of a young composer who here speaks the same musical language known to us from Monteverdi’s Selva morale. Might it be possible that Monteverdi was influenced by his younger colleagues, just as they were influenced by him?

Vinyl LP pressing. The Exciting Wilson Pickett! Launched four crossover hit singles (including 2 #1s!) for the artist on it's way to landing at #3 on the Billboard R&B charts and #21 on the Popular Albums chart in 1966. The chart-toppers are "In The Midnight Hour," "Land of a Thousand Dances" "634-5789 (Soulsville, USA)" and "Ninety-nine and a Half (Won't Do)". The deeper album cuts hold significant appeal as well and include standards "Something You Got," "Barefootin'" and "Mercy Mercy" as well as several original tunes with Memphis Soul greats Steve Cropper, Eddie Floyd, and David Porter.

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release!

Terry Riley’s name will always be associated with his breakthrough work In C, but his influence on modern music has stretched far beyond minimalism. Both of the works on this recording reveal Riley’s spirit of exploration and his close collaboration with remarkable musicians. Commissioned by the Nashville Symphony, The Palmian Chord Ryddle is a kind of musical autobiography in which electric violin pioneer Tracy Silverman’s “one-man string quartet” sets the pace for the sparse, translucent orchestration. At The Royal Majestic is another recent example of Riley’s work with a symphony orchestra and a virtuosic soloist, in this case organist Todd Wilson. Its title refers to “the mighty Wurlitzer housed in grand movie palaces,” and the music draws on a wide variety of genres including gospel, ragtime, Baroque chorales, and boogie.

REVIEW:

The late career of Terry Riley has received less attention than that of Philip Glass or even Steve Reich. The resurgent Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero makes a good case here that such neglect is misguided. The Palmian Chord Ryddle (2011) is an eclectic, playful eight-movement work for electric violin and orchestra, but steering mostly clear of highly extended techniques. Even stronger is At The Royal Majestic, an homage to the golden age of the theater organ. Engineering kudos for clarity in an extremely diverse set of materials. Highly recommended.

– All Music Guide (James Manheim)

The British soprano Linda Richardson has performed extensively across the UK and continental Europe under conductors such as Bernard Haitink, Edo de Waart, Sir Mark Elder, Daniele Rustioni, Libor Pešek, and Carlo Rizzi. Her extensive repertoire includes roles ranging from Monteverdi and Mozart to Janá?ek, Britten, and Wagner. Linda Richardson writes: ‘I have had the privilege of performing many of the great leading soprano roles in the operatic repertoire, but as my career progressed, I found a special love and affinity for the roles that stood as pillars in Italian opera. The beautiful melodic lines, dramatic language, and the overall musical craftsmanship of these Italian composers make their characters especially thrilling. I chose these particular arias because they show the huge variety of heroines that can be found in the greatest Italian operas. Although most of the arias are expressions of love and loss it is the individual emotional journey of each character which I find so compelling.’

For the second volume of the music of Eric Coates, John Wilson has built his programme around three contrasting ‘major’ works. The Suite Summer Days was premiered in October 1919, shortly after Henry Wood had fired Coates from his position as lead viola in the Queen’s Hall Orchestra. An immediate hit, the suite received rave reviews and many more performances. It was recorded in 1926, Sir Edward Elgar telling Coates that he had played it so often that he had worn out the album! The Selfish Giant, from 1925, based on Oscar Wilde’s story, was the first in a series of highly successful musical retellings of fairy tales. The Enchanted Garden originated in a commission from the Swedish Broadcasting Company. Although he described The Enchanted Garden as a ballet, Coates conceived it principally as a concert work. Composed in June and July 1938, it was premiered in a BBC radio broadcast in November that year, immediately before Coates took it on tour to Stockholm. Of the other, shorter pieces on the album, Calling All Workers is arguably Coates’s best-known work, composed in the summer of 1940 and dedicated ‘to all who work’. The march was adopted by the BBC as the signature tune for their new daily radio show ‘Music While You Work’, and was heard twice daily for twenty-seven years – clocking up more than 16,000 broadcast performances.

REVIEWS:

The second volume in John Wilson’s Eric Coates edition for Chandos reprises the excellence to be found in the first. Wilson has recorded much Coates for other labels but to find him return to the repertoire in a more formalized way is especially good news.

– MusicWeb International

Wilson has been a Coates champion for decades and has the natural lightness of touch to make these works, including a substantial ballet, The Enchanted Garden, and an Oscar Wilde-based phantasy, The Selfish Giant, sparkle.

– Sunday Times (UK)

Giuseppe Verdi's second opera Un giorno di regno is one of the composer's least known works. The premiere in Milan in 1840 was a failure, which Verdi said was due to his own personal circumstances: During the creative process two of his children and his first wife died within two months. Despite the rather weak libretto, the stage work has its merits and captivates, for example, with fresh, catchy melodies that, although they cannot deny the influence of Rossini and Donizetti, are by no means imitative. Only in this opera does Verdi combine his renowned depth of musical characterization with the turbulent entanglements of opera buffa. Un giorno di regno offers an especially light-hearted Verdi experience. This recording of the two-at opera was taken live and features Cappella Aquileia, the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno, and conductor Marcus Bosch alongside a stunning list of soloists.