This never-before-released-in-any-format, newly re-mastered, 1960 live performance of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman features the soprano Anja Silja (b. 1940) as Senta in her electrifying Bayreuth Festival debut. +Ms. Silja was a sensational presence on the Bayreuth stage throughout the 1960’s. + Conducted by the eminent Wolfgang Sawallisch, this recording also features tenors Franz Crass and Fritz Uhl, and bass Josef Greindl, noted Wagnerians all, in leading roles.

Rocking Horse Road is the debut recording of Jacqui Dankworth and the Brodsky quartet, bearing witness to a musical relationship that stretches back almost two decades. Jacqui Dankworth is one of the most highly regarded and celebrated vocalists in the UK. The Sunday Times called her ‘One of our finest singers, regardless of category’, whilst the Guardian noted she ‘exhibits a subtle control of dynamics and a voluptuous tonal richness that seems to make almost any material sound special’. Formed in 1972, the Brodsky Quartet have given more than 3,000 concerts around the world, and recorded over 70 albums, covering both the core classical repertoire and collaborations with a wide range of artists from all walks of musical life. The album covers a wide range of material that this partnership has gathered and honed over the years: compositions by Harvey Brough, David Gordon, Charlie Wood and Jacqui Dankworth herself sit alongside arrangements of songs by Björk, Sting, Diana Krall and Elvis Costello.

Songs of love and loss by a trio of early 18th century Spanish composers, showcasing the vocal art of a distinguished early-music soprano. Cristina Bayón Álvarez has sung with early-music luminaries such as Christophe Coin, Diego Fasolis and Carlos Mena. She has also recorded a pair of warmly received albums for Brilliant Classics, reviving the sacred music of Juan Francés de Iribarren (95859) and Romantic-era songs by female composers (‘Boulevard des femmes’, 96729). For her latest album, Cristina Bayón Álvarez turns to 18th-century Spain, presenting for the first time on record a sequence of newly edited secular cantatas. These are all brief pieces, taking amorous and pastoral themes for their subjects, alternating recitative and aria, conveying the pain of a lover separated from the object of their affections, or rejected by them. One piece stands out for its relative modernity of sentiment: La picarilla más bella by José de Torres y Martínez Bravo (ca. 1670-1738), highlighting the contempt for love on the part of a woman who prefers freedom of spirit to the suffering caused by sentimental passion. The least unfamiliar of the three composers featured on the album is Emanuele Rincón d’Astorga (1680-1775), best known for a Stabat mater of plangent expressive quality. The affecting, Italianate vocal lines of this sacred work also colour the three cantatas recorded here: Filis, que abrigas, Respirad, mas sea quedito and Sean, Filis, de mi llanto. Astorga made his name outside Spain, though eventually settled and died in Madrid; Juan de Serquiera (ca. 1655-ca. 1726) was likely also active in the Spanish capital, though of Portuguese origin. Almost nothing survives of his life and work, which makes the survival of Oh, corazón amante all the more precious, especially since it demonstrates Serquiera’s skill at affective word setting. José de Torres y Martínez Bravo is recorded as master of music at the Royal Chapel in Madrid from 1697 until his death in 1707. Not least thanks to this distinction, much more is known of his activity, including a keyboard-instruction manual and a set of Masses dedicated to Philip V of Spain. As recorded here, La picarilla más bella and Por el Tenaro monte share the expressive flair and rhythmic energy of his vernacular villancicos. Taken together, the works here make an exciting addition to the catalogue of Spanish Baroque vocal repertoire, especially in such accomplished and stylish performances.

The pianist Anna Zassimova offers us a musical journey through most of Chopin’s creative periods, bringing together miniatures and some larger scaled, highly structured works. We can thus follow the composer’s stylistic evolution: slightly whimsical at first, then works that are often tragic and violent, evolving in his final years towards great luminosity and relative calm.

Highlights of this recital include the Ballades Nos 2 and 4, the Mazurkas, Op. 41 and Op. 50 and the Scherzo No. 4 in E major. The mazurkas can be seen as a kind of diary that Chopin kept throughout his life as an artist, reflecting his deep-rooted attachment to Poland. In them, folklore was entirely recreated and stylized. Considered the finest of Chopin’s creation and among the most representative of romantic music, the Ballads are pure music in its finest form. Without any specific programme, they are said to have been inspired by the poetic ideas of one of his friends, the poet Adam Mickiewicz. Finally, the Scherzo has an almost fairy-tale, luminous atmosphere, although there are more passionate and intense moments, and it thus appears close to the character of the scherzo as it was once conceived.

Performed by the trio for whom it was written, Paul Schoenfield's new composition "Last Silence" picks up where "Cafe Music" left off. A show stopping tour de force of excitement and emotion. Schoenfield's "Four Souvenirs" is finally released here by violinist Lev Polyakin and pianist Frances Renzi, who commissioned the work. Beautiful trios by Rota and Cui round out the album. Paul Schoenfeld‘s music is widely performed and continues to draw an ever-expanding group of fans. According to Juilliard’s Joel Sachs, “he is among those all-too-rare composers whose work combines exuberance and seriousness, familiarity and originality, lightness and depth. His work is inspired by the whole range of musical experience, popular styles both American and foreign, vernacular and folk traditions, and the ‘normal’ historical traditions of cultivated music making, often treated with sly twists. Above all, he has achieved the rare fusion of an extremely complex and rigorous compositional mind with an instinct for accessibility and a reveling in sound that sometimes borders on the manic.”

This recording features rarely performed musical works by three renowned 20th-century Italian composers: Franco Margola, Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Vittorio Rieti. Margola was profoundly influenced by Alfredo Casella, whom he met while still a student of composition. After graduating, Margola began to compose his Piano Trio in A, and on hearing the piece, Casella immediately rated it among the best modern trios, including it in the repertoire of his own piano trio and performing it in Italy and abroad. The composition, in three movements, is characterized by drama and darkness, with moments of great expression but also fleeting, volatile brilliance. Its concision of articulation and form, its ability to consistently maintain a tight and fully logical discourse and its modern but comprehensible harmonic language all conspired to make this composition one of the most appreciated in Margola’s catalogue. In Due Intermezzi (Two Intermezzos), written by Ghedini at the age of 23, the sublime mastery of counterpoint and use of forms that would become the composer’s signature are already evident and accomplished. Each intermezzo has a distinct character: the first, marked “tranquillo” (calm), pervaded by an intimate atmosphere giving in to momentary expressive outbursts; the second tinged with irony and a buoyant spirit. Unlike Margola and Ghedini, who spent their entire professional lives in Italy (both renowned professors and eventually directors of conservatories), the advent of Mussolini’s fascism forced Rieti – who had Jewish roots and whose music was considered deviant by the regime – to emigrate first to Paris and then to the United States. He was a composer particularly admired by the American public and often performed there, despite being almost completely ignored in his native country.

In English Renaissance collections of music, the term ‘lessons’ is often used to describe instrumental pieces, even though they aren’t pedagogical exercises as such. But as Jonas Nordberg writes in an introduction to his new disc ‘there remains much in them to be studied’. John Dowland is one of the composers whose music was a driving force of the Early Music revival already at the beginning of the 20th century. He has also played a central role in the rediscovery of the lute itself, an ongoing process which began more than a hundred years ago. Like many other musicians, Jonas Nordberg is continuously exploring the intimate relationship between a score and the instrument it was written for: ‘The pieces by Dowland on this album contain an entire musical universe, in which I have spent many years, discovering new layers of meaning. In that way these lessons – in combination with the instrument on which I play them – have also been my teachers. So it is a great pleasure to invite you to share them with me, and to explore for yourselves the rich combination of melancholy, joy and beauty to be found in these works.’

Since 2017, one of Infusion Baroque’s primary initiatives has been The Virtuosa Project, a series of concerts, lectures, and web videos dedicated to women musicians of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. This project, which highlights over a dozen relatively unknown women who made substantial contributions to Western classical music, has generated a great amount of interest at a local and international level, resulting in requests from international presenters for the ensemble to tour the Virtuosa program in the United States, France and the U.K. The album includes a comprehensive booklet and companion website which includes stories, images, and archival material pertaining to the women featured in the recording. The objective is to provide cultural and socio-economic context for the women’s lives as well as for their music and to highlight their accomplishments in the face of adversity. Many of the featured women were pioneers in their field.

•Heritage of the March is a series of 185 vinyl records of marches and galops released from 1973 to the early 1980’s. It remains as the largest single march music record series in history, featuring close to 3,000 different marches! Volumes 7 and 8 feature the marches of Russell Alexander, Gabriel Pares, Joseph Olivadoti, and Franz Lehar, a combination of American, French, and Hungarian composers. These marches highlight the best of the genre from both the United States and Europe, re-mastered for CD release. Altissimo! Recordings is proud to release the next installment of this classic collection as a two-volume set.

Haydn’s 30 Piano Trios were written at a time when the harpsichord was being replaced by the pianoforte and when a parallel change saw the emergence of sonata-allegro form. His earliest trios, such as the Trio in F major, Hob. XV: 40, were also known as Divertimentos or Partitas, whilst the Trio in G major, Hob. XV: 15, was part of a group that offers the performer the alternative scoring of flute over the more usual violin. They reflect the airy and nimble qualities that grace all of Haydn’s works in the genre.

Joaquín Rodrigo is best known for his Concierto de Aranjuez, but the fame of this great work has hidden a prolific and courageous artist who struggled against blindness and hardship, and whose luminous, optimistic music is captured here in rarely heard works for violin that span almost his entire life as a composer. The timelessly beautiful Adagio from the Sonata pimpante is indeed comparable to that of the Concierto de Aranjuez, and all of these pieces are captivating in their intense lyricism and profound originality, from the Dos ezbozos expressing childhood memories of the Parterre Gardens in Valencia, to Rodrigo’s only piece for solo violin, the Capriccio, and the vivacious and nostalgic Set cançons valencianes.

Classical Music

Spanning landscapes from Mexico to Canada, the Pacific Crest Trail covers thousands of miles of natural beauty, creating a transformative journey captured in FROM WILDERNESS from Navona Records. Choral Arts Initiative, conducted by Brandon Elliott and joined by cellist Kevin Mills, paints these landscapes from composer Jeffery Derus with vibrant color, with vocal soloists giving identities to the spirit animals one may encounter on the trail. A concert-length work and meditation, the listener will hear a wash of sounds that allow for introspective reflection on the sacredness of nature, the profound text, and themselves.

REVIEWS:

A Textura Top 20 Album of 2022!

Jeffrey Derus is both a founding board member of Choral Arts Initiative and one of the esteemed ensemble's tenors. He's also, however, the composer of From Wilderness, a glorious choral work brought to magnificent realization by twenty-five CAI singers, eight crystal bowl players, and cellist Kevin Mills. The company earlier distinguished itself with the release How to Go On: The Choral Works of Dale Trumbore and now equals that achievement with a stellar realization of Derus's work. From Wilderness is a multi-hued meditation that lives up to its transformative billing: it's almost impossible to imagine someone hearing it and not being profoundly moved.

-- Textura

Volume 5 of Profil's Günter Wand Edition is devoted to Carl Orff's massive and enormously popular cantata, Carmina Burana, in a stirring radio performance presented with the NDR Sinfonieorchester in 1984. (Profil)

Classical Music