There is one phrase that Rudens Turku uses repeatedly whenever he is discussing his work: “to sink into the note.” The German-Albanian violinist employs it to underscore his principal concern, which is to feel his way into the deeper layers of a composition and at the same time to be aware of the story of its composer’s life and of the way in which that life is embedded in a particular period and its political background. He finds an almost ideal opportunity to do this in the music of Astor Piazzolla - concert music by a cosmopolitan Argentine musician of Italian ancestry who grew up in the United States.

Du Yun, hailed as a “significant voice” by the Financial Times as a composer of concert music, releases her first album on New Focus. Raised in Shanghai, China, Yun blends Chinese and English lyrics freely on the album. Recorded and produced in New York, Shanghai, and Montreal, Shark in You features Yun as a vocalist, composer, producer, and lyricist in 12 far ranging tracks, from dance electronica to Kurt Weill-inspired neo-cabaret. A founding member of the influential International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Du Yun has also received commissions from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, and the Whitney Museum of Art. “This CD is a wild ride, well worth jumping aboard.” –Audiophile Audition

2014 vinyl LP pressing release from experimental classical composer/producer. He is 'praised as "heady", possessing "elements of post-Minimalism, avant-garde rock, jazz and global-fusion styles that mingle and merge with dreamlike mutability"- New York Times.

Two great German music traditions are fused together on this electro-acoustic album from Berlin-based composer Johannes Motschmann: the classics, and electronic music. Using analogue synthesizers, the Yamaha CP-70, and an old Wurlitzer piano, these dark and melancholic tracks mesh rhythmically with massive percussion and violin sounds. All of the components of these tracks, from percussive sounds to violin tracks, were recorded in the same acoustical space. This allows the handmade electrosounds to be perceived in their full, natural qualities. Boris Bolles helped to mix and master these works, as well as provide some of the violin tracks. Johannes Motschmann received his musical education at the University of Music Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden, then at the University of Music in Karlsruhe, and finally at the Hochschule fur Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin. He studied piano, composition, and electronic music with such scholars as Jorg Herchet, Wilfried Jentzch, Clemens Kuhn, and Wolfgang Rihm. Motschmann’s compositions have been performed by Ensemble Modern, the NDR Radio Philharmonic, and the SWR Symphony Orchestra.

The Mediterranean Sea, the cradle of many great cultures and travel route between Orient and Occident, is the point of departure of this enthralling album by the Pera Ensemble. On this release, the Pera Ensemble has dedicated itself to the Early Baroque - the period of transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque period itself. The program consists entirely of Italian music adapted together with Ottoman music. This album contains numerous world premiere recordings.

These Wicked Things is the fourth release from the determinedly eclectic Boston-based band Beat Circus and the final installment in singer/multi-instrumentalist/composer Brian Carpenter's "Weird American Gothic" trilogy. The record bridges a number of disparate genres including experimental music, cowpunk, post-punk, Mexican folk music, mariachi music, and "spaghetti western" and giallo film scores. The cover and booklet include an 18-page graphic novelette by renowned Croatian artist Danijel Zezelj, best known for his live paintings, multimedia, and collaborations with DC Comics/Vertigo. These Wicked Things began after Carpenter was commissioned by the Berkeley Repertory Theater in Berkeley, California to compose music and lyrics for Dominic Orlando's play The Barbary Coast in 2014. Based on the true crime book by Herbert Asbury (Gangs of New York), The Barbary Coast detailed the violent rise of San Francisco in the late 1800s. The play centers around Joaquin Murieta, a Mexican who went on a revenge spree after his wife Rosita was killed by gold miners. Two versions of "Rosita" and some incidental music from the play are included. After recording These Wicked Things with Beat Circus at the legendary Q Division Studios in Boston, Carpenter flew out to Tucson, Arizona to mix the record with es-teemed producer Craig Schumacher (Calexico, Neko Case, Giant Sand.) Carpenter worked with Schumacher previously on his singer/songwriter outing The Far End of the World (2015, Accurate.) Special guests on These Wicked Things include trumpeter Jacob Valenzuela of Calexico, bass saxophonist Dana Colley of Morphine, and guitarist Stephen Ulrich of the NYC guitar noir trio Big Lazy.

The early 20th century is a period that fascinates me. The prevalent musical aesthetic was disrupted by a new generation of composers who maintained their roots in tradition, but felt a great desire to expand music's horizions: they formed a multitude of currents and embarked on a number of different paths, all driven by the idea of transfiguring everything they had previously known. For this album I have chosen to retrace the path originally taken by Arnold Schoenberg. Born in Vienna in 1874, Schoenberg had an atypical career. Upon his father's death, he had to leave school as the eldest sibling at the age of sixteen to take up a profession. As an autodidact he learned the essentials of composition by sight-reading great repertoire and by playing chamber music on the cello and the violin. Married to the sister of Alexander Zemlinsky, Schoenberg took some counterpoint lessons from that composer and soon started teaching harmony and counterpoint himself, from 1903 on. His teaching activity remained central throughout his life, both in Europe and after having immigrated to the US. Profoundly aware of the continual evolution of Art as a historical necessity, Schoenberg introduced an important change into composiiton at hte beginning of the 20th century. He took it over the brink into the unknown by dissolving the classical functions of harmony, then by eliminating all familiar points of melodic and thematic reference. Schoenberg's Op. 11 is the first truly atonal work for piano ever written....

WINTERREISE

Vladimir Jurowski’s award-winning interpretation of Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin returns in a limited vinyl edition to celebrate the orchestra’s centenary anniversary, taking place in late October 2023. The Alpine Symphony was inspired by the composer’s experiences during a mountain trail, and is an audience favourite thanks to its picturesque, idyllic charm and powerfully evocative score. To Jurowski, the attraction of this piece lies not so much in the picturesque, but rather in Strauss’s Nietzschean embrace of living in the now and the transformative power of being in complete harmony with sublime nature.

In that respect, this album shares a kinship not only with Jurowski’s previous recording of Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (2017), but equally with his acclaimed interpretation of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (2020), in which he also recognizes a composer coming to terms with the mortality of man while celebrating the immortal nature of Life. Seen in this light, Strauss’s Alpine Symphony becomes much more than just an exquisitely scored postcard. The recording, first released in 2021, was crowned with an Opus Klassik Award in 2022.

A superb, collector’s-item vinyl transfer for a recent and widely acclaimed recording of Bach’s nocturnal meditations. When Piano Classics released this recording of the Goldberg Variations on CD in 2022, critics praised its natural phrasing and unobtrusively skilful and sensitive response to the technical demands made by Bach in his most virtuosic piece of keyboard writing.

According to Fanfare magazine, the playing of Klára Würtz ‘has limpid clarity, and rhythmic firmness and exactitude; her articulation is clean and nimble (she has a cleaner trill than Perahia), and her voicing of different lines is splendidly balanced. Her rapid playing is vigorous, her slower playing has calm repose. Her interpretive outlook has spirit and vivacity, but also a total sense of confidence and security, the kind of integrity that needs no ostentatious display to make its mark of absolute rightness... Perahia now has a pianistic rival on my shelf; strongly recommended.’ Reviewers elsewhere were hardly less enthusiastic. ‘Cards on the table, what Würtz’s Goldbergs offer is calm appreciation of the music’s manifold beauties,’ according to Rob Cowan in Gramophone. ‘Her pianism sidesteps overt display or affectedness in favour of purely musical values... This for me is truly great piano playing, a direct route to the soul with no tiresome diversions along the way.’ Vinyl collectors can now enjoy this superb recording in a new transfer made for analogue at the Edel factory in Hamburg, which specialises in collector’s print LP editions such as this one.

The heavy-grade vinyl has exemplary quiet surfaces, and the Dutch church acoustics of the original recording gain a rounded, luminous quality which ideally complements Klára Würtz’s pianism. The set is issued as a 2LP gatefold with booklet notes on the inner sleeve.

Sir Charles Mackerras’s accounts of Symphonies Nos. 8 and 9 are torrentially vivid, as performed by the superb Prague Symphony Orchestra under his baton.

The triumph of truth and hope is one way to describe that special moment experienced by the orchestra and the public (including President Václav Havel) in sold-out Smetana Hall at the Municipal House in Prague on the evening of 12 May 1990. It was the opening concert of the first Prague Spring Festival to be held in freedom after 42 years of Communist totalitarianism. Rafael Kubelík led the Czech Philharmonic in a performance of Smetana’s My Country in order to celebrate the renewal of freedom in his Czechoslovakia. Maestro Kubelík had refused to return to his homeland after the Communist putsch in February 1948, and his answer to repeated invitations was always: “No, not as long as the country is not free”. He became a world-famous conductor, but he ended his active career in 1985 because of illness. Five years later, however, he could no longer refuse the invitation, and – with the expenditure of great effort – got himself back into shape and returned to the conductor’s podium. The moment of joy from his return home and from the country’s liberation was clearly worth it. Thanks to the Supraphon recording team, the thousands of listeners who have succumbed to the magic of this legendary recording can still relive this unique moment.

On two occasions during his tenure as chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic (1968-1990) Václav Neumann undertook a major, and beautiful, task – to make a studio recording of one of the best-known and most wonderful symphonies of all time, Antonín Dvorák’s “From the New World”. The first recording was made in early 1972, with the orchestra possessing technical brilliance following Karel Ancerl’s era, yet craving intensive emotionality and romantic flight – which they were duly afforded by their new charismatic chief conductor. The sheer magic of the recording is further enhanced by its analogue format, the technique that at the time enjoyed its apex, splendidly mastered by the recording team at the Dvorák Hall of the Rudolfinum in Prague. Supraphon has now returned to the legendary recording, while having made use of state-of-the art technologies. The legendary recording deserves the utmost care – and a keen listener.

This recording, although relatively new, is one of the rarest gems in the Supraphon archives. After the initial positive reactions the extraordinary quality of the recording was confirmed by prestigious Gramophone Awards; in addition to winning the chamber music category, the young ensemble also brought home from London the top prize: Recording of the Year. Eight years after the first edition, Supraphon is releasing this delicacy for true audiophiles. Dvorák’s mature works perhaps best mirror the ensemble’s extraordinary qualities: the equilibrium between precision and spontaneity, the remarkable ensemble playing, and the solo potential of all of the individual players. At the end of the draft of his Quartet Op. 96, Antonín Dvorák wrote the comment: “I’m satisfied; it went quickly…” Soon after the “New World Symphony”, he composed one of the most beautiful of all string quartets while still in America – and the critics were unsparing in their praise. For the Pavel Haas Quartet, both the “American” Quartet and the following Quartet Op. 106, the first work composed after the composer’s return home from America, are literally affairs of the heart. According to the Sunday Times: “In this repertoire, they are simply matchless today.” Dvorák might even have written his comment “I’m satisfied” about this recording as well.

A few years after the success of her album crossing Baroque music with folk, Love I Obey (ALPHA538), the Franco-American singer Rosemary Standley visits Schubert, this time with the complicity of the ensemble Contraste: ‘We all have a few notes of Schubert buried deep inside us’ say the artists, who have got together around his music and brought to it an original sound texture, the result of their varied influences – classical, pop, jazz, folk. They have picked some of the best-known lieder (Ständchen, selections from Winterreise, etc.) and universally loved instrumental pieces, incorporating in them rhythms from other countries and instruments unusual in this repertory: the jazz trumpet of Airelle Besson, the guitar of Kevin Seddiki, the percussion of Jean-Luc Di Fraja join forces with the piano, violin, viola and cello of Contraste – not forgetting the exceptional participation of the soprano Sandrine Piau, who joins Rosemary Standley for several duets. The arrangements are by Johan Farjot.