A fascinating new name bursts into our Romantic Piano series with the two concertos by Thomas Tellefsen, here coupled with an extended concert piece by series stalwart Friedrich Kalkbrenner. All three works here enjoy Howard Shelley's trademark dexterity and exuberant bravura technique.

In my opinion, film music is one of the rare territories where a composer can write freely, providing that he chooses the films and subjects that suit his personality. This is the ideology that Howard Shore, one of the most innovative film composers, has embraced for more than 40 years. This album provides the perfect synthesis of three Paris concerts, which aimed to define the mysterious contours of the composer's multifaceted output. 2 LP set.

This high-quality production begins with Tim Hugh's lucid, thoughtful, penetrating account of Gerald Finzi's reflective and often elusive Cello concerto. Hugh's measured, noble expressivity gives the unsettled opening movement a powerful sense of line and also real pathos. In contrast, Raphael Wallfisch's 1986 recording for Chandos takes the first movement at a broader pace, but Hugh's urgent arguments seem more alive to dynamic shadings and are more poignantly resigned. Hugh gets more bite and punch into Finzi's "Scotch-Snap" rhythms here, and attains a bleaker, blacker atmosphere than Wallfisch in the coda. Although there are passages where a larger orchestra would have added greater impact, the Northern Sinfonia accompanies Hugh beautifully in the andante, where you'll hear several outstanding contributions from the winds. Hugh's finale, too, generates starker contrasts than Wallfisch's, particularly during the unexpected slow episode part way through, and in the scurrying passagework elsewhere, where soloist and orchestra achieve a chamber-like intimacy.


Peter Donohoe is soloist in Finzi's two works for piano and orchestra, the Eclogue (1929--accompanied by strings alone) and Grand Fantasia and Toccata (1927), both of which were conceived for a piano concerto that never materialized. Donohoe's direct, un-mannered treatment of the Eclogue results in a finely controlled performance that casts ample light on the text without sentimentalizing it. The Nimbus version with Martin Jones and the English String Orchestra under William Boughton is well played too, but the washy acoustic robs the music of inner detailing that registers clearly on the Naxos disc. The Grand Fantasia and Toccata is a demanding virtuoso work inspired by Finzi's love of Bach. What's so compelling about Donohoe's account is that he sees the piece as a kind of neo-Baroque refraction, more closely associated with the 20th century than the 18th. It's a keenly incisive performance; Donohoe's strident accents and penetrating clarity seem ideal, but the loudest passages could still gain from fuller-sounding orchestral support. Phillip Fowke recorded the piece for EMI with Richard Hickox in 1988, but his version hasn't the austere power of Donohoe's. This Naxos release combines performances of impressive stature with pleasingly natural and well-balanced recorded sound. It'll prove hard to beat, especially at budget price.
--Michael Jameson, ClassicsToday.com

Weill’s last completed work given a fine, dramatic reading.

Lost in the Stars is Weill’s last completed work. It was based on the novel, Cry the Beloved Country by the South African writer, Alan Paton (1903-1988) and represents a very speedy adaptation, since Paton’s book was only published in 1948. Yet by the following year Weill and his librettist, Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959), had written the musical, which opened on Broadway in October 1949, where the original production ran for 273 performances.
 
In brief, the story concerns Stephen Kumalo, an African pastor, serving in a South African country parish, whose son, Absalom, has gone off to find work and a better life in Johannesburg. There he meets Irina, who conceives their child, but he also falls in with some less suitable male company and with these men he takes part in a burglary, during the course of which a white man – ironically, a campaigner for racial equality in Paton’s novel - is killed. When Stephen, unaware of these events, arrives in Johannesburg to search for his son he eventually finds the pregnant Irina and then locates his son, who is in jail, awaiting trial.
 
Inevitably Absalom is found guilty and sentenced to death. Not only are father and son reconciled but Stephen realises Irina’s worth. He marries the couple in jail so that their child will have Absalom’s name, and then takes Irina back to the family home and his parish where she is taken into the family’s care before the death sentence on Absalom is carried out.
 
This is emphatically not a conventional subject for a Broadway musical – like the earlier groundbreaking Showboat, which addressed the issue of miscegenation, it tackles a tough subject but it’s much more gritty than Jerome Kern’s great show. As David Kilroy observes in his excellent note, Lost in the Stars created in 1949 “a musico-dramatic parable of a new social order for an American public floundering with its own racial prejudices in the immediate postwar era.” In fact, in many ways it takes us back to the world of Weill’s collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. For example, there are some similarities in the musical styles. The scoring is for a small ensemble of some sixteen players and quite often the instrumental writing is pungent in a way that recalls those Brecht shows.
 
Lost in the Stars was Weill’s last completed work and it’s a fine creation, its quality emphasised by this excellent performance. We only get the musical numbers together with some of the spoken dialogue but the story line is not compromised.
 
The musical invention is strong; there are several memorable numbers in the show. The best of them fall to the character of Stephen and, in a strong cast, Arthur Woodley is one of the best performers of all. He has a fine, firm voice. His tone is consistently strong and round and his diction is excellent – though the libretto is printed it’s almost superfluous since all the cast enunciate very clearly. Woodley brings dignity and intensity to the role and among the highlights of the entire performance are his renditions of ‘Little Gray House’ and the title song. He also gives an excellent account of the emotionally charged soliloquy, ‘O Tixo, Tixo, Help Me!’ in Act II.
 
The other principal character is Irina, Absalom’s girlfriend. Cynthia Clarey gives a strong account of Irina’s music, singing ‘Stay Well’ expressively and delivering the touching ‘Trouble Man’ with real feeling. My one reservation is that her voice is a big, mature instrument and it might be thought rather too heavy to suggest a young, frightened and vulnerable girl.
 
Also impressive is Gregory Hopkins as the Leader of the chorus. He has a ringing, pliant tenor voice, which serves the opening number ‘The Hills of Ixopo’ very well. Even better is the ardent song, ‘Cry the Beloved Country’. Incidentally, great trouble has evidently been taken to ensure authentic pronunciation by all the cast; an adviser from the South African embassy, Tuli Demikude, was retained specially for this purpose
 
The chorus and orchestra are very fine indeed, bringing out all the tension and bite in Weill’s score but providing the right emotional charge. Julius Rudel directs proceedings with evident commitment to the score. The rhythms are kept tight and the memorable tunes flow most convincingly.
 
The recorded sound is perhaps a little close but not in any troubling way. Indeed, there’s rather a feel of the performance being mounted in a small theatre. Perhaps, though, that feeling is more down to the dramatic flair of this performance. The work clearly matters a great deal to Rudel, who says in a brief introductory comment that he regards it as “a composition of great depth, deceptively couched in simple settings.” That belief in the score shines through in his fine, dramatic reading.
 
Originally made for the MusicMasters catalogue, it’s excellent news that the recording has now been reissued by Nimbus. All admirers of Kurt Weill will want to add it to their collections but it should be heard by anyone interested in the unique art-form that is the American Musical.
 
-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

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The fact that these works have, until now, remained unrecorded perhaps bears witness to the fact that the discrimination confronted by Alice Mary Smith over a hundred years ago has still not been entirely eradicated. Smith wrote by far the greatest number of orchestral works of any ninteenth-century British woman composer and the success of her orchestral and choral works gave rise to a heated discussion as to whether a woman could ever compose a work of greatness. Her finely crafted and inventive music is the story of a wife and mother battling against prejudice and, in the eyes of her contemporaries at least, succeeding.

Recorded in: Wessex Hall, Poole Arts Centre Recorded in: Winter Gardens, Bournemouth Recorded 1992 -1994 Producer(s) Brian Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Ralph Couzens Richard Smoker (Assistant: Piano Concerto; Praeludium) Ben Connellan (Assistant: Fantasia on a Theme of Handel) Richard Lee (Assistant: other works)

A selection of 40 scenes and speeches performed in live Royal Shakespeare Company productions from 1959 to thre present day. Performers include Judi Dench, Ciaran Hinds, Ian Holm, Derek Jacobi, Alan Rickman, Ian McKellan, Patrick Stewart, Anton Lesser, Paul Robeson, Laurence Olivier, Sinead Cusack, and more. (Opus Arte)

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Howard Shelley's survey of the piano music is an undoubted highlight of the Mendelssohn revival. In this, the final instalment of the series, he focuses on late works and posthumous publications.

Clarinet virtuoso David Howard performs some of the greatest works for clarinet and piano from the Mid-20th Century.

An exploration of the unique timbral characteristics and technical extensions of wind instruments, Gregory Wanamaker's LIGHT AND SHADOWS, WAVES AND TIME is comprised of eight compositions that collectively illustrate the composer's ability to integrate various genre influences into a distinctive whole. His music has been lauded as "pure gold, shot through with tenderness and grace" by the San Francisco Chronicle and "achingly beautiful" by the Palm Beach Daily News. The album's first track, "des ondes et les temps," which translates to "of waves and time," explores the saxophone's full range of possibilities. A solo piece performed by Casey Grev, "des ondes et les temps" waxes and wanes and rises and falls. Wanamaker expands to a quartet setting for "... unsettled, unphased... ," whose rhythmic roots can be found in genres ranging from Eastern European folk and dance music to jazz and progressive rock. The somber, poignant "Elegy," written for and performed by the Akropolis Reed Quintet, was originally composed in memory of those who died in the September 11 attacks, while the virtuosic musical fantasy, "Ragahoro Breakdown" intricately weaves elements of North Indian Raga with characteristics of a Bulgarian Horo and subtle hints of American folk music. The track that represents the second half of the album's title is a sonata in two contrasting movements, the first a quiet nocturne, the second it's polar opposite, each exploring the extended timbres of the saxophone and extreme ranges of the piano, while the dynamic "Out of Mind, Into Body" travels a similar path taken by John Friedrich's solo bass clarinet. While less than two minutes in length, the spirited "Counterpunch" effectively alternates elements of driving American-style minimalist with a fusion of jazz and funk. The album concludes with a concr�te version of it's opening track, transforming it into the form of experimental music in which sound identities are intentionally manipulated to appear unconnected to their source, creating an ambient, layered soundscape.

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For the seventh volume in this collection devoted to Mozart by the younger generation of soloists, the award-winning Austrian pianist Aaron Pilsan records the concerto K.459 with the ORF Radio Symphonieorchester in Vienna. French horn player Nicolas Ramez records one of his favourite concertos, the first of Mozart's four horn concertos. Finally, the young flutist Diren Duran performs the Andante for flute and orchestra K.315 before accompanying the harpist Elisabeth Plank for the divine concerto for flute, harp and orchestra K.299. The Orpheum Foundation, which has been supporting young musicians for over thirty years, has teamed up with Alpha Classics for a series of recordings devoted to Mozart's concertos on all instruments. The best soloists of the younger generation have been selected under the artistic direction of Howard Griffiths, a renowned Mozart conductor who believes that playing his music is like "looking in a mirror: you hear whether everything is in place, musicality, intonation, rhythm, phrasing" …

In my opinion, film music is one of the rare territories where a composer can write freely, providing that he chooses the films and subjects that suit his personality. This is the ideology that Howard Shore, one of the most innovative film composers, has embraced for more than 40 years. This album provides the perfect synthesis of three Paris concerts, which aimed to define the mysterious contours of the composer's multifaceted output. Picture Disc 3 LP set in special 3-flap-butterfly gatefold with lyrics in Sindarin and English translation from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring. Limited Edition.

In my opinion, film music is one of the rare territories where a composer can write freely, providing that he chooses the films and subjects that suit his personality. This is the ideology that Howard Shore, one of the most innovative film composers, has embraced for more than 40 years. This album provides the perfect synthesis of three Paris concerts, which aimed to define the mysterious contours of the composer's multifaceted output. 2 CD Softpak with booklet included. NUMBER OF DISCS: 2

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Recorded at the historic San Jacinto Hall in New Orleans, this album of pure New Orleans Jazz contains one of the finest versions of "Bogalusa Strut" & some of the greatest tailgate trombone ever waxed by Jim Robinson. Also features George Lewis, George Guesnon, Alcide "Slow Drag" Pavageau & Cie Frazier. Some alternate takes have been added to this reissue.

This is the first time the old "Music of New Orleans" sessions have been issued in their entirety; the sessions were created to showcase the talents of Capt. John Handy's sax playing, backed up by George Guesnon, Louis James & Joe Watkins.

This CD contains a combination of 2 Icon LPs released by Ken Mills of Kid's Olympia Band, also feat. Albert Burbank, John Handy, Kid Sheik, George Guesnon, Jim Robinson & others.

12 tracks.

Teddy Edwards/Howard McGhee - "Together Again!!!! (Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds Series)" / Bringing together trumpeter Howard McGhee and saxophonist Teddy Edwards, "Together Again!!!!" was originally released on Contemporary Records in 1961. In addition to Edwards and McGhee, the album features Phineas Newborn Jr. (piano), Ray Brown (bass), and Ed Thigpen (drums). This new edition, released as part of the Acoustic Sounds Series, features (AAA) lacquers cut from the original master tapes by Bernie Grundman and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at QRP, and presented in a tip-on jacket.

Recorded in 1961 and released by Contemporary Records the same year, Maggie's Back in Town!! is the second album released on the label by jazz trumpeter Howard McGhee. Also featured are the players Phineas Newborn Jr., Leroy Vinnegar and Shelly Manne. - This new edition, released as part of the Acoustic Sounds Series, features (AAA) lacquers cut from the original master tapes by Bernie Grundman and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at QRP, and presented in a tip-on jacket. - FEATURES: Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds Series / (AAA) Lacquers Cut from the Original Tapes by Bernie Grundman / 180gram Vinyl

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