Award-winning Canadian composer Christopher Tyler Nickel adds to his impressive catalogue of large-scale liturgical works with a double-bill featuring his Mass and Te Deum, composed concurrently and completed in 2022. As with previous works - including Requiem, and the seven-hour long oratorio The Gospel According to Mark - Chris' spirituality infuses his music with melancholy and meditative qualities. Haunting intimacy, a predilection for chant-like melodies and allusions to Medieval music, and plangent orchestral colours, give these two new sacred works a feeling of timelessness. Listeners will recognise Chris' penchant for unusual combinations of instruments - a quartet from the oboe family in both works, with the lesser heard oboe d'amore and bass oboe alongside oboe and cor anglais; and a pair of Wagner tubas in the Mass. Chris once again collaborates with soprano Catherine Redding, the Vancouver Chamber Choir and Vancouver Contemporary Orchestra under the baton of Clyde Mitchell - who on previous releases of Chris' music have delivered "emotionally stirring performances" (The WholeNote).

San Francisco-based Cantata Collective continues it's exploration of J.S. Bach's major choral masterworks with a third in the ongoing series, pairing the composer's Easter Oratorio and Magnificat. Released in time for Holy Week, both works are lavishly scored and feature some of Bach's most festive and popular vocal writing. With celebrated baroque music specialist Nicholas McGegan on the podium, and a roll call of today's finest early music vocal soloists, this release is poised to build on the auspicious previous releases - a "bold and beautifully constructed" St. John Passion (BBC Radio 3 Record Review), and "an exemplary performance" of the Mass in B Minor (American Record Guide).

Pianist extraordinaire Anthony de Mare's landmark commissioning project, Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano, reaches Volume II with a diverse range of 14 tracks by a roll call of contemporary composers from the worlds of classical, jazz, film, indie, pop and musical theatre, including Jon Batiste, Stephen Hough, Meredith Monk, Max Richter, Conrad Tao, with the soloist himself contributing the title track "All Things Bright and Beautiful". Launched in 2015 on ECM Records with an acclaimed three-volume set - "a revelation. de Mare's playing superb throughout, a combination of lyrical reflection and extroverted pyrotechnics" (San Francisco Chronicle) - Liaisons II extends the ambitious endeavour that brings together the world's leading composers to re-imagine the legendary musical theatre composer's songs for solo piano. Sondheim, the ever-eloquent wordsmith, proclaimed he was "thrilled" with the music: "I think the new pieces are terrific,' he wrote in October of 2021, simultaneously praising de Mare: "I also like how they show off your piano-playing chops. " Timed to coincide with the 95th anniversary of Sondheim's birth, Liaisons II: All Things Bright and Beautiful stands as a celebration of the life and enduring legacy of the exceptional musical theatre giant.

Newly available on high quality heavyweight 180g vinyl. Bruce Wolosoff is a formidable pianist, lauded for his integration of classical, jazz, blues, and contemporary influences in his compositions. His new magnum opus, Rising Sun Variations, is an extended and innovative set based on the American traditional folk song, best known for a version recorded in 1964 by British rock band the Animals. Wolosoff's "Prelude and Theme" are followed by 39 Variations ranging from sonorous to serene, encompassing a multitude of styles united by the well-known refrain.

Themes of art song, poetry, and spirituality run throughout Poème Mystique, the second solo album by Korean-American violinist Danbi Um. Following Danbi’s acclaimed solo debut album Much Ado – a showcase for her virtuosity and gilded tone – Poème Mystique explores works of lyrical beauty and profound personal expression. Richard Strauss’ Violin Sonata, written in the year he met his future wife, is imbued with romance and intimacy. Ernest Bloch’s Second Violin Sonata, the title work of the album, is by turns ecstatic, spiritual, and fantasy-like. Inspired by a dream, Bloch incorporates a vast range of spirituality, including motifs from his Jewish-themed works, the Gregorian Credo, Mass Kyrie, and traditional Amen. Danbi weaves two shorter works amongst the sonatas. Gabriel Fauré’s Après un rêve (“After a dream”), originally a French art song, becomes an exquisite song without words in this transcription for violin. The album concludes with Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria, likewise originally for voice and piano, presented here in an arrangement by August Wilhelm. Danbi’s refined collaborator is Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen. Together they deliver a performance that is at once technically virtuosic and emotionally nuanced.

Their names were Laura, Livia, and Anna. Together, they were known in the late 1500's as the Tre Donne di Ferrara - the three ladies of Ferrara. Their ensemble was praised by contemporary poets and won highest renown throughout Italy and Germany. However, women were not supposed to become famous for their professional achievements. And so, one of them was murdered by her husband - a count - who went unpunished. Thus, this is a tale of revolutionary women ahead of their time, living in an era when women had no protections. In this album, it has been my pleasure to collaborate with three extraordinary ladies of today - named Amanda, Amanda, and Amanda. The Amandas and I are proud to offer this homage to the unstoppable Italian women who broke the glass ceiling in 1580. We hope that their brilliance and boldness resound through this recording.

Countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen's star is rapidly in the ascendent, his voice "astonishingly beautiful" and "golden-toned" (The Guardian). He has been acclaimed as a "complete artist" by The New York Times and as "extravagantly gifted... Nussbaum Cohen is poised to re-define what's possible for singers of this distinctive voice type" (San Francisco Chronicle). Uncharted is Aryeh's solo debut album, and ventures outside typical countertenor territory into 19th and 20th century lieder never before recorded by his soaring voice type. Austro-Germanic lieder was Aryeh's first musical love and on Uncharted, he indulges in music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Clara and Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms - music that resonates profoundly with his family's German and Jewish heritage. The moving programme is heightened by the deeply sensitive playing of leading collaborative pianist John Churchwell, Head of Music for San Francisco Opera. The release of Uncharted coincides with a North American tour that takes Aryeh to Houston and St. Paul, with debuts at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and New York's Carnegie Hall.

A Lullaby Carol - Christmas at Christ Church

The Young Schumann, the new release by British pianist Charles Owen, is a musical narrative of Robert Schumann's early career, featuring works written in the 1830s when the composer was in his 20s. His first two published works, Abegg Variations and Papillons, the impetuous six Intermezzi, Op. 4, and the characterful Carnaval, Op. 9, are all fuelled by some of Schumann's compositional hallmarks: his imagination and attraction to the fantastical, his love of ciphers and cryptograms, and his frequent quoting of each work within the others.

Bruce Wolosoff is a formidable pianist, lauded for his integration of classical, jazz, blues, and contemporary influences in his compositions. His new magnum opus, Rising Sun Variations, is an extended and innovative set of improvisations on the American traditional folk song, best known for a version recorded in 1964 by British rock band the Animals. Wolosoff's "Prelude and Theme" are followed by 39 Variations ranging from sonorous to serene, encompassing a multitude of styles united by the well-known refrain.

Award-winning Canadian composer Christopher Tyler Nickel scales heights and plumbs depths with his novel new recording of concertos, for piccolo and for four Wagner tubas. Following his recently released Requiem, last year's epic seven-hour Gospel According to Mark, and concertante works for all ranges for his own instrument - oboe, oboe d'amore and bass oboe - Chris' new recording includes a dazzling Concerto for Piccolo featuring principal piccolo player of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Sarah Jackson, paired with an astounding assemblage of four players of the Wagner tuba, a hybrid tuba-French horn instrument commissioned by the namesake composer for his opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. Both Jackson and the four Wagner tuba soloists - Oliver de Clercq, Laurel Spencer, Valerie Whitney, Holly Bryan - are superbly supported by conductor Clyde Mitchell and the Vancouver Contemporary Orchestra.

There Is Sweet Music is the idyllic title of the first AVIE release by the eight-voice Proteus Ensemble and their conductor Stephen Shellard, which surveys a selection of relatively rare part-songs by Sir Edward Elgar. Elgar maintained his dedication to composing part-songs throughout his life and imbued each of them with an inimitable character. Like the composer's celebrated "Enigma Variations", his part-songs bear an array of inspirations and dedicatees, including his wife Caroline Alice who penned the poem of the album's closer, "O Happy Eyes", shortly after she and Elgar were married. This early work became a companion to the song "Love," written eight years later and also dedicated to Caroline Alice. Elgar turned to famous poets and peers - Lord Byron for "Deep in my soul", Percy Bysshe Shelley for "O wild West Wind!", and Alfred Lord Tennyson whose poem "The Lotos-Eaters" provides the album's title track. English translations of Russian poems lend themselves to "Death on the Hills", "Love's Tempest" and "Serenade". Elgar frequently found inspiration in Italy, where he composed "Angelus', a song dedicated to his close friend Alice Stuart Wortley whom he called "Windflower" and whose spirit is enshrined in his Violin Concerto. Stephen Shellard's Elgarian epiphany began in 1990 when he joined Dr. Donald Hunt's choir at Worcester Cathedral as an Alto Lay Clerk. Dr. Hunt's inspired and devoted expertise in performances of works by Worcester's most famous musical son cast a life-long spell on Stephen that manifests itself in these beautiful performances with his Proteus Ensemble.

Pianist Benjamin Hochman's fourth album for AVIE, Resonance, literally resonates with music spanning six centuries. Two late Beethoven sonatas are the pillars of the program, with two Renaissance works by Josquin des Prez and John Dowland, plus a masterpiece by one of today's most heralded living composers, George Benjamin, in between. Resonance opens with Beethoven's Op. 109, followed by Josquin's serene motet Ave Maria, arranged for piano by American contemporary composer Charles Wuorinen, the stylistic contrasts nevertheless resonating with a common tonal centre and rich counterpoint. Dowland's Flow my tears, arranged for keyboard by Downland's contemporary William Byrd, is a lamentation akin to the third movement "Arioso dolente" from Beethoven's Op. 110. The penultimate track is George Benjamin's 2001 Shadowlines. Subtitled "Canonic Preludes", like Beethoven, Benjamin expands both sonic and emotional resonance to the limit.

Jeannette Sorrell, the celebrated founder-director of Cleveland-based Baroque orchestra Apollo's Fire, first fell in love with the harpsichord upon hearing three masterpieces by Johann Sebastian Bach: the composer's concertos in D Minor, BWV1052 and F Minor, BWV1056, and his Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 (for Harpsichord, flute & violin). Jeannette and Apollo's Fire recorded these works between 1999-2004, with the subsequent 2010 album release debuting on the Top 10 of Billboard's Traditional Classical Albums Chart. This 25th anniversary reissue brings together a new programme of Jeannette's favourite Bach harpsichord concertos.

Bach's Coffeehouse brings together a selection of Apollo's Fire recordings - old and new alike - featuring repertoire that is believed to have been performed at Cafe Zimmerman in Leipzig, the city where Johann Sebastian Bach served as Cantor. Coffee houses were all the rage at the time, centres for socialising and musical soirees. Bach would have found respite from his formal duties as Cantor, by curating informal concerts at the thriving coffee emporium. Bach's Coffeehouse features new recordings of Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 with virtuoso soloists Alan Choo, the Singaporean violinist and Assistant Artistic Director of Apollo's Fire, and recorder player Daphna Mohr; the Double Concerto for Oboe and Violin with Debra Nagy and violinist Johanna Novom; and "Air on a G String" from Orchestral Suite No. 3. Rounding out the album, Apollo's Fire brings back catalogue favourites by two of Bach's contemporaries: Telemann's swaggering Don Quixote Suite, and Vivaldi's fiery "La folia", featuring Alan Choo and Spanish violinist Francisco Fullana.

TO-N and Leon Botstein have helped rescue a growing list of works from oblivion, rediscoveries that bring us wonderful music we might never have encountered otherwise and remind us there is more to music history than the standard fare. This album unites three German-speaking Jewish composers, born within a few years of one another in the first decade of the 20th century. All three were lucky enough to escape the Holocaust and start anew after the traumatic interruption of the war years. Their works recorded here were all written during the 1940s: in Jerusalem, Bombay (Mumbai) and Mexico City, respectively. They show three young composers striving to find their own voices, while at the same time trying to adapt to their new environments.

As responses to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons go, the world-premiere of The Irish Four Seasons by Ailbhe McDonagh instantly ranks amongst the most evocative and ear-catching. Presented alongside the "Red Priest's" monumental opus, in the debut recording by leading Irish violinist Lynda O'Connor, McDonagh's The Irish Four Seasons resonates with a shrewd synthesis of Baroque style and Irish culture. O'Connor explains, "Irish and Baroque music are similar in many ways. The freedom to ornament, similarities in structure and the prominence of reinterpretation are apparent in both styles". O'Connor and McDonagh are frequently referred to as musical soulmates. In their most recent collaboration, they bring to bear Ireland's huge musical heritage. Arranged over four movements - Earrach (Spring), Samhradh (Summer), Fomhar (Autumn), and Geimhreadh (Winter) -The Irish Four Seasons introduces new Irish airs inspired by Vivaldi's memorable melodies, creating an exciting and emotive work that proudly takes it's place alongside the Baroque evergreen. Supported by her new, hand-picked ensemble Anamus under the baton of David Brophy, O'Connor brings these programmatic works - old and new alike - to palpable life.

Versatile cellist Christoph Croisé indulges in his passion for romantic Russian repertoire, coming together with close collaborators violinist Andrey Baranov and pianist Alexander Panfilov for a recording of works by a young Rachmaninoff. All of the works on this album were written before 1917, the year that the composer left Russia in the wake of the Revolution, and eventually emigrated to the United States.

The prodigious Rachmaninoff wrote his single-movement Trio élégiaque in G minor in 1892, when he was just 18 years old. A year later, he put pen to paper to compose his second Trio élégiaque, in D minor, on the eve of the death of his friend and mentor Tchaikovsky, to whom he dedicated the work. Both trios are imbued with an air of nostalgia and melancholy that belie the composer’s youthfulness. Christoph and his colleagues offer as encores a selection of songs arranged for piano trio by Alexander Panfilov: “How Fair This Spot” and "Lilacs" from Rachmaninoff’s 12 Romances, Op. 21, part of a set written during his honeymoon; and "The Dream" and "Daisies" from his Op. 38 collection Six Romances (1916). The album ends appropriately with an arrangement of "Autumn Song" from Tchaikovsky’s solo piano work The Seasons.

If you’ve seen the Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro”, you’ve seen and heard The Orchestra Now, the exceptional ensemble that appears in the movie’s Tanglewood Music Festival scene. The Orchestra Now (TON), a New York-based graduate-level training orchestra comprised of the most vibrant young musicians from around the globe, was founded by conductor, educator and music historian Leon Botstein, whose insatiable curiosity has resulted in rescuing countless musical works from oblivion. Their first recording for AVIE, “The Lost Generation”, brings together three German-speaking composers who were contemporaries of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, but whose music became supressed by historical events of the 20th century.

In November 2022, TON gave the US premiere of Hugo Kauder’s Symphony No. 1, a “splendid” work that “made a splash” (New York Classical Review). The largely self-taught Moravian-born composer had a distinguished career in Vienna until he was forced to flee the Nazis and arrived in New York in 1938. The first of Kauder’s five symphonies was dedicated to Alma Mahler. Whilst his musical language is rooted in the tradition of Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler, he forged an individual voice with his ease and flexibility of harmonic and metrical shifts.

German-born, Austrian composer Hans Erich Apostel studied with Schoenberg and Berg. His works incorporated his mentors’ expressionism and 12-tone methods in equal measure. The Nazis deemed Apostel’s music “degenerate”, but he lived out his life in Vienna until his death in 1972. His Variations on a theme by Haydn, performed frequently in the mid-20th century, is an homage to the second movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 103, the “Drum Roll, which itself comprises variations on a theme.

Adolf Busch, one of the most celebrated violinists and chamber musicians of the 20th century, was also a prolific composer. A staunch opponent of Nazism, he left his native Germany, arriving first in Switzerland and eventually the United States in 1939. A late Romantic compositional style imbues his Variations on an Original Theme, originally for piano four hands and presented to his wife as a Christmas present in 1944. Busch’s longtime chamber music partner and son-in-law, the pianist Rudolf Serkin, frequently performed the work with his son Peter, who made this orchestration of his grandfather’s composition, in a familial labor of love.

The spirited New York City-based ensemble East of the River debuts on AVIE with "Ija Mia: Music of the Sephardic Diaspora." Directed by the dynamic duo of internationally renowned "recorder virtuosos" (The New York Times) Daphna Mor (a regular collaborator with Apollo’s Fire) and Nina Stern, the album is inspired by love and commemoration of the musicians’ collective cultural backgrounds – Nina’s Venetian Jewish ancestry, and Daphna’s Ladino heritage. Spanning a vast range of Sephardic folk and traditional musics - stories and dances, prayers and anthems – "Ija Mia" is by turns haunting, soulful, and exuberant. Daphna and Nina’s cosmopolitan collaborators include an astonishing assortment of musicians, including renowned Armenian-American oud player Ara Dinkjian, Silk Road percussionist Shane Shanahan, the phenomenal Israeli bassist Tal Mashiach, and Palestinian multi-instrumentalist Zafer Tawil on qanún, violin, and percussion.

Harpist Lauren Scott’s debut album, Beyond the Horizon, was a breakout sensation. Her scintillating follow-up, Sea of Stars, promises to follow in its footsteps. Lauren explains: “Scintillating … the act of light hitting a many faceted object, sparks flying or the execution of something with panache and brilliance. The harp, with its quicksilver sound and ever-shifting resonances, easily fits these definitions.” Sea of Stars casts Lauren’s own compositions and arrangements alongside original works by Grace Evangeline Mason, Rüdiger Opperman and Monika Stadler. Throughout, Sea of Stars is a brilliant showcase for Lauren’s inimitable style and virtuosity, demonstrating her consummate skill as both a lever and pedal harpist.

Celebrating the sesquicentenary of Charles Ives’ birth, New England-based pianist and Ives scholar nonpareil Donald Berman releases a recording of the composer’s “Concord Sonata” using his own newly prepared edition which reveals fresh insights into the iconic work. Berman’s immersion into Ives’ sound world began under the tutelage of pianist John Kirkpatrick who gave the New York premiere of the “Concord Sonata” in 1939. Throughout many years of study and reflection, Berman discovered numerous notes and alterations that Ives made within the Concord’s manuscript pages, each one “a step toward realising his vision for a three-dimensional auditory experience.” Berman concluded that the first movement of the Concord, as Ives imagined it, is quite different than today’s commonly accepted version; his new edition includes two pages worth of material, masterfully recorded here for the first time.

The album opens with the elegiac “The St. Gaudens (Black March)”, referring to the eponymous sculpture in the Boston Common that depicts the Massachusetts 54th, the first Union army regiment of African American soldiers, that is known widely in its orchestral version as the first movement of Ives’ Three Places in New England.

Sebastian Bohren’s world-premiere recording of “In Evening Light”, the second violin concerto by Pēteris Vasks, comes 25 years after the celebrated Latvian composer’s first, “Distant Light”, one of the most successful, oft-performed and recorded concertos by a living composer. “In Evening Light” seems certain to follow in its forebear’s footsteps, destined to become another modern classic.

“In Evening Light” – a three-movement, 38-minute work – is beautiful and contemplative, evoking a twilit world immersed in muted colours and permeated with deep shadows and dramatic contrasts. The album ends as it begins, with another atmospheric Vasks work. “Lonely Angel” is an homage to his late mother who lived through practically the whole of the 20th century. The composer explains, “This piece is the vision of an angel flying alone above humankind, filled with grief at how cruel and aggressive we are to each other. Like a guardian angel he touches the earth with his wings and in that way offers us comfort and healing.”

Sandwiched in between is the contrasting, classical-era Rondo in B minor by Franz Schubert, arranged for violin and strings. Preceding Vasks’ works by nearly two centuries, Schubert similarly revels in exploring ambiance and spaciousness.

San Francisco-based early music ensemble Cantata Collective continues its major series of J. S. Bach’s choral works with the Mass in B Minor, a towering testament of sacred music and the composer’s crowning achievement of his final years. With celebrated conductor Nicholas McGegan, four of today’s most distinguished early music vocal soloists and a refined chamber choir, this live recording exudes a spontaneity that reveals the depth and passion of Bach’s glorious affirmation of faith.

REVIEW:

Some of the most impressive choral singing in this recording is heard in the central three choruses of the Symbolum Nicenum, the crowning glory and some of Bach’s best music in the entire Mass. The Cantata Collective’s choral forces shine in their expressive use of color and dynamic shading in the long arching lines of “Et incarnatus est” and “Crucifixus” and are able to hold their own in “Et resurrexit” — due, in part, to McGegan’s careful balancing and phrasing.

— EarlyMusicAmerica.org

Japanese-American cellist Yoshika (“Yoshi”) Masuda makes his recording debut with Hidden Flame, an album containing music by Amy Beach, Clara Schumann, Rita Strohl, Nadia Boulanger, Maria Theresia von Paradis, and a world-premiere by Reena Esmail.

The works on Hidden Flame span over two centuries and collectively tell a story of how women have moved from the margins of the classical repertoire to somewhere closer to the centre. Whilst the quality of the music these women composed is indisputable, there are also fascinating background stories for all these pieces which often illustrate the personal and societal pressures faced by creative women in history.

Yoshi describes the album’s concept: “to present the compositions of women as masterpieces by truly great composers. Musicians and music lovers often feel confident that great works that exist in this world must already be a part of the standard repertoire. However, this album proves that there are hidden gems that deserve more recognition are still out there! It is my aspiration that, in encountering both the familiar and the unfamiliar within this collection of pieces, listeners will transcend considerations of gender or race and recognise these compositions simply as expressions of profound beauty crafted by masterful composers”.