Un milagro de fe (A Miracle of Faith) presents the spectacular debut recording of the choral ensemble Border CrosSing, based in Minnesota's Twin Cities, and led by Mexican-Egyptian conductor Ahmed Anzaldúa. Their kaleidoscopic program presents vibrant readings of works of faith by Beatriz Bilbao, Ariel Ramirez's Misa Criolla, Mary Lou Williams's St. Martin de Porres, and selections from Osvaldo Golijov's La Pasión según San Marcos.

Founded in 2017, Border CrosSing envisions fundamental change in classical music culture, so that every concert, every audience, and the artists on stage truly reflect the cultural reality in which we live. Our work provides opportunities for people from different communities to understand each other in new ways through our multi-lingual Puentes concert series, educational programs in schools, and collaborations with Minnesota’s most important cultural organizations, including The Schubert Club and Minnesota Orchestra.

Bridge Records is pleased to issue guitarist David Starobin's final studio recording, W.T. Matiegka's Six Sonatas, op. 31, performed on a Viennese style guitar. Starobin regards Matiegka's sonatas as "in their time, the pinnacle of expression on the guitar, offering the most detailed notation of both articulation and character--a clear window onto performance style in the era of Beethoven and Schubert."

REVIEWS:

[Starobin's] gift for interpretation is evident throughout the present recording and illustrates his artistic ability to “serve” the score. This recording encourages close listening as the guitarist’s technique never intrudes, while the interpretive quality offers myriad opportunities for one’s attention to settle more and more deeply into Matiegka’s compositions.

— EarRelevant

No less a figure than the young Schubert acknowledged Matiegka's skill by making an arrangement of one of his trios. Also a contemporary of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, Matiegka absorbed the musical practices of the day and applied them expertly in his guitar sonatas, of which 11 survive. The sonatas of Op. 31 all contain three short movements, but there's never a hint of repetition or familiarity as these works unfold with a spectrum of creative possibility, especially in Starobin's eloquent hands. The guitarist brings refinement to every turn of phrase, whether the music is marching, dancing or crying. Generations of guitarists will thank Starobin for bringing Matiegka's pieces to light. This recording is a swansong to savor.

— Gramophone

Rune Most, the distinguished Danish flautist performs three delightfully virtuosic flute concertos by C.P.E. Bach with the Danish Sinfonietta and conductor David Riddell. Of the three concertos recorded here, the D minor concerto (Wq 22) is the only concerto conceived for flute. The A minor (Wq 166) began its life as a cello concerto, and the G major (Wq 169) began as a concerto for organ, with C.P.E. later crafting his brilliant flute version.

Rune Most began his studies at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense with Karl Lewkovitch. Later came studies with Professor Lóránt Kovács in Budapest, and in 1990 he made his debut from the soloist class of the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where he had studied with Toke Lund Christiansen. Today Rune Most is solo flautist with the Odense Symphony Orchestra and teaches at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense. Over the years music has taken him to South America, China, Russia and many countries in Europe as a chamber musician and soloist.

The wildly gifted French pianist Marc Ponthus offers a new reading of Beethoven's great "Hammerkavier" sonata; op. 106; pairing it with Karlheinz Stockhausen's explosive Klavierstück X. Serious listening recommended!

States of Play, solos and duos by Robert Carl and John McDonald, features bassist Robert Black, violist Scott Woolweaver, and John McDonald, playing the keyboard parts of the solos and duos with the string players. The recording is a retrospective of joint projects undertaken over the past couple of decades by Carl and McDonald. McDonald writes that "as longtime creative friends and mutual admirers, it seemed natural to team up here with Robert, Robert, and Scott for some ‘excavating’ as well as some new discovering. "States of Play" thus represents this rediscovery-by-excavating, primarily through Robert Carl’s music written between 1987 and 2018. Following Robert’s invitation to contribute some music of my own, I’ve offered two piano pieces to this States of Play lineup that were both completed during 2016 and 2017." A special collaboration!

Bridge Records announces the release of Volume 21 the Complete Crumb Edition, a monumental recording project begun in 1982, and completed 42 years later with this final installment. The Grammy award-winning Crumb series documents the late American composer's complete catalog of works, spanning Crumb's seventy-five year compositional career. Project producer David Starobin writes that “the series benefited tremendously from George's participation in the recording and post-production of these documents.” This last volume includes compositions from the beginning, middle, and end of Crumb’s career and features the world premiere recording of the composer's penultimate composition, the percussion quintet Kronos-Kryptos (2020), performed by Ensemble 20/21 of the Curtis Institute of Music. The record also includes Crumb's second acknowledged composition, the Sonata for Solo Violoncello (1955), performed by cellist Timothy Eddy, as well as two performances of Crumb's piano solo, Processional (1983), played by pianists Gilbert Kalish (keyboard version) and Marcantonio Barone (alternate version with extended piano effects).

The Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio's highly anticipated BEETHOVEN: COMPLETE PIANO TRIOS (BRIDGE 9505A/C three CDs) is now available. The stellar New York City based trio (Yael Weiss, piano; Mark Kaplan, violin; Peter Stumpf, cello) offer deep and full-bodied interpretations of eight immortal masterworks.

Peter Kolkay's new recording of music for bassoon and strings, Red Maple, takes its title from a work that Joan Tower wrote for Kolkay in 2013. Tower's piece is joined by fellow American composer Russell Platt's Quintet, completed in 1997. Two UK composers round out the program, with English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage's Massarosa (2018) (another Kolkay dedication) and the Scottish composer Judith Weir's Wake Your Wild Voice (2008), a duo for bassoon and cello. Peter Kolkay holds a distinguished place in the American music scene as the only bassoonist to have won the coveted Avery Fisher Career Award, and as an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He is joined on the recording by the distinguished Calidore String Quartet, currently quartet in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Fred Lerdahl's "Inner Life" is a cycle of three pieces for two pianos, composed between 2020 and 2022. The work was written for and dedicated to the spectacular duo Quattro Mani (pianists Steven Beck and Susan Grace). Lerdahl refers to the composition as "my pandemic piece". During the course of the 50-minute cycle, the music moves between contemplative moodiness, and brilliant outbursts of glittery virtuosic figuration. This recording documents a truly inspired collaboration between Lerdahl, (recently called "one of America's great secret treasures" (Gramophone), and two musicians called "one of the most enduring and leading keyboard duos anywhere” (Fanfare).

Bridge's latest Louis Karchin disc opens with the brilliant pianist Stephen Drury playing Karchin's recent Sonata-Fantasia. Even newer is Karchin's virtuoso Quintet for Winds; played by Windscape. Pianists Michael Stephen Brown and Han Chen play new shorter piano solos; and organist Carson Cooman and clarinetist Marrianne Gythfeldt round out the program with new solo compositions. For further information; see www.louiskarchin.com

The featured work on this album of compositions by Justin Dello Joio is the American composer's new piano concerto; "Oceans Apart"; composed for keyboard titan; Garrick Ohlsson. Ohlsson is joined by the Boston Symphony Orchestra; conducted by Alan Gilbert; the artists who premiered the concerto in 2023. The program also includes chamber works performed by the New York Philharmonic's principal cellist; Carter Brey; with pianist Christopher O'Riley; and the American Brass Quintet; and organist Colin Fowler. For more information see www.justindellojoio.net

This recording has been released in honor of Ursula Mamlok's 100th birthday, February 1, 2023. Mamlok Vol. 6, featuring new recordings made in Berlin and New York City, contains works from the German-American composer's last creative period- Mosaics (2011) for piano 4 hands, and Terzianum (2006) for violin and flute. Vol. 6 contains works from more than a half century of the distinguished German-American composer's career, dating back to her Suite for Four Cellos composed in 1957. Bridge's Ursula Mamlok series began under the composer's supervision, and continues with this fascinating retrospective.

A Left Coast is a heartfelt song collection for the place baritone Tyler Duncan and pianist Erika Switzer call home- British Columbia. The distinguished artists write: "Our particular connections to Vancouver’s communities, geography, and spirit, continue to nourish us as artists. Its lands and waters, the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory cared for since time immemorial by the Musqueam, Squamish, and Selilwitulh and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, provided us with an extraordinary upbringing. With these songs, (by composers Iman Habibi, Jean Coulthard, Jocelyn Morlock, Stephen Chatman, Leslie Uyeda, Melissa Hui, and Jeffrey Ryan) we wish to say thank you." Duncan and Switzer have been inspired by the vibrant Canadian new music scene, and offer an adventurous, deeply felt homage to Canada's beautiful 'left coast.'

REVIEW:

The centerpiece of the recital is Jeffrey Ryan’s song cycle Everything Already Lost, which explores the themes of loneliness and aloneness, distance and home. “Bill Evans: Alone,” “Autumn Again,” and “Night Music,” incorporate elements of jazz, sounds of nature, and evocations of moonlight. It’s a lyrical, expressive work, one that is sensitive to both Zwicky’s poetry and the lovely sonorities of the participating musicians. The remainder of the songs on A Left Coast all inhabit a similar world of expression. Full texts are included, as well as commentary on all the compositions. This is a lovely and fulfilling recital.

— Fanfare