Classical Music

Classical Music

Born in Buenos Aires in 1916, Alberto Ginastera lived to become unquestionably the most significant figure in Argentine music in the 20th century. This CD combines Ginastera's deep interest in the authentic folk music of his country alongside the more radical compositional techniques which gave his music such individual personality. Commissioned in 1941 for Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Caravan, the 1943 Suite made from Estancia became the piece that launched Ginastera's international fame - the spectacular Danza Final is perhaps Ginastera's most celebrated essay in the style of the Malambo - an exhilarating explosion of kinetic energy. Also in 1943, Ginastera composed his Overture to the Creole Faust, and it is, in a way an appendix to the Estancia dances, since it again deals with the life of the gauchos. Ollantay is nearly a symphony. Composed in 1947 for Erich Kleiber, the three movement work takes its inspiration from a poem from the early Incan period. Pampeana No. 3 is even closer to the symphony that Ginastera never wrote. Pampeana No. 3, like Ollantay, is also in three movements. The title recalls rhythms and melodies of the Argentine pampas, and the second movement contains one of the most extraordinary rhythmic tours-de-force in all of Ginastera's output. The Odense Symphony Orchestra continues their new series on Bridge with this outstanding recording. Bridge discs which also feature the Odense Symphony Orchestra include: Bridge 9129 (Villa-Lobos Symphonic Music), Bridge 9122 (Poul Ruders Edition, Vol. 3) and Bridge 9100 (Nielsen Violin Concerto).

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Craig Morris, former principal trumpet player of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has recorded brilliant solo trumpet versions of three Philip Glass classics. Morris’s new recording features works ranging from Glass’s constantly shifting ‘Melodies’ (1995) to the driving minimalist rhythms and figures of ‘Gradus’ (1968) and ‘Piece in the Shape of a Square’ (1967). ‘Melodies’ was written as incidental music for a play based on the novel, Un Captif Amoureux (Prisoner of Love) by the French author Jean Genet. Glass’s thirteen melodies cover a wide range of emotion, from touching and introspective to joyous and dancing. The visual element of ‘Piece in the Shape of a Square,’ is much more a part of the composition than it is in ‘Gradus.’ The music is set up in a roughly 10’ square, with one performer on the inside of the square and one performer on the outside. The performer on the inside moves around the square in a clockwise direction, while the performer on the outside moves around in a counterclockwise direction. Virtuoso trumpeter Craig Morris plays both parts on this fascinating recording.

Classical Music

Classical Music

This retrospective disc presents music composed by the late Elliott Carter over a period of more than 70 years. Unquestionably, the major work presented here is the late Charles Rosen’s performance of Carter’s Piano Concerto. Rosen, a great advocate of Carter’s music, had recorded most of Carter’s solo piano music over the course of his long career, though he never made a studio recording of Carter’s brilliant concerto. The release of this radio recording, featuring the superb Basel Sinfonietta, conducted by Joel Smirnoff, was one of Rosen’s last wishes. Volume 9 of Bridge’s ongoing Carter series opens with vocal works of Carter’s from the 30s and 40s, and proceeds to Steven Beck’s electrifying accounts of late solo piano music, and the Slowind Quintet’s performance of Carter’s quintet, Nine by Five, completed during the composer’s 101st year.

BrIdge Records launches Anne-Marie McDermott's Mozart Piano Concerto cycle with Vol. 1 of the series offering Concerto No. 6, K. 238, and Concerto No. 13, K. 415. The Odensesymfoniorkester (Denmark) is conducted by Scott Yoo. Of Ms. McDermott's extraordinary musicianship BBC Music Magazine recently wrote: "McDermott's heart has heft and translucence, structural certainty and seasoned humanity." In a career that has spanned over 25 years, American pianist Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals and chamber music in hundreds of cities throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. The breadth of her repertoire matches that of her instrument, spanning from Bach, Haydn and Beethoven to Rachmaninoff, Prokoviev and Scriabin to works by today’s most influential composers -- Aaron Jay Kernis, Steven Hartke, Joan Tower and Charles Wuorinen, among them. As an Artistic Director, Ms. McDermott leads the Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival in Florida and the Avila Chamber Music Celebration in Curacao.

Classical Music

American pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, who has accumulated a catalog of outstanding recordings, performs five captivating and stimulating sonatas by Franz Joseph Haydn. In addition to these solo works, McDermott also joins the Odense Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Scott Yoo in two Haydn piano concertos.

“I've long admired Anne-Marie McDermott's unsurpassed performances of Haydn. Her understanding of his music is superb and her playing of it so apt and expressive that I could not resist her invitation to provide cadenzas for one of Haydn's concerti. It was a joy to write them, and reproducing my own thoughts in the language of this ancient composer was exhilarating. It goes without saying that their realization in sound is exactly what I had intended.” - Charles Wuorinen (The noted American composer who wrote the cadenza for Haydn's Concerto No. 4 in G major, Hob.XVIII:4)

Max Kowalski, who lived and practiced law in Frankfurt am Main, was from 1913 till 1933 a well-known, much esteemed, and frequently performed composer. Kowalski was born in Poland (then Russia) on August 10th, 1882 and grew up in Germany, to which his parents emigrated when he was a year old. Kowalski's reputation rests on his production of more than two hundred art songs, which have been in the repertoire of many leading artists, including Heinrich Schlusnus, Maria Ivog�n, Paul Bender, Joseph Schwarz, Alexander Kipnis, Karen Branzell, and Hans Hotter. The present CD is drawn from a recital sung in 2011 in Munich by the great Austrian baritone, Wolfgang Holzmair. It offers two song cycles and songs composed to texts by some of Germany's leading poets. The CD includes Kowalski's best-known cycle, his Pierrot Lunaire, which appeared the same year (1913) as Arnold Schoenberg's settings.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

In 1937, Cincinnati's May Festival gave the world premiere of R. Nathaniel Dett's oratorio, "The Ordering of Moses", a 'Biblical Folk Scene' composed in 1932.  The event was broadcast live to the nation by NBC radio.  The present recording captures a thrilling 2014 concert of Dett's magnum opus, performed by four stellar vocal soloists, the May Festival Chorus, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Conlon.

 REVIEWS:

Conlon leads the Cincinnati musicians in a performance of radiant intensity. The chorus are in glorious communal voice and the Cincinnati Symphony blend elegance with vitality. How is it possible that a work as soaring and powerful as R. Nathaniel Dett’s The Ordering of Moses could have languished for so long?

-- Gramophone

This is certainly a major milestone in African-American classical music—a fine piece, very well done!

-- American Record Guide

This brilliantly stirring 1937 oratorio receives its first commercial recording, live from Carnegie Hall. Excellent soloists with sensitive chorus and orchestra.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Classical Music

This recording presents first performances of four recent scores by Arlene Sierra, the American composer, now living in London. Arlene Sierra’s music packs volcanic rhythmic power into compositions that are at once atmospheric, yet possessed of inexorable forward drive. The subject matter of Sierra’s compositions is far flung, and includes East Asian studies, evolutionary biology, entomology, game theory, siege engines, and architecture, to name but a few. In recent years Sierra has been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and the Seattle Symphony, and both of these compositions are heard here. Sierra teaches composition at Cardiff University, Wales and the The BBC National Orchestra of Wales, led by their Principal Guest Conductor, Jac Van Steen, have played Sierra’s orchestral music more frequently than any other orchestra. Their superb performances capture the visceral quality and detail of Sierra’s virtuosic scores. - Bridge Records

The New Orford Quartet approach these chamber monuments with justifiable reverance while providing ample space for them to sing, brood, and dance. Led with penetrating vibrancy by violinist Jonathan Crow, the performance of Op. 51/1 combines tonal beauty with seamless interaction. In the Op. 51/2, they are keenly alert to the contrapuntal conversations as they are to the matters of timbral warmth and focus.

– Gramophone

Classical Music

A special and splendid collection of the piano music of Stefan Wolpe played to perfection by the leading living interpreter of his keyboard music.

This excellent series of music by Stefan Wolpe, whose life spanned the first three quarters of the last century, continues both to perplex and to delight. To perplex because the musical character of German exile to Palestine Wolpe was so complex, enigmatic and diverse. To delight because of the very high quality both of that intriguing music and its playing.
 
Indeed, David Holzman's first CD in the series (BRIDGE 9116) in 2003 was nominated for 'Best Solo Instrumental Performance' in that year's Grammys and did in fact go on to win AFIM's INDIE award as 'Best Classical CD'. The current recital has all the vigour, perception and delicacy of his earlier success. The music played here was written between 1926 - before Wolpe and Irma Schoenberg (1902-1984) emigrated to Palestine, in 1934 - and 1959 only just over a decade before his death.
 
Particularly noteworthy is the first complete recording of Wolpe's huge Four Studies on Basic Rows (1935-36). It occupies almost half this CD and includes the composer's most frequently-recorded piano piece, the 'Passacaglia' [tr.4], which is in turn the longest single movement here at getting on for a quarter of an hour.
 
Music representing Wolpe's time in Germany, Palestine and America is included. It varies in complexity and scope from the experimental to music written for his students. So you're getting a mixture, a taster, of Wolpe's output for the instrument. You're also getting it played by undeniably the greatest interpreter of Wolpe's keyboard music alive today.
 
In his essay for the CD's liner notes, Holzman describes how he has come to know Wolpe so intimately that he can detect the composer's most minutely expressed moods and feelings in his music. Although this is evident from Holzman's control of tempi, phrasing and timbral nuance, the pianist is never permissive to the exclusion of the true musical essence which he's gently intent on conveying. It's insight and interpretation first, and any hint of special understanding second. The playing of the 'Passacaglia', for instance, is approached with great confidence and all the necessary familiarity; Holzman unshowily brings to the performance his ability to anticipate and to pace the music yet is as fresh and full of surprises as can be.
 
Holzman reveals and commends the depth and breadth as well as the engaging beauty of these works: Wolpe's fascination with the colours (literally) of intervals was never mechanical, forced or self-indulgently indecisive. Holzman quietly and effectively communicates with great conviction and confidence the gentle and at times understated loveliness in music whose titles sound as though they were mere exercises. They're not. Their range and originality are impossible to miss thanks to Holzman's perception and dedication.
 
His playing is alert and alive. It continually presents new delights. Listen to the juxtaposition of the 'Pastorale' then 'Con fuoco' of the Two Pieces for Piano from 1941 [trs. 9, 10]. It's not that they could be by different composers (Berg then Webern perhaps); nor that the same composer is as versatile as he clearly is. The playing succeeds because it's conversant with the wealth of resources on which Wolpe draws at any one time. These include moods, light, invention, ties to other formats, references and original topoi in which Wolpe is so evidently at home. As a result, what does emerge in contrasts and parallels somehow has its own logic.
 
Technically Holzman is flawless. The piano is recorded nicely forward yet with enough space to allow full air to the many timbres and palettes it's required to evoke. The notes, which are nicely informative - especially for someone new to Wolpe's world - explain the somewhat relaxed circumstances under which this recital was prepared and executed. Indeed, there's a spontaneity and lack of deliberateness to the playing, to the order in which the pieces are heard and consequently to the listener's overall delight in this slice of a very intriguing composer. But this is a freedom which not for a minute even hints at sacrificing the rigour necessary for music as demanding as this. The result: an hour and a quarter's sheer enjoyment and inspiration.
 
This sixth volume in Bridge's series fulfils the promise of the others released so far. It's a great introduction to Wolpe's piano music for those unfamiliar with it. Since most of the pieces here presented are not available elsewhere, Holzman's recital will also satisfy collectors of Wolpe. Don't hesitate.
 
-- Mark Sealey, MusicWeb International

Classical Music