Johan Helmich Roman is called the “Father of Swedish music” and also the “Swedish Handel”. And with good reason, as his instrumental works match Handel’s chamber music in charm, virtuosity formal structure and tunefulness. There is no better advocate for these somewhat neglected works than Jed Wentz and his musical companions of Musica ad Rhenum. They are thoroughly aware of the stylistic details of the music and its performance.Included are liner notes by Jed Wentz.

Recorded in November 2016 at the Cathedral of San Lorenzo in the Umbrian city of Perugia, the latest Brilliant Classics album from Adriano Falcioni has an especially personal impulse behind it. He decided to record the first two sonatas of Max Reger after receiving the approval of the composer’s granddaughter, who happened to attend one of his recitals.

Like many organists before him, looking for repertoire which would stretch his skills to the utmost, he came across the Second Sonata as a student: ‘it made me fall in love with his music,’ says Falcioni. ‘Moreover, it has been essential to my development as an organist.’

Indeed the recording serves as an ideal introduction to a body of work which still has a forbidding aspect to many listeners. Outside Germany, Reger is still underappreciated for the density of his counterpoint and the richness of his harmonic language, which could hardly exist without Wagner and yet places itself at a distance from the erotic aspect of the operas, while also pursuing a path distinct from his Modernist contemporaries. The Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H is one of Reger’s most accomplished and dramatic homages to the composer he loved above all others. The First Sonata concludes with an extended Passacaglia – one of several in the composer’s output which inevitably recalls the great C minor Passacaglia of the young Bach. But it is the Second Sonata in which the mastery of Reger’s mature style is most persuasively evident, from the striking gestures of the opening Improvisation, through the gentle solemnity of the Invocation to the taut and thrilling progress of the concluding Fugue.

The album complements the organist’s well-received recordings of late 19th-century organ music for Brilliant Classics, among them the complete organ sonatas of Guilmant (BC94227) and the complete organ music of Franck (BC94349).

An instrument that is almost entirely absent from the output of the great pre- twentieth-century composers, the guitar has long been viewed as a means to discovering new repertoire and neglected composers. One such example is Ferdinand Rebay, whose works (which have only recently come to light) present a unique case in bridging the central-European gap. This release is dedicated to his two Sonatas for Flute and Guitar.

Rebay believed that the blending of wind and guitar timbres produced a far more attractive sound than that of winds and piano, and the two sonatas – written in 1942 – date from an immensely productive period as regards the composer’s chamber duo output for guitar. Heavy in dialogue, they reveal a technique deeply rooted in Viennese tradition; from the Neoclassical style of the First, whose Scherzo exudes Beethovenian inspiration, to the stirringly Romance feel of the Second, with its broad phrasing and intensely lyrical passagework, these are two strikingly different works of character that together illuminate a fascinating area of past-century music-making.

In representing the first recording of the two sonatas – works that currently exist only in manuscript form – this release forms a significant addition to Brilliant Classics’ chamber music discography. The two young Spanish artists on the disc, Mari?a Jose? Belotto and Gonzalo Noque? (who created the performing editions), set a high standard with their virtuosic display, arguing a strong case for why this composer deserves to be better known.

OTHER INFORMATION:
• First recordings of the works, made in 2011.
• Performing editions from the manuscripts by Gonzalo Noque?.
• Includes booklet notes and biographies of the performers.

Here's a genuine rarity: Ferdinand Rebay (1878-1953) has been hitherto unknown outside a small circle of guitar connoiseurs, but that should change thanks to this attractive set of sonatas and dances, all receiving their first recordings at the hands of two talented young Italian musicians. Rebay was Viennese born and bred. In 1901 he entered the piano class of Joseph Hofmann at the Vienna Conservatory and studied composition with the eminent pedagogue Robert Fuchs, who counted Mahler, Wolf, Sibelius and von Zemlinsky among his students.

Four years later, when leaving the Conservatory with a distinction in composition, Rebay's catalogue already numbered around 100 works, including a piano concerto dedicated to Prof. Hofmann. He continued to compose prolifically, mainly in the area of vocal music, pro-ducing around 100 choral works, 400 Lieder and two operas. After the Anschluss in 1938, Rebay lost his teaching positions as well as his pension and was reintegrated only in 1945, a few months before his definite retirement. Rebay's interest in writing for the guitar was triggered by his niece, the guitarist Gerta Hammerschmid (1906-1985) and by her teacher, his friend and colleague at the Musikakademie, Jakob Ortner (1879-1959), who probably introduced him to the technical possibilities of the instrument. He died, almost forgotten, in Vienna in 1953.

Among Rebay's most ambitious and important guitar works are the duos for guitar and a string or wind instrument. Substantial works, with a duration between 15 and 25 minutes, these duos have no match in the guitar repertoire; the Sonatas on this disc are among their number, and complemented by stylish arrangements made by Rebay of several of Beethoven's German Dances. The scarce original repertoire for clarinet and guitar, limited during the 19th century essentially to Heinrich Neumann's six serenades is almost trebled by Rebay's substantial contribution.

OTHER INFORMATION:
- World Premiere Recordings
- Detailed booklet notes on Rebay's life and work
- www.luigimagistrelli.com

Maurice Ravel is famed as a master of orchestral colour, in the context not only of his own work but that of others, most notably Mussorgsky's awkward but brilliant piano original of Pictures at an Exhibition, and yet he wrote almost no music for the orchestra in origin, but instead arranged pieces conceived at and for the piano; so why not follow his lead and transcribe his music for another palette of instrumental colours? This was the rationale of the young and already-acclaimed members of the Orlando Quintet, who commissioned Mark Popkin and Wayne Peterson to fit three works of diverse origin within Ravel's output to the compact ensemble of the wind quintet, and the results are, as we can hear on this new recording, consistently engaging, imparting a pungency that never breaks the line or occludes Ravel's melodic genius for a sad song, such as one finds in the second movement of the string quartet, in part at least because the wind ensemble preserves that vocal quality which can be heard even in Ravel's 'abstract' instrumental music, which yet reflects the culture and vibrant colours of his native Provence, and the melancholy temperament of a deeply reserved individual, with no less precision than the operas and ballets from his pen.

Other information:
- Recorded December 2012.
- A sheer delight: arrangements for wind ensemble of three of Ravel's masterpieces!
- Ravel himself was an avid arranger/transcriber of his own music, a master orchestrator, with an incredible ear for timbre and colour. A real treat therefore to listen to these excellent arrangements of the Sonatine (original piano solo), the string quartet and the popular suite from Ma mère l'oye (original piano 4 hands). The combination of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn offers a completely new spectrum of sounds and colours, without doing any injustice to the original: good music stands firm in any good arrangement!
- Superb performances by Dutch elite players, soloists and first desk players of the Amsterdam and Rotterdam orchestras.
- Booklet note introductions to the transcriptions and the music.
- Extensive and personal liner notes written by all members of the quintet.

PURCELL Songs: 1 Strike the Viol; The Queen’s Expedition; Here the Deities Approve; O solitude; Sweeter than roses; Music for a while; If music be the food of love; In the black dismal dungeon; An Evening Hymn. Dioclesian: 2 First music; Overture; First Act Tune; Dance of the Furies; Second Act Tune; Two in once upon a ground; The Chair Dance; Third Act Tune; Butterfly Dance; Country Dance; Dance of the Bacchanals; Still I’m wishing; Canaries; 2 Dances. Timon of Athens: 3 Curtain Tune • Michael Chance (ct); Richard Boothby (vdg); Maggie Cole (hpd); Nigel North (lt, thb); 1 Florilegium 2,3 • BRILLIANT 93937 (72:50)


I am unsure about the provenance of the music on this disc, which, though pleasing, combines two different sessions by two different groups. (The notes are uninformative; more mysteriously, the Brilliant Classics Web site doesn’t, if I have read it correctly, list this disc.) But the music is the thing, and the music here is beautifully stylish and well recorded, both the songs sung by countertenor Michael Chance, a known quantity since he began recording in 1980, and the theater music by Florilegium, a group of 10 accomplished musicians. Chance is an expressive singer and Nigel North an effective accompanist, as we hear especially in the most intimate songs, such as If music be the food of love. (North also plays on the Purcell song collection by Nancy Argenta.) There are a surprising number of alternatives to this collection, including performances by Alfred Deller, Emma Kirkby, Ian Partridge, and James Bowman who has done all the secular songs on three CDs. What this disc offers, besides the budget price, is a fine collection of songs with an equally fine collection of theater music, the lively “Country Dance” with its melody carried by two recorders as well as a “Bacchanal,” and several other imitative pieces. This is all light music, exquisitely tuneful and even boisterous in a courtly manner, and it has rarely been better played.


FANFARE: Michael Ullman

Prokofiev’s great ballet scores for Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella have become firm favourites in both the concert hall and the repertory of ballet companies worldwide – ‘The Montagues and Capulets’ from Romeo and Juliet, for example, features regularly at major sporting events, something Prokofiev probably never envisaged!

The earliest of the ballets featured here is Romeo and Juliet, commissioned in the mid-1930s, soon after Prokofiev returned to the USSR from self-imposed exile. Drawn from the main events of the ballet, the music of Suite No.2 ranges from the grand, formal music of the ball and sounds of a popular holiday to the tragedy and despair of the story’s end, illuminating Prokofiev’s commitment to communicating the depths and intricacies of Shakespeare’s play.

Cinderella followed Romeo and Juliet in the 1940s, with a score of rich and sophisticated music that rewards audiences of adults and children alike.The Suite No.1 features some of the ballet’s best-loved music, including ‘Cinderella’s Waltz’ and the brilliant Mazurka.The Stone Flower was the last of Prokofiev’s Soviet ballets, dating from 1948, and is based on a folk tale from the Urals. Although it will perhaps be the least familiar of the works on this disc, its score contains music of great beauty, with soaring tunes that are as memorable as anything in the two ballet scores that preceded it.

OTHER INFORMATION:
• Recording made in 1997.
• Includes booklet notes.

Astor Piazzolla, the undisputed master of Argentine tango, recorded more than 500 pieces across his career and composed many, many more. The present recording features Italian guitarist Alessio Nebiolo, winner of numerous international guitar competitions, alongside the acclaimed string quartet Quartett Orfeo with Nadio Marenco on accordion and Alessandro Schillaci on the double bass in the same ensemble formation in which Piazzolla himself often performed. This fascinating album contains some of Piazzolla's lesser known music, The Five Tango Sensations, the Concerto for Bandoneon, the Ave Maria, and the Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, all of which breathes with the pulse of Buenos aires.

Hungarian pianist, Klara Wurtz, one of Brilliant Classics's most prolific artists brings us a delightful collection sure to enchant children of all ages. Piano Music for Children features such instantly recognizable classics as Beethoven's Fur Elise and Mozart's Alla turca alongside some classic works lesser known to the average listener such as Tchaikovsky's Album for the Young, Robert Schumann's playful Kinderszenen, and Debussy's Children's Corner. Wurts is joined by the orchestral players of Prima La Musica for the well known andante from Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, rounding out this varied collection sure to delight young and old alike.

A leading contemporary music critic once wrote concerning Vincenzo Antonio Petrali (1830-1889), of who's music there is only one other survey on record, I have heard Saint Saens, Lemmens, Guilmant, Lefevre and Widor - and I have earned the right to be difficult and demanding. As an improviser, Petrali need fear no comparison: he has a highly personal, characteristic style which sets him apart as being unique. Organist Marco Ruggeri, first prize winner of the International Organ Competition of St. Elpidio a Mare and the Harpsichord Competition of Bologna, has selected repertoire from throughout Petrali's career in order to paint a vivid portrait of this extraordinary composer's development.

Giovanni Batista Pescetti was born in Venice into a musical family, both his father and grandfather were musicians. He studied with Antonio Lotti and Adolph Hasse, the Saxon who was composer in Venice. In 1734 he settled in London (like many of his compatriots), where he was director of both Covent Garden and the King’s Theatre. Although Pescetti wrote many operas he is mainly remembered for his works for the keyboard, notably the harpsichord, for which he wrote several volumes of sonatas. They are charming, with a strong emphasis on the melody, expertly written for the keyboard, and popular with both professionals and amateurs. This new recording presents the complete keyboard works by Pescetti, for both harpsichord and organ, played with infective zest and lyrical poise by Paolo Bottini.

The composer we know as Annibale Padovano was named after his native city of Padua, but in 1552 he became organist at St Mark’s Venice while the Dutch composer Adrian Willaert was master of music there. Padovano probably joined Willaert’s group of pupils, and he would have encountered the likes of Andrea Gabrieli and Cipriano de Rore. Nonetheless, his reputation rests on the slender book of organ music published in 1604, which reveals him as a master contrapuntalist of his age in the Ricercars, and no less innovative or inventive in his use of the Toccata form, clearly Venetian in spirit yet individual in expression. Vincenzo Pellegrini was born in Pesaro around 1562. Following his studies at the seminary, he became a canon regular of the cathedral in 1589 and appears to have been a popular teacher as well as a composer of church music. His work for organ likely dates from the end of his life, when he had become a canon in Milan Cathedral where there was a stronger tradition of instrumental composition. The Canzoni that have come down to us betray an evident debt to the French chanson tradition: simpler in form than Pellegrini, their melodic freshness and charm offers more than ample compensation in works such as ‘La Serpentina’ which has become a popular work of the period in its own right. This is Luca Scandali’s sixth album for Brilliant Classics, after imaginative collections of repertoire such as ‘Balli, battaglie e canzoni’ and 17th-century Italian organ music by Galuppi and Pasquini. For this album he has selected the historically significant organ in the Basilica of Santa Barbara in Mantova, which is tuned to the mean-tone temperament used in the era of Padovano and Pellegrini

In the 19th century, Paris consolidated its position as the leading city of opera. Composers from Germany (Meyerbeer, Paer and Wagner, who famously had a very unhappy time there) and Italy (Rossini, Verdi, Spontini, Cimarosa and Cherubini) worked there alongside native composers, vying for public favour in the years following the French Revolution.

Opera was performed in Paris’s major theatres (the Opera, Opera-Comique, Theatre- Lyrique and Theatre-Italien) and divided into two varieties – serious works on heroic themes and lighter works based on the lives of ordinary people or events. This divide developed into two fully defined styles: opera comiques and drama lyrique.

The programme of this new recording is shaped around rarities of the French operatic repertoire. Among these are the duet between Adam and Eve from Massenet’s Eve, a fascinating number with remarkable scoring for soprano saxophone, harp, woodwind, horns and cellos, giving the music a profoundly poetic and supremely lyrical quality. Also included is a duet from the second act of Gounod’s Polyeucte, a work that failed to gain widespread popularity due to its combination of opera and oratorio as well as its musical quality.

The title of this disc – Patrie! – is taken from an opera of the same name by the now-forgotten composer Émile Paladilhe. Cast in 5 acts and performed on a huge scale, this tale of the Flemish uprising against Spain was one of the Paris Opera’s most successful works, which continued to be staged until the 1920s, when it rapidly sank into obscurity. Heard on this disc is the supremely intense duet from the first scene of act two.

This recording features further duets by Halévy, Massenet, Gounod and Thomas, shedding light on a number of forgotten gems from French romantic opera.

OTHER INFORMATION:
• New recordings made in 2010.
• Fascinating and rare repertoire, a must-have disc for opera enthusiasts.
• Comprehensive booklet notes.
• Sung texts and biographies available at www.brilliantclassics.com.

Bernando Pasquini was a musician of considerable reputation in 17th-century Rome. Having held various organist posts throughout the city, he struck gold in 1666 when he was made organist and director of music to Prince Gianbattista Borghese. In 1706 he, along with his contemporaries and fellow musicians, Arcangelo Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti, was made a member of the Arcadia, a movement begun by Queen Christine of Sweden.

Keyboard music in Italy in the 1600s was to undergo a radical change, with an introduction to Rationalism and simplicity; Pasquini himself is known to have been particularly enamoured with the works of Palestrina and Frescobaldi. Aside from his skills as a performer and composer, Pasquini was also an immensely gifted teacher. Each of the sonatas for two basso continuo instruments bears the hallmarks of the partimento teaching technique, which involves a kind of dialogue between teacher and student. The sonatas include the fashionable styles of keyboard music of the time, such as the Allegro da concerto, Adagio, Fugue, Corrente and Gavotte.

The recording boasts two multi-award-winning organists. The first, Luca Scandali, was educated at the Conservatory 'G. Rossini' of Pesaro in his native Italy and has performed in festivals all over Europe. He is currently Professor of Organ and Composition for Organ at the Conservatory 'F. Morlacchi' of Perugia. The second, Swiss organist, Hadrien Jourdan, studied at the Conservatory of Geneva and regularly participates in festivals and recordings throughout Europe.

Other information:
- Recorded in 2012.
- Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710) was an Italian composer of opera and church music. A renowned virtuoso keyboard player in his day, he was one of the most important Italian composers for harpsichord and organ between Frescobaldi and Scarlatti.
- Pasquini's sonatas for two organs offer delightful dialogues between the two instruments (sometimes acting as teacher and pupil) in fashionable forms such as Allegro da Concerto and various dance forms.
- Two excellent organists enjoy their interplay on two historical organs from the 18th century.
- Organs: Pietro Nacchini, 1757; Gaetano Callido, 1785.
- Harpsichord: copy after Ignazio Mucciardi, 1789, by Giulio Fratini & Pierpaolo Pallotti, 2012.
- Contains liner notes on the works and biographies of the artists.

Around 1700 Naples was one of the most important centres of music in Europe, a melting pot of different cultures brought in by composers from all over Europe who came there to study with the great Italian masters.
This new recording brings together an astonishing range of keyboard music written by known and unknown masters: Trabaci, De Macque, Valente, Rodio, Storace, Strozzi, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti. The music is of a high level of virtuosity and invention, Italian cantilenas, rich ornamentation and instrumental brilliance go hand in hand.
Played on harpsichord and organ by Stefano Innocenti, who did extensive research into this fascinating part of music history, a true scholar, and an excellent soloist.
Booklet notes by the artist, texts on the composers, the music and the historic instruments used.

Other information:
Contains notes on the pieces in English and Italian.
Contains notes on the artist.
Contains notes on the instruments used in the recording.
Recorded in 2013 in Parma (harpsichord) and at the Auditorium Giani Casa d’Organi, Corte de’ Frati, Cremona (organ), Italy.