Classical Music

Classical Music

A superb collection of works for vocal ensemble from Bologna, CA. 1500s performed by the Speculum Ensemble.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Robert Alexander Schumann (June 8, 1810, Zwickau - July 29, 1856, Bonn) was one of the most significant composers of the 19th century and a pioneering music critic. His works represent some of the purest expressions of Romanticism in music. The son of a bookseller, Schumann was deeply influenced in his youth by German Romantic literature, particularly the writings of Jean Paul and E.T.A. Hoffmann.

This album seeks to honor composers that have been relegated to marginalized communities and are under-represented within the classical musical cadre. To be able to perform these stellar works is a mere starting point for offering the honor, attention, and exposure that is deserved and has been so long overdue.

I have chosen the title Kairos for my debut album of compositions, as this richly meaningful Greek word conveys a sense of a significant moment or season of time. While the word Chronos refers to quantitative, measurable time, Kairos refers to a deeper, qualitative view of time. This music is the fruit of a season in which I turned over a new page as a composer, digging deeper into the forms and vocabulary of the historic classical music tradition, and delving into some of the most vital themes of human existence - time, birth, life, death, and love. - Kyle Werner

Piano works by two great French composers; Contemporary composer Philippe Manoury, and Claude Debussy.

During the long, uneasy days of the Covid Pandemic, I listened to radio dramas of the 1940's and 50's. These tales of extortion, infidelity and murder were filled with ominous organ hits, creaking doors, stilted dialog and droll one-liners; a mix of the deadly serious with the absurd. Radio Noir recalls the strange pandemic mood of dusk encroaching and isolation. ___Joseph M. Levin

INVISIBLE LIGHT presents six compositions, each representing a different facet of the compositional work of David Evan Jones (b. 1946). Four of the six compositions are scored for traditional Korean instruments and two for Western instruments.

It has been a good while since I heard electronics quite this intriguing. So naturalistic, so alive like in the branches of a tree, much might be said here about the excellence of the technology employed. In each piece on this album, it constitutes a remarkable asset, while at the same time being wholly integrated with expression. The viola part, for it's share, is seamless, it's presence so closely interwoven with the electronics that the boundary fades away. It contributes gesture, impulse, and energy. Likewise, the entire catalogue of viola techniques serves the purpose of expression. - Krzysztof Komendarek-Tymendorf

Music is a river fed by many streams. Try as one might to capture it and attach tidy labels - classical in this bottle, jazz in that, minimalism in the other - the river flows on, enriched by each tributary as it goes.

This album comprises nine solo and chamber compositions written over a span of more than fifty years. Although none of these pieces uses any Asian instruments, most of them contain some kind of Asian cultural references. All of them were composed for the performers who have recorded them. __ David Loeb

Widor is a composer best known for writing the thunderous organ symphonies that echoed throughout the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, where Widor was organist for over 60 years. His famous Toccata for organ continues to be a favorite piece at weddings and concert halls around the world. We share this album in order to shine a light on a quieter, more intimate side of Widor, as a composer of French solo songs and duets for voice and piano. In these songs, Widor let's go of the grandiose sounds of the cathedral organ and offers delicate, expressive meditations on human emotion, poetry, and connection. In this spirit, we invite you to join us in hearing these rarely performed and little-known works: Six duos-six duets for soprano and contralto, and Soirs d'�t�-eight solo songs set to the poetry of Paul Bourget.

This is a first-rate album of contemporary American piano works for the left hand, performed by Nariaki Sugiura.

This is an album of first-rate contemporary works for clarinet and piano.

Why Preludes & Fugues? Everyone loves a fugue! But the prelude is important too. It should set up the fugue in dramatic fashion. Although my fugues have expositions, episodes and stretto sections, they diverge from the strict forms of the Baroque period. A pure 3 or 4 voice fugue is modeled on 4-part choral writing where each voice is maintained withing it's limited range. In the classical era - Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms all wrote 'fugue-like' pieces known as 'fugati'. These pieces often started out formally but soon broke out of their strict voice leading with runs, arpeggios and block chords. Fugue writing continued into the 20th century, but losing the tonal centers and discernable key changes weakened the strength and logic of the form. Tonal fugue writing calls for independent, melodious, horizontal lines, while also expressing logical chord progressions vertically. It's tricky! Why write piano music in this style these days? Actually, they were all composed in the late 1970's during my student days at Boston University. I was having a great time, and my teacher, David del Tredici was writing fully tonal music himself. Bottom line: if you have one life to live, you should write the kind of music you like!

The piano duos presented here, all drawn from the mid-20th century, have their inspiration in dance or ballet: but thankfully, that red flag for program music - is it a hopeless prisoner of a storyline or visual narrative? - shows no sign of rising. All three works stand majestically on their own: Rachmaninoff's autumnal self-eulogy, The Symphonic Dances, Barber's Souvenirs, a whimsical collage of the Gilded Era ballroom, and Piazzolla's Tango for Two Pianos (arr. P. Ziegler). And, in the case of Piazzolla, we witness the tango, as it moves from the cafe to the concert hall, shedding the strictures of dance itself.

The idea of a late artistic style evokes something special, an autumnal wisdom or serenity born of hard-won emotional experience. In describing the genesis of his choices of three late masterworks for this album, Kwan Yi wrote that 'these pieces are dear to my heart and [ones] I studied extensively with my former teachers, Leon Fleisher and Bob McDonald. With the passing of Mr. Fleisher, I wanted to pay homage to my masters and took the time to record these selected works.'

Music, for all of us, is intimately connected to our lives and the sounds we love and grew up with, and that we discovered on our journeys through our world. We all remember the music we heard as children, and certainly we remember the songs that bound us together with our friends as teens. As we grow older, we are exposed to music from all over the world that we experience through visits, shows, and media. -Craig Madden Morris

This album features two of the greatest Clarinet Trios, those of Beethoven and Brahms. These are beautiful performances of truly great works.

Ignatius Sancho: Music of an Eighteenth-Century Black Englishman The Black British writer and musician Ignatius Sancho (ca. 1729-1780) may have been born into slavery. By 1749, he had become part of the household of the Duke of Montagu, where he worked as a valet, later becoming a shopkeeper in the neighborhood of Westminster. Sancho is known today as a writer through his posthumously published Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (1782).