Classical Music

Classical Music

Recording information: Bennington College (01/2007).

Classical Music

This eclectic album includes works by Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Kris Becker, Rogers and Hammerstein, and more. The works included on this release all focus on American compositional vision. The pieces are recorded by pianist Ian Gindes.

Joseph Schwantner is one of the most prominent American composers of our day. This new release features Looking Back, a commission in honor of flutist Sam Baron by his former students. Sarah Frisof showcases Schwantner's works with her vibrant and soulful playing. Frisof was the winner of both the National Flute Association Young Artist Competition and the Heida Hermanns International Woodwind Competition. Frisof considers herself a proponent of contemporary music and frequently premieres major works.

Pianist Sophia Agranovich has been called “a tigress of the keyboard.” She is an acclaimed soloist and sought after chamber musician as well as a recording artist and educator. She has performed across the United States, Europe, Israel, and Canada in solo recitals as well as alongside all of the most respected orchestras. For this release, Sophia has chosen Robert Schumann’s Carnaval and Fantasie. Carnaval, Op. 9, was written in 1834-35 and consists of 21 short pieces which represent masked revelers at Carnival, the festival before Lent. The Fantasie in C major Op. 17 is dedicated to Franz Liszt. It is known amongst pianists as one of Schumann’s greatest works for solo piano, and is one of the most important works of the early Romantic period.

This new release is a rousing program of patriotic works for piano by John Philip Sousa, James Hewitt, Charles Grob, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and more. Kirsten Johnson was born in America, but has lived in the United Kingdom since 1994. While she is now a dual-national, she remains very proud of her American heritage and roots. Recording this album was a very important task for her, and one that she did not take lightly. A multi-instrumentalist, she began on piano and recorder, then added clarinet, organ, and harpsichord to her arsenal. A mentor once told her, “You’re a musician first and a pianist second,” a mantra by which she has lived out her professional career.

This is Volume 4 in Centaur's integral edition of the Complete Pieces de Clavecin of Francois Couperin, performed on harpsichord by Mark Kroll. Mark Kroll has made a specialty of Couperin throughout his long and distinguished career. Mark Kroll has performed on four continents as a harpsichordist and fortepianist, in both solo recital and as a collaborative chamber musician. Highlights include an appearance as the official guest of the city of Barcelona; featured soloist in Germany’s Regensburg Early Music Festival, France’s Festival Ambronay and the Bordeaux Hummel Festival; two concerts for the Czech Republic’s Prague Spring Festival; and recitals at Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Foundation, Rome’s Conservatorio Santa Caecilia and Associazione Musicale Romana, Poland’s Dni Bachowski, and Slovenija’s Radovljica Festival. This recording was made on a 1974 William Dowd harpsichord at Brooks Concert Hall, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, and a 1769 Pascal Taskin harpsichord in the private instrument collection of Marlowe A. Sigal, Newton Centre, Massachusetts.

Gary Schocker has composed some of the greatest works for flute of the past half-century. Included on this new release are his Sonatas for Flute and Piano Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9, performed by Leslie Neighbor Stroud. Leslie Neighbor Stroud, flute, received her Bachelor’s degree in Flute Performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music where she was a student of Britton Johnson (National Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra) and Timothy Day (San Francisco Symphony Orchestra). She has also studied with Lois Schaefer (Boston Symphony Orchestra), Walfrid Kujala (Chicago Symphony Orchestra) and Mark Sparks (St. Louis Symphony Orchestra) and baroque flute with Suzanne Stumpf (Musicians of the Old Post Road), as well as participating in the master classes of Gary Schocker, Julius Baker, Bonita Boyd and William Bennett. Leslie currently performs with the Pentangle Arts Orchestra, BarnArts Festival Orchestra, Pro Musica Vermont, Guilford Music Festival Orchestra, Cameo Baroque (a period instrument ensemble), Buttonwood Wind Quintet, the Richard Faith Ensemble, and the Sterling String Quartet. She has performed with New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, The Plymouth Philharmonic, New Bedford Festival Theater, the Tri-County Symphonic Band, the Buzzards Bay Musicfest, the Savannah Symphony Orchestra, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the Peabody Wind Quintet, the Bellemore Ensemble of Baltimore, the Mozart Festival of Alameda, and the Trinity Chamber Concerts of California.

Noted for her wonderful integral recording of the complete Debussy works for solo piano, Larissa Dedova now brings us an equally wonderful recording of the complete solo piano works of Maurice Ravel. For over 30 years Larissa Dedova has appeared in solo and chamber recitals in concert halls throughout the world at such venues as Carnegie, New York, Kennedy Center, Washington DC, Great Hall of St. Petersburg Philharmonic, St. Petersburg, Sumida Triphony Hall, Tokyo, Teatro Ghione, Rome, and many more. As a soloist, she has played with famous orchestras, including St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Dresden Philharmonic, Kiev Philharmonic, Orchestre de Chambre de Budapest, Moscow Philharmonic and Estonian State Symphony Orchestra, among many others. The lyricism, romanticism, and virtuosity of Ms. Dedova’s performances have brought her love and affection of audience and critical acclaim. Commenting on Ms. Dedova’s performance of the D-minor Brahms Concerto with Fairfax Symphony, the Washington Post described it as “performance that went straight to the heart of the music.” Larissa Dedova holds both Masters and Doctor of Musical Arts Degrees in Piano Performance from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory where she studied with Lev Oborin and Evgeny Malinin.

Classical Music

Italian pianist Sebastian Di Bin provides us here with an intriguingly beautiful performance of Franz Liszt’s complete Transcendental Etudes. Sebastian Di Bin has dedicated this album to the memory of his brother, Francois, who passed away in March 2015. The composition of Liszt’s twelve Transcendental Etudes began when the 15-year-old composer composed a set of much less difficult exercises titled the Etude en douze exercices. These works were elaborated upon to become his Douze Grandes Etudes in 1837, then finally revised and republished in 1852 as the etudes performed here.

Alexander Krein was a Russian Jewish composer who lived and worked during the twentieth century. The piano works featured on this new release date from the early parts of his career. Also included are pieces by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, who was a Soviet composer of Polish-Jewish origin. The sonata included here was composed in 1955. The Ukrainian-born pianist Anastasia Seifetdinova has performed extensively in the United States and Europe. She has appeared in the Weill Recital Hall in New York City, the Bolshoy Hall of Moscow Conservatory and many European festivals. She was first prize winner of the International Piano Competitions in Rome and in Puigcerda, and received her musical education in Kiev at the Lysenko School of Music with V. Vorobyov, in Wurzburg at the Hochschule fur Musik with Silke-Thora Matthies and at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford with Oxana Yablonskaya. She is currently pursuing a Doctoral Degree in Hartford and is active as her teacher's assistant. She is a recipient of the Musical Club of Hartford's Evelyn Bonar Storrs Scholarship.

Classical Music

Natus es: A Christmas Celebration

Classical Music

A native of Turkey, Betul Soykan has the full measure of these colorful works. She is beautifully accompanied by Russian pianist Anatoly Sheludyakov.

Polish-born New York City-based musician Kinga Augustyn is a versatile classical concert violinist and recording artist who is gaining worldwide recognition through her performances as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. She has been described as "an adventurous performer valuable to New York's scene" (NY Concert Review), "stylish and vibrant... playing with verve and superb control" (The Strad Magazine), and "beyond amazing, one hell of a violinist!" (The Fanfare Magazine). Her repertoire ranges from early baroque, which she sometimes performs on a baroque violin, to modern, oftentimes written especially for her. She has won several international awards, including First Prizes at the Alexander & Buono International String Competition. On this release, she presents Georg Philipp Telemann's 12 Fantasias for Solo Violin.

The two pieces chosen for this new recording are based around a central theme: healing. Beethoven’s String Quartet in A minor, Op. 132 was written after Beethoven had recovered from a serious illness which he, at the time, worried would be fatal. He had been afflicted during the entire winter of 1824-25, and headed the third movement with the words “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart” (Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode). The Mendelssohn quartet is inspired by a different kind of healing, and was composed a few months after the death of Ludwig van Beethoven. It is heavily inspired by Beethoven’s late works, and is one of the most significant examples of cyclic form in music. The DaPonte Quartet is based in Maine, and has a mission to connect audiences to composers and their influences by bringing to life the human context of each score’s creation.

Classical Music

Composer, pianist, and teacher Jeanne-Louise Dumont Farrenc was born in 1804 into an artistic and bohemian Parisian family. She studied with Anton Reicha at the Paris Conservatory, where she later became a professor. She was the only female professor at the Conservatory in the 19th century. Her most famous works are chamber music compositions.

For this release, the Telegraph Quartet has chosen a program of twentieth century string quartets that are among some of the finest of the era. Each work exhibits great passion. The Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) formed in 2013 with an equal passion for the standard chamber music repertoire and contemporary, non-standard works alike. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as "…an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape" and "powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety," the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. The Quartet has performed in concert halls, music festivals, and academic institutions across the United States and abroad. Currently, the group is Quartet-in-Residence at the San Francisco Conservatory.

"•The Rite of Spring is performed here in a brilliant piano transcription by Vladimir Leyetchkiss. • The piano transcriptions of the Prokofiev are by Prokofiev himself. • Pianist and pedagogue Dr. Svetlana Belsky is an internationally in-demand recitalist and chamber pianist, noted for her stylistic versatility and remarkable rapport with audiences. • She is the Coordinator of Piano Studies at the University of Chicago."

Studies in Nature is inspired by the captivating illustrations of biologist and naturalist Erns Haeckel (1834-1919). These are musical depictions of these illustrations, performed on acoustic instruments. The music of Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand (b.1970) has been called “strong and startlingly lovely” (Boston Globe). His compositions are wide-ranging in influence and inspiration, encompassing solo, chamber, vocal and orchestral works. From scores for dance, to compositions for young people, to multi-disciplinary and collaborative works, Al-Zand’s music is diverse in both its subject matter and its audience. It explores connections between music and other arts, and draws inspiration from varied sources such as graphic art, myths and fables, folk music of the world, film, spoken word, jazz, and his own Middle Eastern heritage. Al-Zand’s music has enjoyed success in the US, Canada and abroad and he is the recipient of several national awards, including the Sackler Composition Prize, the ArtSong Prize, the Louisville Orchestra Competition Prize and the “Arts and Letters Award in Music” from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a founding and artistic board member of Musiqa, Houston’s premier contemporary music group, which presents concerts featuring new and classic repertoire of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In his scholarly work, he has pursued several diverse areas of music theory, including topics in jazz, counterpoint, and improvisation. Al-Zand was born in Tunis, Tunisia, raised in Ottawa, Canada and educated in Montreal and Cambridge. He has taught composition and music theory at the Shepherd School since 2000.