Classical Music

Classical Music

Daniel Stepner, a specialist in early music, whose postions have included concertmaster of Boston Baroque, Concertmaster of the Boston Handel and Haydn society, and violinist for the Boston Museum Trio, among others, turns in great performances.

Founded by five Julliard graduates in 1973, The Aulos Ensemble was one of the first American "original instrument" ensembles. Its accomplishments over the past four decades have given it pre-eminence in the early music movement. After one of their concerts the New York Times boasted “This was authentic Baroque performance at its best.”

Born and raised in Foggia, Italy, Antonio Pompa-Baldi, a top prizewinner at the 1998 Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition, winner of the 1999 Cleveland Int'l Piano Competition, and silver medalist at the 2001 Van Cliburn Int'l Piano Competition, appears regularly at the world's major concert venues. A beloved professor at the Cleveland Institute of Music and a prolific Centaur recording artist, this release marks the second volume in his complete traversal of the piano sonatas of Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837). "... warmth, exquisite taste and...arresting technique." (The LA Times)

Modern Fairy Tales, recorded in 2014 for Centaur Records, features oboist Courtney Miller accompanied by one of three pianists on six works of chamber music written in the 19th, 20th and 21st c. by, among others, B�la Bart�k and Peter Schickele. She travels throughout the US as a solo, chamber and orchestral musician, playing both prestigious as well as smaller, more intimate venues where she enjoys more audience interaction.

Taiwanese violinist Wanchi Huang came to the US age 13 to further her studies in Baltimore, MD, soon thereafter debuting with the Baltimore Symphony, followed by more study at Curtis, Julliard and Indiana Univ. During her professional career she has given many acclaimed recitals and concerts in collaboration with internationally renowned performing artists and ensembles. Here, the James Madison Univ. Prof. Of Violin follows her 2012 debut Centaur recording of Ysa�e's solo violin sonatas with Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, the summit of solo literature for her instrument.

Classical Music

Classical Music

These works by Clerambault are true glories of the Baroque era for ensemble and voices. Aston Magna specializes in this literature, with period instrument and a superb cast of singers.

Robert Ballard was one of the most famous lutenist-composers of the first decades of the seventeenth century, during which the lute was the favored instrument of the Parisian aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie. Richard Kalb loves this literature, and it clearly shows in these loving performances. Richard Kolb has performed throughout North America and Europe as a soloist and with a wide variety of Baroque and Renaissance ensembles. He was principal lutenist of the Carmel Bach Festival for eight years, and has performed frequently with Opera Atelier, New York City Opera, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Chicago Opera Theater, Waverly Consort, Handel & Haydn Society, Pegasus, and Concert Royal. He completed a Ph.D. in musicology at Case-Western Reserve University in 2010, and has published widely used editions of music by Barbara Strozzi and Antonio Francesco Tenaglia. Kolb teaches harmony and continuo, and serves as scholar in residence for the NY Continuo Collective, whose fall project in 2015 featured performances of works by Strozzi using his editions and scholarship.

This is volume 5 in Centaur's recording of the complete Pieces de Clavecin, 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 1978 Franco-Flemish style double manual harpsichord by William Hyman and D. Jacques Way at the Harpsichord Clearing House, Rehobeth, Massachusetts.

The Concordia String Trio explores and expands the eclectic repertoire of an under-appreciated genre - the string trio. This versatile ensemble has built a reputation for it's exciting performances and innovative programs, juxtaposing pieces from the standard string trio repertoire with new compositions and little-known works of great composers. On this release, the Concordia String Trio performs a program of great American works for String Trio, including works by Walter Piston, Alan Hovhaness, Leonard Mark Lewis, John Harbison, Henry Cowell, and David Colson. The trio is made up of Marcia Henry Liebenow, concertmaster of the Peoria Symphony Orchestra and professor at Bradley University, Leslie Perna, respected artist and teacher, and Karen Becker, active soloist and avid chamber and orchestral player.

Classical Music

Seattle Baroque, founded in 1994 by violinist Ingrid Matthews and harpsichordist Byron Schenkman, quickly established itself as one of the most vibrant American early music ensembles. Their goal is to awaken contemporary audiences to the vitality of baroque music through historically informed performance of both familiar and unfamiliar works. Recorded 2011-12, their new Centaur release features a varied selection of sonatas and a lute concerto by Antonio Vivaldi, including some that spotlight individual soloists.

This exquisite collection of Italian and Spanish music for Vihuela de Mano – a guitar-shaped instrument with six double or paired strings common to Spain, Italy and Portugal in the 15th – 16th centuries – is played by Italian lutenist and vihuelist Massimo Marchese (b. 1965), a specialist in this repertoire. + Mr. Marchese has been an active recitalist both as soloist and ensemble member since 1980.

• Charlotte Mattax Moersch extends her series of recordings for Centaur with this new release. • Couperin wrote some of the finest harpsichord works of the 18th-Century; these works among them.

This recording features works by the young Handel and his colleagues at the court of Benedetto Pamphili, including world premiere recordings of cantatas by Lulier and Bononcini, along with a flute concerto by Gasparini. Soprano Kristen Watson joins the ensemble for this exciting program.

This album is the third installment in Centaur’s cycle of the complete piano concertos of Anton Rubinstein (1829-94). +One of the great piano virtuosos of his day and a prolific composer, much of Rubinstein's musical output has long fallen out of public consciousness, only in recent decades receiving renewed performer and audience interest. +The Greece-born pianist Grigorios Zamparas is currently Associate Professor of Music, Piano, University of Tampa, FL., and an active international recitalist.

Carol of the Bells; Wexford Carol; A Holly and Ivy Calypso; Today in Bethlehem; Sleep Baby Jesus; The First Nowell; A la Nanita Nana (Lullaby); Riu, Riu, Chiu; Coventry Carol; In the Bleak Midwinter; A la Media Noche/De Tierra Lajana Venimos; The Bells of Christmas: A Medley of Two Modern Carols; Silent Night; Lo, How a Rose e'er Blooming; Christmas Cornucopia; the West Edge String Quartet

The Austrian composer Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944) and the German composer Sigmund Schul (1916-44), both Jewish (Ullmann the child of Roman Catholic converts, Schul the child assimilated parents) were also both WWII concentration camp victims (Ullman perished in Auschwitz, Schul in Terezin). Schul's work featured on concert programs Ullmann hosted in the camps. Recorded in 2004, this Centaur release features three of Ullmann's orchestral works coupled with two of Schul's chamber pieces, both scores, sadly, incomplete due to obvious and most unfortunate circumstances.

HUMMEL Piano Sonata No. 3 in f. Fantasy after Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. MOZART Fantasy in c, K 475. Piano Sonata in F, K 332. MENDELSSOHN Andante with Variations • Daria Gloukhova (pn) • CENTAUR 3080 (55:54)


As a critic, you tend to notice that some labels produce consistently dull and uninteresting releases while others, for whatever reason, are consistently interesting and stimulating. Happily, Centaur is one of the latter companies. Nearly every Centaur release I’ve received for review is fascinating in one way or another, and some of them have replaced other longstanding reference recordings on my shelves.


If this disc doesn’t supplant any other in my collection, it is only because I have no other music by Hummel. Daria Gloukhova is a pretty young woman, 24 years old, and apparently so dedicated to Hummel that she has his family crest, name, and dates of birth and death tattooed on her left arm. I must admit that kind of scares me, but her playing is so absolutely mesmerizing that I forgive her whatever tattoos she chooses to inflict on herself, now or in the future. Go for it, girl! Whatever makes you play like this, I’m all for it!


She is similar to historically informed performers in that she plays in a straightforward rhythmic style, with no deviations for rubato. She differs from them in that she plays a modern piano, yet with such a tightly knit, cohesive style that you listen to her, mesmerized, from start to finish. We all know Hummel as a great pedagogue, like Carl Czerny, but are perhaps less familiar with him as a composer. This sonata and fantasy make a strong case to reconsider his worth; this is interesting music, half in the style of Mozart and half in the style of Beethoven, yet not really sounding like either. One wonders if someone would be charitable enough to finance a recording of Gloukhova playing some of his eight piano concertos, or perhaps his piano quartet and quintet. Gloukhova brings the same combination of warm tone, springy rhythm, and exceptional musical cohesiveness to Mozart’s Fantasy K 475 and Sonata in F. I’ve never heard Mozart played with such a combination of headlong excitement and dark, brooding colors. Gloukhova will completely change your perceptions, and expectations, of Mozart. Even the “lightweight” Sonata in F, played with delicious élan by Ronald Brautigam on BIS, sounds darker, moodier, more smoldering here in Gloukhova’s interpretation. This is a young woman who curries no favor with the modern tendency toward emotional detachment in her playing—she seems incapable of playing anything without going at it full bore. Her technique is absolutely dazzling, yet though, especially in the allegros, she seems to gobble up notes like Pac-Man, technique is not an end in itself but always, for her, a means to expressing the exultation or feeling she encounters in the music.


Hummel’s fantasy on Mozart’s Figaro is exceptionally imaginative, breaking up the components of “Non più andrai” into fragments in the introduction and then, after statement of the theme, running through virtuosic changes and variants in a most imaginative way, including a switch to minor for the bridge and a relaxation of tempo for further variants. The return to strict tempo does not mean a return to major, however, as Hummel keeps moving in and out of minor keys as well as numerous key changes. Gloukhova balances all this like an army of angels dancing on the head of a pin, her playing extraordinarily neat and, in this piece, playful as well.


Mendelssohn’s Andante with Variations receives a warm, glowing reading of its opening statement, then her by-now familiar condensation of pulse and smoldering, flowing legato in the variations. It should be reiterated that, for all her forward momentum, Gloukhova never plays anything in a shallow manner, which for me is the mark of a true artist. I can only hope that she goes far in her career; I’ll certainly be looking for her name on future releases.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

L'ELISIR D'AMORE (DONIZETTI):

Doug Rosener, a master of the marimba, presents a great program of contemporary works for Marimba. Works from composers Takatsugu Muramatsu, Dwayne Rice, David Gillingham, Gordon Stout, and Joaquin Turina are included, as well as Daniel Levitan's Baroque Suite, where Rosener is joined by flutist Alina Windell. Dr. Doug Rosener serves as Associate Professor of Percussion and Associate Director of Bands at Auburn University. In addition to teaching the applied percussion studio, Dr. Rosener teaches courses in percussion literature, percussion skills, Finale techniques, and directs the Auburn percussion ensemble and Auburn University Marching Band drumline. During Dr. Rosener's tenure, the drumline has been the subject of two separate features on VicFirth. Com, and both the percussion ensemble and steel band have appeared on Alabama public television.

Early in his career Carl Roskott wrote atonal compositions. He became increasingly frustrated with the expectations for modern music, though. He ultimately abandoned atonality, and in his later career wrote music that, while it incorporates some 20th Century techniques, is first-rate, melodic music that is readily accessible to all. On this release, his Concerto for Violin Solo and Orchestra and his Sonata for Violin and Piano are presented by violinist Akemi Takayama, pianist Silvan Negrutiu, and the Shenandoah Conservatory Symphony Orchestra. Akemi Takayama appears internationally as a soloist and chamber music collaborator. She was a violinist in the retired Audubon Quartet, of which she was a member for fourteen years. She serves as associate professor at the Shenandoah University Conservatory of Music and concertmaster of both the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and the Williamsburg Symphonia in Virginia.