Classical Music

Quincy Porter was one of a diverse generation of American composers who played a significant role in shaping and directing American musical culture in the mid-twentieth century. Although his orchestral works attracted considerable attention in. Quincy Porter: String Quartets Nos. 1-4 CD music contains a single disc.

Classical Music

John Corigliano is one of the finest and most widely recognized American composers. He has won several Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and an Academy Award for his score for the film the Red Violin. Corigliano' nostalgic Snapshot.

Mouton, C.: Concertos a 5 Nos. 1-10

FELDMAN String Quartet (1979) ? Group for Contemporary Music ? NAXOS 8.559190 (78:35)


The Group for Contemporary Music made several CDs of American music for Koch in the early 1990s, the above being one of them. Now here it is, reappearing as part of Naxos?s ?American Classics? series. I expect one of Fanfare ?s resident Feldman specialists covered it back then?I think Mike Silverton was doing it in those days?but I have been unable to locate any review. According to the CD information, this was a world premiere recording.


Although not to be confused with his monumentally long second string quartet, this late work of Feldman?s still runs for almost 80 minutes. (Well, it doesn?t exactly run .) Readers unfamiliar with this composer?s music but interested in experimenting at the low Naxos price should dispense with any normal idea of the passing of time. Feldman?s work unfolds at a snail?s pace, with the result that every musical incident is examined in minute, close-up detail. Imagine walking down your garden path to the mailbox; now imagine doing it on your hands and knees with a magnifying glass, taking over an hour to complete the journey. You would know a heck of a lot more about the nature of your garden path by the end of it.


Of course, it?s not entirely as simple as that. Feldman understood the big picture, form-wise: the apparent randomness of the sounds he dwells on in his own good time is kept in balance by a fierce musical intelligence. These sounds include rocking motifs, chords, and often even single notes, usually separated by moments of complete silence. Feldman requests the quartet to play without vibrato and, most of the time, using mutes. Much of the material consists of high harmonics. It is nearly all pianissimo or softer, except for some sudden loud interruptions?for example, at 26:00 and 33:30 respectively. (The Eastern-bloc composer Kancheli appears to have known his Feldman. Unheralded fortes are a fingerprint of his as well.) As the work progresses, earlier motifs or textures are revisited and developed, providing at least an unconscious sense of structure. In the end, the painstaking process undertaken together by the composer, the performers, and the listener creates a unique, mesmerizing context where sudden shifts of emphasis are almost seismic. The forte s mentioned above seem earth shattering. The occasional consonant harmony, unnoticed in another context, becomes pure balm. The slightest rhythmic acceleration feels like panic. High, quiet harmonics from the solo violin assume the cloak of unbearable loneliness.


For those readers already conversant with Feldman?s world, it need only be said that this performance seems to me as good as it could possibly be. (I don?t have access to a score.) The internal balance is finely judged, and all four members of the group must have spent many hours in meditation to be so at home in this time span. By the way, the stalwart players are Benjamin Hudson and Carol Zeavin, violins; Lois Martin, viola; and Joshua Gordon, cello. Recorded sound is first-rate. One can only hope Naxos will reissue the other recordings in the Koch series, particularly those of Wolpe and Wuorinen.


Morton Feldman?s mind worked in a manner unlike that of any other composer. This fact alone makes him important and his music riveting.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

EXPLORE AMERICA

This new release is the fifth album in the Pentatone Oxingale series. Two of Franz Schubert's great masterpieces are combined here: his Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A Minor, D. 821, and the String Quintet in C Major, D. 956. Grammy-nominated cellist Matt Haimovitz performs the arpeggione part, alongside pianist Itamar Golan.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Berlin Philharmonic bass trombone player Stefan Schulz is one of the foremost exponents of his instrument. His second BIS disc, Copenhagen Recital, opens with a quartet of Russian songs, exposing the yearning, melancholic side and melodic potential of an instrument usually associated with music of a more overpowering nature. What follows is a varied program, taking in Telemann's F minor Sonata, Robert Schumann, Lebedev’s Concert Allegro, works by two living composers, Daniel Schnyder and Søren Hyldgaard, and encoring with an arrangement of Thora Borch’s 1866 song The Sky Darkens.

Includes work(s) for cello and piano by various composers. Soloists: Steven Isserlis, Stephen Hough, Simon Callow.

Art & Music: Caravaggio - Music of His Time

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

The young period band Höör Barock, based in the south of Sweden, has chosen a colourful programme for its début disc. With recorder virtuoso Dan Laurin at the helm, the twelve musicians steer a course through Telemann’s celebrated Wassermusik (also known as Hamburger Ebb’ und Fluth) with its sea gods and goddesses dancing bourrées and gavottes before a rowdy crowd of seamen closes the suite with an energetic Canarie. The center piece of the programme is Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in F major, the composer’s arrangement of his own Brandenburg Concerto No. 4. Soloist here is Anna Paradiso, who also plays continuo in the other works of the recording. Bach is flanked on either side by two of the Op. 6 concerti grossi by another Baroque heavyweight, Arcangelo Corelli. His Concerto No. 4 and No. 8 – the much-loved Christmas Concerto – appear here in a slightly unusual guise. They are usually performed by strings alone, but inspired by recent research, Dan Laurin and his recorder-playing colleague Emelie Roos here take on the solo parts, and the tutti ensemble is joined by oboes and bassoon – while a baroque harp adds to the angelic atmosphere of the closing Christmas Pastorale of Concerto No. 8. The album closes as it began, with Telemann, whose Concerto in B flat major for winds, strings and basso continuo is a perfect example of the composer’s art, involving playful juggling of different instrumental combinations and musical ideas.

LIEDER DAS IRDISCHE LEBEL

Classical Music

GIULIANI: Flute and Guitar Duets

PIANO CTO. NO. 4 PIANO CTO. I

One of the world's foremost wind quintets meets one of today's finest pianists in a work that many consider to be one of the best examples of a work for piano and winds: Poulenc's Sextet. The composer himself called it 'a homage to the wind instruments which I have loved from the moment I began composing', and its cheeky character, virtuosic drive and catchy melodies are typical of his other writing for wind instruments. Poulenc also supplied the piano with a crucial - and virtuosic - part, however, including jazzy elements typical of the period as well as emotional outbursts in the manner of Rachmaninov. Stephen Hough and the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet have enjoyed a long collaboration. On disc this has resulted in recordings of the quintets by Mozart and Beethoven, a release which made the reviewer on the website classicstodayfrance.com surrender unconditionally: 'the adjective which comes to mind while listening is one of excruciating banality, and yet it says everything: this disc is profoundly beautiful'. Poulenc's sextet is framed by three other French works, and from the late-Romantic Quintet by Taffanel to the last of Tomasi's Cinq Danses (a 'War Dance' marked 'wildly frenetically'), the players of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra - who began performing as a group more than 20 years ago - once again demonstrate their supreme capacity not only on their individual instruments, but as ensemble players. Please note: The music on this Hybrid Super Audio CD can be played back in Stereo (CD and SACD) as well as in 5.0 Surround sound (SACD).

Classical Music

This disc contains narration by David Timson, which was written by Thomson
Smillie. Excerpts from the Naxos recording of "The Magic Flute" (Naxos 8-660030/31) are used in this recording to illustrate passages from Smillies's text.

Classical Music

The musical collection by Antonia Padoani Bembo entitled Produzioni armoniche (Harmonic Productions) contains cantatas and arias that together establish an intriguing portrait of the singer-composer born around 1640 in the Veneto. She received help from the guitarist-composer Francesco Corbetta who most probably accompanied her when she sang for Louis XIV, thereby obtaining a life-long pension with which to live in a women's community in Paris. Convoce Coeln

Enregistré en juillet 2005 à Paris à la chapelle de l'hôpital Notre-Dame de Bon Secours

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Performed in 1981 by Rudolf Nureyev and re-created specifically for the Bolshoi Ballet by French choreographer Pierre Lacotte, “Marco Spada, or the Bandit’s Daughter” is a grandiose and unique ballet on both a technical and dramatic level: complex choreography, five lead roles created for five principals, several changes in scenery, the participation of nearly all the Corps de ballet and even the presence of animals on stage. The American soloist David Hallberg stars as Marco Spada with Evguenia Obraztsova, Olga Smirnova, Semion Chudin and the Corps de ballet of the Bolshoi Ballet.