Like his orchestral work, Jacob Druckman's chamber music is notable for its bold physicality and vivid atmosphere, qualities also on full display in the String Quartet No. 3 (1981) that opens this new Naxos disc. The first movement's abrupt dynamic shifts, sinister dark/light shadings, slithery runs, and persistent mewing portamentos suggest a musical game of cat and mouse. The more recent (1994) Dark Wind also follows this pattern, however a very different aesthetic informs Quartet No. 2 from Druckman's earlier (1966), purely atonal period. Anyone familiar with Elliott Carter's works in the genre will know what to expect here, although Druckman is less interested in extreme complexity than he is in rhythm and color (even if the latter is simply varying shades of gray).

Reflections on the Nature of Water was composed for solo marimba. The six movements feature such titles as Crystalline, Fleet, and Relentless, and they are indeed varied by tempo and mood. But admittedly, the sound of atonal marimba begins to wear before long, and listeners are accordingly advised not to play this entire CD in one sitting. To its credit, the program features exceptional, virtuoso performances from the Group for Contemporary Music (featuring Druckman's son Daniel on marimba), as well as vivid recorded sound by Naxos. For the adventurous.

--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

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

Within the output of Sofia Gubaidulina, solo and chamber music occupies a position of prominence; she has written more than eighty such works. One of the earliest is the brief – and not really typical – Serenade for solo guitar from 1960, composed as a commission from a Moscow publishing house for inclusion in a collection of guitar compositions. The composer was asked to write a piece not overly difficult or progressive, and has later described the result as ‘music for pleasure’. Demonstrating a particular closeness to the guitar, Gubaidulina’s later writing for it has exploited its sound spectrum in previously unimagined ways. Two further works involving the guitar are included here, with Repentance from 2008 being a reworking of an earlier work, just as its title is a translation of the original’s Italian one, Ravvedimento. Her latest work involving the guitar, and also the latest on this disc (and a world première recording) is Sotto voce for viola, double bass and two guitars. About this unusual combination, Gubaidulina has remarked: ‘It fascinated me on account of its dark colour and its potential for contrast between a muted, almost whispered sotto voce sound and that particular sort of expressivity that low-pitched instruments possess’. Each with a duration of more than 20 minutes, these two works frame the equally substantial but much earlier Piano Sonata. Looking back at her youth, the composer has described the piano in her family home as ‘the only light’ in ‘a fairly grey and uninteresting existence’. Striking features of the sonata include borrowings from jazz and the twelve-tone row which underpins all its three movements – a nod towards the dodecaphony through which Gubaidulina asserted her place in the Russian musical avant-garde at an early stage. This varied and fascinating journey into the world of Sofia Gubaidulina’s chamber music is given us by a Munich-based group of eminent musicians.

This Disc is devoted completely to the music of Vancouver composer Owen Underhill comprised of 4 major works composed between 1998 and 2011 featuring Montreal's Quator Bozzini. Underhill is winner of the 2007 Most Outstanding Composer in Western Canadian Music Awards and is considered Robert-Everett-Green of the Globe and Mail says Underhill is 'one of the most thoughtful and effective of West Coast composers'.

Elena Sartori’s aim with this new recording is to reinterpret a pair of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s grand motets through the prism of his Italian heritage. As Sartori notes in her booklet essay, the magnificent Te Deum shares little of musical style or text-setting in common with Lully’s operas. The ornamentation and stylised, asymmetric rhythms that are woven through the texture of his dramatic works and those of his successors such as Rameau are notable by their absence; she finds, instead, ‘a deep-rooted, maternal sense of melody, and an enduring, even unwitting memory of Latinate language that leads the work away from factional claims (of national style).’ Anyone who follows Lully’s music and the French Baroque will want to investigate this new recording, which was made in the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna: a Byzantineera building with its own complex history which lends an imposing sense of space to the interpretations.

This CD is the continuation of viola d’amore specialist Thomas Georgi’s The Stockholm Sonatas I (BIS-CD-1535), resurrecting the neglected music of Attilio Ariosti. The first volume consisted of the music published by Ariosti in London as a set of ‘Lessons for the Viola d’Amour’. The works were preserved in Stockholm in a manuscript entitled ‘Receuil de Pièces’ and copied by the Swedish composer Johan Helmich Roman in the late 1710s during his studies in London. Based on the Stockholm manuscript, Georgi has made his own edition of the works. This recording comprises the first 7 of the 15 ‘sonatas’ contained in the Receuil, leaving the remainder for a final, third volume in the series.

Highly regarded by his contemporaries as a singer, organist, cellist and dramatist, Ariosti has been more or less forgotten for more than two centuries. In his liner notes Georgi underlines Ariosti’s “remarkable twists of harmony, his witty way with silence as well as with notes, his preference for juxtaposition of contrasting material over development of a single idea”; wondering if these qualities would have found him “as wide an audience as Corelli’s”, had the viola d’amore remained popular as an instrument. As on the first disc, Georgi is joined by lutenist Lucas Harris, and this time by different cellist, Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann, another product of that excellent Early Music Department at my place of work, the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.

Thomas Georgi has used the title ‘Sonata’ for these works even though the word is never used in the manuscript source. “They sound like sonatas to me” is his almost belligerent declaration, and I admire his pioneering spirit in cutting through a potential quagmire of nomenclatural red tape. His expertise and scholarly research mean that his treatment of embellishments in this music is based on the historical examples of contemporary performers. Citing Corelli as a model, the scores are taken as a framework from which a player of the time would have used partially as a springboard on which their own technical and expressive abilities would have had a significant effect with regard to the final result. In his review of the fist disc of this series, Gary Higginson describes these works as ‘second-rate music’ – in which I would agree that they don’t really plumb great emotional depths to our modern ears. For the purpose that they were no doubt intended they are however ‘first-rate’, as your gigging reviewer can confirm. A composer writing to satisfy players and a mixed audience walks a narrow line between being over-demanding and dull. Ariosti is neither of these things, providing plenty of interesting music for all of the musicians involved, enough wow factor and variety to keep the elderly aunts and uncles awake in the front row, and keeping enough in reserve not to annoy the wealthy patrons at the back who are having a boozy chat through the whole thing. The handkerchief waving bewigged gentry of the time swooned hopelessly at anything too dissonant in any case, so Ariosti knew exactly what he was doing with these works.

Thomas Georgi’s Viola d’amore has an ‘alto’ pitch range, but while the general tessitura is lower than a violin, the colour is in fact quite bright. The strings have a thicker, more throaty texture in tone, but the overall effect is highly attractive, and the balance between violoncello and lute, the glue which links the two, is nicely struck. I note that these have been recorded in a different acoustic to volume one, but Bis’s reliably wonderful recording techniques have created another winning balance between close detail and spaciousness. It may well be that the CDs from this series end up being used as background music to chic dinners, but now all those embarrassing pauses can be filled with at least one sensible question: “…mmm, I like this music, what is it?”

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

Lanza, A.: Canadian Composers Portraits

This CD features all the music from The Choral Pilgrimage 2013, The Sixteen's annual UK tour, including the new version of Allegri’s Miserere and MacMillan’s new, and equally memorable, setting of the same text. The disc also features music by Palestrina including some of his wonderful music for Easter including the Stabat Mater a8 and excerpts from the Missa Regina caeli.

Trio Ismena guides us through a fascinating collection including world premiere recordings of contemporary works showcasing the diversity of the vanguard of Danish contemporary composers.

Tristan & Iseult Bodel, de Bornelh, Riquier, Joel Cohen, Anne Azéma (Iseult), Henri Ledroit (Tristan), Ellen Hargis (Brangäne), Richard Morrisson (Mark), Andrea von Ramm (narr), William Hite (Watchman/Sailor/Monk), The Boston Camerata. Composer: Jehan Bodel, de Dia, Beatriz, Comtessa, Giraut de Bornelh, Performer: Andrea von Ramm, Henri Ledroit, Anne Azéma, Ellen Hargis, Conductor: Joel Cohen, Orchestra/Ensemble: Boston Camerata. What we have here is a Warner Classics reissue of the award-winning 1987 Erato recording (it won the Grand Prix du Disque in 1989) of medieval poems, songs, and music associated with the Tristan and Iseult legends, compiled by Joel Cohen and played by The Boston Camerata. It certainly makes for different and fascinating listening. - John J. Puccio - Classical Candor.

Classical Music

On two previous discs, London Baroque has explored the genre of the trio sonatas as it unfolded in 17th Century France and England. Both these issues met with great acclaim. The ensemble has now arrived in Germany, or more correctly: the German-speaking world of the time, as the programme also features works from the Low Countries and Austria. The great masters of the period, Buxtehude and Biber - are both among the ten composers represented here. But included are also other, less well-known names, such as Johann Schmelzer and Johann Rosenmüller. The great variety of styles and forms found on the disc fully reflect the diversity among the composers, while also serving to remind the listener of the fact that the trio sonata genre was just becoming established during the period.

Destination London

Weill, K.: Kleine Dreigroschenmusik / Concerto for Violin an

LAUTENLIEDER DES 17.JAHRHUNDER

Prokofiev, S.: Symphony No. 2 / Summer Night / Autumnal Sket

This new release is the final disc in the Escher String Quartet’s traversal of Mendelssohn’s string quartets. The Strad called the first installment “A deeply rewarding release… and by any standards a distinguished one.” Later the same magazine made the sequel its recommendation in the November issue of 2015. Mendelssohn’s final quartets, Nos 5 and 6, are featured here alongside his Capriccio and Fugue. The Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80 was a special work in the composer’s eyes. The work was written in response to the unexpected death of his beloved sister, Fanny. The piece was published posthumously, as Mendelssohn suffered a number of strokes and died a month after premiering the piece.

Strauss II: Waltzes

KARITA MATTILA - KAIPAINEN, ME

The personification of turn-of-the-century America, John Philip Sousa toured the world and won unprecedented fame. His marches are acknowledged as some of the best in the genre and The Triumph of Time embodies all the nobility of his great parade marches. Sousa the successful operetta composer is encountered in the dashing overture to The Irish Dragoon, in the spirited Circus Galop, and in selections from The Charlatan, one of his most lyrical and successful operettas. Showpieces and solos enhance a program that also features the iconic Sousa/Walter Damrosch arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner.

Classical Music

Much lauded in his lifetime, Walter Piston is remembered chiefly today for his eight Symphonies, the two Violin Concertos and the popular ballet, The Incredible Flutist. This recording presents three of the five string quartets, which range from from the lithe neo-Classicism of the First Quartet and the rhythmic trenchancy and intense melodic writing of the Third Quartet to the forceful yet accessible Fifth. This is the Naxos début of the Harlem Quartet, an ensemble comprising First-Place Laureates of the Sphinx Competition for young Black and Latino string players.

'A disc of exceptional quality, reinforcing The Sixteen's reputation as one of the finest choirs of our day.' Gramophone "The Sixteen perform Britten's virtuosic masterpiece with fearsome accuracy and a luxurious sound." Classic FM Magazine "Britten's mastery for writing for unaccompanied chorus is here demonstrated in fine performances..." BBC Music Magazine This superb collection, released in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Britten's birth, features all three of The Sixteen's celebrated Britten recordings. Arguably the most famous British composer of the 20th century, Benjamin Britten possessed a formidable talent and distinctive style. His remarkable career spanned over 40 years and this collection of choral works features a fascinating selection of music from throughout his life. Works include Hymn to the Virgin, a piece originally conceived during his school days; A Boy was Born which first brought him to the public's attention; the much-loved A Ceremony of Carols - a masterpiece composed on board ship as Britten returned to England from the USA in 1942; and the Choral Dances from 'Gloriana' with tenor soloist Ian Partridge. A Ceremony of Carols won a coveted Deutsche Schallplattenkritik when first released.

Gabriela Lena Frank is the real deal: a modern composer with a personal style, one that manages to integrate a wide range of sounds and performing techniques into a cohesive language that unapologetically includes melody and tonal harmony without ever sounding anachronistic. She clearly manages to remain true to herself, but she doesn't have to write down to her listeners in order to share her thoughts and feelings. This is just good music.

Hilos is a quartet for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano inspired by Peruvian weaving. The music is colorful, vibrant, and consistently inventive; the Latin element is pervasive, but not cheap, and not overwhelming. Danza de los Saqsampillos is an arrangement for two marimbas of an earlier piano piece, and it sounds like a blast to play; Adagio para Amantaní (for cello and piano) is a soulful meditation inspired by an island landscape in the middle of Lake Titicaca. Quijotadas is a string quartet based on Cervantes' Don Quixote. Its second movement, Sequidilla para la Mancha, has to be one of the most charming pieces of its kind since the scherzo of Ravel's Quartet, which it resembles in some ways (lots of pizzicato).

The performances, with the composer's participation where the piano joins in, and presumably her supervision where it does not, are uniformly excellent, and so are the sonics. A wonderful disc of inventive, fresh, characterful music, plain and simple.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Every piece is nearly flawless, exciting, and played with tremendous passion.

…we have music that unfolds comfortably, but there’s enough to arouse curiosity without scaring anyone off. It will not alienate stodgy blue-hair types, but it will still satisfy those who crave creative new music.

- American Record Guide

Sean Hickey – A composer who maximizes the miniature in his savvy travelogues.

…these compositions are substantive and savvy. The aesthetic that emerges here is that of excitable conversation between the instruments – a discourse that never collapses into idle palaver. Fool’s Errand packs a wealth of material into a three-minute masterpiece.

- Gramophone