Having previously recorded the Baroque greats such as Handel and Vivaldi, Pamela completes her anthology of eighteenth century favorites with Telemann's Recorder Sonatas and Fantasias. Telemann's legacy as a composer of recorder music is among the richest of the age. The warmth and conviviality of Telemann's writing, the easy beauty of his melodies, as well as the knowing playfulness and ingenuity across many national styles are fully explored in this engaging program. Pamela utilizes a range of recorders in many sizes, known to players in the eighteenth century but only recently again perfected by makers for modern use. Accompanying Pamela are Ensemble Marsyas' Peter Whelan (bassoon), Alison McGillivray (cello), Elizabeth Kenny (archlute/guitar) and Marcin Swiatkiewicz (harpsichord/organ). Telemann's virtuosic 'concerto style' writing provides many opportunities for Pamela to further cement her deserved reputation as 'queen of the recorder'. Pamela Thorby has an international reputation as the UK's most stylish and creative recorder virtuoso. Pamela is most regularly heard on Karl Jenkins' fabulous Adiemus recordings making her possibly one of the most listened to recorder players in the world. Pamela's ability to assimilate many genres of music and her love of improvisation has led to collaborations with leading jazz, folk and pop musicians in an influential career in which she has travelled the world as concerto soloist, chamber musician and orchestral principal. Pamela's numerous and diverse recordings include acclaimed chamber music albums with the much admired Palladian Ensemble and a continuing series of highly praised solo recordings for Linn.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Pade, E.M.: Aquarellen Uber Das Meer I-Xxi / 4 Illustrations

Classical Music

Featuring ambitious and accomplished music for voices and viols, ‘Ward: Fantasies & Verse Anthems’ offers a privileged glimpse of a special moment in English music history. The four-part viol fantasies show a fluent and skillful style exemplifying Jacobean consort fantasy at its best. The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, Emily Ashton and Christopher Terepin join Phantasm to perform Ward’s verse anthems that contain an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of textures and generous word painting amidst a polyphonic swirl of viols. This recording is a fitting tribute to John Ward, whose efforts have been rediscovered in our own time and whose mellifluous music deserves a closer look. The award-winning ensemble has been applauded across the globe for its moving performances and is recognized as the most exciting viol consort active on the world scene today. Critics have described their performances and recordings as 'intoxicating', 'revelatory', 'electrifying', and ‘interpretations pervaded by a truly burning spirit'.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology.

DON JUAN

Classical Music

Includes work(s) by Naoko Akutagawa. Ensemble: Group for Contemporary Music. Conductor: Harvey Sollberger.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Rene Eespere gained recognition in his native Estonia in the 1970s and 80s for his vocal symphonic opuses, works for the stage and his music for children. The most significant among his instrumental works are seven concerti and chamber music. This CD presents chamber works written from 2002 to 2009. It is entitled Februa, alluding to the Roman festival of purification, in which sadness and a state of mourning take the listener on a journey to a sun-filled place of beauty and peace.

Classical Music

Classical Music

KALEIDOSCOPE • Amy Schwartz Moretti (vn); Robert McDuffie (vn); Elizabeth Pridgen (pn) • DORIAN 92126 (63:36)


GERSHWIN 3 Preludes. TCHAIKOVSKY Mélodie. Valse Scherzo. NOVÁ?EK Perpetuum mobile. MARTINON Solo Violin Sonatine, op. 31/1. KREISLER Caprice viennois. Praeludium and Allegro. MASSENET Thaïs: Meditation. MOSZKOWSKI Suite for 2 Violins and Piano


According to the blurb, Amy Schwartz Moretti chose the pieces for her first solo CD because they represent a kaleidoscope of works she’s known through her years of violin playing. The recital begins with Jascha Heifetz’s arrangement of George Gershwin’s Three Preludes, pieces in which Heifetz could wow an audience with stylish verve. Moretti is not so straightforwardly energetic as Heifetz, and she doesn’t wind up the first with a knockout punch. She’s slinkier, however (in a way similar to that of Maria Bachmann), especially in the second prelude. The engineers have swaddled her sound (on an 1874 Vuillaume that seems especially rich in the lowest registers) in a decent amount of reverberation, but at times she seems more recessive than does the pianist, her colleague Elizabeth Pridgen from Mercer University, although she brings the third prelude to a satisfying conclusion.


Two contrasting pieces by Piotr Illyitch Tchaikovsky follow: the Melodie, op. 42/3, which she plays with great warmth if not Nathan Milstein’s élan, and the Valse Scherzo, op. 34. At least one virtuoso I knew well ran afoul of this brilliant showpiece (both technically and stylistically), but Moretti doesn’t, and even if her portamentos don’t always seem finely judged in the waltz-like sections, she hits the double-stops squarely, plays the staccatos lightly and gracefully, and swirls the arpeggios with the silvery elegance of a baton twirler. Ottokar Nová?ek’s popular Perpetuum mobile may not be so difficult as it sounds, but Nathan Milstein could make a very dashing impression in it. Moretti takes it a bit more slowly, but perhaps makes a bit more musical sense out of it. For that reason, his 2:35 sounds somewhat longer than her 3:10.


Jean Martinon’s Sonatine No. 5, coming near the recital’s center, provides a slice of spiced meat among the sweets. She plays with prepossessing bravado at the opening of the second movement, but spikes the whole with energy. Fritz Kreisler didn’t slink and slide in his Caprice viennois the way Moretti does (compare, however, his two recordings from May 11 and 18, 1910—which themselves differ surprisingly—to his last, much more mannered one, from January 15, 1942), but her way in it makes a sense of its own kind. Its middle section is bright enough, but the outer section is softer-grained than, say, Zino Francescatti’s. Her even quarters in the first section of Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro remind me of the similar opening of David Nadien’s recording. Kreisler himself didn’t record the piece, which has been acclaimed by critics as the best of his lot, so we’ll never know what he would have done (Moretti does play the return of the quarter notes more subtly than their initial statement), although Carl Flesch relates that the composer didn’t take the Allegro too rapidly. Neither does Moretti, though it’s fast enough to throw off highlights (she approaches the cadenza slowly, but then mixes a real cocktail of sounds at the end). Jules Massenet’s popular Meditation may be the single most frequently requested violin piece in my experience, and Moretti plays it with such beauty of tone and glowing ardor that it’s easy to see why.


The program concludes with Moritz Moszkowski’s ingratiating Suite in G Minor for Two Violins and Piano, in which Robert McDuffie joins Moretti and Pridgen. McDuffie and Moretti seem well matched tonally (though he’s playing the 1735 Ladenburg Guarneri del Gésu) and stylistically through this work’s four movements. Together, Moretti and McDuffie produce an almost orchestral sonority, a tribute perhaps to Moszkowski’s skill in writing for the instruments, but also to the two violinists channeling his spirit. If it’s lightweight fare, listeners should note that the ability to make such pieces sound worthy of a hearing used to be more highly prized in earlier eras, and Moretti and the ensemble possess this ability in abundance. Although the recital will appeal most strongly to Moretti’s followers, all the well-played numbers suggest a broader recommendation to a wider audience—especially on account of Moszkowski’s suite.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Classical Music

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Classical Music

Classical Music

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

An Argentinian composer of Italian origin, Luis Gianneo is much lesser-known than his slightly younger colleague Alberto Ginastera. His music however clearly paves the way for Ginastera’s in that much of it is, in one way or another, folk-inspired. Many of these pieces actually use Argentinian folk rhythms rather than quote or rhapsodise on folk-tunes, much in the same way as in Bartók’s so-called imaginary folklore. Indeed, Gianneo’s music is never slavishly nationalistic (i.e. in the narrowest meaning of the word) or merely picturesque. It nevertheless is deeply rooted in the local tradition as well as in mid-20th Century musical language. His piano writing is clearly of its time, and often brings Prokofiev, Stravinsky or Bartók to mind.

The Suite of 1933 is the earliest work in this selection and a good example of Gianneo’s musical thinking. It successfully blends folk-like rhythms and phrases with a more cosmopolitan idiom. It is a brilliant piece, full of energy and colourful contrasts.

The Sonatina, completed in Paris in 1938, is much more Neo-classical in outlook though its main themes are again often redolent of folk music. The thematic material is moulded in more traditional forms and handled with much economy and clarity. It never outstays its welcome.

The Piano Sonata No.2 (1943) is a much more ambitious piece, though it has still much in common with the earlier works, especially in its reliance on traditional Neo-classical forms and Argentinian rhythms. In this, as in the earlier pieces, there is much contrapuntal activity which Gianneo expertly masters; but again his colourful music is never blandly academic or dryly austere.

The shorter Improvisación of 1948 is set in a clear ABA form. The gently undulating outer sections frame a more impassioned middle section. A beautiful short piece that should become a popular encore, were it heard more often.

The Piano Sonata No.3, completed in 1957, is another ambitious, substantial piece. It is a much more troubled work than any of the other ones recorded here. According to Dora De Marinis, this may reflect the composer’s sorrow at the death of his wife but also the turbulent political situation of the country at that time. In any case, the music here is rather more austere, harsher, though it still has its share of folk-inspired material. The way in which this material is handled already points towards Gianneo’s later music. This is characterised by a greater economy of resources as is evident in the masterly Seis Bagatelas, written between 1957 and 1959. This is one of his last piano pieces, and, as far as I am concerned, the finest work here. The folk material is less prominent and the counterpoint is in strict two-part writing, whereas the musical idiom now tends towards some free atonality. The music is still very colourful, inventive and superbly written for the instrument.

Gianneo’s attractive piano music is well-served by the present performers and is given a warm, natural piano sound. I for one hope that Volume 2 will soon be released, for, judging by the present recordings, Gianneo’s music greatly deserves to be re-assessed, the more so when it is played, as it is here, by dedicated performers.

-- Hubert Culot, MusicWeb International

"•The Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra’s superstar clarinetist Anthony McGill join forces for the clarinet quintets of Mozart and Brahms – widely considered the greatest chamber works for clarinet and strings. • Both are mature masterworks inspired by phenomenal clarinetists of their day. • This is McGill’s first commercially released album as featured soloist and his Cedille Records debut. • This is the Pacifica Quartet’s ninth Cedille album."

Classical Music