Francis Poulenc is considered one of the greatest melodists of the 20th century but it is his individual and immediately recognizable harmonic language that makes his music so distinctive. Often overlooked in his lifetime and in the years after his death, his sacred music was an expression of his more serious side and, following the death of his close friend, Pierre-Octave Ferroud, a re-awakening of his religious faith. The Sixteen’s new recording centers around the themes of conflict and atonement, reflecting both Poulenc’s intense internal struggles and the turbulence of life in France during the mid-20th century. “Some choirs of high renown aim for a kind of robotic perfection in sync with the digital age. Christophers’ troupe contains human beings coloring lines with individual hues, yet still acting and breathing as one.” (The Times)

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REVIEW:

The sacred music of Francis Poulenc would seem somewhat off the regular path of the popular British choir The Sixteen, but they show themselves to be sensitive and skillful Poulenc interpreters. The Mass in G is perfectly controlled, but somehow radiant.

– All Music Guide

Joan Tower's chamber music has much the same emotional intensity and gestural ferocity as her orchestral works. Her primarily angular harmonic language, with its predominantly dissonant cast, evokes a sense of agitation bordering on rage--something most apparent in Wild Purple for solo viola (played with conviction and arresting virtuosity by Paul Neubauer). Like many Tower works, In Memory (in a stunning rendition by the Tokyo String Quartet) begins quietly--the violin's first notes are almost imperceptible--then builds to a gripping climax. The music's emotions are particularly raw and acute, as the composer was inspired by the death of a close friend, and then the 9/11 attacks that occurred shortly after.


Big Sky for piano trio (persuasively performed by Tower, along with Chee-Yun and Andre Emelianoff) has somewhat softer contours. It begins and ends in a subdued, melancholy atmosphere, while the climactic central section jars with its abrupt syncopations fleshed out in robust, quasi-romantic piano writing.


Island Prelude is the most surprising piece in this collection, as it features passages of genuine consonance and even lyricism, as well as some characterful writing for solo oboe (featuring the expert Richard Woodhams with the Tokyo String Quartet). Of course, all of this is woven into Tower's free-flowing, volatile musical style, which quite often catches you off-guard--the very thing that makes her music compelling.


No Longer Very Clear is a set of four piano pieces, the titles of which are lines taken from the John Ashbery poem of the same name. This very intimate encounter with Tower's art reveals a composer of imagination and ingenuity, and one who possesses a profound emotional sensitivity. The piano writing is brilliant and ranges from Scriabinesque passion to the mystery and exotic beauty found in Messiaen. Ursula Oppens (in the first two pieces) and Melvin Chen (in the remainder) both offer powerfully evocative performances. The recordings are uniformly excellent in both the chamber and solo settings. This release marks an important document of the composer, and a fine addition to Naxos' American Classics series. [9/16/2005]
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

Includes work(s) by Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, Johann Pachelbel, Antonio Vivaldi, Arcangelo Corelli.

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartets: Nos. 1–4. PROKOFIEV String Quartet No. 2 • Pacifica Qrt • ÇEDILLE 30 (2 CDs: 129:17)

Sooner or later, most contributors to this journal are bound to receive letters from disgruntled readers and the occasional colleague complaining about what they perceive to be an unfairly negative review, or even an unfairly positive one. But I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever been chided by a colleague as I was by Peter J. Rabinowitz in Fanfare 35:4 for submitting an enthusiastic review that wasn’t enthusiastic enough. In a second-opinion follow-up to my review of Volume 1 of the Pacifica Quartet’s new Shostakovich cycle, Rabinowitz took exception to my “Goldilocks” analogy in which I stated that the Pacifica’s performances struck me as “j-u-s-t right.”

Although I never got to review the Pacifica’s complete Mendelssohn quartets, they showed up on a couple of Want Lists, and in a number of reviews of Mendelssohn quartet recordings by other ensembles, I’ve repeatedly singled out the Pacifica’s version as equaling, if not surpassing, the Emerson’s set. So, as a rejoinder to Rabinowitz, let me just say for the record that I agree with him that the Pacifica’s Shostakovich is not “middle of the road,” and by “j-u-s-t right” I didn’t mean to imply that the ensemble’s performances straddled the fence or clung to the median strip running down the center of the highway. There is no better string quartet on the scene today than the Pacifica. In terms of technical precision and keenness of musical insight, the Pacifica is the true inheritor of the Emerson’s crown and, in warmth of tone and emotional responsiveness, I often find the Pacifica superior to the Emerson.

That said, there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that once the Pacifica has completed its Shostakovich cycle it will be among the top two or three to have, those others being the aforesaid Emerson and what some consider to be the definitive Fitzwilliam. With this release of Volume 2, the Pacifica has now crossed the ocean more than halfway. Eight of the 15 quartets have now been committed to disc—Nos. 5–8 in Volume 1, and now Nos. 1–4 here. And as in the previous volume, the MO is to include another roughly contemporaneous string quartet by another Russian composer. In Volume 1 it was Miaskovsky; here it’s Prokofiev.

Shostakovich’s quartets span a period of 36 years; the first was written in 1938, the last in 1974. The four quartets heard here are the composer’s earliest, though in the overall chronology of his works, you could say that he got a relatively late start in the quartet-writing business. He’d already written his first five symphonies by 1937, before his first quartet was even a twinkle in his ear.

As he is quoted in Shostakovich: A Life Remembered , it was the composer’s intention to write 24 quartets following a cyclic progression of major and minor keys. Unlike Bach, however, who proceeded through the keys by semitone, or Chopin, who in his 24 preludes proceeded via the Circle of Fifths, Shostakovich adopted a unique scheme of his own. He proceeds—at least in the 15 quartets he managed to write—more or less by submediants (by sixths). The first six quartets, all in major, follow the pattern. C, A, F, D, B?, G—A being a sixth above C, F being a sixth above A, and so on. But then something goes askew with the plan. No. 7 should have been in E?, but instead Shostakovich throws a monkeywrench into the works by giving us a quartet in F?-Minor. No. 8 returns to the pattern with C Minor, which would have been the submediant of No. 7 if No. 7 had followed the plan and been in E?. Another deviation comes with No. 10, which is also in the “wrong” key from what it should be, but the pattern resumes once again with No. 11.

In a fascinating analysis of the quartets (quartets.de/index.html), one Ian Strachan explains that “the insertion of F?-Minor and the effective rotation of E? sharp major [ sic ] and C minor were done so that quartet number nine would be written in E?-Major and quartet number 16 in B Major. By doing so Shostakovich would ensure that his initials (DSCH) were used as the keys in quartets whose number are a perfect square (D Major: quartet number four or 2 squared; S, in the German notation or E?-Major in the English: quartet number nine or 3 squared; C Major: quartet number one or 1 squared; and H or B Major in the English notation as quartet number 16, or 4 squared). So it seems that Shostakovich, a tonal composer who delighted in keeping detailed numerical records of football scores, indulged in numerical as well as musical ciphers.”

In a way, I suppose, this tends to reinforce something I’ve said before about Shostakovich’s quartets, not that they’re all alike, but that there’s a prevailing sense of continuity in the musical discourse that makes them seem like one cogent and coherent conversation from beginning to end, which, of course, could be advanced as an argument for listening to them in order. Still, the above bit of clever mathematical manipulation presumes the existence of a 16th which was never written, as well as the continuation of the pattern all the way through to a nonexistent final 24th quartet. You’ve got to love stuff like this; it can be so earnest in its pursuit of the Delphic. Or, as the oracle once said, “Pi are square, cake are round.”

Nonetheless, I would urge you to visit the website because it goes way beyond the tortured math I’ve touched on here. It also provides a detailed history, description, and analysis of every single quartet.

The First Quartet, for the most part, is a bouncy, one might almost say joyful, thing. The coruscating harmonies, rhythmic ostinatos, and pervasive gloom we often associate with Shostakovich’s music are saved for the later quartets.

The austerity and menace begin to creep in as early as the Second Quartet. The Soviet victory over Hitler’s army was near in the early fall of 1944 when Shostakovich composed the work, practically in the same breath as his famous E-Minor Piano Trio, but he wasn’t in a celebratory mood. There’s a Russianness or East European Jewishness to the melodic and harmonic material, which often sounds like it’s derived from folk songs and klezmer dances soured and bent out of shape by Shostakovich’s parodying techniques.

Superficially, the Third Quartet (1946) bears some resemblance to the First Quartet in its opening swagger and jaunty Haydnesque character, but it’s a cheerfulness colored by disappointment and disillusion. The piece was written on the eve that ushered in the dark days of the Zhdanov denouncement and the targeting of Soviet artists and intellectuals. Shostakovich’s state of mind is reflected in the fact that the Third Quartet is the only work he wrote during this year.

The Fourth Quartet (1949) ran into resistance for other reasons and of a different sort. Characterized as another of his “Jewish” works—though not Jewish, Shostakovich was drawn to Jewish musical and cultural themes throughout his life—the Fourth Quartet appeared at exactly the time that the Cold War was heating up, anti-Semitism was once again on the rise (if it had ever abated), and Stalin was gleefully engaged in another round of persecution and purges. The horror is made manifest in the leering danse macabre of the concluding Allegretto, one of the standout movements in the entire quartet cycle.

For Prokofiev the string quartet plays a far less central role in his output; he wrote only two, the first in 1930, and the second, included in the present set, in 1941. Writing string quartets was not a particularly self-motivated or self-fulfilling effort for him, and this, his second go at the medium, was apparently not even his idea. Having been sent to a Soviet outpost presumed safe from Germany’s invading forces, Prokofiev was encouraged to write a string quartet based on the Kabardino-Balkar folk themes common to the North Caucasus region to which he and other artists had been evacuated. He seems to have warmed to the idea, producing a fine example of abstract music inspired by authentic folk elements.

In every single movement of Shostakovich’s quartets and in the Prokofiev, the Pacifica Quartet penetrates to the very heart and soul of the music. What stands out—matters of technical precision and ensemble blending and balance are givens—is the way in which the players probe for and reveal amazing details even in passages that, superficially, may seem to present relatively flat surfaces unlikely to yield much in the way of dimensionality, such as the Adagio of the Third Quartet. But under inspection of the Pacifica’s microscope, the music displays a topography filled with hidden peaks and valleys. It’s this intellectual curiosity to explore, wedded to largesse of emotional expressivity that makes these performances special.

I hope Rabinowitz takes this to be the fervently enthusiastic recommendation intended.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

This album features cello concertos by Witold Lutoslawski and Henri Dutilleux performed by the multiple prize-winning German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, conducted by Thomas Søndergård. These works, premiered in 1970, are two of the biggest gems of the twentieth century, the golden age of the cello. While equally virtuosic and engaging, both pieces showcase different aspects of the musical landscape of the late twentieth century. Lutoslawski’s concerto explores the possibilities of chance composition in the form of a duel between the solo cello and a ferocious orchestral accompaniment, in which the individual ultimately prevails. In comparison, soloist and ensemble work together more smoothly in Henri Dutilleux’ “Tout un monde lontain”. In this “cello concerto”, the composer invokes a mystical “world from afar”, inspired by Baudelaire quotes and full of allusions to French musical greats such as Debussy and Messiaen, while simultaneously sounding unmistakably Dutilleuxian. This is Moser’s fourth album as an exclusive PENTATONE artist, after releases with the cello concertos of Dvorak and Lalo (2015), Elgar and Tchaikovsky (2017) and works for cello and piano by Rachmaninov and Prokofiev (2016, awarded with a diapason d’or and ECHO Klassik 2017). The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin has an even longer track record with PENTATONE, including albums with Vladimir Jurowski (Mahler/Strauss 2017, Schnittke 2015) Jakub Hruša (Bartók/Kodály 2018) and Marek Janowski (complete Wagner operas, 2011-2013).

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REVIEWS:

Playing with depth and naturalness but above all a sense of theatre, Moser shapes an animated performance of the Lutoslawski, together with Thomas Søndergård and the Berlin orchestra. With its allusion to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, Dutilleux’s Tout un monde lontain is perhaps more mystical, and Moser allows it to unfold with hypnotic beauty.

– BBC Music Magazine

Moser maintains a keen focus over the eventful trajectory of the Lutoslawski. Many performances rather lose momentum in the Cantilena but Moser neither falters nor sells short this music’s rapt eloquence. In the Dutilleux, Moser eschews any emotional uniformity. Throughout both works, Thomas Søndergård propels the music forwards with a real sense for their vastly different yet equally inevitable destinations.

– Gramophone

"Music allows us to really find our inner self, to be free to search for those things that we normally don't have the opportunity or the time to search for. It opens up many, many doors within us. It opens the doors to our soul, to our feelings, to humanity as a whole." – Yakov Kreizburg One of the most interesting and exciting conductors of his generation, Yakov Kreizberg conducted most of the major orchestras throughout Europe, North America and Asia. At the time of his death he held the posts of Artistic and Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, and Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Netherlands Philharmonic and Netherlands Chamber orchestras. PentaTone presents In Memoriam Yakov Kreizberg , a collection of the Kreizberg’s excellent PentaTone recordings, in honor of the esteemed conductor.

Howard Blake, a living composer best known for his film scores (a.o. Snowman), presents his new classical compositions, all world premiere recordings. Sir Neville Marriner conducts.

The 1980 Deutsche Grammophon debut of violinist Shlomo Mintz re-issued on Pentatone’s Remastered Classics series, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado. Mintz then still in the fresh bloom of both critical and popular acclaim chose his program well in this debut featuring the penultimate pieces in Romantic era violin repertory: Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, and Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Inescapably an essential musical snapshot which contains impassioned playing giving freshness to these much performed pieces. Originally recorded in quadraphonic sound.

SZYMANOWSKI: String Quartets / STRAVINSKY: Concertino

Conceived and realized in partnership with Q2 Music's Peabody award-winning podcast Meet the Composer, Splitting Adams is Alarm Will Sound's tribute to American composer John Adams, and in particular to his works Chamber Symphony (1992) and Son of Chamber Symphony (2007). Presented with commentary tracks from MTC's host Nadia Sirota, Alarm Will Sound's artistic director Alan Pierson, and the composer himself, the podcast-plus-performance conveys a rare sense of interaction for the listener; not only does the music, performed in all its lush detail by the 17 musicians in AWS, capture and connect the long trajectory between the two works, but the commentary also shines a revealing light on the story behind the music.

Volume 3 in the Legendary Treasures series further expands Martha Argerich’s discography with two important works: five unreleased radio, live and studio recordings, mainly solo works, stand alongside one of the earliest versions of Argerich’s signature work with orchestra. Surprisingly Argerich’s Schumann Toccata has never been released on disc. Her clarity, lightness and speed on this recording may well be compared to the famous recordings by Barere, Cziffra and Horowitz.

Recorded between 1957 and 1965.

When Michael Gordon's Timber, scored for six amplified wooden 2-by-4s, premiered in 2009, it brought the physicality and endurance of percussion performance to a new level. In the liner notes for Slagwerk Den Haag's recording of the piece, released on Cataloupe Music in 2011, Gordon described a connection to the work of shamanist author Carlos Castaneda, whose self-imposed spirit journey in the desert could wipe the brain clean and "bring on visions." Newly recorded by Mantra Percussion and reworked by an A-list of producers and DJs, Gordon's deep exploration into the extreme possibilities of rhythm gets the full electronic treatment on Timber Remixed. This album contains six key remixes by Squarepusher, Oneohtrix Point Never, Tim Hecker, Johann Johannsson, Fennesz and Hauschka.

Too funky for the academy, the Bang on a Can All-Stars emerged from the scruffy unvirons of downtown New York playing a new kind of music, with a new kind of energy, for a new kind of audience. This is the music that made them famous - their breakthrough CDs for Sony Classical, newly packaged, remastered onto one 74-minute disc. Music from Bang on a Can co-founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, Bang on a Can All-Stars member and acclaimed composer-clarinettist Evan Ziporyn, and innovators Nick Didkovsky, Annie Gosfield, and Lois V Vierk. With this music, Bang on a Can cracked open a powerful new world. Hear why.

The period of the early Habsburgs, from c.1340 to c.1520, saw the development of a richly diverse musical culture in the Austrian region. This pioneering selection, the product of an extensive research project conducted at the University of Vienna, presents an overview of music in everyday life, in many cases in première recordings performed by Ensemble Leones. The music is sacred and secular, allowing the listener to eavesdrop on Tyrolean palaces, dance halls and bourgeois homes, and on the singer-poets who travelled the country where old local styles fused with the latest international fashions.

Michael Gordon, co-founder of Bang on a Can and also featured on Nonesuch (Light Is Calling, Weather) and Cantaloupe (Decasia), wrote the 52 minute 'Trance' for Icebreaker in 1995. Called 'a minimalist classic' by The New York Times, 'Trance' is a kaleidoscope of pan-pipe melodies and provocative rhythms, and features Icrebreaker's aggressively virtuosic sound.

The Duke Box 2 picks up the story of the great Duke Ellington band in the early 1950s and spans the next 20 years or so of his remarkable output. Spanning the years in which Ellington regularly toured Europe and Scandinavia, The Duke Box 2 offers a rich selection of performances illustrating a tirelessly inventive musical spirit on tour with changing personnel and occasional guest artists. CD3 features never before released live recordings from a 1963 concert in Gröna Lund, Stockholm—a veritable treasure for the committed Ellington fan. The box also includes the well-renowned Jaywalker (CD5) and Piano Player (CD4) albums whose music always deserve a re-visiting. Among other gems are late 1970s recordings from New York, some of the last music Ellington ever put out.

The bonus DVD combines a series of short films of the Ellington band in action and despite the sound being recorded first and the performances showing the band miming, this curiosum offers a fascinating glimpse of The Duke in action, and the audio is of course technically excellent.

REVIEW:

This box set of seven CDs, one DVD and an illustrated booklet celebrates the latter part of Duke Ellington's monumental career. It opens with the so-called "Silver Jubilee" 1952 coast-to-coast broadcasts from Birdland in New York City by NBC.

But the Birdland gig was no simple trip down memory lane. Ever anxious to be seen to be on the cutting edge, Ellington used it to demonstrate the ability of his orchestra to absorb the changes brought about by be-bop. The music suffers somewhat from NBC's desire to emphasize the cultural importance of the occasion, with celebrities in the audience called to the microphone by MC William B. Williams to attest. These include—most interestingly—British critic, pianist and composer Leonard Feather.

Things calm down on CD2 with a pretty typical 1958 concert in Munich featuring Ducal compositions new and old, plus the inevitable "greatest hits" medley.

On CD3 the band is caught on tape while playing a week-long booking at the Gröna Lund amusement park in Stockholm.

The remaining CDs are from the Ellington "stockpile," recordings of self-financed sessions from the Duke's own vaults. No.4 is of particular interest, concentrating as it does on Ellington's mostly unaccompanied piano playing.

CD5 was recorded—by the full orchestra—at the RCA studios in New York in 1966-67. It is memorable for two things: Cootie Williams' playing of "The Shepherd," a magnificent slow blues that Duke later incorporated into his Second Sacred Concert; and for Ellington's musical dialogue with conga drummer Emmanuel Abdul-Rahim.

CD6, from 1970—1972, reveals Ellington nearing the end of his life but still capable of springing surprises. He attempts to come to terms with the "New Thing" via such enigmatic compositions as "Rext" and "Flute" and new, spare arrangements of "Sophisticated Lady" and "I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good."

The video on the DVD was filmed at Pathé Studios in New York in 1962. It captures Paul Gonsalves in full flight on "Blow By Blow" and Sam Woodyard doing some astonishing things with his drum kit on "Kind Of Dukish."

It's a lot to digest but Duke Box 2 provides a highly entertaining and well-rounded portrait of one of the few jazzmen truly worthy of the title genius.

-- AllAboutJazz.com (Chris Mosey)

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Domenico Cimarosa was one of the last great exponents of the "Neapolitan School" and one of the most famous and successful composers before the arrival of Rossini on the European opera scene. His works were produced and re-staged at innumerable performances in opera houses all over Europe. This program represents the extraordinary range of Cimarosa's career, from Le trame deluse (The Foiled Schemes) and La villana riconosciutta (The Country Girl Revealed), which were among his greatest hits, to overtures from cantatas such as Atene edificata (The Founding of Athens) and the "dramatic composition" for Cardinal de Bernis, written on the occasion of the birth of the Dauphin, the firstborn son of Louis XVI.

Norgard, P.: Piano Music

Although orchestral music and operettas such as Tom Jones (Naxos 8.660270-71) were Edward German's main focus as composer, he wrote a dozen or so works specifically for violin and piano, mostly during his time at the RAM, London, UK, where he was recognized as a gifted violinist, and the years immediately following. Many of these salon pieces were written for his own use, including his earliest known compositions. From the beguiling charm of the Chanson d'Amour to the haunting Souvenir, these works are exquisitely crafted miniatures, several of which have remained unheard for over a century.

Classical Music

Although Herbert Howells is known chiefly for his large body of church music, arguably the finest by any English composer of the twentieth century, he also wrote major choral, orchestral and chamber works.

Moritz Moszkowski enjoyed a considerable international reputation as a composer and pianist, and was feted as the natural successor to Chopin. It is a mark of his music's success that it was arranged for countless ensembles and solo instruments. French violinist Emile Sauret transformed the popular Spanish Dances into virtuoso showpieces filled with all manner of impressive elaborations, Jascha Heifetz similarly turning Etincelles or "Sparks" into something brilliantly light and twinkling. The interaction of two violins makes the Suite highly dramatic, contrasting with the fine lyrical melody of Moszkowski's Serenata.

Although he is best known for his innovative operas and iconic music dramas, Richard Wagner maintained a keen interest in symphonic composition throughout his career. Written in his late teens and early twenties, these two symphonies stand as a tribute to Wagner's passion for his great idol Beethoven. The Symphony in C major absorbs the engertic fire and rhythmic dynamism of Beethoven's Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, while the Symphony in E major was alas left unfinished at its beautifully warm and lyrical Adagio cantabile.

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REVIEW:

If you enjoy the music of Mendelssohn, you will very much enjoy this CD, as it occupies much of the same musical territory. There are hints of Wagner’s reverence for Beethoven, and there is real energy and fire in parts of the writing. Performances here are clear and committed. Jun Märkl has the measure of the scores, and it is good indeed to be reminded of the depth and musical richness of the various radio orchestras found in Germany – there is no need for this Leipzig (how appropriate!) ensemble to hide its light.

– MusicWeb International

This is the second of a four volume series presenting new Spanish works for solo guitar commissioned as part of the acclaimed guitarist, Adam Levin’s residency in Spain. Amongst a wealth of exciting new names there are also some established composers such as Balada, whose imaginative re-invention of Granados’s Danzas españolas opens the recording, García Abril and Casablancas, already made familiar through an extensive catalogue of recordings on Naxos. Volume 1 [Naxos 8.573024] was hailed by Scene Magazine as “one of the essential collections of solo instrumental performance released in the past 50 years”.

Well-known tunes for flute and piano.