Includes passacaglia(s) by George Frideric Handel. Soloists: Carlos Prieto, Edison Quintana, Juan Hermida, Juan Luis Prieto Reina.
Includes work(s) by various composers. Soloists: Carlos Prieto, Edison Quintana, Juan Hermida, Juan Luis Prieto Reina.

Includes work(s) by Juventino Rosas. Ensemble: Alauda Ensemble. Conductor: Samuel Máynez Champion. Soloist: Juan Carlos Rodriguez.

Turina, J.: String Quartet No. 1 / Debussy, C.: String Quart

For most listeners, including choral music enthusiasts, this disc's subtitle, "Contemporary choral music from Lithuania", isn't likely to spark the recall of a list of familiar works or even composer names. Here is territory that to say the least is unfamiliar--and yet, as proved by this long-overdue program devoted to works by Vytautas Miškinis (b. 1954), is well-worth getting to know. Works by Miškinis occasionally turn up on a compilation program--for instance, a recent release (Baltic Exchange) on Hyperion with the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge (type Q12694 in Search Reviews)--and each time the one Miškinis piece among many others distinguishes itself. It invariably makes you want to hear more. And so, now we can.

All the works on this program, sung with expert technique and impeccable ensemble by the 25-voice Kammerchor consonare, are squarely in the tonal world, yet the "quartal/quintal" basis for much of the harmony--enlivened by added seconds and occasional clusters--ensures just enough ambiguity to keep us listening expectantly and openly. Your first reaction on hearing the opening Gloria is likely to be--wow, a 21st-century composer who writes in a modern idiom, with a true understanding and mastery of the special character and capability of voices in ensemble, but who remains firmly committed to the oft-disdained key to all the best, most memorable, longest-surviving choral music: singability.

Although the 18 works on the program would not fall into the "easy" category, neither are they treacherously difficult (as some composers seem to delight in writing), and many are absolutely accessible to the better amateur choirs, likely a reflection of Miškinis' training and long involvement in the "real world" of conducting his own groups. Indeed, it's really remarkable to find a program of works by a modern choral composer whose every selection is clearly written with both singer and listener in mind.

Although we may have heard this kind of harmony before, it's Miškinis' reverence for text--and his uncommon affinity for word-setting--that makes these works, well, sing the way they do. He has an impressive facility for melody--listen to the gorgeous Ave Maria and to the chant-like (impressions of Duruflé) Tu es. And then there's the uplifting Cantate Domino (one of several settings Miškinis has made of this text), an almost too-catchy, pop-influenced motet that you'll not stop singing for days.

But then there is the exquisitely wrought O salutaris, a masterpiece of choral color, effervescent rhythm, and vibrant harmonic character, enhanced by what may be some aleatoric effects--also apparent in the astonishing Dum medium silentium, a highlight of the disc whose music and performance embody the words "virtuoso" and "inspired". It would be easy to go on--commenting for instance on the economy and consistently high quality of the writing in the title work, a set of seven pieces, mostly psalms, every one of which is worthy of church or concert performance.

In fact, there's not a weak link on this entire program--and Kammerchor consonare obviously knows and respects this composer just as he clearly knows and respects singers and choral music. The sound, from a Hamburg church, is first rate. My only complaints: precious little information is given in the liner notes about the music (there's nothing at all about the Thoughts of psalms); translations are given only in German; and, if you want to order the few scores available from the sheet music publishing arm of Carus, you have to order a minimum of 20 copies, sight unseen--not a great way to encourage conductors to take a chance on a newly discovered composer. That issue aside, this is one of the best choral recordings of 2010, an essential disc for every true lover of choral music.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Vaughan-Williams Tina Louise Cayouette, viola Six Studies in English Folksong, etc.

A leavening of novelty for the curious-minded.

The title of the disc speaks for itself, but there are intriguing moments for the unwary. If the Bloch pieces are by now staples of the repertoire we can note that the Bruch Kol Nidrei is heard here in an arrangement for five cellos made by Günter Ribke, and its textures are refined and malleable. And whilst Eli, Eli has been played by Mischa Elman as well as folk groups, Odeon Partos’s Yizkor will be a far less well known piece.
 
Cellist Amit Peled announces his musical precepts early, in Eli, Eli. He plays with lyric intensity but also with discreet emotionalism. It’s a quality, one of understated taste, that will recur throughout the disc. The cantorial declamation embedded in Bloch’s Meditation Hébraïque over the syncopated piano part is adeptly realised by Peled and by pianist Eli Kalman. If you want a more explicit take, however, you could turn to Parry and Frances Karp on Laurel LR856CD. The same is true when the Pered-Kalman duo turns to From Jewish Life. There’s a good sense of nobility in the Centaur performance of the Supplication and the Jewish Song is taken with directness and linearity. If one misses an infusion of expressive warmth however than that will be supplied by the Karps. This newcomer is a more cool look, though not without its own attractions.
 
Stutschewsky’s Hassidic Suite was written in 1946. There’s a yearning Bulgar opening, and a rather repetitious Chant for a second movement. Next comes a pleasing little scherzo. The most obviously Jewish movement is the finale, a Dance replete with lurching and rubato vivacity. By contrast Partos’ Yizkor (In Memoriam) is a haunted, brooding folk-based affair that sustains its ten minute length well. This is not the later 12 tone Partos. Mark Kopytman continues the mournful, elegiac feel with Kaddish, written in 1981. It’s written in three movements and the urgency and intensity of the first proves arresting. The central panel enshrines cleverly woven dance patterns – and there’s an ear catching role for the piano’s deft patterning. This is all leading to the keening soliloquy of the Lento finale, where it’s as if the enormity of loss has finally made itself apparent, beyond the forced vitality. The keening edge is rapt indeed.
 
So despite the conventional looking programme there is a leavening of novelty for the curious-minded. You don’t, as it were, have to be Jewish.
 
-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Includes work(s) by Alan Hovhaness. Soloist: Robin Dauer.

Marimbist Fumito Nunoya has enjoyed international fame as one of the most in demand marimba players of our day. A native of Odate Japan, he is currently based out of Herford in Germany, where he teaches at the Academy of Music in Detmold. In addition to performing across Europe, he frequently gives concerts in the United States and Japan. For this release, he has chosen Astor Piazzolla's Tango Suite I-III, Tangata "Silfo y Ondina," and other well-known works by the tango master. Nunoya is joined for this recording by pianist Momoko Shano, fellow marimbist Hiroya Honda, and violinist Yuka Sato.

This disc features four great Victorian works for Cello and Piano. This is literature that deserves to be a part of the standard repertoire.

Classical Music

Francois Couperin was one of the finest French Baroque composers and keyboardists. In fact, he was known as “Couperin the Great” to distinguish him from the rest of his talented Couperin family. This release features some of Couperin’s finest works, including Huitieme Concert “Dans le gout Theatral,” and “Les Ondes.” All works on this recording are performed on period instruments by the acclaimed Aulos Ensemble.

Virtuoso saxophonist Farrell Vernon performs a program of works that span the centuries. All works are for soprano sax.

The Los Angeles New Music Ensemble was formed in 2007 with the purpose of promoting new classical music, collaboration within the arts, the commissioning of new works, and the creation of multimedia presentations within innovative live performances. + Commissioning new classical chamber works and preserving chamber music written after 1900 is the Ensemble’s focus. + This Centaur release captures five years of recording activity for the ensemble, and features several newly commissioned works along with O King, a work by the late Italian composer Luciano Berio.

Classical Music

Hailed for Their Outstanding Musicianship, the Arianna String Quartet - Violinists John McGrosso and Julia Sakharova, Violist Joanna Mendoza and Cellist Kurt Baldwin - Has Firmly Established Itself As One of America's Finest Chamber Ensembles. Their Performances Have Been Praised for Tonal Warmth, Fastidious Balance... Expressive Vitality (Chicago Tribune) and Emotional Commitment and Fluent Virtuosity, (Pretoria News, South Africa). This Double-Disc Set Finds the Group Initiating a Complete Beethoven String Quartet Cycle with the Earliest of the Quartet Opuses, Op. 18/1-6.

Classical Music

A work caught the attention of musicians during the late 1990s - a Christmas Oratorio by Graun. The only known copy of it was being housed in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. But it has so far been impossible to determine either the name of the manuscript copyist or an exact dating of the work and copy. There are many indications that this is a work from the composer's phase prior to his years in Berlin. After The Death of Jesus, Thomas Gropper and his Arcis Vocalists now proudly present the second oratorio of Graun as a recorded production for OehmsClassics. Since their foundation by their chorus director Thomas Gropper in 2005, the Arcis-Vocalists have taken a firm place among the well-known semi-professional choirs of the city in the high-class and diverse Munich music scene due to their sound quality and the special program design. The project choir consists of about 80 committed singers, who mostly have a sound vocal education. Depending on the work it is flexibly occupied and can count between 30 and 80 members.

REVIEW:

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s first two releases for Ondine under Christoph Eschenbach (Bartók and Tchaikovsky) were extremely good, no doubt about it, but this Mahler Sixth is really extraordinary. Part of its success must stem from the fact that the best German conductors usually do misery especially well, finding the dark side of just about everything. If you don’t believe me, check out Kurt Sanderling’s startlingly deep and edgy rendition of Poulenc’s Concert Champêtre on Supraphon. So you can just imagine what can happen with a piece like Mahler’s Sixth. Anyone fortunate enough to have heard Eschenbach’s performances of this work with the NDR Orchestra in Hamburg will know that he has a special feeling for its harrowing intensity and expressionistic instrumental palette. Toss in the collective virtuosity of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the result is, to put it mildly, pretty special.

As a coupling, the early piano quartet movement is more appropriate than you might at first think. First of all, it shares the same key as the symphony, and second, it’s useful to have it along as part of an all-Mahler program, allowing collectors to round out their collections without having to search for an acceptable all-chamber-music program. The engineering also represents the best in this series so far, with virtually no audience noise, tremendous presence in both stereo and multichannel formats, and extremely natural balances between orchestral sections. I know that Mahler Sixes seem to be a dime a dozen these days, but this one, a first for Philadelphia, belongs among the elite few (Bernstein I and II, Chailly, Levi, T. Sanderling, and Gielen). It’s just bloody thrilling.

— ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

Classical Music

KUUSISTO, Pekka: Strings Attached

Bach’s three Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord were once thought to belong to the composer’s Cöthen period. His employer, prince Leopold, was an enthusiastic amateur gambist and the court orchestra boasted a performer of exceptional talent in Christian Ferdinand Abel. Yet it seems more likely that the pieces were written at Leipzig, possibly for Abel’s son Carl Friedrich who lived there for several years and who may even have been a Bach pupil. In all three Sonatas the gamba is partnered by an obbligato harpsichord, Bach placing the gamba line between the treble and bass keyboard strands to provide a distinct voice in the alto-tenor range. Bach always wrote expressively for this eloquent member of the viol family, above all in the wonderful G minor Sonata whose outer movements adhere to the ritornello principles of a Vivaldian concerto. Jonathan Manson and Trevor Pinnock form a hugely rewarding partnership. Both are spirited players with strong characters but who, yet, are susceptible to the sublime poetry of the Sonata’s centrally placed Adagio. There is much rewarding dialogue in these performances where neither player steals the limelight from the other. The conversational interplay between the instruments is animated and engaging and the rapport between the artists hardly can be placed in doubt. In short, I find greater athleticism and a greater sense of playful spontaneity here than in rival versions either by Jordi Savall and Ton Koopman for instance (Alia Vox) or Jaap Ter Linden and Richard Egarr (Harmonia Mundi). The fourth Sonata in their programme is a transcription of a piece best known in its B minor version for flute and harpsichord but which, in turn, derives from a partly preserved source in G minor. Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Nicholas Anderson, BBC Music Magazine

On Slow Motion Miracles, Sachal delivers a full set of multilayered gems steeped in a variety of styles, including indie pop, hip-hop, electronic, Brazilian, Afro-beat, old-school jazz and new-styled jazz. The album is produced by Michael Leonhart, best known for his work with Steely Dan and its co-founder Michael Fagen. Slow Motion Miracles is Sachal's most accomplished recording as an artist.

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



FLYING SAXOPHONE CIRCUS • Milan Turkovi?, cond; Selmer Saxharmonic • MDG 910 1625-6 (SACD: 59: 01)


SHOSTAKOVICH Suite for Variety Orchestra. DVO?ÁK Slavonic Dances, op. 46/1, 7, 8. MILHAUD Scaramouche. GERSHWIN American Stories Suite. MATITIA Devil’s Rag


If Flying Saxophone Circus , the title of this CD, conjures up images of a troupe of madcap comedians and “something completely different,” I think you have gotten the point. As the program notes, with their references to magical materializations in Red Square and abductions by jazz-loving space aliens make clear, here indeed is a unique experience. With this eclectic program of Shostakovich, Dvo?ák, Milhaud, Gershwin, and Jean Matitia, played by a saxophone dodectet (I’ve waited my whole life to use that term) called the Selmer Saxharmonic, this is about as different as things get here in the classical aisle.


The Shostakovich Suite for Variety Orchestra (post 1956)—usually misidentified, as it is here, as the lost-but-now-located 1938 Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2 —is the perfect opener for a disc of this title, as the style of these delicious waltzes, polkas, and gallops, taken from film and ballet scores, is strikingly similar to music played in Russian circuses. (That the composer could apparently write these crowd-pleasing tunes with the same skill and conviction as his darkly intense symphonies and string quartets is a mystery worthy of further exploration. It surely doesn’t sound like slumming to me.) The band’s multilayered saxophone sonority expands on the color offered by the four saxes in the original orchestration, with some excursions into pizzicato and other sounds usually alien to reed instruments. The performance of the insinuating Waltz No. 2, made familiar in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut , is particularly convincing.


The other works are just as effectively done. The Saxharmonic’s Dvo?ák dances capture the Slavic flavor while adding the colorations of his wind serenade, the saxophones morphing credibly into flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons. The Scaramouche may seem a bit heavy at first, but well before they get to the “Brasileira” one almost begins to believe it was written for this ensemble. Then the German musicians transform into a 1930s dance band—with an amazing sax line—for the suite of Gershwin show tunes arranged by French saxophonist Jean-Marie Londeix. They finish off with the fiendishly difficult Devil’s Rag for 12 saxophones by another French sax player and teacher, Christian Lauba, writing under the nom de plume Jean Matitia. Pure magic.


But I go on too long. So, here’s the endorsement: This is the group I’d want to book if I was having a cost-no-object party. The ensemble boasts 12 of the finest saxophonists in Germany, playing everything from sopranino to bass. The music is ingenious and accessible to a wide variety of tastes. The arrangements, most of them by tenor saxophonist Christoph Enzel, are technically sophisticated, true to the various styles, and great fun. Bassoonist/conductor Milan Turkovi? (he still plays in the Vienna Concentus Musicus) leads lively, idiomatic performances. These range from subtle to brazen as appropriate, with not a trace of the stiffness that often creeps in when wind ensembles tackle orchestral repertoire. The sound is magnificent and the notes are a hoot . Why wait? Drop your copy of Fanfare (temporarily of course) and get to your favorite retailer post haste. If you enjoy this repertoire, or the sound of saxophones, you will love this SACD.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames