GARRO: MASSES O QUAM PULCHRA ES & CANTATE DOMINO

ACROSS ... IN GRIEF AND DETAIL

RENEWAL

In this program, the DNSO let's you experience the fascinating world of John Williams' music in a concert that brings cinema to life. From the epic fanfares of Star Wars to the magical sounds of Harry Potter and E.T. to the touching melodies of Schindler's List, this program spans an impressive arc between adventure, fantasy, and deep emotion. An evening full of goosebumps, big emotions, and unforgettable film music that awakens memories and ignites new enthusiasm.

Few years ago, an idea germinated while reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. An idea not driven by the narrativity of the book, but by the traces and the aura invoked in it. That was it: an audible auratic journey trough the memories of a place lost in the heights of the swiss mountains. A century after the events depicted in the book, we went where the story took place, trying to capture the remaining sounds that could have been heard at the time, and the ghosts who might have still wandered around. Zauberberg is based on these captures, on recordings of the music played by Hans Castorp (the novel's main character), on acoustic/electronic instrumentation and digital processing. The result is an evokation of time and duration, an exploration of what remains and what is lost, a meditation of the dissolution and persistence of the aura surrounding everything. - Kassel Jaeger, Nov. 19, 2015

Collected Works and War of the Martian Ghosts is the definitive recorded collection of living Chicago DIY legend, Dr. Charles Joseph Smith. It also marks the first archival release from Chicago's Sooper Records. All of the music here is being made widely available for the first time ever. This 90-minute collection is compiled from 30 years of Charles' self-released music spanning concert piano, electroacoustic experimentation, electronic beats, free improvisation, and two instrumental realizations of his evolving sci-fi opera, War of the Martian Ghosts (a 2023 electronic realization, and a 2018 piano realization). This double Vinyl / Triple CD Collector's Edition includes an extensive liner note booklet containing 9000 words about the artist's life and work, as well as poetry, interviews, quotes, and 30 archival photographs. Liner notes written by Sooper co-founder Glenn Curran and edited by Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz. Dr. Charles Joseph Smith's remarkable story begins with a mute child's gift for music, and the purposeful way he nurtured this talent to become both life practice and raison d'etre. Charles recounts this artistic journey in his autobiography, The 88 Keys that Opened Doors, a self-published book that chronicles a life in which music was (and still is) the primary key to overcoming immense challenges posed by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). His career as a musician starts in the church, reaches into the international concert piano circuit, and eventually settles to bear strange fruit in Chicago's experimental underground. Along the way, Charles Joseph Smith's compositional voice absorbed and metabolized popular music spanning pop to jazz, the gospel of the church, the canon of the classical conservatory, modern dance scores, and the rule-shattering experimentalism of his city's DIY subculture, where he has been a mainstay for over 30 years. Since the mid-1990s, Charles has been performing, dancing, and selling his self-published musical and written works in person, often at the local shows he frequents. He is known around Chicago as a living symbol of the power of music, and of the beloved spirit of community at the heart of DIY. This is the definitive collection of his original recordings-though it would be impossible to ever encompass the galaxies of music, poetry, and prose penned by the prolific Dr. Charles Joseph Smith.

SOLO PIANO

APHORISMEN

A major work in Francois Bayle's repertoire, Jeita ou murmure des eaux provides a journey and an immersion into a world of unleashed energies, with the Jeita cave serving both as a backdrop and a particle accelerator. Here, the cave indeed stands for the concrete source of the composer's inspiration as much as the mind space where metamorphoses occur. By combining such figurative spaces and immaterial sound projections, Francois Bayle evokes another subject, an inhabitant of the multiple and symbolic cave: the listening subject, who always reveals himself, implicitly, at the heart of Francois Bayle's musical concerns and the path he has always defended: the acousmatic approach. -Francois J. Bonnet, Paris, 2025

The most iconic recording of Mozart's Requiem in Warner Classics catalogue is released on vinyl in the new remastering from original tapes made for the Giulini Remastered 2025 Edition. "This is above all a lyrical performance, both chorally and, more particularly, in the solo music, the realisation of which gave me especial pleasure. Giulini's attentiveness to line is always much in evidence, and he obtains solo singing of a beautifully focused quality." Gramophone

OPEN SPACE

The distinguished French pianist Pascal Roge turned 75 on April 6, 2026. An exclusive Decca recording artist in the 1970s and '80s, his recording career started early. He played the solo piano part in a vaunted recording of Giordano's opera Fedora, recorded in Monte Carlo, and produced a tremendous Liszt album as an 18-year-old. He then went on to document extensively the music of Ravel, Debussy, Satie and Poulenc. Concertos, chamber music, solo piano music and song, Mozart, Beethoven, Saint-Saens and Faure all make their way into a comprehensive 43-CD box set with original jackets. Many of these recordings have been unavailable, physically, for several years. But collectors will be additionally pleased to discover two unpublished works - Brahms's Second Sonata, left unpublished for want of a suitable coupling, and a selection of preludes by the Japanese composer Takashi Yoshimatsu. Also published for the first time on Decca is a recording of Mozart concertos with Raymond Leppard.

MOTHERLOAD

Joe Hisaishi - "Joe Hisaishi Conducts The End Of The World; Reich: The Desert Music". Joe Hisaishi's new album blends cinematic sound worlds with the spellbinding power of a live performance experience. Recorded in 2024 at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Hisaishi's album features the maestro's original piece "The End of the World" and Steve Reich's "Desert Music," performed with the Futures Orchestra Classics and the Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo. Now in it's seventh volume, the "JOE HISAISHI FUTURE ORCHESTRA CLASSICS" series highlights Joe Hisaishi's signature versatility, precision and passion. 2 LP set, gatefold jacket.

THE ROYAL EDITION - SHOSTAKOVI

"The Hindemith concerto, while not exactly revealing itself as an unregarded masterpiece, gets just the right degree of tempered bombast and pastoralism - suggesting that here is a piece ripe for reassessment."

-- BBC Music Magazine reviewing Sony 64507

"These two concertos are the product of Nielsen's last years: the Clarinet Concerto, surely one of his strangest and most powerful utterances, was written in 1929, only two years before his death, and the Flute Concerto comes from 1927. They are two of the most masterly concertos for their respective instruments (Nielsen whose understanding of the wind was second to none had planned a concerto for each of the wind family) and Robert Simpson rightly calls the Flute Concerto "the richest and most original" written for the instrument...Stanley Drucker gives an intelligent account of his demanding part...Julius Baker is the excellent soloist in the Flute Concerto which he plays with great virtuosity."

-- Gramophone Reviewing original LP, CBS 72639

The hurdy-gurdy is a European string instrument. Its exact origins are obscure but it seems to have developed in the 10th and 11th centuries A.D. as an instrument used in religious music. Most European countries have, or had, a type of hurdy-gurdy. Some are lavish, others very simple but despite the wide variety of shape, size and sophistication they all work on the same principle. A handle turned by the right hand of the player revolves a wooden wheel, the edge of which continuously bows one, two and occasionally three melody strings and various drone strings. The melody (chanter) strings pass over the wheel and through a wooden keybox mounted on the belly of the instrument. Sliding wooden keys are depresssed with the fingers of the left hand to produce the melody. The other strings pass over the wheel in the same way but they continue outside the keybox, straight to the pegbox and provide the drone accompaniment to the melody. The buzzing rhythmic sound, so characteristic of the instrument, is produced by the controlled vibration of a small, loose bridge (trompette) on the soundboard. The buzz is achieved by subtle momentary acceleration of the handle, and thus the bowing of the wheel, causing the trompette string and bridge to vibrate. This is, by far, the most difficult aspect of the instrument to master. In parts of France, particularly the central regions, the hurdy-gurdy continued to be very popular throughout the 19th and into the 20th century when it began to give way to newer instruments, particularly the accordion. Over the last fifteen years there has been a significant revival of interest all over Europe, with contemporary craftsmen perfecting its design, extending the choice of materials and developing new construction techniques. A new generation of musicians are taking to the instrument and exploring a range of musical possibilities that go far beyond its traditional folk dance music role.

"Michael Tilson Thomas made some excellent records with the Philharmonia in the ’80s, and although I hadn’t come across this particular performance before, knowing this conductor’s flair for such music, I expected good things. I wasn’t disappointed.

The Nutcracker was the final ballet in Tchaikovsky’s great triptych, and was completed in 1891, a year during which the composer made a fatiguing concert tour of America and also suffered a nervous collapse. There is real justification in calling Tchaikovsky the father of the modern ballet score, and he effectively paved the way for dance-theatre music to be taken seriously. However, his first ballets were coolly received, and he was (as ever) wracked with self-doubt about this work, even after the premiere. This score has, of course, gone on to become one of his most popular scores.

Like Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, The Nutcracker is most often heard in highlight form, but in fact works better when experienced complete. It’s just the right length, and has so many famous numbers that it seems ridiculous to condense it to 20 or 30 minutes. I do possess excerpt discs, but turn most frequently to my benchmark complete version, Ashkenazy’s Decca recording with the Royal Philharmonic. It has a spectacular sound, full, rich and wide-ranging, and a very useful fill-up is included, Glazunov’s masterpiece The Seasons. However, that set is at full price, so the real competition for this budget Sony release comes from Previn’s excellent LSO version (now on Classics for Pleasure, also without a filler), and Dorati’s marvellous Concertgebouw recording on a Philips Duo, which finds room for a substantial Sleeping Beauty selection (Fistoulari and the LSO).

The fact that Tilson Thomas can hold his own against anyone is immediately evident in the Overture, which has a Mendelssohnian lightness and graceful wit that is captivating. As a Bernstein protégé, MTT is a theatrical conductor through and through (listen to any of his Mahler or Copland records), so he is completely at home with the colour and drama of this great score. His pacing throughout is exemplary, on the fast side but with ensemble crisp and rhythms tight. All the famous dances of Act 2 are as infectious as one could wish for; listen to the delectable trumpet playing in the Spanish Dance, whilst the Russian Dance has tremendous weight and panache. The principals of the Philharmonia obviously relish the many solos that litter the score, and indeed the whole orchestra enjoy themselves enormously. I like the way Tilson Thomas gives due attention to Tchaikovsky’s exotic ‘special-effects’, including a child’s trumpet in C, children’s drums, a rattle and mechanisms suggesting cuckoos and quails. He even uses a ratchet and Irish whistle in the Grandfather’s Dance, while kazoos, toy snare drums and a children’s cap gun are used in The Battle. Marvellous fun!

The whole performance has a flair and feeling of ‘rightness’ that are very captivating. The conductor never loses sight of the famous adage that ‘there is a lot of ballet in Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, and a lot of the symphony in his ballets’. He gives everything its due place, so one feels an organic growth in the piece, rather than a succession of set-pieces. Listening to these discs was as satisfying as any of the competition I had to hand, and in many ways the short playing time ceases to be an issue in the face of a great performance. Recording quality is also well up to scratch, with a full-bodied richness that matches the playing...highly recommended."

-- Tony Haywood, MusicWeb International

Saint-Saëns holds a vital place in the history of French chamber music. At a time when his compatriots were more devoted to opera and song, Saint-Saëns (who wrote both, too) repeatedly produced chamber music of compelling individuality and lasting significance. The 1875 Piano Quartet in B flat major, Op 41 remains one of the great works in the chamber repertory, a masterful example of the composer’s organisational skill and lyric gifts. The gorgeous Barcarolle is followed by the youthful Piano Quintet in A minor, Op 14, a brilliantly confident work with a concerto-like role for the piano.

Harry Partch is an American visionary and stubborn individualist... He has built his own musical world out of microtones, hobo speech, elastic octaves and percussion instruments made from hubcaps and nuclear cloud chambers. Recently ... an army of young music lovers stormed New York’s Whitney Museum to hear Harry Partch and his thirteen disciples produce a music that was totally personal and eclectic in the best sense. African polyrhythms, and ancient Greek modes, bits of Babylonia and the pulse of the American diesel engine all gathered into a richly erotic, primitive, fresh and stirring drama of sound.

-- Newsweek


Includes bonus tracks: The Instruments of Harry Partch.

ABEL GANCE'S NAPOLEON

Tchaikovsky & Arensky: Piano Trios

This is the Hindemith so many listeners and commentators love to hate—earnest, workaday neo-classicism based on cardboard harmonic progressions and squared-off rhythms, conveyorbelted via an apparently inexhaustible supply of wrong-note marches, sicilianos and pastorales. And yet these sonatas can be great fun to play, and when the players are masters of their instruments they are fun to listen to as well. Moreover, when the accompaniments are in the hands of a recreative personality as strong as Glenn Gould's they assume an entirely new and unexpected range of character.

Gould's fundamental insight into Hindemith's world was his identification of its "true amalgam of ecstasy and reason". These were the very qualities which fused in Gould's own artistic make-up, and it should not be surprising that his empathy with Hindemith is strong. Only in a rare eccentricity of tempo (such as the dead slow opening to •the finale of the Trumpet Sonata) or in a tendency to peck at lines marked with slurs (in the finale of the Tuba Sonata at a point actually marked molto legato) does the perverse side of his nature assert itself; and even here the sensation of intense commitment overrides all. The added vocals are of course something that every Gould-listener has to learn to take in their stride.

The soloists were members of the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble and all thoroughly distinguished musicians. Hornists could no doubt fault Mason Jones's steadiness of tone and intonation, particularly in the Alto Horn Sonata. Otherwise the playing is consistently well-focused and alert (Hindemith gives the tubist an especially severe examination in rhythmical awareness).

As with other issues in this series, the recordings (from 1976) are clear and forward, though instrumental perspectives do appear to vary slightly from sonata to sonata. It does seem a pity, though, that Sony Classical did not include Gould's accounts of the three piano sonatas in this set, rather than issuing them separately (they would still have fitted onto the two discs).

-- Gramophone [3/1993]

As sparkling and invigorating a Swan Lake as anyone could wish, with the LSO in top form throughout and clearly enjoying themselves.

...The new recording from Michael Tilson Thomas doesn't include the added Prince Siegfried/Odile pas de deux..., but it has everything else in its favour and is fitted comfortably on to a pair of CDs. The break, however, comes in the middle of the "Danses des cygnes" divertissement, about seven minutes before the end of Act 2. The recording, made in Watford Town Hall, is first class in every way; full and vivid, nicely balanced with a fine concert-hall effect, and certainly spectacular in the climactic moments, which Tilson Thomas clearly relishes (and so do the brass and percussion, which are placed in convincing perspective). Without losing the rhythmic ballet feel, Tilson Thomas treats the score slightly more freely than the other conductors..., the ebb and flow of phrasing and tempo less determined by the demands of the theatre, more by the way he feels the music's natural flux. This is immediately demonstrated in the Introduction to Act I, with its opening languor, followed by a fairly swift accelerando to the climax and enormous energy from the strings in the Allegro giusto which opens the act. Indeed, the lively numbers (the motto vivace coda of the Act 1 pas de deux, for instance) are as sparkling and invigorating as anyone could wish.

The LSO are on top form throughout and clearly enjoying themselves. The string phrasing is warm and polished and the two string soloists, Alexander Barantschik (violin) and Douglas Cummings (cello) are splendid... [T]the LSO wind soloists offer much to seduce the ear and continually demonstrate the composer's wonderfully imaginative orchestral palette. -- Gramophone [4/1992]

The fortieth anniversary of the Marlboro Music Festival is celebrated by the release of' 12 CDs from Sony Classical, which give a broad view of the major personalities and musical highlights of this exceptional initiative and institution... Particularly outstanding is a deeply felt Schubert String Quintet with one of the most serene second movement adagios on record.

-- Gramophone [6/1991]