Classical Music

As the proverb goes, necessity is the mother of invention. And one brief look at the repertoire for the trombone will show how inventive trombonists need to be. One way of enlarging the repertoire is to arrange the works of Baroque masters for trombone and organ. Then it can even happen that the trombonist suddenly finds himself taking over the part of the solo violin in Antonio Vivaldi's La Primavera - of course with a twinkle in his eye. As you will hear in this music, Hannes Meyer's Love Play, a hymnal partita in the Baroque mode, definitely has its humorous sides as well. Thomas Horch is the principal trombonist with the Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation in Munich, a position he has held since 1990

Learn more about pianist Carol Rosenberger and the Delos label on the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast!

This program is designed to help listeners find a 'quiet time' of non-stressful, contemplative relaxation. Its selection of short, melodic pieces also serves as an ideal introduction to the world of classical music. 'A splendid disc, to be treasured by young and old,' - American Record Guide 'The perfect gift among recordings for introducing a child to the intimacies and universality of music.' - Fanfare 'The world's loveliest piano music, beautifully programmed to help people of all ages find an inner core of tranquillity.' - Keynote The program of Perchance to Dream moves from simple, lyrical pieces, many written for beginning pianists, to more profound works like the Adagio cantabile of Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata and Brahms' Intermezzo Op. 117, No. 1. In our high-tech, computerized, accelerating age, the need for a time of relaxation - a period to reflect, or simply to experience a sense of calm - is more important than ever. Work and other responsibilities have a way of overtaking more elemental pleasures - like time spent with loved ones, or in solitude. Yet finding this 'quiet time' need not be difficult, and it is partly with this in mind that this musical program is offered. The selections chosen here - accessible, melodious pieces by great composers - speak to all ages. For children, they may form a gateway to a world not yet explored - that of concert music. For their elders, they may generate fond recollections, like old friends who have not lost their power to inspire or comfort. They also may act as a bond between parents and children, providing a peaceful background for a time of intimacy, storytelling, and shared experience. - Steven C. Smith (from the booklet notes)

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

After his first solo album of music by Marchand and Cl�rambault, released in 2015 and nominated for a Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, the harpsichordist Luca Oberti, who has performed on the international scene for years alongside such figures as Marc Minkowski and Christophe Rousset, presents a new album on the theme of Bach's imaginary journey to Italy. Sch�tz, Froberger, Muffat, Handel, Hasse, Mozart and Wagner are merely the most famous of the many musicians who crossed the Alps to immerse themselves in the world of Italian music and grasp it's atmospheres and it's secrets. Yet the composer who most fully assimilated the Italian style was Johann Sebastian Bach, who never even set foot in Italy. His journey was a virtual one: the scores of the Italian masters, which he avidly studied and absorbed from childhood onwards, guided him on an ideal itinerary from Vivaldi's Venice to Frescobaldi's Rome. Beginning with the transcriptions of concertos byVivaldi and Marcello, and continuing with pieces ofItalian inspiration like the Aria Variata alla maniera italiana, the Capriccio sulla lontananza del fratello dilettissimo and the Fantasia and Fugue BWV 904, the journey culminates in the celebrated Italian Concerto.

Classical Music

This thoroughly recommendable issue is most welcome on CD, where its appreciable attributes can be even more clearly heard. Each singer has been carefully chosen for his or her task, and the contrast in timbres is, for the most part, illuminating. My single reservation concerns Heather Harper whom I now find a little cool for Sheherazade, in spite of the obvious distinction of her phrasing, but then this cycle isn't that well suited to Boulez's talents for stereoscopic precision and minute calculation. The other three singers have hardly been bettered as interpreters of their songs, and Boulez and his BBC and Parisian colleagues play throughout with delicacy combined with pinpoint accuracy. The recordings, made at different times in the 1970s and 1980s, are finely balanced. So I am as enthusiastic about the disc as I was back in 1984, if not more so.

-- Gramophone [4/1987]

Classical Music

HAYDN: ORGAN CONCERTOS NOS 1,

This is not a historical recording. Yet mysteriously the music is performed in an interpretation which is historically authentic down to the last detail. The key to this mystery is: The original performer was present at the recent recording session, but not physically: The music is heard on a modern Steinway. Never has music stored in the Welte-Mignon system sounded so "right" or so good. Thanks to TACET's much-praised recording technique, and because the Welte-Mignon memory system and sound production mechanism have now been newly adjusted for the first time by the leading expert in the field - and are thus able to meet TACET's requirements. (Welte-Mignon was invented in 1904.) the Welte-Mignon mystery can now speak to US without distortion.

Classical Music

Classical Music

At the beginning of the 18th century Italian instrumental music reached France and began to make its decisive impact. Michele Mascitti was a protagonist of this remarkable change. The young violinist moved from Naples to Paris where he spent most of his long life and managed to publish nine collections of instrumental music between 1704 and 1738. The extraordinary success and popularity of Mascitti’s works allowed him to live for many years as a free-lance musician and to be applauded and admired in the artistic circles of the French capital. His music brings us back to the fashionable and refined atmospheres of the Parisian aristocratic salons and to the galanterie so beautifully illustrated in the paintings of the time. The violin sonatas recorded for the first time in this album blend the brilliant and passionate expressivity emanating from the Neapolitan legacy with the elegance and grace of the French instrumental tradition and offer an exquisite example of the new union of tastes.

During the reign of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1444-76), Milan experienced an extraordinary musical era. In the 1470s, the Duke set out to form a 'famous and worthy choir', recruiting a 'goodly number of singers from beyond the Alps and from various countries'. He soon assembled a musical ensemble that boasted some of the most celebrated musicians in the Franco-Flemish polyphony of the day, from Italy and beyond. The Duke brought into being a new kind of polyphonic mass, a cycle of motets called missales to replace the traditional ordinarium, with texts attributing special importance to the worship of Our Lady of Grace and Mercy, much beloved by the Sforza family. A masterpiece of the genre is the so-called Missa Galeazescha for five voices, composed by Loyset Comp�re and performed here by an ensemble inspired by the impressive size of Galeazzo Maria Sforza's cappella. This recording brings together four vocal-instrumental groups.

The piano works of the Czech-born composer Antoine Recha - friend of Haydn and Beethoven, teacher of Berlioz, Liszt and Franck - are one of hte best-kept secrets in music. He was an important influence on composers of the next generation but, apart from an innovative set of fugues, his piano works have remained almost unknown since his own day. Encompassing Baroque practices as well as looking forward to the twentieth century, they are full o fharmonic and other surprises that show this liveliest of minds at work. The massive variation-set on a simple French gavotte recorded here for the first time reveals a composer who tempers his learning with a vivid sense of humor. Henrik Lowenmark is the world authority on the piano music of Reicha. He was born in Gothenburg and educated at the university there but has long since lived in Stockholm. Since his graduation he has been active as freelance musician in a multitude of contexts: solo, chamber, accompaniment and song-coaching. In 2006, he finished his master's thesis, The Piano Music of Anton Reicha, at the University of Gothenburg.

BERNSTEIN FAVORITES- OPERA FOR

The American composer Richard Moriarty (born in Boston in 1946) spent his professional life as a pathologist, taking up composition upon his retirement as a student of Adolphus Hailstork and Richard Danielpour. His deeply felt orchestral song-cycle We That Wait, using poems from the American Civil War written by women, and the expansive, exuberant Missa Adsum! Celebrating Women, are both grand statements in a proud American tradition of Neo-Romanticism, accessible, direct and sincere. Of the premiere performance, one reviewer wrote: “Adsum-Celebrating Women was a tour de force, whose title comes from the Roman rite of ordination when candidates are called by name and answer “Adsum- Present!” It was sung with passion and beauty…” (M.D. Ridge)

Zefiro has already proved its strong affinity with Georg Philipp Telemann's music, and the ensemble's recording of his Ouvertures a 8 was awarded a Gramophone Editor's Choice. As Julie Anne Sadie pointed out, ''the much-vaunted lean muscularity of the Ensemble Zefiro performances favors the wind instruments and, when joined with one-to-a-part strings, produces a freshly balanced sonority that alters our experience of these works''. The 250th anniversary of Telemann's death offers now a neat incentive to re-release this successful recording - originally issued on the Ambroisie label - on which his Wassermusik, generally referred to as Hamburg Ebb and Flow, is coupled with Handel's more familiar aquatic suites. Both are occasional pieces composed within a few years of each other, the former written to celebrate the centenary of the Admiralty in Hamburg, and the latter for royal water parties on the Thames. Unlike Handel's work, Telemann's suite attempts to evoke images of water, aided by references in the titles to scenes and characters associated with the sea, and may therefore be considered as ''programme music''.