Classical Music

Christmas Carols Around The World

Vancouver Chamber Choir: Love Songs for a Small Planet

Driven by exuberant rhythms and soaring lyricism, Lorenzo Palomo' Dulcinea is a cantata-fantasy devoted to love and freedom. The inimitable knight errant Don Quixote and his companion Sancho Panza each sing of their loves.

The Vocal Constructivists roar, whoop, snap, and flutter their way into the experimental music world with their debut album, Walking Still. Formed in 2011, the group has brought the exuberance and playfulness of experimental music to live audiences in England and America with their sung interpretations of graphic and text scores. Ranging in age from 18 to 72, members come from a variety of musical backgrounds and draw on classical, global, avant-garde and performance art traditions. The members of the group make all musical decisions in collaboration.

Arnold: The Return of Odysseus

Herzlich lieb hab ich dich

Seid nüchtern und wachet (Choral music from the Twentieth ce

Die Wiltener Sangerknaben in der Innsbrucker Hofkirche

DARK HOURS (Mystic Moments of Classical Music)

This superb programme combines the beautiful 'Alto Rhapsody' with the much more rarely performed 'Gesang der Parzen' and the cantata 'Rinadlo' - a work which gives us some idea of how a Brahms opera world would have sounded. This is the third and final volume of Brahms's works for chorus and orchestra, performed by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under its distinguished Principal Conductor, Gerd Albrecht.

Orff: Carmina Burana

In Boulez's hands, this music sounds as it should: immensely expressive, enormously concentrated, totally unyielding, and utterly uncompromising.

As they used to say back in the fin de siècle, for every generation, it's art. How could one argue? Every generation has its own life and its own world and its own history and every generation has the right to its own artistic prophet. But should every generation's art appeal to the next generation, or the generation after that, or the generation after that? In his generation, Schoenberg was anathema to almost everyone not accepted into his elect band of disciples who revered him as the prophet of modern music. After his death, Schoenberg was still anathema to almost everybody except the next generation of disciples, and that generation gave the world performances of the prophet's music that made it sound as austere and forbidding as possible. But, finally, after three generations, the disciples were able to relax a bit and give the world performances of the prophet's music that made it sound as close to appealing as the music has ever gotten. In these recordings of Schoenberg's choral music by Pierre Boulez and the BBC Singers and BBC Chorus, the prophet's music still sounds like the prophet's music: immensely expressive, enormously concentrated, totally unyielding, and utterly uncompromising. But at least the music is accurately directed and accurately performed so for once it is clearly and lucidly presented, which is more than one can say for earlier recordings. And if the prophet's music still sounds forbidding to most listeners, well, there is only so much performers can do and remain faithful to the spirit of the music and of the prophet. For true believers, however, these discs will provide proof positive of the greatness of the man and the music.

-- James Leonard, AllMusic.com

Children's Songs

Schumann’s treatment of Goethe is a curiously uneven work, composed at various stages in the last decade of his life. Parts 1 and 2 consist of dramatic scenes, which lie somewhere between opera and oratorio, rather as in Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust; but Schumann’s third part takes the music on to an altogether higher plane, setting the mystical final scene from Goethe’s poem (the same text Mahler used in his Eighth Symphony). Recordings and performances of the complete work are rare, partly because of its length (nearly two hours) and the need for multiple soloists (ten in this performance); so this exceptionally fine new Sony set, recorded ‘live’ at Berlin concerts last year, is very welcome indeed. Bryn Terfel is an ideally ardent, troubled Faust, and sings a large amount of music with consummate authority. Mattila makes us feel for Gretchen, and the ensemble numbers are led by Barbara Bonney’s silvery high soprano. The choral singing (Swedish choirs prepared by the legendary Eric Ericson) is simply outstanding, as are the Tölz Boys Choir’s lusty contributions. Most importantly of all, Claudio Abbado conducts with flair and also with great sensitivity, and the members of the orchestra respond as if they believe in every note. If this set doesn’t win an award, there’s no justice in the world.

Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- BBC Music Magazine

Inharmonies

Classical Music

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

Reviews:

It’s very fitting that during the four-year period when we continue to commemorate the centenary of World War I there should be a new and long overdue recording of Morning Heroes. Sir Arthur Bliss volunteered for the army in August 1914 and he served with distinction in the trenches in war-time France. He was wounded at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and in 1918 he was gassed at Cambrai. All this, and the carnage he witnessed all around him, made an ineradicable impression on him. However the most grievous blow was the loss of his younger brother, Kennard, who was killed in action on 28 September 1916 at Thiepval; he was just 24. After the war was over Bliss returned to France to find his brother’s grave but this pilgrimage failed to lay Kennard's ghost. In his notes for the earlier recording of Morning Heroes by Sir Charles Groves, Felix Aprahamian writes that Bliss began to suffer from nightmares in 1928; these must have been a manifestation of the psychological effects of the war. Finally, the opportunity came to commemorate his brother with a commission for a major choral work for the 1930 Norwich Festival. The result was Morning Heroes, scored for orator, chorus and orchestra. Bliss himself conducted the first performance. The score is dedicated ‘To the memory of my brother Francis Kennard Bliss and all other comrades killed in battle.’

Morning Heroes is an ambitious score and its construction is rather unusual in that two of its five movements are for orator with orchestra – though, as we shall see, the accompaniment in the second spoken movement is sparse indeed. A choral finale follows the second spoken section; together these two sections constitute the fifth movement. In the centre of the work are three movements for chorus and orchestra. Bliss assembled an anthology of texts; his sources include Homer’s epic Greek poem, The Iliad; Whitman’s Drum Taps; the eighth century Chinese poet, Li Tai Po; and poems by two twentieth century poets, Wilfred Owen and Robert Nichols.

Bliss’s scoring – if we can call it that – is astonishingly original and imaginative here. There is virtually no accompaniment to the orator’s recitation save for timpani rumbling ominously in the background like distant, menacing guns. Only once – at “Exposed!” – do the drums play loudly and that’s terrifying. What a masterstroke it is for Bliss to reintroduce the orchestra as the orator recites Owens last line, “Why speak they not of comrades that went under?” The woodwind play melancholy, lilting material from the first movement and the effect is very moving. The chorus then sing Robert Nichols’ Dawn on the Somme. The music begins quietly, almost like a hymn, but gradually the intensity increases as Nichols’ ‘morning heroes’ are saluted. If this music sounds like a glorification of heroism then who better than Bliss to write in this vein? After all he had been through he was surely entitled to celebrate heroism. Yet the work ends on a subdued, pensive note and that too feels eminently right.

Morning Heroes is a work of great stature and I find it very moving indeed. There’s no doubt at all that this new Davis recording is now a clear first choice for this fine score.

The “filler” is interesting – and relevant. Bliss wrote Hymn to Apollo in 1926 in gratitude to Pierre Monteux for his early championship of A Colour Symphony. Indeed, it was Monteux who gave the first performance, with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. It seems that very early on Bliss was dissatisfied with the work but he didn’t get round to revising it until 1964. Sir Andrew offers the original version of the score, recording it for the first time.

This is a splendid disc. The performance standard is extremely high and Ralph Couzens’ engineering is excellent. Similarly excellent are the notes by Andrew Burn. Bliss devotees should acquire this as a matter of urgency and other collectors are strongly urged to hear this eloquent musical commemoration of the fallen of World War I. On this evidence Sir Andrew Davis appears to be a doughty champion of Bliss. I hope he may record more of his music in the future: might we hope, at last, for a modern recording of The Beatitudes?

– MusicWeb International (John Quinn)

This new recording is a revelation for its clarity (notably of the composer's vivid orchestral palette and imaginative choral writing), coherence and sheer emotional intensity.

– Gramophone

Sir Andrew Davis's performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus surpasses Sir Charles Groves's fine 1974 EMI Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra account with urgent tempos, choral singing of full tone and incisive attack, eloquent orchestral playing, and an excellent, open recording.

– BBC Music Magazine

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

RUTTER: Feel the Spirit / Birthday Madrigals / SHEARING: Son

Bronius Kutavicius' oratorio The Seasons (2005-8) sets texts from a classic Lithuanian poem by 18th c. pastor-poet Kristijonas Donelaitis describing the peasant's life of toil. The Seasons mixes musical modernism and folk-inspired primitivism in an astonishingly powerful portrayal of the interaction of human activity and natural forces. Born 1932, Mr. Kutavicius is Lithuania's senior composer and is regarded as a national treasure. This 2012 live recording documents the first complete performance, given in the composer's presence, as part of the celebrations marking his 80th birthday.

Classical Music

Haydn, J.: Jahreszeiten (Die)