Classical Music

Pulitzer Prize- and GRAMMY® Award-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis’s Flute Concerto was inspired by and written for Marina Piccinini. Its four movements explore darker and lighter elements in various dance forms, most of which begin calmly but end up spiraling out of control. Kernis describes the songlike Air as ‘a love letter to the flute.’ His Second Symphony was composed at the time of the Persian Gulf War and signified a powerful shift of tone in his music. Non-programmatic but linear and compact, it forms a part of his ‘War Pieces’ of 1991–95. Internationally renowned flutist Marina Piccinni’s rich artistic tapestry is woven from her multinational upbringing and vibrant, global perspective. Her extensive programs include premieres by Aaron Jay Kernis, John Harbison, Lukas Foss, and Paquito D’Rivera. She has appeared as a soloist with the Boston, Vienna, Tokyo, and Toronto National Symphonies, among others.

This new release is an eclectic collection of 22 folk songs from all over the world. Cathy Berberian performs these works exceptionally well, performing in 17 different languages. Pianist Harold Lester accompanies Berberian on this recording.

The cult and devotion to Mary have been among the greatest and most important sources of inspiration for all the arts in the history of humanity, and in the history of music they have given rise to a myriad of compositions that have spanned the centuries since the beginning of Christianity to the present day. Within this record the ensembles Vox Poetica and Nova Alta directed by the master Sabino Manzo offer to us some examples of the most significant Italian composers of the Renaissance and Baroque period, starting from the "divine" Claudio Monteverdi, a milestone in the history of music, up to Alessandro Scarlatti, a leading exponent of that Neapolitan school that in the eighteenth century exploded in all it's shining vitality, passing through Girolamo Frescobaldi, "monster organist" whose fame as a composer and keyboardist went across the Italian borders.

Alexey Stanchinsky was considered an outstanding student by his teacher Taneyev, his work anticipating Stravinsky, Prokofiev and others, paving the way towards many aspects of twentieth-century style. His tragic early death and publishing difficulties meant that his music was hidden for decades. Volume 1 of this complete edition contains his entire output until 1910, including several world premiere recordings and revealing his early melodic gift and sophisticated virtuosity. Pianist Olga Solovieva was born in Moscow, graduated from the Russian Academy of Music, Moscow, and took a postgraduate course as an assistant to Leonid Blok. Since 2004 she has been a professor at the Gnessin State Musical College, and has given masterclasses in Ireland and Belgium. Solovieva was a prizewinner of the 1999 Taneyev Competition of Chamber Ensembles, a finalist of the 2000 XX Chamber Music Competition in Trapani, Italy, a 2010 Boris Tchaikovsky Society Award Winner, and was awarded the Best Accompanist Prize at the XII International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. In May 2019 she received the Russian public award for her contribution to the development of the musical art and the Glinka Medal.

The recording of “La Leggenda di Vittore e Corona” focuses on the musical-liturgical repertoire that the ancient Venetian medieval tradition named after the two proto-martyrs. The source (Antifonario Marciano, Archivio di Stato di Venezia, 14th century) sings in the form of the minor liturgy of the Vespers the different moments of the Passio involving Vittore until he joined Corona in the martyrdom, reaching eternal glory. Far from representing only a local cult, the legend of Vittore and Corona is fully part of the history of Christianity and, in particular, of the defenseless yet determined struggle for the freedom of faith, thought and conscience. The style between the Gregorian and the Aquileian rite of the Marcian vespers (first performance in modern times) is very well accompanied by that of the polyphonic pieces taken from European codes of the same period, underlining the salient moments of the legend; the original alternation of the voices and medieval instruments between concordant monody and polyphonic dialogue connotes the performance of the InUnum Ensemble enhancing the narrative.

The Philadelphia-based baroque orchestra Tempesta di Mare here reveals an unparalleled musical legacy, presenting long forgotten works by the German baroque composer Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, confined for centuries to unexamined archives. The works formed part of an enormous music collection which belonged to Sara Levy, the great-aunt of Felix Mendelssohn. She was a distinguished harpsichordist, collector, and influential figure in the musical life of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Berlin. Removed from the Berlin Sing-Akademie towards the end of World War II, her musical library was for many decades considered lost or destroyed. It was unearthed in Kiev only in 1999 and returned to Germany in 2001, where it is now again accessible to the public. While there can be no doubt that the instrumental oeuvre of Janitsch matched the diversity of that of some of his more prominent Berlin colleagues, the emphasis of his compositional output lay on chamber music, especially Quadros, four of which are featured here. The typical, prevailing dialogic structure of the Ouverture grosso highlights the influence which thematic play had on the rest of his work.

This is the seventh album in the first complete recording of the 72 cantatas from Georg Philipp Telemann's collection Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst, published in Hamburg in 1726 — the first complete set of cantatas for the liturgical year to appear in print. The cantatas are designated for voice, an obbligato instrument (recorder, violin, transverse flute or oboe) and basso continuo, and generally take the form of two da capo arias with an intervening recitative. Although intended for worship, both public and private, Telemann's cantatas are a masterly blend of tunefulness with skilled counterpoint and vocal and instrumental virtuosity. Bergen Barokk was established by Frode Thorsen and Hans Knut Sveen in 1994 in connection with a concert series supported by the city arts department in Bergen and is today one of the leading early-music ensembles in Norway. The group has performed in concerts and radio broadcasts in Europe, Russia and the USA. Its recordings on Simax Classics, BIS, Bergen Digital Studio, LAWO and Toccata Classics include German, English, Italian and French repertoire.

Founded in 1969, the 18-member United States Navy Band, Commodores, have been performing big band jazz for the Navy and the nation for over 40 years. They're held in high regard nationwide by concert patrons and critics alike, and have compiled an impressive roster of jazz artists who've guested with them (James Moody, Branford Marsalis, Chris Potter, and many more). This album includes an array of great jazz tunes, including “Caravan”, “Waltz For Debby” and “Lester Left Town”

Bernard Herrmann was famous for his film scores, but he was also a leading figure in music for radio, to which he brought his inimitable palette of mood and sonority. Whitman, whose subject is Walt Whitman’s collection of poems Leaves of Grass, was a 1944 radio drama, a genre now much neglected but revived in this newly restored version. Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra is not a suite or excerpts from the film but a concert work, re-ordered and re-composed, while Souvenirs de voyage is one of the most polished and seductive of all American chamber works.

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REVIEWS:

Gil-Ordóñez and the PostClassical Ensemble have plenty of experience with Herrmann and perform the music with the proper heated quality. The result is an album that will be essential for Herrmann fans but also of great interest to general listeners.

– AllMusic Guide

With a narrator as Whitman, and a chamber sized orchestra to add impact and color, these many years after the end of the WWII (around the time of its original broadcast), it still carries a profound message. Souvenirs de voyage came towards the end of Herrmann’s life, and was proof of his range of genres that today are overlooked in favor of his film scores. It is a beautiful score, blessed with attractive melodic material and couched in subtle colors. Herrmann was to re-compose music from Psycho years later to form a concert work. It was rediscovered by conductor John Mauceri in 1999.

It would be difficult to imagine finer performances from a number of performers, Whitman, being a World Premiere Recording with the conductor, Angel Gil-Ordonez and the Washington-based PostClassical Ensemble, William Sharp the ideal narrator. Top quality sound, and It comes with an excellent booklet.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

This album is one of a pair of distinctive Saint-Sa�ns recordings, made with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It features several rarely-recorded works, alongside the premiere recording of Saint-Sa�ns's arrangement for tenor and orchestra of the iconic Danse macabre - which was originally a song for voice and piano to a poem Henri Cazalis before it's expansion into a celebrated tone poem. Australian conductor Geoffrey Simon is resident in London and has appeared there with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, and English Chamber Orchestra. Internationally he has appeared with the Adelaide, Atlanta, Israel, Moscow, and American Symphonies, among others. He is Music Director Emeritus of the Northwest Mahler Orchestra in Seattle, with which he has conducted the Mahler symphonic cycle and Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony. He is Consultant for Classical Special Projects for Arts Global, and has served as a jury member for Young Concert Artists, PianoTexas, Australian Cello Awards and Royal Over-Seas League.

The German violinist Friedrich Seitz was born in Günthersleben near Gotha in 1848 and died in Dessau in 1918. He served as a conductor in Sondershausen, where he had studied, as concert-master in Magdeburg and from 1884 as Court Concert-Master in Dessau. He was particularly active as a teacher, and is remembered for his Schülerkonzerte, teaching concertos, which introduce pupils to something of nineteenth-century concerto technique and remain a part of teaching repertoire. On this new release, violinist Hyejin Chung and pianist Warren Lee explore his five Concertos for Violin and Piano- by far his most successful works. Hyejin Chung studied with Takako Nishizaki at the Academy for Performing Arts in Hong Kong and graduated with an Advanced Certificate in violin performance. Subsequently she went to Russia and studied with S.I. Kravchenko, a student and assistant of Leonid Kogan, at the Moscow State Conservatory. After settling in Hong Kong, she focused on playing chamber music and teaching advanced students at the Takako Nishizaki Violin Studio. This is her second recording for Naxos.

The friendship between Mátyás Seiber and Antal Doráti dates back to their youth, when they were the two youngest students in Zoltán Kodály's composition class in Budapest in the 1920s. Doráti was one year younger than Seiber and held him in high esteem from the beginning. In the memoirs, Így láttuk Kodályt [‘Thus We Saw Kodály’], he writes the following: "The two 'best' were Mátyás Seiber and Lajos Bárdos. Matyi [Mátyás] wrote a great string quartet at the time, which has survived. One of our tasks was to write variations on a Handel theme. In response to one of Seiber's slow-tempo variations, Mr Kodály said: 'That's nice'. In our eyes - at least in my eyes - that was the canonization of Matyi."

Classical Music

Apollo descends to earth and proposes marriage to Oebalus' daughter Melia. But when he goes to play discus with her brother Hyacinthus and his friend Zephyrus, a tragic accident occurs, after which nothing will ever be the same again... Classical Opera's series of Mozart's complete operas on Signum continues with the addition of Apollo et Hyacinthus, the second of his two stage works from 1767. The opera is sung in Latin, and is based on a colourful story from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Mozart was only eleven years old when he wrote this remarkable work, but the music is astonishingly accomplished, frequently anticipating the wonders of his maturity.

A 2021 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Orchestral Performance!

Pulitzer and Erasmus Prize-winning composer John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of American music. His works stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. Adams describes My Father Knew Charles Ives as “an homage and encomium to a composer whose influence on me has been huge.” Harmonielehre was a deliberate move by Adams to expand his musical language beyond Minimalism, keeping its energetic pulse but embracing the rich tonal resources of the past to create a work that has accrued an aura of timelessness. Six-time GRAMMY Award-winning conductor Giancarlo Guerrerois music director of the Nashville Symphony and the NFM Wroc?aw Philharmonic in Poland, as well as principal guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, Portugal. He has championed contemporary American music through numerous commissions, recordings and performances with the Nashville Symphony, presenting eleven world premieres of works by Michael Daugherty, Terry Riley, and others. As part of this commitment, he helped guide the creation of Nashville Symphony’s Composer Lab & Workshop initiative.

 

REVIEWS:

 

In point of fact, John Adams’ father did not know Charles Ives, but imagined that they had a good deal in common, and that was a springboard to a work that is unlike any other among Adams’ output. It’s not at all clear why My Father Knew Charles Ives has been so neglected. The work gets a detailed, sympathetic treatment here from Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Guerrero and the Nashvillians have done a major service by reviving My Father Knew Charles Ives.

 

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

 

Given the difference in ambiance and style between the two works, these brilliantly played and recorded performances might just make an ideal point of entry for those new to the composer.

 

 

– MusicWeb International

It’s no surprise that The King’s Singers have recorded a huge number of love songs on all kinds of albums over the last fifty years. Some of these were albums devoted to love songs like Chanson d’amour and Romance du soir. Other albums couldn’t help but include music about love, although their theme was actually different. This album, Love Songs, is a chance to revisit some of the ensemble’s favorite tracks that they’ve recorded over the last two decades, compiled from across their back catalogue with Signum Records. The tracks they’ve chosen have come from five different albums, released between 2008 and 2017. Rather than trying to take in any of the enormous number of classical love songs from the back catalogue, the group wanted to focus on some of the best folk songs, jazz standards, and pop songs that have featured in King’s Singers concerts throughout their history. This selection has been curated especially to celebrate the group’s favorite recent albums, and to show how rich and varied the tapestry of love songs we have today is.

REVIEWS:

[A] spirited, handsomely sung program of entries representing a number of genres. I enjoy the bass fiddle licks sung with such jazzy appeal in ‘I’ve Got the World On a String’ (Harold Arlen) and Jerome Kern’s ‘I Won’t Dance’. The softrock arpeggios in Paul Simon’s ‘April Come She Will’ and ‘Helplessly Hoping’ (Stephen Stills) are great fun, and I will happily make time for Simon Carrington’s radiant arrangement of ‘My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose’. For a union of the British choral tradition and the Doo-Wop style, look no further than this rendition of ‘At Last’.

A cappella groups singing in this style have proliferated like gangbusters on high school and college campuses. If a young musician you know is singing in one, why not get ahold of this and show them what the gold standard sounds like.

-- American Record Guide

Despite its enormous success during the 19th c., Giacomo Meyerbeer’s grand opera Les Huguenots is rarely staged today, and arguably not with much more frequency at the time of this 1955 studio broadcast from the Vienna opera in a German-sung production. The conductor Robert Heger leads a cast of whom only Walter Berry and the great Wagnerian Gottlob Frick still have any real resonance today, with Maud Cunitz sneaking in just under the wire of recognition. The cast is a fine one however, with the German lyric tenor Karl Terkal a worthy re-discovery, and Valerie Bak a rare presence on record.

Non-professional lovers of music ranged, in their mastery of the instruments, from amateurs to concert performers. So the instrumental fantasias were “molded” to the patrons’ specific requirements, and nourished a constantly growing market. The history of Pietro Morlacchi (1828-68) and Antonio Torriani (1829-1911) coincides with the history of the success of instrumental music genre in Italy. That these of the many published fantasias of the time survived, testify to their musical worth.

MAHLER Symphony No. 5 • James DePreist, cond; London SO • NAXOS 8.557990 (72: 43)


The Mahler symphonies have had a somewhat episodic history on Naxos: most of the recently completed cycle features Antoni Wit conducting either the Polish National Radio-TV Orchestra or the Warsaw National Philharmonic; but the recordings of the First, Seventh, and Ninth Symphonies were conducted by Michael Halász. Now, another Fifth appears, conducted by a distinguished American with the mighty LSO.


Whatever its provenance (and why look such an attractive gift horse in the mouth?), this is a sturdy, musically solid performance. The first movement is characterized by commanding fanfares and the steady tread of the funeral march. DePreist doesn’t linger over the latter, but he isn’t as hasty as Sir Roger Norrington in his view of the fanfares, either. One unusual gesture is the sudden ritenuto immediately after the eruption of the quicker tempo at the first Trio; this seems to suggest that the struggle is almost too much. The timpani introduction to the second Trio is muted, becoming almost an echo at the end of its phrase, an effect repeated at the end of the coda, where the muted trumpet, which echoes the opening fanfare, is almost inaudible—a very haunting effect, made that much more interesting by the final note, which is decisively sforzando.


The second movement is a convincing extension of the first, as the stormy opening gives way to the subdued echo of the funeral march. The two themes are convincingly alternated, the occasionally imploring character of the second theme suddenly giving way to optimism in the chorale that ends the development section; this is reinforced by its later D-Major variant, aptly described by Dr. Floros as “Vision of Paradise.” This performance amply demonstrates how apposite that characterization is, while the coda plunges the listener back into the maelstrom.


DePreist takes Mahler’s indication of nicht zu schnell to heart for the Scherzo, as a very expansive tempo (very similar to that of Michael Tilson Thomas in his new Fifth) produces music of geniality rather than robust jollity, and it is a bit short on vigor for a movement marked kräftig (the last minute is an exception, as the music dashes to the end). The LSO copes easily with the relaxed tempo, producing music of strength in addition to good humor. The sound production from Abbey Road Studios is clarity itself, allowing the wide variety of instrumental effects in this mammoth score to be heard while producing the necessary sonic punch when required. The soundstage is satisfyingly wide and deep, and on the whole this recording can stand comparison with most of the Mahler Fifths on the market. Fanfare ’s headnotes used to include the producer’s name, so I am happy to note here that the producer of this splendid-sounding recording is our own Michael Fine.


The Adagietto is decidedly old school, clocking in at 10:42; as with the MTT performance, this can work if one accepts that there are often conflicting feelings being voiced, and if, as is the case here, there is some flexibility in the tempo. The prominent harp assists in giving the illusion of movement in this otherwise timeless music. On the whole, DePreist makes a better case for this kind of interpretation than Tilson Thomas.


An echo of the amiability (and tempo) of the Scherzo is heard as DePreist ushers in the finale; the movement gains momentum as the rondo takes shape. The tempo marking Allegro giocoso , and the term Frisch, are utilized by Mahler to characterize this movement; “jolly” and “fresh” this interpretation certainly is, and the whole performance comes to an exhilarating close.


For a symphony as oft-recorded as the Mahler Fifth, there have been (surprisingly) few featuring this orchestra; I for one am grateful to Maestro DePreist and his crew for producing such a successful performance with one of the world’s premier Mahler orchestras. At the Naxos price, this is one of the Mahler bargains of the decade.


FANFARE: Christopher Abbot

Widely regarded as one of America’s pre-eminent living composers, Joan Tower, who is also a pianist, is particularly devoted to chamber music. Organic structures underpin her string quartets; there is ‘heat from within’ and radiance of texture in "Incandescent", her third quartet, virtuosic interplay in No. 4, "Angels", and fluid connections in "White Water", her fifth string quartet. Only the third composer – after Stravinsky and Copland – to be commissioned by the Dumbarton Oaks Foundation, Dumbarton Quintet pursues extremes of moods both romantically consonant and dissonant.

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REVIEW:

Premiere recordings of three quartets and a piano quintet, composed over a 10-year span and performed by two outstanding American quartets. The Fifth Quartet has an aquatic feel and flow, the music leading towards an exquisite, radiant end. The Piano Quintet is a characteristically dynamic and angular score, tempered by the piano's warmth and and an intriguing range of combined sounds.

– Gramophone

'O Rosa Bella' is the title of two popular 15th-century chansons, the earlier composed by Johannes Ciconia and the latter originally attributed to John Dunstable, but now to John Bedyngham. The text is based on a poem written by Leonardo Giustiniani (1300-1446): 'O lovely rose, My sweet soul; Let me not die In courtly love.' More than 20 works were based on this popular theme by composers including Johannes Ockeghem, and a Mass attributed to Gilles Joye. Born around 1420, in the Belgian town of Courtai, Joye worked as a singer and lived beyond his means. Having taken up a prestigious ecclesiastical post in Bruges, he was sent by the church fathers on a pilgrimage in order to atone for misdemeanors, but he continued to accumulate debts which compelled him to sell all his possessions; he died in penury. The song which Joye took as the basis for his Mass circulated widely during the 15th century; by a curious coincidence, Rosabella was also the name of Joye's lover with whom he lived openly (and imprudently). The recording follows performance practice of the time by using only male voices doubled by instruments for the two Masses and mixed voices for the Chansons. The chosen instrumentation includes shawm, slide trumpet, sackbut, cornetto, recorder, lute, gothic harp and psaltery: an authentic but richly colored ensemble. Although there are previous recordings of the Mass and the chansons, all the music recorded here has been newly transcribed from original sources by two of it's performers, Min J. Kim and David Brutti. The recording took place in the Umbrian church of San Francesco in Trevi, where the original organ survives, dating from 1508, and thus retaining a sound-world that resembles one known to the likes of Dunstable and Joye.

The Beethoven year is about to begin and the first contributions by various artists to the anniversary are already being published The focus will be on the evergreens that will attract the attention of the public As a versatile and extremely productive artist, Beethoven has also created a number of works that are virtually unknown today This extensive 9 album edition is dedicated exactly to these works and its tracklisting reads like a sparkling treasure chest Rarely heard arias in various languages, Contredanses, minuets, Ländlers the Piano Concerto No 0 music for a knight's ballet, fun loving and sometimes not entirely youth free canons Over 10 ½ hours full of works by Ludwig van Beethoven, which were written throughout his life and cast a new, unusual glance on his musical oeuvre and his perhaps sometimes not so serious character.

This is the penultimate release in the Chandos series of Brahms works for solo piano, performed by Barry Douglas. | Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist and an innovator with his music being rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of Baroque and Classical eras. | These recordings are being performed in the finest international venues including the Wigmore Hall and Concertgebouw. | This fifth volume is the most virtuosic of the series, including the Scherzo in E flat minor, technically demanding variations, several intermezzi, and three Hungarian Dances. | Barry Douglas is gainging a reputation of one the few world-class piano virtuosi of the romantic repertoire. | Barry Douglas won the 1986 Tchaikovksy Competition in Russia.

• A 1957 live performance from Stuttgart, conducted by Lovro von Matacic. • The great Heldentenor Wolfgang Windgassen stars as Rienzi. • Stuttgart came to be known as the “Winter Bayreuth” for its staging of Wagner operas not slated for performance in Bayreuth.