Before Jean-Pierre Rampal appeared on the music scene in the 1950s, wind players were rarely hired as soloists with orchestras. This legendary French flute virtuoso broke through that barrier with his astonishing talent, flair, and commanding stage presence, attaining the kind of visibility previously enjoyed only by pianists and violinists. He regularly filled the world’s largest concert halls for his recitals and chamber performances. Rampal was the father figure of the flute renaissance in the 20th century which restored the instrument to the exalted position it held during the 18th century.

He also became one the world’s most recorded artists, commanding all the essential repertoire of his instrument but equally embracing previously unknown works, his own discoveries, jazz, pop, folk and contemporary works. Virtually anything written for the flute or plausibly adapted for it was grist for his mill. In his autobiography Rampal referred to the discography that brought him numerous prizes and awards as being so enormous that not even he could keep track of it. In 1969, he began recording for CBS, and in 1979 he signed an exclusive contract with the label.

To mark his 100th birthday, Sony Classical released in a 56-CD box set the first complete edition of Jean-Pierre Rampal’s recordings for CBS, RCA, and Sony Classical.

SET CONTENTS:

DISC 1: Mozart: Flute Quartets
DISC 2: Bach Family
DISC 3: Bolling: Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano
DISC 4/5: Rampal and Lagoya in Concert
DISC 6: Vivaldi/Telemann
DISC 7: Bolling: "Picnic Suite"
DISC 8: Mozart: Flute Quartets K. 285 & K. 298/Divertimento K. 334
DISC 9: Carnaval de Rampal (Showpieces)
DISC 10: Schubert: Sonata In A Minor/Moscheles: Sonata concertante
DISC 11: Pastorales De Noel
DISC 12: Dvořák, Feld, Martinů: From Prague With Love
DISC 13: Japanese Melodies, Vol. III
DISC 14: Haydn: Divertimentos
DISC 15: Sonatas of J.S. Bach and sons
DISC 16: Jean-Pierre Rampal plays Scott Joplin
DISC 17: Weber: Sonatas for Violin and Piano
DISC 18: Bach: Concerto for Flute, Strings and Basso Continuo
DISC 19: Vivaldi: Six Concertos for Flute
DISC 20: Fascinatin' Rampal: Jean-Pierre Rampal plays Gershwin
DISC 21/22: Bach: Sonatas and Partita for Flute
DISC 23/24: Haydn: Concertos
DISC 25: The Flute at The Court of Frederick The Great
DISC 26: Night at The Opera: The Magic Flute
DISC 27: Chants de Noel / Children’s Songs
DISC 28: Mozart: Sonatas
DISC 29: Bolling: Suite No. 2 For Flute and Jazz Piano Trio
DISC 30: Mozart: The Flute Quartets
DISC 31: Telemann: Overture/Concertos
DISC 32: Telemann, Kuhlau, Bach, Mozart, Doppler
DISC 33: Kuhlau: Flute Quintets
DISC 34: Mozart: Concerto for Flute and Harp/Sinfonia concertante
DISC 35: Carulli: Flute Concerto and more
DISC 36: Concertos for Two Flutes
DISC 37/38: C.P.E. Bach: The Complete Flute Concertos
DISC 39: Mozart: Flute Concertos
DISC 40: Music for Flute and Harp
DISC 41: Mozart,Telemann, J.C. Bach, Reicha
DISC 42: Vivaldi: 6 Double Concertos
DISC 43: Rameau: Pièces de clavecin en Concerts
DISC 44: Italian Flute Concertos
DISC 45: Mozart: Divertimento, K.334/Adagio And Rondo, K.617/Andante, K.616/Quintet, K.557
DISC 46: Haydn: London Trios
DISC 47: Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
DISC 48: Kathleen Battle and Jean-Pierre Rampal in Concert
DISC 49: Pla: Catalan Flute Music of the 18th Century
DISC 50: Boccherini: Flute Quintets
DISC 51: Collaborations
DISC 52: Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 36 & 38 – Jean Pierre Rampal, conductor
DISC 53: Carulli/Haydn: Guitar Concertos – Jean Pierre Rampal, conductor
DISC 54: Bolling: Suite for Chamber Orchestra and Jazz Piano Trio – J.P. Rampal, conductor
DISC 55: Romantic Harp Concertos – J.P. Rampal, conductor
DISC 56: Mozart: March/Serenade K. 250 “Haffner” – J.P. Rampal, conductor

REVIEW:

Flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal brought the instrument to new prominence, proving its enormous potential in a wide range of repertoire. Sony’s new collection, ‘The Complete CBS Masterworks Recordings’, opens to a benchmark 1969 recording of the Mozart flute quartets where Rampal joins forces with Isaac Stern, Alexander Schneider, and Leonard Rose, and ends with more Mozart – and more Stern – for a keenly played 1994 version of Mozart’s Haffner Serenade. Especially noteworthy are three Kuhlau flute quintets where Rampal joins forces with the Juilliard Quartet: this is superior music, beautifully performed and recorded.

Contemporary repertoire is represented in the first instance by a colorfully inventive and well-performed Penderecki Concerto under the composer’s own direction, surely the best ‘modern’ piece in the set. Rampal enjoyed a fruitful musical relationship with the French jazz pianist, composer and arranger Claude Bolling. Of those pieces included in the set, I’d gravitate first to the Suite for chamber orchestra and jazz piano trio, with its classical resonances; on the other hand, programs devoted to Scott Joplin rags and Gershwin (including a musically pointless abbreviation of An American in Paris) are best left in the box. I’m all for creative crossover but the Gershwin in particular misfires, musically. Still, to be landed with just two ‘duffs’ in a collection of 56 CDs is pretty good going.

As you can imagine, some of the featured repertoire appears more than once but there are sufficient differences in approach between alternative recordings to justify spending time comparing. What’s most interesting is the typically wide range of music on offer, some of it of exceptional quality.

Overall, this is a most enjoyable set, sturdily boxed, with original jacket sleeves that include readable spines, and a hardcover 220-page accompanying book that will give you informative annotations and all the discographical information you need. As diverting collections go, this is certainly one to consider.

-- Gramophone (Rob Cowan)

Following the success of their previous album, English Music for Strings, John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London turn their attention to the music of Henri Dutilleux. His ballet Le Loup was composed as a commission for Roland Petit’s dance company and premièred in Paris in March 1953. Rarely recorded – this is the first recording by a non-French orchestra – the work unfolds in three tableaux and tells a convoluted tale of a bridegroom who jilts his bride (to run away with a gypsy) by persuading her that he has been changed into a wolf. Over time she discovers that the wolf is real, but her feelings turn from terror to love and when the alarmed villagers hunt the wolf, she defends him and dies at his side. The album is completed by three world première recordings of new orchestrations (by Kenneth Hesketh) of wind solos written for the Paris Conservatoire in the 1940s. Both the Sarabande et Cortège and Sonate pour hautbois are virtuosic tours de force for their soloists, as is the Sonatine pour flûte, which displays the lyricism, agility, and sparkling incisive qualities of the flute in what became Dutilleux’s most-performed work.

Along with Vivaldi’s ‘Seasons’ or Beethoven’s ‘Fifth’, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos belong to those works that are so well-known that we risk taking them for granted. In order to (re-)discover the special qualities that can inspire us today, in 2001 Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra decided to contact six contemporary composer, asking each of them to compose a companion piece to one of the concertos. Seventeen years later, in 2018, it was time to present the result, with a performance at the BBC Proms of all the works – new and old. Recorded over a period of 18 months leading up to this event, the present boxed set provides a unique opportunity to experience six very different musical minds and idioms entering into conversation with Bach: Mark-Anthony Turnage, Steven Mackey, Anders Hillborg, Olga Neuwirth, Uri Caine and Brett Dean. Bach’s concertos are remarkable in that they are all scored for different instrumental combinations, and part of the brief to the group of composers was to reflect this. In her Aello, Olga Neuwirth has for instance used several ‘instruments’ to stand in for Bach’s harpsichord, including a synthesizer, a milk frother and a typewriter. Brett Dean, on the other hand, has stayed very close to Bach’s instrumentation, but has chosen to write his work as a preparation for Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 – an Approach to Bach’s extremely tight canonic writing. In performing the twelve works the orchestra and Dausgaard are joined by leading soloists including Clare Chase, Mahan Esfahani, Håkan Hardenberger, Pekka Kuusisto and Tabea Zimmermann.

On Synergy, flautist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends demonstrate that one plus one can be much greater than two. Featuring works that celebrate the coming together of like-minded musicians, this project is a reminder, after more than two years of a pandemic that has affected all of us, that true musical synergy can only be achieved 'face-to-face’, rather than ‘remotely’. With his Concerto for flute and recorder, Telemann not only creates a fusion of different musical styles of his time – namely Italian, German and French – but also shows a gift for borrowing elements from popular music. Saint-Saëns brings swirling colors and energy with a Tarentelle for flute, clarinet and orchestra, that at times displays obsessive, even threatening undertones. From the same period, Doppler’s Concerto for two flutes is not far from the world of opera, providing the two soloists with ample opportunity to shine like two singers in front of an orchestra. In addition to celebrating the synergy created between musicians, the last two works featured on this disc, Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 and Suite from the Orchestral Works, are telling examples of synergy between composers: it is as if Villa-Lobos and Mahler were shaking hands with Johann Sebastian Bach across distances of thousands of miles and hundreds of years.

REVIEW:

The principal attraction of this SACD, as good as the performances are, is the uniqueness of the program. Sharon Bezaly, one of the outstanding flutists of our time, has brought together composers not particularly associated with each other, and from different eras. While each performance is enjoyable, the real success of the disc is how the imaginative program flows in such a lovely way.

On Telemann’s Concerto in E Minor for Recorder, Flute, and Strings with harpsichord continuo. Bezaly is joined by one of the world’s premier recordists, Michala Petri, and their interplay is delightful. The final Presto is particularly inventive and sparkling in the way the two soloists play off each other.

Michael Collins and Bezaly play Saint-Saëns’s Tarantelle with total communication, lingering lightly over lyrical passages while clearly enjoying their virtuoso moments as well.

The big surprise for me was the Concerto in D Minor for Two Flutes by the flute virtuoso and composer Franz Doppler (1821–1883). The music is almost vocal in its melodic shape, but the remarkable aspect of the score, surprisingly, are the passages where the two flutes must play in unison. Bezaly and Walter Auer come close to making us believe that they are a single flute.

Next comes the one work without orchestra, Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas brasileiras No. 6, scored for flute and bassoon. Bram van Sambeek is a brilliant technician, but more importantly he produces a rich sound from his bassoon and provides harmonic support for Bezaly’s flute.

Her combination of rich tone and rhythmic precision is just right for The Mahler-orchestrated selections from the Second and Third Orchestral Suites. While no one would mistake this for an historically informed performance, it is an extremely stylish one. Michael Collins and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra bring elegance to the Air and energy to the Gavotte from the Third Suite. As an encore Bezaly give us a repeat of the Badinerie from the Second Suite.

BIS’s usual high standards of engineering and informative program notes round out a truly lovely disc.

-- Fanfare (Henry Fogel)

Grammy-Award-winning Kenneth Fuchs (born 1956) is without doubt one of American music’s leading orchestral composers. His orchestral output has grown and developed to encompass a wide range of genres, from overtures and tone poems to suites and concertos (ten to date, including ones for string quartet, electric guitar, and piano, the last entitled Spiritualist), inspired by a diverse range of subjects, testimony to his wide sympathies and fields of knowledge. His output includes chamber music (including five string quartets), solos and duos, vocal and choral music, and four chamber musicals. Cloud Slant is a virtuoso orchestral concerto based on three of Helen Frankenthaler’s canvasses: Blue Fall (1966), Flood (1967), and Cloud Slant (1968)–not just musical depictions of them but also the composer’s reactions to their artistic sweep and power.

The flute was Fuchs’ first instrument, so it was inevitable that he would compose a flute concerto. However, it was not until 2019 that he set about the task – for the flautist Peg Luke, to whom the concerto is dedicated. As is customary of compositions by this composer, the concerto carries a descriptive title, Solitary the Thrush, a reference to lines from Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d'. Commissioned by the Californian Musique Sur La Mer Orchestras, Pacific Visions is scored for string orchestra, and is a single, dynamic movement sub-divided into five sections. Quiet in the Land, a Poem for Orchestra is a revision of a chamber work Fuchs composed in 2003, inspired by the rolling prairie of the Midwestern United States and the ‘immense arching sky’ under which it sits, cast against the impact of the Second Gulf War which had then recently broken out. The orchestral version heard here was composed in 2017 for the Phoenix Symphony. The album was recorded in Surround Sound, and is available as a Hybrid SACD and in Spatial Audio.

REVIEW:

The scores, as heard here in gloriously deep-staged and brilliant sound, are awash with oxygen and rich in melody. The players and conductor are celebrities and their playing is of a piece with that hard-won status.

The sound style of these four pieces, written between 2016 and 2021, is inviting; there are few complexities of texture. The scores are oxygen-rich and their skies are blue Californian or Mid-West vaults. The explosion of cornflower blue is that of Hockney’s A bigger splash and almost has you reaching for the aural equivalent of Ray-Bans. His sound signature is stable and uniform without being tedious. Allowing for passing echoes of others, like Martinů, he has his own sound and you can almost hear him intoning his article of faith: to thine own self be true.

The first piece is a concerto for orchestra in three movements: Cloud Slant (2020-2021). Impressions flood in: a Bernstein brilliance, succulent softness, very exposed Britten-like writing, as in the Grimes Interludes. It’s all superbly recorded[.]

The booklet notes are by Guy Rickards – so we are in safe hands – and are in English, German and French. They tell us much of what we need to know. Even so, I would have liked a lot more about what the music meant to the composer, a fuller biographical setting and what stung Fuchs into creating the music.

Fuchs has a brilliant tonal voice and here it is heard through a medium that equates to un-smeared dustless glass.

-- MusicWeb International

What would it mean to 'compose like a woman'? The present collection answers the question, in a literal sense, while undoing the premise on which the question was asked in the first place. In social and historical terms, it means enjoying privileges of upbringing, education, and/or wealth that were historically denied to the vast majority of women. It means, on the part of the women represented here, a single-minded determination in pursuit of their vocation, helping them to overcome prejudice and sexism in a cultural, social and political milieu that has consistently denied women the opportunity to find and express their own voice in music. Only with movements of emancipation in the last century, and much more rapidly in the last 50 years, has this situation begun to be addressed and corrected. What composing like a woman does not mean - as the music in this collection makes clear - is a definable set of qualities or characteristics to the music itself which would distinguish the work of female composers from the music composed by men.

This remarkable set gathers many individual recordings of music by women composers, which Brilliant Classics has quietly yet actively championed in their catalogue for decades, uniting it with exciting new outings, so that a comprehensive historical picture of the highly varied struggles and successes of women composers through the ages to our present time are chronicled and celebrated.

Other information:

- Recordings date from 1994-2024

- Booklet in English contains liner notes by Peter Quantrill

- The revival of interest in female classical composers reflects a growing recognition of their overlooked contributions to music history.

For centuries, women composers were marginalized, their works overshadowed by their male counterparts. However, recent efforts by musicians, scholars, and institutions have brought these composers into the spotlight, highlighting the richness and diversity of their compositions.

- This renewed focus stems from a broader movement toward inclusivity in the arts, challenging traditional narratives that have historically excluded women. The rise of feminist musicology has also played a key role, offering fresh perspectives on these composers' lives and works.

- This comprehensive box set offers a wide spectrum of works by female composers, from the Medieval mystic Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179), through the Renaissance Isabella Leonarda (baptized 1620-1704), Francesca Caccini (1587-1640) und Barbara Strozzi (baptized 1619-1677), traversing the Baroque and Classical eras, and arriving in the contemporary field, with composers such as Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) and Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969).

- A long due homage to the art and voice of female composers, spanning nearly a thousand years!

German composer Hans Werner Henze’s (1926–2012) admiration for the great masters of the Baroque and musical Classicism manifested in compositions born from a desire to transcribe, rework and transform 17th- and 18th-century masterpieces into new orchestral textures. The project Travestimenti (Disguises), managed by conductor Marco Angius and the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, from which this CD was created, makes reference to Henze’s ‘reinventions’ of masterpieces by Mozart, C.P.E. Bach and Vitali, clothed in new, modern fashion.

For the Drei Mozart’sche Orgelsonaten, Henze takes up three of Mozart’s one-movement Kirchensonaten (church sonatas or trio sonatas). Sonatas 17 and 15 are in an Allegro tempo, whereas the Sonata K.67 is marked Andantino, so Henze, in his transcription, places the latter between the two livelier tempos, thus reconstructing the tripartite structure of a classical three-movement sonata. Scored for an ensemble of 14 players that includes the less common, softer variants oboe d’amore and viola d’amore, it aims to underline the darker instrumental timbres, favouring the sombre sonorities of the alto flute in G, the bass flute in C, the bass clarinet and the bassoon. During the last year of his life, in 1787, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach composed a Fantasia libera per tastiera sola (Free Fantasia for keyboard alone) which he expanded into the Clavier-Fantasie mit Begleitung einer Violine (Fantasy for harpsichord with violin accompaniment), one of his most personal and expressive works.

Henze transcribed it for solo flute, harp and strings, aiming to project the extremely interesting and expressive harmonic material of the composition into a larger instrumental apparatus, thus making its future-oriented harmonic structures more manifest and moulded. He proposed two options for division of the: string quartet + string quintet or string quartet + tutti (the latter version is recorded here).

Although it was probably composed in the early 18th century, Vitali’s Ciaccona ‘Il Vitalino’ – whose musical form is inspired by dance and consists of variations on a ground bass – was only rediscovered in 1867, published by the German virtuoso violinist Ferdinand David. Henze’s Il Vitalino raddoppiato – called “raddoppiato” (“doubled”) because of his extension of the composition by means of interpolated variations of each original section in the style of 18th-century doubles – retains Vitali’s bass almost throughout the entire composition. It alternates Vitali’s variations on his chaconne theme with Henze’s variations of Vitali’s variations, in an ever-changing dialogue between the 18th-century past and Henze’s present.

Brilliant Classics have celebrated the 150th Anniversary of Reger’s birth last year by expanding their Reger Collection of a decade ago from 11 to 18 CDs. Added to the original set, which presented Reger’s best known works – the glorious orchestral Böcklin Suite, the Mozart, Beethoven and Hiller Variations, the mighty piano and violin concertos, the beautiful clarinet quintet (not in the least inferior to Brahms’ masterpiece), the complete Chorale Fantasias for organ (Reger, an organist himself, wrote extensively and superbly for his instrument) and a fine selection of choral music – is a new set of chamber music including the Piano Trio, Flute-Violin-Viola Serenades, Clarinet–Piano Sonatas and other works, and Reger’s compositions for solo viola and for solo cello. The transparency of the chamber music genre particularly highlights the composer’s absolute mastery of counterpoint. Also new is an expanded keyboard section, with more works for the organ – so associated with Reger – including the Sonatas and Fantasy–Fugues, and a new solo piano CD recorded in 2023 by Eden Walker featuring Dreams by the Fireside and the Bach Variations and Fugue.

For his second album for Chandos, the flute virtuoso Adam Walker explores the music of British composers with pianist Huw Watkins. Vaughan Williams’s Suite de ballet was commissioned by the French flute virtuoso Louis Fleury (who had given the première of Debussy’s Syrinx). The work uses eighteenth-century French dance forms, a common practice in ‘neo-classical’ composition. Bax’s Four Pieces rescue music from an abandoned ballet originally conceived for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Sir Lennox Berkeley’s Sonatina was originally written for treble recorder; James Galway’s championship of the piece made it a staple of the flute repertoire. Howard Fergusson’s Three Sketches were composed intermittently over a period of twenty years. The theme of the third piece is a Hindu melody, ‘Koyalinya bole ambuvan’ (Cuckoos sing in the mango tree). Sonatas by York Bowen and William Alwyn complete this varied and engaging program.

REVIEW:

Seventy-seven minutes of British music for flute and piano might at first glance seem like 40 minutes too much. But that ’s without taking on board the nimble and dazzling skills of flautist Adam Walker, or the individual strengths of the works presented...a new pleasure is never far away in this most accomplished recital, full of the sounds of spring.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Edward Gregson (b. 1945), one of Britain’s most versatile and prolific composers, has gained worldwide recognition for his approachable and engaging music. With the BBC Philharmonic, Bramwell Tovey conducts orchestral works, including two recently arranged for ensemble in the Horn Concerto and Aztec Dances, that take inspiration from an array of musical and extra-musical sources, revealing the breadth of Gregson’s musical imagination.

This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra focuses on works by Perttu Haapanen (b. 1972), one of the most important and interesting Finnish composers of his generation. It includes a recently-written Flute Concerto with Yuki Koyama as soloist and conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk, and two other works conducted by Hannu Lintu: a song-cycle written for soprano Helena Juntunen and an orchestral work, Compulsion Island, written for the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Compulsion Island was written to a commission from the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and makes full use of the resources of a full-sized symphony orchestra. Haapanen creates a multi-layered and richly sonorous texture where extended instrument techniques play a significant and carefully considered role. Quiet, stagnant and expectant yet tense moments alternate with charged and punchy rhythmical passages that increase in force until the final culmination, followed by a subsiding, dreamlike and unreal epilogue. The Flute Concerto lasts about 25 minutes and is in a single movement divided into two halves featuring different materials, according to the composer. At the surface level, it comes across as a flexible and elastic structure consisting of several short sections in rapid succession, with contrasting moods either alternating or superimposed. The palette of sonorities is rich, augmented by extended instrument techniques and a number of rare sound sources such as a typewriter producing crisp rhythms and the absurd sounds of wheezing toys. Ladies’ Room for soprano and chamber orchestra was written to a commission from the Musica nova Helsinki festival. Originally written and premiered in 2007 by Helena Juntunen, it was revised by Haapanen in the following year. The texts come from a wide variety of sources: poems by conductor and mezzosoprano Jutta Seppinen, the Bible, Google, the archives of Scotland Yard and Paul Celan. Between them are four nonsense text settings that pay homage to Adolf Wolfli, an early 20th-century Swiss artist. The soprano part is highly demanding due to its wide range of vocal techniques which make Ladies’ Room a vocal virtuoso work where the virtuoso component is an integral part of the content.

This new release is the latest title in The American Bandmasters Association’s Commemorative Recording Series, and focuses on the legacy of John R. Bourgeois. Colonel John R. Bourgeois, USMC (Ret), was the 25th Director of “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band. His acclaimed career spanned nine presidential administrations from Presidents Eisenhower to Clinton. A native of Louisiana, Colonel Bourgeois is a graduate of Loyola University in New Orleans. He joined the Marine Corps in 1956 and entered The President’s Own in 1958 as a French Hornist and arranger. Named Director in 1979, Colonel Bourgeois was promoted to his present rank in 1983. He retired from active duty on July 11, 1996. As director of The President’s Own, Bourgeois was Music Adviser to the White House. He selected the musical program and directed the band in its traditional place of honor at the US Capitol for four presidential inaugurations, a Marine Band tradition dating back to 1801. He regularly conducted the Marine Band and the Marine Chamber Orchestra at the White House, appearing there more frequently than any other musician in the nation.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was one of Italy’s most influential and important composers during the 20th century. He was inspired to write for the guitar after meeting Andrés Segovia, and in the years that followed he wrote over one hundred works for the instrument. The Quintet for Guitar and String Quartet, a rare combination, reveals perfect sonority and construction with a serene Iberian mood. The Sonatina for Flute and Guitar contrasts joyfulness with poignant melodies, while the Eclogues are bucolic and lively. Written for Segovia and his wife Paquita Madriguera, the Fantasia for guitar and piano presents an expertly blended texture for this combination of instruments. Guitarist Leonard Becker is the Second Prize winner of the International Hannabach Guitar Competition 2020, held in Augsburg, Germany. He has performed with orchestras including the Pilsen Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he performed Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuezin 2019. Alongside Louis Vandory, Valerie Steenken, Elisabeth Buchner and Márton Braun he is the founder of the Tedesco-Quintett (guitar and string quartet), which won First Prize at the International Chamber Music Competition ‘Gerhard Vogt’ in 2019.

Performed by the trio for whom it was written, Paul Schoenfield's new composition "Last Silence" picks up where "Cafe Music" left off. A show stopping tour de force of excitement and emotion. Schoenfield's "Four Souvenirs" is finally released here by violinist Lev Polyakin and pianist Frances Renzi, who commissioned the work. Beautiful trios by Rota and Cui round out the album. Paul Schoenfeld‘s music is widely performed and continues to draw an ever-expanding group of fans. According to Juilliard’s Joel Sachs, “he is among those all-too-rare composers whose work combines exuberance and seriousness, familiarity and originality, lightness and depth. His work is inspired by the whole range of musical experience, popular styles both American and foreign, vernacular and folk traditions, and the ‘normal’ historical traditions of cultivated music making, often treated with sly twists. Above all, he has achieved the rare fusion of an extremely complex and rigorous compositional mind with an instinct for accessibility and a reveling in sound that sometimes borders on the manic.”

The music of Samuel Adler – born in Mannheim in 1928 but long since one of the leading figures of American music – has its roots in the Neo-Classical clarity of composers like Copland and Hindemith, who were among his teachers. The works on this album arose from a range of impulses: a Neo-Baroque concerto grosso and a tribute to Bach encase a series of tributes to lost individuals and traditions; and two jeux d’esprit – Ives’ tongue-in-cheek Variations on America and Holst’s ‘Jupiter’ from The Planets – both bring jollity in Adler’s idiomatic arrangements for string orchestra.

REVIEW:

Adler’s arrangements not only provide string orchestras the opportunity to perform these works, they offer considerable excitement and impact in their own right. The performances by the New York Classical Players and conductor Dongmin Kim are excellent throughout. The playing is incisive, tonally rich, and phrased with great care. The featured soloists are first-rate as well. Jürgen Thym’s excellent liner notes, including commentary from the composer, are brimming with information offered with erudition, clarity, and enthusiasm. Samuel Adler: Music for Chamber Orchestra is a marvelous tribute to an American musical treasure who has long distinguished himself as a composer, teacher, and writer. Recommended.

-- Fanfare

Recent scholarship on Luis Misón (Mataró, 1727–Madrid, 1766) demonstrates the growing interest among the musicological community in studying the life and work of one who is an essential composer in the history of Spanish music. Musical historiography has extolled Misón's contribution to the genre of the tonadilla escénica, a genre widely appreciated in his time and which must have had a notable influence on his instrumental music, about which less is known. His talent as a flautist was appreciated within the noble circle of the House of Alba, where musical academies were held in which Misón actively participated and for which he composed 12 sonatas for transverse flute and bass dedicated to the Duke of Alba. These pieces were located in the archives of the House of Alba and described in 1927 by José Subirá (1882–1980), but unfortunately they disappeared during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The discovery of the five hitherto unknown Sonatas for Flute and Bass by Misón represents a substantial contribution to the Spanish chamber music repertoire of the second third of the 18th century for this instrument, given the scarcity of pieces written by Hispanic composers contemporary to Misón in which the flute is definitely the real protagonist. Moreover, they are sonatas which, from a technical point of view, pose interesting challenges to the flautist, something that highlights Misón's mastery of the flute, in accordance with surviving documentation of the period.

Ortega explains that José Teixidor (c.1751–c.1811), vice-master of the Royal Chapel from 1778, considered his works to be no lesser than those of the best-known foreign composers and said of him that he was an unequalled performer on the transverse flute. The sonatas are found in five musical manuscripts preserved in the Lebrija Palace in Seville, a stately home dating from the 16th century, which in 1901 became the property of Regla Manjón y Mergelina (1851–1938), Countess of Lebrija. With regard to the sources, it seems unlikely that any of the five are autograph. (Although up to five different copyists have been identified, there is nothing to suggest that any of them could be Misón, himself.) Generally speaking, the sonatas are characterised by the importance of melody, regular phrases and steady rhythms, as can be seen in the elaborate seisillos of the Allegro moderato of the Sonata [No.3] in G major. Overall, the basso continuo line is simple – excepting the B section of the Allegro of the Sonata [No.4] in G major (undated) – allowing the role of the flute to stand out prominently. This recording is the culmination of a long process of recovery of Spanish 18th-century musical heritage that deserves to be disseminated, studied and enhanced. After more than two centuries of silence, Misón's music is heard again.