Known for his characteristically deep sound and formidable virtuosity, violinist Monte Belknap joins concert pianist Barbara Allen to perform the complete collection of Beethoven's sonatas for piano and violin in this new 4-disc set.

Belknap has numerous film credits, including serval as a soloist. He regularly performs with the Uinta Trio and the Deseret String Quartet. Belknap has been a violin professor at the BYU School of Music since 2003, and his former students concertize and perform with major symphonies around the world.

Allen has concertized widely, playing solo chamber music and concerto repertoire. Also a singer and a conductor, she has been music director of the Utah Lyric Opera and is currently vocal coach for the BYU Opera Theatre.

Pre-order your copy today! This release is scheduled to ship on or about Friday, October 8.

Also available: 20th Century Foxtrots, Vol. 1 and 20th Century Foxtrots, Vol. 2

Gramophones and radios brought the voice of America, its fashion, its carelessness and joie de vivre into every corner of Europe during the Roaring Twenties, and no composer could remain immune to the hot jazz influences of the Foxtrot, Shimmy and Charleston. This third volume of jazzy piano dances features composers from nine Central and Eastern European countries, from Misha Spoliansky’s hypnotizing Valse Boston ‘Morphium’ to Leonid Polovinkin’s extremely entertaining and refreshingly futuristic approach to the genre. Gottlieb Wallisch continues his ‘most surprising and consistently charming recording project’ (The New York Times on Volume 2, GP814).

Following the acclaimed Brahms recording in 2021, Emmanuel Despax presents his sixth album with Signum Classics: Chopin Piano Concertos (chamber versions) with Chineke! Chamber Ensemble. “Chopin’s Piano Concertos are among his first and most significant points of departure, a marked liberation from the constraints of an early but short-lived respect for custom and tradition... I would say that the exceptional nature of this Chopin recording lies in the combination of the chamber music, quintet slimmed-down version of the Piano Concertos complemented by a pianist who plays with an almost epic size and grandeur.” (Bryce Morrison)

Emmanuel Despax has gained worldwide recognition as a singular artist, whose interpretations bring a rare sincerity and imagination to the music. Chineke! was founded in 2015 by the double bass player, Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE, to provide career opportunities for established and up-and-coming Black and ethnically diverse classical musicians in the UK and Europe. The Chineke! Chamber Ensemble comprises the principal players of the Chineke! Orchestra.

REVIEWS:

Chineke!'s accomplished and delightful playing forced at least this particular listener to pay greater than usual attention to music that can sometimes seem little more than a lengthy introduction to the piano-enriched score to come. This is, then, a quite delightful and distinguished release with an individual character of its own. It has been expertly recorded, moreover, in first-rate sound. While, as we’ve noted, the chamber versions of the Chopin concertos have done rather well on CD over the years, the new disc can hold its own with any of the others and will certainly not disappoint anyone who buys it.

--MusicWeb International

[The] brilliant young French pianist, Emmanuel Despax, already well known in Europe and according to Gramophone magazine, “A formidable talent, fleet of finger, elegant of phrase and a true keyboard colourist”...collected five string players (the Cheneke! Chamber Ensemble) to perform Chopin’s two piano concertos with the orchestra reduced to a string quintet, so what we have here is effectively a piano sextet. 

Chopin’s orchestration has been much criticized over the last centuries...but since the piano plays almost continuously, this version with smaller forces is quite enjoyable.

--The WholeNote

Christopher Glynn continues his series of Schubert in English releases with a new recording of ‘The Fair Maid of the Mill’ (Die schöne Müllerin) with acclaimed Scottish tenor Nicky Spence. Set to a new translation by writer and director Jeremy Sams, Willhelm Müller’s direct and emotionally-charged poetry became the basis of Schubert’s first cycle to tell a complete story over the course of its 20 songs. Nicky Spence is one of Scotland’s proudest sons and his unique skills as a singing actor and the rare honesty of his musicianship have earned him a place at the top of the classical music profession. Nicky won a record contract with Decca records while still studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and then took a place as an inaugural Harewood Artist at the ENO. Christopher Glynn is a Grammy award-winning pianist, praised for his ‘breathtaking sensitivity’ (Gramophone), ‘irrepressible energy, wit and finesse’ (The Guardian) and ‘perfect fusion of voice and piano’ (BBC Music Magazine). He is also Artistic Director of the Ryedale Festival, where he has been praised as a ‘visionary’ and ‘inspired programmer’ (The Times).

REVIEWS

"The Fair Maid of the Mill [is] extraordinary: For the first time, as a native English speaker, I found myself understanding this song cycle on a more intimate and revelatory level...The meticulousness of word-for-word accuracy is traded for emotional accuracy. Playwright and director Jeremy Sams was commissioned to write this new translation, and his background in both opera and musical theater lends itself well to finding the right words to convey poetic, emotional, and dramatic honesty.

Tenor Nicky Spence’s own sense of crossover theatricality heightens the immediacy and intimacy of the cycle and Sams’s new texts with a verdant tenor that blooms and contracts in emotional fits and starts. (These beats are both offset and at times juxtaposed by pianist Christopher Glynn...) As the journeyman’s dream begins to collapse on itself...Spence spits out his pleas in a fit of jealousy and panic. The clarity with which he delivers the words makes it easy to slip into the language of Schubert’s work and tap into the small details that render the story so devastating at the end—try listening to him sing of how his love 'loves hunting green' without your throat catching a bit. It’s these small details that make this English Müllerin so rich and compulsively listenable.

--Van Magazine (Olivia Giovetti)

This is the third in the Signum label’s sequence of Schubert song cycles using an English version of the texts by Jeremy Sams. His is in no sense a literal translation and is never in the least archly “poetic”, but is instead couched in relatively, plain, direct English which captures the spirit and directness of the original German while jettisoning any faux-Romantic or medieval archaisms such as “fain would I”. The translation is vernacular and quotidian but not modish or vulgar – and Sams does a fine job of reproducing the rhyming, strophic form of some songs, finding workable rhymes which do not sound forced, so in “Mine” we hear “sound, round, resound” and “found”, and “shine, wine, intertwine, combine” and “mine” sequentially to reproduce the effect of the German. The freedom of the English into which some songs are rendered might initially take the listener aback but a moment’s reflection will confirm the aptness and fidelity of Sams’ rendering; hence, the opening song begins “A miller loves to sit and dream of somewhere” rather than “To wander is the miller’s delight, to wander” or some such precious transliteration – and I know which I prefer. Sometimes the translation is both felicitous and amusing, as when in “Impatience” (Ungeduld) Sams picks up on the German: “ich möcht es sän auf jedes frische Beet/ Mit Kressensamen” (I’d like to sow it in every fresh bed with cress seeds) and translates that colloquially as “I want to sow the words in watercress” so that it rhymes with “happiness” in the next line, and in “The Hunter” the miller girl’s cabbage patch (Kohlgarten) is transformed into a “strawberry bed” so that “fruit” rhymes conveniently with “shoot”. Certain lines impress themselves immediately upon the mind of the listener by their memorability, such as the alliterative “The sound of rushing water has mesmerised my mind” in the second song.

Nicky Spence’s diction is so pellucid as to render the provision of the English texts almost superfluous but such thoughtfulness on the part of the label remains a welcome gesture. [Spence's] beautiful, flexible, easily-produced sound...never falters; his tone encompasses both sweetness and power as required and his knack of placing just the right emphasis or applying a momentary pause in the words without unduly disrupting the vocal line is apparent throughout. I particularly like the way he can introduce a desperate sighing note into his timbre without it turning mawkish. Christopher Glynn supports him with some of the most subtle and sensitive pianism I have even heard applied to this work; his playing is by turns as fluid, sparkling and turbulent as rushing water. He and Spence make an ideally matched partnership – fresh and immediate, presenting it in a manner which could easily win new adherents to this miraculous song cycle but, in Glynn’s words, is also capable of 'offering a new perspective to those who know it well.'

--MusicWeb International (Ralph Moore)

“Après un rêve” is an ode to the French Belle Époque repertoire, depicting the beauty of dreams and the night. The album is an opportunity to hear and perhaps discover rarely played / rarely recorded wonderful works (Chaminade Nocturne, Duparc Aux étoiles, Poulenc Les soirées de Nazelles), alongside central pillars of the repertoire, and includes a world premiere of Despax’s arrangement of Après un rêve. The album is attributed to his grandfather, Jacques Charpentreau, a French poet who adored this repertoire and frequently drew inspiration from the night in his works. Despax has curated some of his poetry, as well as works by other poets he admired to complement this music, taking the listener on an immersive poetic and musical journey through this noctur- nal landscape.

REVIEW:

Despax has recorded Bach, Brahms, Chopin, but the works here particularly suit his sensibility. In Maurice Ravel’s haunting masterpiece Gaspard de la Nuit, he masters the ferocious challenges with ease, delicacy, strength.

-- The Guardian (UK)

Maltese composer Karl Fiorini is a European without frontiers – the compositions in this album reflect his early detachment from a Mediterranean identity towards a more varied and intense sound world. Trio Lamina features elements of Bartók’s ‘night music’ in its complex sub-sections, whereas Fiorini’s two piano studies, which predate his move to Paris, already exude a Gallic ambience. Influenced by North African folk music, the Piano Trio expands his global reach, and the Piano Sonata, a gritty virtuoso concert piece, shifts geographical influence towards Eastern Europe to powerful effect. All of these world première recordings were recorded in the presence of the composer.

REVIEWS:

This program is a shining example of a 21st-century composer who has stepped back from the extremist styles of the mid-late 20th century to re-embrace communication with an audience, but has taken elements from those styles into his own armory.

Karl Fiorini (b. 1979) references Minimalism alongside Lisztian bravura in the first of his Piano Études (2007–08), Middle Eastern syncopation in his 2017 Piano Sonata, and Neoclassical momentum plus Webernian fragmentation in the Trio Lamina (2002).

He draws on the characteristics of recent schools without adhering to their strict rules or specific aims. He knows his instruments, and his chamber music on this showing is bracingly virtuosic. Like other contemporary composers such as Francisco Coll, he has created a strong voice by synthesizing disparate elements so they emerge as subtle flavors, to use a cooking metaphor. (Much 21st-century music resembles modern fusion cuisine.)

The latest work on this program is a quartet, In the Midst of Things (2019), utilizing the same instrumental combination as Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. I think Fiorini deliberately echoes that seminal work in the first movement, which begins with a languorous cello melody accompanied by full, stately chords from the piano, but he soon turns away from it. By the time we reach the closing Presto movement we are in a bustling world of earthy joie de vivre of a type Messiaen never attempted. Again, Eastern rhythms feature.

I greatly enjoyed these examples of Fiorini’s work. He may be an instinctive composer as he claims, but his instinct is clearly based in a solid grounding of acquired knowledge and continual exploration. The sound and performances are excellent. For those interested in new music, this disc is an exciting and not overly demanding example.

-- Fanfare

The early Trio Lamina (2002) for violin, clarinet, and piano sports an arch form and a spooky atmosphere reminiscent of Bartok. The Two Piano Etudes (2008) have a Gallic neo-Impressionism; and the Piano Trio (2005) has echoes of North African folk music in the use of hexachords and modes in retrograde and inversion. The Piano Sonata (2017) is a dense and demanding concert piece inspired by the music of Eastern Europe.

In the Midst of Things (2019) is a four-movement work for clarinet and piano trio that takes a Beethoven-like approach to structure, balancing intricate theory with carefully timed emotion. The performers bring out the best in the scores, rendering them all with marvelous skill, vigor, transparency, and commitment[.]

-- American Record Guide

Schubert moved to Vienna in early 1817, which was the center of musical activities in Europe at that time. Schubert focused strongly upon composing piano sonatas, and the result was these four superb works. Korean-born pianist Sookkyung Cho brings these sonatas truly to life. Noted for her sensitive and imaginative (New York Concert Review) playing, Sookkyung Cho has been captivating worldwide audiences with her personal, thoughtful expressionist style. She has appeared in venues such as Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, Sarasota Opera House, Baltimore Museum of Art, Montreal Conservatory, Beaux concerts de la releve in Quebec, Château de Fontainebleau in France, and Zijingang Theater at Zhejiang University in China, among others, and was recently heard on Chicagos WFMT.

Selim Palmgren, a native of Finland and a student of Busoni, was one of the most prominent and prolific Nordic composer-pianists since Edvard Grieg, with works that were widely performed by some of the most notable concert pianists of his day. From early pieces influenced by Chopin via the tour de force of his only surviving Piano Sonata, to the darker Autumn Prologue – this is the first volume of a complete edition that includes première recordings of unpublished works, showcasing every side of Palmgren’s varied character. Jouni Somero (b. 1963) is one of the most active performers among present Finnish musicians. He has given over 3,100 concerts in many countries worldwide. His wide repertoire includes all the solo piano works of Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Bortkiewicz, as well as seldom heard music by, among others, Alkan, Godowsky, Rubinstein, Reinhold, Godard, Cui and Gottschalk.

Soprano Patrice Michaels, “a formidable interpretative talent” (The New Yorker), and collaborative pianist extraordinaire Kuang-Hao Huang offer Notorious RBG in Song, an album of world-premiere recordings saluting the life and work of legal pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg in celebration of her completion of 25 years on the United States Supreme Court. Ginsburg, a longtime crusader for equal rights, has become a pop culture icon known as “Notorious RBG.”

Michaels, a vocalist of “spectacular and diverse gifts” (Journal of Singing) is also a gifted composer. Her nine-song cycle, ‘The Long View’, illuminates key aspects of Justice Ginsburg’s personal and professional life through letters, remembrances, conversations, and even Court opinions. The album concludes with songs by American composer Stacy Garrop, winner of many prestigious awards and commissions; JUNO Award-winning Canadian composer Vivian Fung; prolific art-song composer Lori Laitman; and an aria from Derrick Wang’s new comic opera, Scalia/Ginsburg.

American composer Stacy Garrop, recipient of many prestigious awards and commissions, based her deeply moving “My Dearest Ruth” on the farewell love letter the Justice’s husband, Georgetown University law professor Martin Ginsburg, wrote shortly before his death in 2010. The aria “You are Searching in Vain for a Bright-Line Solution,” from Derrick Wang’s opera Scalia/Ginsburg, which captured widespread media attention, crystallizes Justice Ginsburg’s views on interpreting the U.S. Constitution. JUNO Award-winning Canadian composer Vivian Fung’s humorous “Pot Roast à la RBG” provides directions for preparing the beef dish, using Justice Ginsburg’s own words as related in the text by daughter Jane Ginsburg. Prolific art-song composer Lori Laitman’s setting of the Emily Dickinson poem “Wider than the Sky” wasn’t written with Ginsburg in mind, but it was performed at her 80th birthday celebration because it perfectly embodied her intellectual breadth.

REVIEW:

This is a difficult production to review, not just because Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become such a significant figure in modern American life, but because the range of her achievements—whether as a jurist or as a wife, mother, opera maven, attorney, professional colleague and feminist icon—resists purely musical treatment. That’s not a reason to hesitate in offering her this lovingly produced tribute. Like RBG herself, who responded to the notion that women had no place in the legal profession by going ahead and doing it anyway, Cedille General Manager Jim Ginsburg (her son) and singer Patrice Michaels (her daughter-in-law) have taken the plunge with evident gusto.

The main item here is The Longview, an imposing portrait of RBG in nine songs composed by Michaels for voice and piano in an attractive, post-modern tonal idiom. There are vivid and beautiful numbers here, especially the central Anita’s Story, a wonderful tale of the power of Ginsburg’s words to change a life; but for many listeners the main interest will lie in the eighth song’s quotations of Ginsburg’s own legal opinions. Imagine setting this to music to get an idea of what Michaels is up to: “I have said before and reiterate here that only an ostrich could regard the supposedly neutral alternatives as race unconscious.” What results from this effort is not so much a conventional song cycle as a theater piece—I could readily imagine it staged, particularly as Michaels, whose voice is hardly conventionally beautiful but whose intelligent artistry is beyond question, performs it here.

The remainder of the program consists of four songs by four different composers, all inspired by RBG’s life and legend. Vivian Fung’s “Pot Roast à la RBG” is the most amusing; Stacy Garrop’s “My Dearest Ruth”, a love letter written by husband Martin Ginsburg from his death bed, is the most touching. I suspect that more than a few tears were shed both here and elsewhere during this project. Through it all, Michaels receives ideally sensitive support from pianist Kuang-Hao Huang, while Cedille’s engineering, as usual, is first class. The final impression that emerges is a portrait of a family as much as of an individual—a very remarkable family indeed. I suspect that RBG may regard this as her greatest achievement of all.

– ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

This recording has been released in honor of Ursula Mamlok's 100th birthday, February 1, 2023. Mamlok Vol. 6, featuring new recordings made in Berlin and New York City, contains works from the German-American composer's last creative period- Mosaics (2011) for piano 4 hands, and Terzianum (2006) for violin and flute. Vol. 6 contains works from more than a half century of the distinguished German-American composer's career, dating back to her Suite for Four Cellos composed in 1957. Bridge's Ursula Mamlok series began under the composer's supervision, and continues with this fascinating retrospective.

Philip Glass has become an iconic figure in American music. His works are often inspired by collaborations with other leading musicians, and the proposal of an “American Four Seasons” by the violinist Robert McDuffie to reflect Vivaldi’s famous masterpiece resulted in a concerto which evokes the Baroque spirit of early 18th-century violin tradition. With the Concerto’s range of moods, listeners are invited to decide for themselves which season the music evokes. The Violin Sonata sees Glass’s melodic and harmonic language haunted by the ghosts of Brahms, Faure and Franck, “the meditative-ness of this piece bringing a unique energy” for award-winning violinist Piotr Plawner.