Arguably more known for his operas, the Moravian composer Leos Janacek also wrote choral and instrumental works and Rikadla presents the chamber/choral aspects of Janacek's works unfolding essentially as a survey of his musical development with his early to mid then his astoundingly prolific creativity in the latter years of his life. The conductor Reinbert de Leeuw, with the Collegium Vocale Gent and Het Collectief ensemble present these choral works and instrumental pieces with performances of great poetic energy that contributes to a more rounded appreciation of the legacy of Janacek.

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Domenico Scarlatti, the sixth child of the celebrated composer Alessandro Scarlatti, was a prolific keyboard composer, and is best known today for his 555 sonatas for keyboard. Domenico was employed by various members of European royalty and nobility in Italy, Spain and Portugal throughout his career. His style was unusual and innovative, but very few of his works were published during his lifetime.

The disc combines several of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas with Neapolitan songs by various composers of the era, exploring the influences of these songs on Scarlatti’s sonatas. Scarlatti’s style is notable for its improvisatory nature as well as its incorporation of elements of Spanish and Portuguese folk music (the composer having spent time in Lisbon, Seville and Madrid), and among the Neapolitan songs featured on the disc is the immensely popular Lo guarracino, a fast?talking and high?spirited number that narrates the story of a fish, and the lilting La Nova Gelosia. Two extracts from operas – ‘So’ li sorbe e le nespole amare’ from Leonardo Vinci’s Lo cecato fauzo and ‘Chi disse ca la femmena’ from Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s Lo frate ‘nnamorato – are also present, both of which feature a light?hearted portrayal of women. Out of the many versions of the song Quanno nascette ninno, the one by the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare was chosen for this disc, thanks to its fascinating minor modulation.

Acclaimed harpsichordist Francesco Cera is considered one of Italy’s foremost interpreters of early music. He has toured all over the world and his recordings include interpretations of 17th?century keyboard sonatas, French suites and harpsichord concertos by J.S. Bach. Italian soprano Letizia Calandro’s repertoire includes Neapolitan songs alongside the more traditional oeuvres of the Classical and Baroque periods. Having studied at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, she won the Spoleto Award and has performed the lead role in operas by composers as diverse as Monteverdi, Mozart and Verdi.

OTHER INFORMATION:
* New recording, recorded September 2009, Chisea di S. Anatolia, Colle di Tora, Rieti, Italy.
* Extensive liner notes included in English and Italian.
* Sung texts available on the Brilliant Classics website.

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Christoph Willibald Gluck is one of the great reformers of opera, departing from the tried and tested genres of opera seria in the 18th century: Metastasio's drama per musica and Rameau's tragédie lyrique. Gluck sought to restore dramatic truth to musical theatre, dispensing with long, virtuosic arias simply written to play to performers' vanity, and providing a greater musical and dramatic coherence to his operas. His focus on clarity, simplicity and the return to nature is perfectly exemplified in his great work, Orfeo ed Euridice, the first of his 'reform' operas. The work owes much to the style of French opera, with its accompanied recitative and simple vocal lines.

This historic recording from 1966 features a young Grace Bumbry, who was recognised at the Kennedy Centre Honours in 2009 as a defining figure in American arts and culture. Also featuring internationally renowned conductor Václav Neumann, the recording is an acclaimed interpretation of one of Gluck's best-loved works.

Other information:
- Includes plot synopsis and liner notes on the composer and work.
- Libretto available on www.brilliantclassics.com.

Drawn from across the composer's lengthy career, this collection of Part-Songs and Choral Works explores the great variety and range within Elgar's work for choir and voices. Along with more well-known works such as Love and Deep in my Soul there are early pieces such as O Salutaris hostia (composed for small amateur choirs) that give hints of his later mature style, through to the 1928 piece I sing the Birth - a work that shows Elgar's ability to adapt to more contemporary styles of 20th-century choral composition. The Rodolfus Choir have established themselves as one of the leading youth choirs in Britain, made up of singers aged from 16 to 25 who have been chosen from past and present members of the Eton Choral Courses for prospective choral scholars. Many members of the Choir are choral scholars, some are at music college, and most hope to make a career in music. The Rodolfus Choir and Ralph Allwood are well-known for imaginative programming, and for presenting new music. The Rodolfus Choir's recent CD recordings with Signum include music as diverse as Howells, Monteverdi, Grier, Tallis and the German Romantics. 'One can only marvel at the group's remarkable collective skill and cohesion' fanfare magazine

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ETHOS JAZZ TRIO: Ethos

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'The King's Singers, the superlative vocal sextet that has retained immaculate blend, perfect tuning and crystal diction...' (The London Times, October '05) have combined one of the greatest vocal compositions of all time with modern recording technology and customary style to produce a truly stunning recording of Thomas Tallis' 'Spem in alium'. This is a unique opportunity to hear every part in 'Spem' sung and recorded to perfection, with the six King's Singers diving the forty parts of 'Spem in alium' between them, in this multi-track recording. (CD single - SACD/CD Hybrid recording)

"Seculi sui Musicus excellentissimus" was the epitaph inscribed on his tombstone in the old Frauenkirche of Dresden -- to his contemporaries, the Saxon-born Heinrich Schütz was one of the most outstanding composers of the century, and even writers of music history today refer to him as 'Musicus poeticus ecclesiasticus', whose works were and are still the epitome of Protestant church music.

This collection is a tribute to the great Baroque composer, who received most of his training in Venice from the organist of St Mark's, Giovanni Gabrieli. The richness of colour and musical splendour of the Psalmen Davids, scored for several choruses and first to feature on the release, reflects the arts-minded Saxon court for which they were composed; next comes a collection of motets, which similarly follow in the footsteps of Venetian composition through 'painting in sound' the content of the text and dividing the choir into two or more tonal groups. The motet played a significant role in church service music, and Schütz also wrote a number of polychoral concertos for festive occasions, the affective Magnificat anima mea SWV468 for Christmas among them. Rounding off the compilation is the composer's Schwanengesang, literally meaning 'Swan Song' and deemed to be his parting gift to the world -- here Luther's version of the 'German Magnificat' at the end of the piece reveals Schütz's taking on the role of musical interpreter in the cause of Lutheran teaching.

The renowned Dresden Kreuzchor became closely associated with the works of Schütz under the directorship of Rudolf Mauersberger, who made the choir an instrument of singular appeal. Here they feature alongside a number of other distinguished German choral groups and ensembles, including the Berliner Solisten, to perform the works of a composer who represented an important transitional phase in sacred music.

Other information:
- Recordings made in 1965, 1970 and 1983--4.
- Heinrich Schütz was no doubt one of the most important composers from the period of transition from Renaissance to Baroque, a German who imbued the strict german polyphony with Italian melos of warmth and emotion. Johann Sebastian Bach considered him the greatest of his predecessors.
- Brilliant Classics has given Schütz ample due in its Schütz Edition volumes 1-4, and this new set presents some of his grandest works, the splendid Psalms of David, Polychoral Concertos and Motets and his moving Schwanengesang, music both magnificent and intimate.
- Performances in the best german choral tradition by the famous Dresdner Kreuzchor, Capella Fidicina and the Berliner Solisten.
- Booklet contains detailed notes on the composer and his music.

These are beautiful, finely-wrought and tightly-focused works standing on tense tiptoes at one of western music's most important turning points, peeking both ways.

'The science of numbers ought to be preferred as an acquisition before all others… Every art considers reason more honourable than a skill which is practised by the hand or the labour of an artisan,' wrote Boethius, one of music's earliest theorists. For Boethius music was essentially a mathematical discipline – chiefly because the regularities, predictabilities and knowability of mathematics best reflected the Creator's world. Boethius' influence was still strongly felt in the twelfth century when one small area of a relatively small city lead musical development throughout Europe certainly as never before and perhaps as never since: Notre Dame in Paris. Paris Expers Paris ('Paris has no equals') is a splendid CD celebrating the pre-eminence of the Notre Dame school and its achievements from the mid twelfth to mid thirteenth centuries. Two innovations in particular changed the course of music. Firstly harmonically: organum (virtuosic melismatic embellishment of the text in the upper solo voices). Then rhythmical innovations: the imposition of a steady beat on otherwise equal values for notes – as in plainchant. The motet (multiple, usually polyphonic, voices singing multiple texts, sacred and secular) and conductus (usually non-liturgical, or even secular, composition with up to four voices performing original texts) epitomize these innovations.

This pre-eminence in music was led by the two giant composer figures Léonin and Pérotin. They wrote against the background of the great University in Paris with scholars like Abelard, the monastic Mont Ste. Geneviève and the 'Left Bank'. It was amid this vibrant, evolving and questioning atmosphere that neo-Platonism emphasized the relationship of the visible and material with the invisible and immaterial. The essence of Gothic thinking was to bathe in harmony, coherence and unity as Gothic cathedrals bathed in the light of the Divine. It was also inevitable that theories of music should emerge that were specific to its technicalities; theories that no longer sought to explain and explore organum, say, in terms purely of Boethian mathematics. Such a development seems to have conflicted with the prevailing distinctions made by Boethius between the musicus (the speculative theoretician) and the cantor (the operative practitioner). That is, roughly a distinction between composer and performer. The distinction was all the starker since the six solo cantor clerics from the Notre Dame choir known as 'machicoti' memorized and may have improvised their organum. Their role was much more than reproduction of plainchant by this time. That non-written and 'occasional' music-making surely accounts in part for why we do not have more examples of their work. Those that we do are consequently all the more precious.

Paris Expers Paris is a CD with nine examples, ranging in length from under 2½ to nearly 18½ minutes, of the richness of this extraordinary musical development sung most expertly by the six-strong Diabolus in Musica (two tenors, baritone and three bass-baritones) in transcriptions by their director, Antoine Guerber. This is not, though, a purely didactic or dry set of historical curiosities. It's live, spirited and wholly contextualised music. Although it was recorded not in Notre Dame itself but in the Abbey of Fontevraud for the splendid acoustic of its refectory (the venue for this CD) and high dormitory.

Benedicamus Domino and Descendit de celis are three-part organa typical of the melismatic traditions established at Notre Dame by the late twelfth century and are examples of responses by the main choir to the 'specialist', élite machicoti. Sursum corda is a two-part conductus actually itself an exhortation to sing polyphonically – but carefully: 'non discordat vox a corde'! The text contains many musical terms… probably more evidence of its performers' awareness of the important musical changes through with they were passing.

Mundus vergens and Deus misertus are four-part conducti; the former lamenting the current national troubles and political instability in France at the time. The latter was probably introduced by Pérotin, who was the first to write in four parts; it sets Old and New testament texts. Olim sudor herculis is a one-part conductus whose author (for once) we know – Peter of Blois, a noteworthy scholar. Naturas deus regulis, O Maria virginei and Veri floris sub figura are three-part conducti concerning the clergy and Virgin.

These are beautiful, finely-wrought and tightly-focused works standing on tense tiptoes at one of western music's most important turning points, peeking both ways. Diabolus in Musica does the music proud. The centerpiece is the extraordinary and lengthy (over 18 minutes) Descendit de celis. The singing throughout is clear and directed, fluent and without a hint of languor yet Diabolus in Musica sing with an acute awareness of the awe in which this music deserves to be held. Such a balance (between 'edge' and reverence) is surely achieved by the enjoyment and affection which the ensemble brings to their performances, and to the occasion. The singing has a remarkably unified sound to it; the voices blend well and the balance is clean and easy on the ear. Although the weight of the ensemble is towards the lower end of the vocal range, the sound of Diabolus in Musica is reserved and serious rather than sombre.

Attractively-presented in a sturdy 'Digipak' with an informative booklet (parts of it a little hard to read: black on gray) which contains background to everything relevant except, unfortunately, Diabolus in Musica themselves – so see their site and has texts in Latin, French and English. The recording is excellent.

There are other discs of some of the music from this period, certainly by the two great exponents Léonin and Pérotin. But not all, and not all so expertly rendered as here. Paris Expers Paris is a special CD and one to buy and listen to repeatedly with real delight.

Mark Sealey, Classical Net

Classical Music

The 26th Volume of Bach Cantatas with Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan consists of three works composed for performances during the last three months of 1742. They are part of the composer's projected (but discontinued) Chorale Cantata Year, in which every cantata for a whole year was to be based on a well-known chorale rather than on the traditional gospel reading for the Sunday in question. The text of the chosen hymn was thus reworked by the librettist into poems suitable for setting into recitatives, arias, duets etc. Of the three works in question, BWV 180 (Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele) is the most famous -- based as it is on a communion hymn by Johannes Crüger. Among Bach connoisseurs, its opening chorus -- which also opens the disc -- has long been regarded as one of the most beautiful in any of the cantatas. ('One can tell from the composition that the master was working on one of his favourite melodies', wrote Albert Schweitzer.) BWV 122 (Das neugeborne Kindelein) was intended for the Sunday after Christmas, which in 1742 was also New Year's Eve, and is a meditation on the future, seen in the light of the recent birth of the Saviour. The BIS Cantata Cycle has recently been earning even more praise than usual. In the yearly best-of-lists of the critics of the German magazine Fono Forum, the whole series is put forward as Edition des Jahres, and Volume 24 was named Choc de l'année in the influential French review Le Monde de la musique, while Diapason gave it their November Diapason d'Or. In the same month Volume 25 was chosen as Disc of the Month by BBC Music Magazine, while in the December issue the Gramophone critic wrote: 'Suzuki projects the unity of each work with carefully sculpted opening choruses, well-leavened recitatives and urgent, radiant orchestral playing -- a recording series, reaching near its mid-point, of outstanding consistency.' This the 26th volume will surely be seen as a worthy successor!

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Leading young composer Will Todd performs a unique fusion of sacred choral music and jazz in his 'Mass in Blue'. This central work is complemented by beautiful musical settings of religous texts, infused with a highly individual and melodic style, bringing the composer's life-long love of traditional choral music into the 21st century with spiritual sensitivity and a contemporary edge. An accomplished jazz musician, Will Todd has played piano, saxophone and clarinet in Jazz bands from an early age and in 1999 he toured Europe, the Far and Middle East and America with his Jazz Quartet. Soprano Bethany Halliday brings an eclectic vocal style to her performance. The daughter of a Baptist pastor, her early influences were gospel, in particular the recordings of Mahalia Jackson, one of the world's greatest gospel singers. She went on to train as an opera singer but has maintained a love of Jazz and gospel music. His extensive output includes opera, musicals, oratorio, orchestral works and works for children and amateur performers. His work has been featured on Radio 3's In Tune, Classic FM and the Radio 2 Arts Programme and he has had performances of his music all over the UK as well as in the USA.

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Recorded live at The Sixteen's Handel in Oxford Festival, 2006, Elin Manahan Thomas gives a performance of captivating communication and sparkling intelligence in these stunning and contrasting Handel Cantatas, bringing to life the world of four women, all of whom have been betrayed by love and its deceitful charms.

Volume 25 of Masaaki Suzuki's Bach cantata series arrived on my desk out of sequence, providing further proof of that old adage, "Better late than never"? The disc comes in a slipcase marked Jubilee Edition, along with a separate booklet containing a celebratory essay (in four languages), a slew of encomiums (none, unfortunately, from me), and, best of all, an index of the cantatas in the first 25 volumes, arranged in BWV order. One hopes that it will be updated periodically. Three superb cantatas, dating from September and October 1724, make this one of the most attractive volumes in the series. All three are cast in the chorale-cantata format with splendid opening choruses that further illustrate Bach?s endless ingenuity. Cantata 78 opens with an intensely expressive chaconne over a lamento bass that is sounded 27 times. (For numerology buffs, 27=3 x 3 x 3 or 3 3 is a representation of the Trinity.) BWV 99 has a more joyful feel, with chorus and orchestra alternating in concertante style. No. 114 projects an aura of strength and confidence, its choral statements punctuated by an energetic ritornello. All three cantatas also feature memorable arias for tenor with an obbligato traverse flute. Many observers have pointed out that Bach had a virtuoso flutist at his disposal at the time, but Klaus Hofmann?s notes suggest that a superior tenor soloist may have been available then as well. BWV 78, Jesu der du meine Seele , one of the most popular of all the cantatas, contains a duet for soprano and alto that qualifies as a ?Bach moment???a movement you might profitably play for an uninitiated listener who wants to know what the fuss over JSB is all about. Did I sense a hint of impatience in Suzuki?s pacing for No. 78? If so, it would be a rare blip in an epic venture that to date has maintained a remarkably and consistently high standard. Most highly recommended, nonetheless.


FANFARE: George Chien

The three cantatas on Volume 34 were first performed in February and March 1725, in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where Bach was employed. The first one, Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, was composed for the Feast of the Annunciation, and celebrates the joyous news brought to Mary of the coming birth of Christ in a suitably jubilant manner. A particular feature is the unusual scoring - as well as a string orchestra there are two horns, two oboi da caccia (ie. alto oboes) and two solo violins. BWV126 (Erhalt uns, herr, bei deinem Wort) is in a rather more dramatic vein, with its exhortation to God to support mankind against the enemies of the faith. the recitative 'Der Menschen Gunst und Macht' for alto and tenor is particularly noteworthy: Bach has cast the entire movement in the form of a dialogue, creating a fusion of recitative, arioso and chorale that is without equal in its era. The disc ends on a more resigned note with BWV127, based on a hymn which is in fact a song of death, ending with a plea for the forgiveness of sins. The soprano aria 'The soul will rest in Jesus' hands' combines a certainty of belief and a longing for death are combined in one of Bach's most beautiful and individual cantata movements, and the simple four-part final chorale concludes with an exquisite sequence of harmonies that lends a dreamlike quality to the words 'until we slumber blessedly'.

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Reviews:

The moments of hustle and bustle are wonderfully easy-going, while the Berlin RSO's corporate virtuosity is often breathtaking - I can't remember when I last heard the finale's final couple of minutes, from the outrageous whooping horns to the finish line, rattled through with such apparently nonchalant ease.

– Gramophone

Those who don't know the least often heard of the symphonic poems should be amazed by Marek Janowski's sympathetic, detailed interpretation; but even Straussians don't often get to hear Die Tageszeiten. I fell in love with the work, contrary to all previously held common wisdom on its not being very good, and have played it over and over. This would be worth the cost of the disc alone, but Janowski's Domestica is also up there among the best, as you get to hear more inner detail than on any other recording.

– BBC Music Magazine

TCHAIKOVSKY: Songs (Complete), Vol. 2

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro (Highlights)