Classical
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Agitata / Galou, Dantone, Accademia Bizantina
Delphine Galou is renowned and admired for her musicality and her appealing timbre. She has taken part in many productions of Baroque music and recordings of operas (notably by Vivaldi), but this is her first recital. It is a programme of sacred music, motets, cantatas and excerpts from oratorios, which in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were influenced by the increasingly fashionable genre of opera. From the famous ‘Agitata infido flatu’ from Vivaldi’s oratorio Juditha triumphans, here counterpointed by an aria from another setting of the story of Judith composed by Jommelli, to Stradella’s Lamentations and Porpora’s magnificent motet ‘In procella sine stella’, Delphine Galou covers a wide range of spiritual emotions. She is accompanied by the excellent Accademia Bizantina under its director and harpsichordist Ottavio Dantone. A concerto byGregori and a sinfonia by Caldara complete this release, which includes several world premiere recordings.
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REVIEW:
This is a treasure trove of rare music, and Galou is the perfect singer to introduce us to it, thanks to an agile and comfortable technique (hear the way she sails effortlessly through her full compass in a single phrase in the first aria of the Porpora). The orchestral playing is keen as mustard and filled with typically telling detail by director Ottavio Dantone. A lovely disc of discoveries.
– Gramophone
Schumann: Dichterliebe / Pregardien, Le Sage, Piau
Bach: Toccatas, BWV 910-916 / Rannou
After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue and Pink collections (a total of 56 reissues), which brought the pearls from the Baroque catalogues of the house labels back into the spotlight, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to rediscover more Baroque treasures and rarities. Like the last series, this fifth installment also opens up to the Classical (Mozart) or Renaissance (Dufay) repertories – recordings that are an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history. This series’ reissues are performed by the finest musicians in the field; most of these recordings received one or more awards on their first release. The albums come with proper booklets, including notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from many different backgrounds illustrate the covers of the series with their works: this time the main theme is the color white. The present album features Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccatas, BWV 910-916, performed by Blandine Rannou.
Byrd: Harpsichord Music / Leonhardt

The harpsichord isn't the most ingratiating instrument to listen to for long periods, but when you hear one that's well-made--full-bodied, with a resonance that's complementary and well-integrated across registers (no clangorous bass trying to meld with tinny treble), you're in for what can be a very satisfying experience. And just how satisfying depends on the player and how he or she uses the particular instrument's registers and stops, and how clearly the fingering articulates the rhythms, which means a knowledgable and skillful managing of the spaces between the notes as well as the notes themselves. Gustav Leonhardt needs no introduction to fans of the harpsichord or of early music in general; he's one of the pioneers of modern technique and scholarship. And his instrument, a copy of the famous 1579 Lodewijk Theewes claviorgan by Malcolm Rose, is a magnificent example of 16th-century keyboard construction. This harpsichord can really make a sound--and the recording (you can really turn it up!) fully complements the instrument's very personable timbre and room-filling dynamic range. Not that Byrd's music is especially flamboyant--but the harpsichord's substantial tone allows these 14 pieces to move easily from parlor to concert hall with no degradation of their subtle structures or genteel dance origins. There's nothing overtly virtuosic in Byrd's writing--but that's the point. These works were for relatively ordinary folks to enjoy--and there's no doubt that if you have any interest in harpsichord music at all, when you hear Leonhardt's performances you will be among them. [1/12/2006]
--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com
Tongues of Fire
Nordic Journey, Vol. 7
Lemare Affair
ECLECTIC - BEING ME
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 21, 23 & 26
Scenes & Fantasies
Great Organ Gala!
Orpheus Anglorum / Genov
John Johnson and Antony Holborne share much in common, in their music and in their careers, but this album, in setting their work side by side, reveals their individual style and approach to the instrument. It is assumed that they both were born in the 1540s, without authoritative record, but their work in the royal court of the 1560s is attested. Johnson made his career as an accomplished performer, while Holborne’s energies were focused on writing for the instrument. In the case of Johnson, the pavans, galliards and grounds recorded by Yavor Genov incorporate an amalgam of native and foreign (especially Italian) elements. His works show the English taste for cross-relations, surprising harmonic and tonal relationships and, above all, variation. However, like Holborne, he developed the form of the pavan during the course of his career, endowing it with increasing richness of ornamentation and expression, to be enjoyed in full in the melancholy undertow of the Passingmeasures Pavan. Holborne’s lute music is still more painstakingly elaborate, designed perhaps less for public show than private reflection, to give as much pleasure to the musician as to his courtly audience. With two albums on Brilliant, of music by Kapsberger and Zamboni, the young Bulgarian lutenist has introduced himself to international audiences and proved to be a thoroughly sympathetic interpreter of this idiom which trades on subtle intimacies of phrase, decoration and inflection.
Couperin: Complete Pieces de clavecin, Vol. 5 / Kroll
This is volume 5 in Centaur's recording of the complete Pieces de Clavecin, performed on harpsichord by Mark Kroll. Mark Kroll has made a specialty of Couperin throughout his long and distinguished career. Mark Kroll has performed on four continents as a harpsichordist and fortepianist, in both solo recital and as a collaborative chamber musician. Highlights include an appearance as the official guest of the city of Barcelona; featured soloist in Germany’s Regensburg Early Music Festival, France’s Festival Ambronay and the Bordeaux Hummel Festival; two concerts for the Czech Republic’s Prague Spring Festival; and recitals at Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Foundation, Rome’s Conservatorio Santa Caecilia and Associazione Musicale Romana, Poland’s Dni Bachowski, and Slovenija’s Radovljica Festival. This recording was made on a 1978 Franco-Flemish style double manual harpsichord by William Hyman and D. Jacques Way at the Harpsichord Clearing House, Rehobeth, Massachusetts.
Ballard: Premier livre de luth, 1611 / Kolb
American Vistas
Debussy: Melodies / Windsor, Ballista
Debussy wrote songs throughout his career, beginning at the age of 18 with Nuit d’étoiles, with which this collection also begins. Most of his vocal output was inspired by the singers he encountered as a young man in the fashionable salons of fin-de-siecle Paris, and in particular the soprano Blanche Vasnier: from that time, Debussy’s songs resembled an amorous diary of dreams and desires of infinite sweetness, entrusted to a voice capable of the utmost seduction. The epilogue to his love story with Vasnier is heard in Apparition, after which Lorna Windsor moves to the years of Debussy in Rome, and in particular his sumptuous settings of Baudelaire. There follow the much more elusive settings of Verlaine and Rimbaud, dating from his ‘impressionist’ and even ‘post-impressionist’ late years, and often inspired by his encounter with the soprano Mary Garden, the first Mélisande. Lorna Windsor has established a reputation as a specialist in contemporary music: her catalogue on Brilliant Classics includes the songs with piano by John Cage (8850) and a more recent, wide-ranging album of solo-vocal music by Feldman, Kagel, Kurtág and others. She also has considerable experience in French repertoire, having studied with the doyen of French baritones, Gérard Souzay, and given performances in France of Offenbach and Satie, as well as recording the songs of Satie. A further point of interest to the album concerns the piano used by Antonio Ballista: a 1923 Pleyel. Ballista himself was born just 13 years after the piano was made, and for more than half a century he formed half of one of the best-known and most recorded piano duos of their time, in partnership with fellow Italian Bruno Canino. Though he has accompanied many eminent singers such as Cathy Berberian, Anna Caterina Antonacci and Kim Criswell, his work with singers has been very rarely represented on record, making this album a collector’s item in Ballista’s distinguished career as well as a ravishingly idiomatic record of French song.
Philippe Entremont: Complete Piano Solo Recordings on Columbia Masterworks
It was in 1958 that a fabulously talented 23-year-old French pianist made his name in the musical world with the release of his debut concerto recording for Columbia Masterworks. That coupling of the Grieg A minor and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, was the first of many best-selling albums that Philippe Entremont would record for Columbia over the next two decades.
In 2014, Sony Classical issued a set containing all of his concerto recordings. Now, to mark Entremont’s 85th birthday in 2019, Sony is pleased to announce the release of his complete solo recordings at budget price.
Philippe Entremont was born in Reims to two professional musicians who were also his first teachers. He then studied with the legendary pianist Marguerite Long and entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he won numerous prizes. When he was only 16, he won the prestigious Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition. European tours soon followed as well as his Carnegie Hall debut in 1953: playing concertos by Liszt E flat Concerto and André Jolivet, he “brought down the house” with his “technical and musical mastery” (New York Times). The new release, which contains many recordings never before issued, ranges from Entremont’s 1956 Chopin recital originally released on CBS’s Epic label to a recital of keyboard favorites he recorded in Vienna in 1985. There is Entremont’s Debussy, played “with bold splashes of color...and tremendous warmth” (High Fidelity) and his Liszt. The many other recitals in this capacious, newly remastered reissue showcase composers ranging from Rameau, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Kuhlau, Clementi, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and Mendelssohn to Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. There is Spanish music by Granados, Albeniz and Falla. And, naturally, there is an abundance of French music – works by Fauré, Ravel, Satie, Poulenc and Saint-Saëns. Two very special albums recorded in 1979 deserve separate mention: a coupling of Dohnányi “Nursery Song” Variations, the Strauss Burleske and the Litolff Scherzo, with Okko Kamu conducting the National Philharmonic, and the delectable recital from Paris in which Philippe Entremont accompanies the great soprano Régine Crespin in mélodies by Ravel and Satie.
Locus Iste / Nethsingha

Locus Iste celebrates two milestones for the Choir of St John's College, Cambridge: as well as 2019 marking the 150th anniversary of the consecration of the college chapel, this release is coincidentally the choir's 100th recording – 60 years on from George Guest’s iconic first recording of ‘Hear my prayer’ for Argo, released in 1959. Directed by Andrew Nethsingha, the programme makes great use of the chapel's renowned acoustic, and celebrates the choirs past, present and future – including an anthem by a former director of music, a motet by one of their recent student composers and the cello-playing of a current undergraduate. The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge is one of the finest collegiate choirs in the world – known and loved by millions from its broadcasts, concert tours and recordings. Founded in the 1670s, the Choir is known for its rich, warm and distinctive sound, its expressive interpretations and its ability to sing in a variety of styles.
Gloria Tibi Trinitas
Martinu: Songs
Carlevaro: Guitar Music / Cappelli
This new release presents an absorbing portrait of Abel Carlevaro (1916-2001) through his music as performed by Cristiano Poli Cappelli, an Italian guitarist making his second album for Brilliant Classics. The first was of guitar music by another relatively forgotten figure, Alexander Tansman, and it was enthusiastically reviewed by Classical Guitar magazine: ‘Highly recommended!’ Like Tansman, Carlevaro studied with Andres Segovia, the father of the modern guitar, during the 1930s. However, he broke away from his master’s teachings in order to make his own experiments in both guitar manufacture and composition. His music caught the ear of Heitor Villa-Lobos, another South American innovator, and it embraces the widest stylistic range captured by Poli Cappelli on this album, from the delicate watercolours of the Preludios Americanos (1969-74) to the vivid brushstrokes and abstract form of Cronomias (1972). Carlevaro’s later music returned often to the milonga, a tango-related dance popularised in the classical sphere by Astor Piazzolla. Milonga para Ling (1999) is brief but saturated with melancholy, while to the Milonga Oriental (1994) belongs one of the composer’s happiest melodic inspirations. Later still, a pair of milonga suites describe a peaceful return to the composer’s heritage. An essential acquisition for guitar aficionados, but also a collection of beautiful South American melodies that deserve to travel more widely.
Bach: Complete Cantatas / Koopman, Amsterdam Baroque
On this new release, Ton Koopman has gathered together every one of Bach’s cantatas. Finally reprinted after some years, this is a must-have reference collection. Antonius Gerhardus Michael (Ton) Koopman is a Dutch conductor, organist and harpsichordist. He is also professor at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. In April 2003 he was knighted in the Netherlands, receiving the Order of the Netherlands Lion. Koopman’s Bach Cantatas project is the most ambitious project of his career. He finished the project in 2005.
Bach: Cantatas BWV 169 & 82
Istanpitta: Danses Florentines du Trecento / Agnel, Nick, Tournier, Chemirani
Following on from the success of the Red and Yellow series (a total of twenty-eight reissues), which have restored to the limelight the treasures of the label’s Baroque music catalogues, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to renew acquaintance with further gems of the Baroque as well as a number of rarities. This third series also expands to embrace the Classical repertory (Mozart, Haydn etc.) and other cultures, notably those of the East, in recordings that form an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history. The fourteen reissues are performed by the leading musicians in the relevant repertory; most of these discs received one or more press distinctions on their first release. They are accompanied by full booklets, with articles in three languages (English, French, German) and richly illustrated chronologies. A wide range of photographers have provided the cover illustrations for the series, this time with the colour blue as the unifying thread.
