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The Organ of St. Bavo, Haarlem / Nolan
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REVIEW:
His performance of Messerer’s arrangement of the Bach chaconne has grandeur and bite.
– BBC Music Magazine
Subotnick, Vol. 4: Complete Piano Works
Beethoven Unbound - Live from Wigmore Hall / Williams
A stunning release, Beethoven Unbound is presented to mark the completion of Llyr Williams’ monumental Beethoven cycle at Wigmore Hall and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and was recorded live at Wigmore Hall over three years and nine recitals. As well as the complete piano sonatas, the release also features other works including the 32 Variations in C minor, Eroica Variations, Opus 126 Bagatelles and the Diabelli Variations, a total of almost 14 hours of music.
This is Williams’ fourth album on Signum Classics. Williams comments on the album and the partnership with Sherman: “Rather than adopt the chronological approach, I have arranged the works roughly in the order that I played them in the concerts... This has sometimes allowed for creativity in putting the pieces together. Working with Judy on this project has been a joy and a privilege. It was sad to reach the end – but at least we still have a Schubert cycle to look forward to!”
Williams has developed a reputation as one of the finest exponents of Beethoven, since giving his first Beethoven cycle in Perth in 2010, and winning a South Bank Sky Arts Award in 2012 for an epic two-week marathon in Edinburgh. The Guardian said of one of his RWCMD cycle recitals in 2016: “Williams’ already considerable stature as a Beethoven interpreter seems to grow with every performance” (Rian Evans, 25 March 2016) and The Independent commented on a Wigmore recital: “Williams treats it [the keyboard] as an extension of his body, and with the three Opus 10 sonatas plus the Diabelli Variations he took us onto an altogether higher plane” (Michael Church, 12 October 2016).
Kernis: Dreamsongs - 3 Concertos / Neubauer, Roman, Miller, Royal Northern Sinfonia
Winner of the 2002 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, 1998 Pulitzer Prize, and 2011 Nemmers Award, Aaron Jay Kernis is one of America’s most honored composers. His music appears prominently on concert programs worldwide, and he has been commissioned by America’s preeminent performing organizations and artists, including the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco, Toronto, and Melbourne (AU) Symphonies. The Viola Concerto – composed for the soloist Paul Neubauer – was in its first instance inspired and informed by the viola music of Robert and Clara Schumann, but takes on a number of other influences. Taking the performers own interest in folk music as an influence too, the final movement A Song My Mother Taught Me is based on the well-known Yiddish song Tumbalalaika. Dreamsongs also follows folk influences, following inspiration from sources including aboriginal ‘dreamsongs’ and the West African djembe drum. A virtuosic work, it was developed in collaboration with the cellist Joshua Roman who features as soloist in this recording. Conductor Rebecca Miller leads the Royal Northern Sinfonia in the final work Concerto with Echoes, inspired by the Sixth Brandenburg Concerto.
In Damascus
Chopin: 24 Preludes, Berceuse, Barcarolle
Davis: Arcadia / Bateman, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Oliver Davis graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 1994 and has since composed numerous concertos, ballet scores, albums, soundtracks and television scores working with many of the major London orchestras. The Infinite Ocean was composed for choreographer Edwaard Liang and was commissioned by San Francisco Ballet for the Unbound festival, 2018. Liang requested the work to be in six sections and to feature a solo violin. The aim of Arcadia was to create a piece which evoked an idyllic serene place. Gemini was specifically composed for violinist Kerenza Peacock and was designed to explore the contrasting styles of her playing.
The Suite for piano and orchestra was written for Huw Watkins on piano and heavily involves thematic development throughout. Inferno began life as a short orchestral sketch, which gradually evolved into a full, single-movement piece. Lastly, The Elements was commissioned by The Hanke Brothers, who specifically wanted a piece describing the four elements. The ensemble containing piano, viola, recorder and tuba, produces a unique timbre, and the piece explores the possible various aspects of this timbre.
Xenakis: Orchestral Works / Tamayo, Hague Residentie Orchestra
The orchestral works on this recording include two of Xenakis’ adventurous spatialized works along with Metastaseis, the work with which he emerged onto the international avant-garde scene. Metastaseis A is the original version, which is better known by its revision, Metastaseis B. The revision was the result of conductor Hermann Scherchen, who was critical of the size of the score and of elements of its instrumentation. He agreed to perform it if certain revisions were made. Ultimately, the première of the revised version, Metastaseis B, would be conducted by Hans Rosbaud at Donaueschingen in 1955, where it created a sensation. The public would have to wait until after the composer’s death before hearing the original version of Metastaseis A, which took place in 2008 in Torino under the direction of Arturo Tamayo, who conducts the work in this recording, its first commercial release. Xenakis explained that the sound world of Metastaseis was inspired by his experiences as a member of the student Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Greece. In Nomos Gamma, the listener is struck by the increased size of the percussion section, which rings the orchestra and audience, lending a kind of ritual brutality to the piece.
Leonardo: Shaping the Invisible
Wayne Siegel: Celebration
Purcell: Royal Welcome Songs for King Charles II, Vol. 2 / Christophers, The Sixteen Choir
On this release, Harry Christophers and The Sixteen continue their exploration of Purcell’s stunning music written for royal occasions on the third album in their acclaimed series. King Charles II liked to project a strong, stable, divinely legitimated image. Whilst that image had no basis in reality, the scale of his deception and financial skulduggery did not emerge until 19th-century historians discovered secret treaty documents between Charles and King Louis XIV of France. Purcell had no idea of course, and so all of the music on this album celebrates the political triumphs that he and his colleagues thought they had witnessed. It includes the quite brilliant Welcome Songs 'Welcome to all the pleasures' (with its superb six-part fanfares to St Cecilia in the final chorus) and 'From hardy climes'.
Beyond - Music by American & Icelandic Composers / Los Angeles Percussion Quartet
There are more languages spoken in Los Angeles than in any other city in the world. It’s a transitive city. Most residents have come here to contribute to its cultural identity and have ended up calling it “home”. Los Angeles is a city where every industry, creative or otherwise, is fueled by the pursuit of personal creative dreaming. It’s clear then how the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet (LAPQ) created a community of composers and made them all local to the group’s music making and to Los Angeles itself, regardless of each composer’s city of origin.
Is it language that makes someone at home in a given place? If so, the compositional languages of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Christopher Cerrone, Ellen Reid, Daníel Bjarnasson, and Andrew McIntosh appear as interwoven and complex as Los Angeles itself. Their music similarly courses with chiming repetition, spectral near-silence, and the wearing away of time on objects so barely touched that they appear, in moments, as fragile as paper. These composers from two drastically different continents are brought together by LAPQ, despite their differences in origin, under one banner: friendship. For years LAPQ has been known for its skill in both championing and cataloging works by West Coast composers, with a specific focus on Los Angeles. With Beyond they explore the deep knowing that comes from making work with old friends. And broadly, the project signals a move for the Los Angeles contemporary music scene, a scene burgeoning out with global significance, and overflowing with artists actively seeking to create community. Beyond is a remarkable epic in which space and time are stretched on and on, over and past the horizon.
Bjarnasson’s “Qui Tollis" spans an incredible arc, emerging from the contemplative space of the works around it, brimming with the bashes and tumbles of bass drums, and then seemingly too early, vanishes again into a lull and rhythmic groan. With “Fear-Release,” Reid takes us into a world of metallic voices, as if we’re listening to a rubbed piece of crystal from inside the gem itself. It’s rare that a piece of music seems to truly sonically shine, and Reid’s piece accomplishes this brilliance early and often. Thorvaldsdottir’s “Aura” is the wind, the sand in the wind, and the wind chime hanging from the wood on the old falling-apart porch all at once. It speaks multitudes, and miraculously all upon the quiet edge of audibility.
The expanse of McIntosh’s “I Hold the Lion’s Paw” is that of a twelve-hundred page novel, in which each page has less than a half dozen words. Its sprawl is scrolled out like a web in air, as the quartet communicates effortlessly with one another across a cavern of distance. In one moment they sit still in space, another they rattle endlessly like the earth; they arrive where we are, simply putting musical puzzle pieces together. With “Memory Palace,” Cerrone creates rooms of sound, each drenched in a subtle hue. In the rooms of this ever-expanding house we find ourselves drinking different air, buzzing with pop, hiss, and click, and lingering with a guitarist who could be inside the guitar itself.
REVIEW:
Beyond excels in every sphere: this well-chosen programme brims with fine music and impassioned musicianship, all presented in sound that will delight audiophiles, percussionistas and music lovers everywhere.
-- MusicWeb International
Schubert: Aus der Ferne / Signum Quartet
Hailed as one of the most adventurous and outstanding string quartets of today, both in the performance of modern pieces and the iron repertory, Signum Quartett now releases its first PENTATONE recording with an all-Schubert program. Aus der Ferne illuminates the Romanticism and lyricism of this great master. By combining string quartets with lieder arranged for string quartet, the members of the Signum Quartett aim to show how Schubert’s instrumental and vocal music cross-pollinate each other. The fact that Schubert quotes openly from his own songs in his chamber music underlines the strong connection between the two, and this album takes this connection a step further. The concept for the album grew out of the Schubertiad, where chamber music and vocal works would be heard side by side in an intimate setting. A further idea was to complement one of the late quartets with an earlier one - perhaps lesser-known but not a lesser piece. The B-flat major quartet and the Rosamunde Quartet, both featured on this album, share a delicacy and fragility of spirit; convey a longing from afar. These instrumental works gain significance by being accompanied by the lieder arrangements, created by quartet member Xandi van Dijk. These arrangements present quintessential Schubert lieder such as Du bist die Ruh, Wandrers Nachtlied and Lachen und Weinen in a new, fascinating light.
Nielsen: Ophelia Dances / Christensen, Rasilainen, Aarhus Symphony, Arhus Sinfonietta
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REVIEW:
The Ophelia Dances is certainly strange and interesting music, more “ambient” in sound but still well structured beneath its odd sonorities. Though apparently a continuous work, it is clearly composed in discrete movements, placing the accordion in the midst of bitonal swirls of sound and pungent brass and string interjections.
The Symphony No. 3, written in 2010, uses a sort of musical “big bang” at the outset, followed by “stuttering fragments” which “muster to initiate the development of the symphony’s vertical structure, supported by foundations in the form of tectonic pedal notes.” This is indeed a technical description of what happens, but the listening process is more emotional and therefore more fascinating.
A strange sort of album, then, yet fascinating and certainly worth a listen!
– Arts Music Lounge
Poul Rovsing Olsen: The Planets – Works for Voice & Instrume
Dussek: Complete Piano Sonatas, Op. 47 & Op. 64, Vol. 7
ECUME OU BAVE
Musgrave: Mary, Queen of Scots / Mark, Gardner, Putnam, Virginia Opera
Thea Musgrave writes of her work “Mary Queen of Scots”: Mary has been a fascinating subject to work with. It was interesting and challenging to find a path through all the well-known facts about her life, in order to be able to envision her with fresh eyes and gradually to shape my own portrait of her. My interest in her as a subject was first aroused by a basic idea of Amalia Elguera, (who had written the libretto for my previous opera The Voice of Ariadne) and on whose play Moray the opera is based. Here the emphasis lies, as the title implies, on Mary’s half brother James Stewart. I soon decided that in the opera, although the chief protagonist would be James, the central character must be Mary herself.” This recording is of a live performance on 2 April, 1978 in Norfolk, Virginia, at the gala performance for the Metropolitan Opera. Lyrita is proud to present this re-issue of Mary, Queen of Scots to coincide with Thea Musgrave’s 90th Birthday celebrations.
Weber: Euryanthe / Sutherland, Vroons, Stiedry, BBC Symphony
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REVIEW:
Despite big cuts (including around 20 minutes’ worth of Act 3), this is a well-prepared performance of considerable merits. Not the least of these is the proof that Joan Sutherland could indeed have made a serious career in the dramatic German Fach: she sounds an outstandingly fluent and natural exponent of the titlerole. Conductor Fritz Stiedry’s preserved Wagner performances are often a little spotty but here he seems in well-ordered control of everything. All the other major roles are on committed top form.
– Gramophone
Forbidden City Tour
Music of the Americas / Orozco-Estrada, Houston Symphony
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REVIEW:
What a nice disc from Pentatone. All the works here are well played by the Houstonians, under the baton of the orchetra's music director. The recording is a fine one. Microphones are well placed giving an in-the-hall listener perspective. Surrounds are used for ambiance, and they successfully recreate the sound of a live orchestra.
– Audiophile Audition
Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 6, 7 & 8 / Kubelik
PENTATONE’s third release from Rafael Kubelik’s acclaimed Beethoven cycle of symphonies in its Remastered Classics series is his commanding reading of the sixth, seventh and eighth symphonies performed by the Orchestre de Paris, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra. Sometimes known as the “hymn to humour”, the genial eighth symphony sits as an intriguing gem between the imposing seventh and stupendous ninth symphonies. In a performance described as “light-footed and bristling with energy” (AllMusic), Kubelik captures the work’s essentially irreverent spirit with vibrant and colourful playing from the Cleveland Orchestra. Rafael Kubelik recorded his cycle of Beethoven symphonies in the 1970s for Deutsche Grammophon, each with a different orchestra, earning widespread praise. Although recorded in multi-channel sound, these unmissable performances have previously been available only in the conventional two-channel stereo format. Using state of the art technology which avoids the need for re-mixing, PENTATONE’s engineers have remastered the original studio tapes to bring the performances to life as originally intended: in compelling and pristine multi-channel sound. Other releases from PENTATONE in the Kubelik Beethoven cycle are the Symphonies 1 & 4 (with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) and Symphonies 2 & 5 (with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra).
Il Secondo Libro De Madrigali
Bach: Complete Organ Works, Vol. 10 / Goode
Bach: The Complete Organ Works, Vol. 8 / Goode
This digital-only recording is available from all major download stores and streaming services in MP3, CD Quality and Studio Quality/24-bit audio. It is also available to buy as a ‘Presto CD’ – made to order by Presto Classical with a printed booklet and inlay.
