Barb Jungr's "Every Grain of Sand" has deservedly become known as a modern cult classic and has won the singer a dedicated fan base around the world. Originally released in 2002 this insightful album established Jungr as one of the leading interpreters of the Bob Dylan songbook and entered the Top 10 "Jazz Album of the Year" lists in The Sunday Times and The Telegraph whilst the Wall Street Journal described it as "... The most significant vocal album of the 21st century thus far."Jungr's revelatory interpretations get right to the heart of Bob Dylan's lyrics, finding new depths and emotion in his works. The original release prompted more than a decade of Dylan performances with a Barbican tribute alongside Billy Bragg and Odetta. Jungr is supporting this re-release with a UK tour in 2017.

This release features three exciting chamber works by female composers, written during the first three decades of the twentieth century. This project was initiated by pianist Joanna Goldstein. Joanna Goldstein (piano, University Orchestra director) is Professor of Music at Indiana University Southeast. She was also formerly the Dean of the School of Arts & Letters until 2001. In addition to her piano studio, she directs the Indiana University Southeast Orchestra. Joanna earned her Bachelor of Music degree summa cum laude at Temple University, her Masters of Music at The Juilliard School and a Ph. D. from New York University. She also studied at the Academy for Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria as a Fulbright-Hays Scholar and has received numerous honors including winning the Philadelphia Orchestra Young Artist Competition on two occasions, the National Arts Club Competition and the Mason-Hamlin Competition. She is joined here by Steven Moeckel, Nicholas Finch, and Bruce Heim.

This new release is the eleventh volume in Centaur's Steven Staryk Retrospective collection. Steven Staryk is one of the greatest violinists that has ever lived. Here he presents a masterful program of caprices, etudes, and studies by composers such as Paganini, Wieniawski, Schubert, Locatelli, and more. This is an amazing guide to the playing and interpretation of the great solo violin literature. "The first recording of it's kind ever to appear," (1963). "Still the only existing recording of it's kind." (2014). This is truly an album that can't be missed, whether the listener is a violin virtuoso, a violin amateur, or a violin appreciator.

Two great romantic piano concertos are performedon this new release- one by Brahms, and one by Rubenstein. The works beautifully complement one another, and are brought to life by pianist David Glen Hatch. Internationally concert and recording artist and master teacher of piano, David Glen Hatch enjoys a distinguished career as a soloist and guest artist with symphony orchestras on six continents. Dr. Hatch completed the BMU degree from Brigham Young University where he received the Outstanding Pianist Award and the MM and DMA degrees summa cum laude at the Conservatory of Music, University of Missouri-Kansas City where he received the Outstanding Graduate Pianist Award. He has recorded a wide variety of repertoire on thirty compact discs for several labels. In addition to being an award winner in numerous state, regional, national, and international competitions including the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, Dr. Hatch is a frequent competition juror and clinician.

This recording is the first in a new series with Thomas Søndergård and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The programme features music by Richard Strauss: the concert suite from Der Rosenkavalier and Ein Heldenleben, a work they have performed together in concert to critical acclaim. The tone poem tells the epic story of an imaginary hero and offers a stirring introduction to the world of the German Romantics. Strauss demands uncompromising virtuosity from both the orchestra and the horn player who is tasked with portraying the bold hero. Following a concert performance of Ein Heldenleben in March 2018 The Scotsman stated: “From the swaggering confidence of Strauss’s bounding heroic theme to the gleefully grotesque carpings of his critics, Søndergård delivered a bold, utterly committed account – this is clearly music that matters to him.” Closing the recording is the concert suite from Der Rosenkavalier in which Strauss’s colourful and evocative orchestration recalls many favourite moments from his most popular opera.

The Chamber Orchestra of Europe performs Stravinsky's Apollon musagete and Pulcinella Suite, repertoire that demands the fresh and energetic delivery for which the COE is renowned. The COE deliver the 'wonderful freshness' Stravinsky himself envisioned in Apollon musagete with their bright and spirited performance. The Guardian commented: "In Stravinsky's Apollon musagete each and every player contributed to the distinctive, rich-toned sonority." The Pulcinella Suite is a ballet based on some of Pergolesi's most memorable music. The COE has recorded the more unusual 1949 'revised' version of the 1922 concert suite which is in eight sections and performed without voices. The Independent commented: "Stravinsky's Pulcinella Suite brimmed over with the energy and insight of first-rate musicians discovering every opportunity such sunny music offered them." The COE recorded this album at eglise Maronite Notre-Dame-du-Liban, Paris, in November 2008. They performed this Stravinsky programme at Cite de la musique, Paris, Konzerthaus, Vienna and Philharmonie, Luxembourg to widespread critical acclaim.

This opera, which had fallen into oblivion, was revived in 1973 in the Dutch city of Zaanstad (the Saardam of the libretto) and staged at Bergamo's Teatro Sociale as part of the Donizetti Festival in a new critical edition made for the Donizetti Foundation by Alberto Sonzogni. In the plot, the Tsar Peter the Great works incognito as a carpenter at the shipyard of Sardaam to acquire technical knowledge to carry back home. On the podium, the knowledgeable Roberto Rizzi Brignoli leads the orchestra of the Donizetti Opera, assisted by the internationally renowned cinema director Davide Ferrario. In the cast, Andrea Concetti (a successful artist who has sung throughout the world) is joined by singers who are emerging in the belcanto repertoire, such as Giorgio Caoduro, Juan Francisco Gatell, Irina Dubrovskaya and Aya Wakizono.

The Burning River Brass presents a new recording of fresh and dynamic arrangements from Bach and Gibbons to Debussy, Shostakovich, and DiLorenzo. Since 1996, Burning River Brass has been dazzling audiences from Alaska to Taiwan with "power and virtuosity," "harmonious blend," and "consistently stirring performances." Composed of twelve of the finest brass and percussion players in the country, Burning River Brass is an ensemble on fire! The original inspiration behind Burning River Brass was to give great players who were also good friends a chance to play together on a consistent basis. Soon after the first rehearsal in May 1996, BRB began to grow rapidly. The ensemble made its debut in September of 1996 in Tremont, Ohio under the auspices of Arts Renaissance Tremont and by 1998 was touring nationally. Burning River Brass is consistently applauded for the infectious joy with which it performs. In concert, the ensemble presents a variety of music designed to satisfy the tastes of every audience. BRB’s repertoire includes fresh arrangements of classic literature as well as original works written specifically for the group. The camaraderie continues into BRB’s educational and outreach programs, where the players provide students with a rich, positive experience to encourage their enthusiasm for music in the future.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Kermit Poling writes music that is beautifully crafted, and immediately accessible. It is full of beautiful, melodic lines. The Guitar concerto, written for Guitarist Giovanni De Chiaro, who performs it here, is one of the greatest guitar concertos of the past 50 years. Named by Forum Magazine as one of the top ten faces to watch, Kermit Poling is celebrating his 22nd season as Music Director of the South Arkansas Symphony and his 27th season as Music Director of the Shreveport Metropolitan Ballet. He is in his 31st year as Associate Conductor of the Shreveport Symphony, an orchestra where he also was Concertmaster for over 27 years. He has produced the Shreveport Symphony’s broadcast series since 1987, having also produced radio programming for WBUR Boston and other public radio stations. He serves as General Manager of the Red River Radio public radio network at LSUS having been appointed to the position in 2006. In 2015 he became music director of the Marshall Symphony Orchestra in Texas. “The Romantic spirit lives, breathes, and flourishes in Kermit Poling.” (Fanfare Magazine)

Classical Music

Called “one of the most original and compelling jazz albums in recent memory” (Montreal Gazette), Matt Haimovitz and Uccello’s Meeting of the Spirits gets a surround-sound makeover for the PENTATONE Oxingale series. Featuring jazz milestones re-imagined for a big band of cellos, arranged by composer David Sanford, the 2010 Grammy-nominated album was hailed by All About Jazz as “a captivating recording from start to finish … Haimovitz and Sanford have created a work of great beauty.” The cellos wail, slide, and swing in an all-new big band sound – joined by dazzling musical contributions from guitar legend John McLaughlin, percussionist Matt Wilson and Jan Jarczyk on keyboards – in works by Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu), Miles Davis, Billy Strayhorn and other jazz greats. NPR says, “This agile band of players, led by such a free spirit, makes almost everything sound fresh.”

This album is violinist Arabella Steinbacher’s tribute to the favorite composer of her family household. The music of Richard Strauss has played a crucial role throughout her life. As great Strauss lovers, her parents named her after the main character of Strauss’ opera Arabella, and the family house was filled with Strauss melodies, often sung live by famous singers accompanied by Steinbacher’s father, who was a solo-répétiteur at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The album starts with a piece that Strauss originally conceived for violin and orchestra, the rarely-performed Violin Concerto in D minor, composed when he was still a teenager. Two other early instrumental works – the Romanze (usually performed by cello and orchestra) and Scherzino (an arrangement of an early piano piece) – are also featured on this album. The rest of the repertoire consists of famous Strauss songs (Zueignung, Wiegenlied, Traum durch die Dämmerung, Cäcilie), “sung” on Steinbacher’s violin. The apotheosis of this highly personal programme is Steinbacher’s rendition of “Aber der Richtige…”, the celestial duet from Arabella. Arabella Steinbacher, a multiple award-winner with an extensive PENTATONE discography, is accompanied by the WDR Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lawrence Foster.

The acclaimed Russian-born maestro Vladimir Jurowski kicks off his new cycle of the complete symphonies of Prokofiev for PENTATONE with a searing account of the challenging and uncompromising second and third symphonies. Forged out of “iron and steel”, the rarely-performed Symphony No. 2 uses strident fanfares, martial rhythms and clashing dissonances to create great walls of sound to represent the inexorable march of the machine age. It’s a deliberately modernist work, written while the composer was in Paris in the 1920s and intent on provoking audiences. The stark first movement is balanced by the second movement which is in the form of six disparate variations. Containing more subdued and lyrical moments, these variations build towards a relentless march, culminating in a series of hammer blows from the orchestra to end the work with a ghostly calm. The Symphony No. 3 recycles material from his opera The Fiery Angel to great dramatic and terrifying effect. It’s an angry, defiant and complex work which contains a lyrical slow movement, a dazzling third movement in the form of a devilish scherzo and an almost unhinged final movement which starts as a sinister march and builds to an apocalyptic climax of alarming power. Vladimir Jurowski has recorded extensively for PENTATONE and has received enthusiastic critical acclaim. In July 2017, he signed a long-term, multi-album agreement with PENTATONE which includes a new complete cycle of the symphonies of Sergei Prokofiev with his State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia “Evgeny Svetlanov”.

Sensuous, lushly evocative and intricately constructed, Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé is widely regarded as his greatest orchestral masterpiece and one of the 20th century’s finest ballet scores. This vast musical fresco with its shimmering harmonies, magical diaphanous textures and spectacular conclusion is compellingly realised by Gustavo Gimeno and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg in this eagerly awaited release from PENTATONE. The album also contains the haunting and exquisite Pavane pour une infante défunte and the vividly scored Une barque sur l'océan. Stravinsky regarded Daphnis et Chloé as “not only Ravel’s best work, but also one of the most beautiful products of French music” and it’s easy to see why. Written with consummate finesse for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, this “choreographic symphony” is an intoxicating blend of warm, seductive harmonies and passionate intensity, realised on a large orchestral canvas. Three movements have become perennially popular: the luxuriant Lever du jour, the enchanting Pantomine and the raucous Danse générale (Bacchanale) which Ravel incorporated in the later Daphnis and Chloé Suite No. 2. Elsewhere, Ravel displays the same deftness of touch with the much-loved Pavane pour une infante défunte and Une barque sur l'océan, both masterly orchestrations of his charming piano miniatures. “Gimeno cultivates … a bright, transparent orchestral sound free of dull pathos and also rediscovers colours in this score,” wrote the Trierischer Volksfreund in 2014. “[...] Wonderful! This conductor is a discovery!” This is Gustavo Gimeno’s third recording with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg (OPL) for PENTATONE following two releases in May 2017 of orchestral works by Bruckner and Shostakovich. A further six projects are planned in the coming years. “We’re very excited to make this multi-album collaboration with PENTATONE part of the artistic journey of the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and Gustavo Gimeno,” writes Matthew Studdert-Kennedy, Head of Artistic Planning at the OPL. “Having the opportunity to commit to a series of recordings of music by a broad range of composers is hugely rewarding for all involved … We believe that the albums ahead of us have a great deal to offer.”

The Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo, was founded in 1962 by Japan's three leading media companies--The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper company, Nippon Television Network Corporation (NTV) and Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation (YTV). The orchestra performs around 100 concerts each year true to its founding mission of dedicating to promoting the universe of classical music in Japan. On this release, the ensemble pairs Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin Suite. French-born conductor Sylvain Cambreling is a musician with big ideas. A thought-provoking, colourful and dramatic artist, and persuasive champion of contemporary music, he has a flair for grabbing the attention of audiences, yet his originality is rooted in thorough knowledge of musicology.

German pianist Elly Ney (1882-1968) came to be regarded as one of the great Beethoven interpreters of the 20th century and her prewar recording of the Op 111 sonata must still be considered one of the very finest. That recording, and all the other solo and concerto recordings she made for Electrola before the war are included here. Particularly noteworthy are the three landmark concerto recordings, the Mozart and Beethoven vivacious and stylish, the Strauss revealing just what a virtuoso Ney could be. Though she specialized in Austro-German repertoire, another side to her art is shown in her early, almost unknown, American Brunswick acoustic recordings, reissued in this set for the first time. Here the repertoire choice is broader and lighter and there is even a stunningly articulated Debussy 'Feux d'artifice' - the work's first recording.

This double album offers a testimony to Stravinsky’s overwhelming musical heritage, covering all the phases of his creative life. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) is twentieth-century music! More than any other composer, he continued to develop his compositional style throughout his seven-decade-spanning career, innovating and adopting all the most important musical trends of his century. Historically, the musical journey starts with one of the first recordings of the recently rediscovered Funeral Song (1909), composed as a tribute to his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov. The next phase in his development is represented with the raw but tremendously refined Rite of Spring (1913), Stravinsky’s most famous work that created a scandal at its Paris world premiere, and immediately turned him into a star. His Neoclassical style is showcased by Jeu de cartes (1937) and the Concerto in D (1947), whereas Agon (1957) presents Stravinsky’s original take on Schoenberg’s serialism. This multifarious repertoire is performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and their Music Director Gustavo Gimeno, who continue their acclaimed PENTATONE series of composer portraits that already featured monographs of Shostakovich, Bruckner, Ravel and Mahler.

Violinist Josh Modney presents this release highlighting his remarkable versatility as a performer, collaborator, and improviser. The album is elegantly cohesive across the entire program, as concerns with alternate intonation systems, experimental approaches to timbre, and intensely collaborative work connect the pieces. Moreover, tying the collection together, from Braxton to Bach to Modney’s own powerful improvisations, is Modney’s focused virtuosity and a laserlike attention to sound and the details of the means for producing and shaping that sound. One hears this immediately in the first bars of the opening work by longtime Wet Ink Ensemble colleague, Sam Pluta. We hear not just a generic violin scraping sound along the string, instead we hear a whole vocabulary opening up inside this technique of sound production, a language Modney manipulates with as much subtlety of expression as we hear in his just-intoned performance of Bach’s timeless Ciaconna. Josh Modney’s improvisations demonstrate the sophisticated vocabulary he has developed for his work in this context. In his own words, “This way of working with material- allowing riorous investigations into sound to be the spark that illuminates a deeper path toward form, expression, emotion, language- represents an ethos that permeates all of the works on the album.”

Music is a timeless force, constantly ebbing and flowing, a steady sea of sound. At once reliable and unpredictable, there are few people who personify the ever changing and evolving nature of music- of Jazz in its freer forms in particular- better than Gunter Hampel. Going on eighty at the time of this live recording, he plays bass clarinet, vibes, flute and saxophone, and contributed all of the compositions here. “It is important to never stop learning, to stay curious,” he says during the interview at the end of this album. “And that’s why the joy never left- and then you get to be so old doing this.” Born in Gottingen, Germany, Hampel has been living and playing Jazz around the world for more than seven decades, befriending and recording with likeminded masters such as Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Steve McCall, Leo Smith, John Tchicai, Archie Shepp, John McLaughlin, as well as Miles Davis, Charles Mingus or Thelonious Monk. The concert starts from the back, literally, with Hampel and his “Berlin-New York Quartet” with Johannes Schleiermacher on sax and flute, Bernd Oezsevim on drums, and his daughter Cavana on vocals, entering the venue from the rear of the auditorium and making their way to the stage in a Conga line to the aptly titled “Kindred Spirits.”

The music of J�n Leifs is often inspired by Iceland's powerful nature and literary heritage. From early on he was profoundly influenced by the medieval tradition of Icelandic literature, preserved in a handful of manuscripts, including the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. Leifs' magnum opus is the Edda oratorio, a massive (although incomplete) work in three large parts which occupied him on and off for most of his composing career - from around 1930 to his death in 1968. A partial performance of Edda I - The Creation of the World - met with incomprehension, and Leifs only resumed work on his great project a decade later, completing the second part - The Lives of the Gods - in 1966. He immediately started on the third part of the oratorio, and was still working on it at the time of his death. Neither of the two finished parts were performed in his lifetime, Edda I receiving it's first complete performance in 2006 and Edda II in 2018, in conjunction with the recording of the present disc. Leifs' music is as ruggedly grandiose as it's subject matter and the score calls for vocal soloists, choir and large orchestra, making huge demands on the performers. Once again the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and the intrepid Schola Cantorum join forces under the baton of conductor Hermann B�umer, following up on their acclaimed recording of Edda I, which was described by reviewers as 'one of the recording events of the year' (Gramophone) and 'splendid in it's craggy and intensely individual lyricism and magnificence' (MusicWeb-International. Com).

On the occasion of the 200th birthday of the song Stille Nacht (Silent Night), the Salzburg baritone Rafael Fingerlos, who grew up in the Stille Nacht community of Mariapfarr im Lungau, and his piano partner Sascha El Mouissi wish to approach the subjects of "stillness“ and "night“ in a completely new manner. The intentionally secular, loving selection of poetry settings of the most widely varied romantic composers forms a counterpoint to the repertoire of customary Christmas albums. Well-known settings and precious musical-literary rarities result in an especially variegated and profound sound, a deeply moving listening experience. Twenty-four musical numbers following a clear dramaturgy, including three world premiere recordings (piano miniatures by the young, up-and-coming Salzburg composer Jakob Gruchmann), will remind listeners of a secular Advent calendar. After the third transitional miniature by Gruchmann, the calendar finds its spiritual fulfilment with the world famous Christmas song Stille Nacht (Silent Night) on the 24th place. This masterwork by Joseph Mohr and Franz Xaver Gruber has been recorded here in the original version for two male voices and guitar, including all six verses.

In 2009, at the age of 19, Haochen Zhang became one of the youngest musicians ever to win the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Since then he has had a busy concert schedule, primarily in his native China and in the U.S.A. but also in Europe where he made his début at the BBC Proms in 2014. Recording has been less of a priority for Zhang, and it is only now that he releases his first studio album, recorded at the Reitstadel, the well-known audiophile venue in Neumarkt in Germany. For this recital, Haochen Zhang has devised a programme made up of works that he feels particularly close to. As he writes in his own liner notes, they ’not only speak to me in a very intimate way, but also connect with one another at a corresponding level of intimacy: as a whole they form a unique musical narrative.’ The pieces all share a reflective and introspective quality, albeit reflective in different ways.

Opening the disc, Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen were described by the composer as ‘reflections of an adult for adults’ and in the closing Op. 117 Intermezzi, Brahms also seems to be looking backwards – but with resignation rather than intimate tenderness. Framed by these two, the works by Liszt and Janáček contain overtly dramatic episodes, but contemplative interludes form a recurrent feature of the Ballade, and in Presentiment, the first movement of Janáček’s Sonata, the dark forebodings seem to rise up from the composer’s own soul.

This second and last volume completes two different sets of string quartets: the four so-called Solo Quartets by Franz Anton Hoffmeister and Gioachino Rossini’s six String Sonatas (or Sonate a quattro). Both sets differ from the ‘normal’ configuration in that they allow a double bass to take part, albeit in different roles. Rossini, who composed his sonatas at the age of 12 (!), left out the viola and gave the double bass a more or less conventional bass role – apart from the occasional virtuosic outburst. The sonatas were first published in an arrangement for traditional string quartet and are often heard performed by string orchestras. In Vienna, where he was active as a composer and music publisher, Hoffmeister (1754-1812) chose a different solution than Rossini and gave his double bass player a leading role in the ensemble, letting it replace the first violin. It was no coincidence that this happened in Vienna – considering the amount of solo works for the double bass composed there, the standard of playing must have been exceptional. On the present recording, it is the Dutch player Niek de Groot who takes up Hoffmeister’s challenge in the company of a Finnish trio consisting of Minna Pensola, Antti Tikkanen and Tuomas Lehto. Featuring the same team, Volume 1 (BIS-2317) was as described by a reviewer in Gramophone as ‘entertaining, effortlessly enjoyable and beautifully performed’ upon its release in 2017.

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REVIEW:

In later life Rossini dismissed the quartets as ‘terrible’, but the truth – as made plain by the excellent performances on this recording – is that this music is much more than a mere prentice effort.

– BBC Music Magazine