Classical
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The Legend of Alirio Diaz, Vol. 3
For classical guitar lovers IDIS presents to the audience an album that collects some Fifties and Sixties recordings performed by Alirio Diaz; among them Antonio Lauro Concert for guitar and orchestra with also four small rarities. Four popular Venezuelan songs arranged for two guitars and recorded with a false name in 1962 with the great South American guitarist Rodrigo Riera. During these times Diaz was one of the favorite guitarists of Andrés Segovia and he did not want to get the Master upset recording popular music; a kind of music not loved or much appreciated by Mr. Segovia. This album is a really do not miss release.
Masters of the Guitar, Vol. 3: Cuba
After the first two volumes dedicated to the greatest Spanish guitarists, the series Master of Guitar presents in this third volume a collection of five great Cuban guitarists. Famous names like Osé Rey de la Torre and Leo Brouwer join other less known performers like Elias Barreiro, Hector Garcia and Juan Mercadal. The recorded repertoire ranges from classical works from the seventeenth Century like Gaspar Sanz to the traditional transcription of J.S.Bach, from Carulli to the most famous Spanish works, and finally we arrive in the end to the most modern and new repertoire represented by Leo Brower, Elogio della Danza. All of the tracks are taken by sources which are now unavailable and are presented here on this release that must become a staple in the collections of all guitar lovers.
Music For The Medieval & Renaissance Fiddle
Vivaldi: La quattro stagioni - Bach: Sonata, BWV 1001 / Gulli
Franco Gulli can be easy considered one of the greatest violinists of the XIX Century; but unfortunately had a discographical career less than his qualities and merits. Nowadays IDIS is gathering his discographical history. In this release the Triestine violinist performs two of best masterpieces of XVIII musical literature: Antonio Vivaldi ’s Quattro Stagioni and J.S.Bach’s Prima Sonata for solo violin BWV 1001. In the first recording of 1959 the thirty-three year old violinist is conducted by one of the most talented conductors of time, Aldo Ceccato; the pure sound and the impeccable virtuosity comes out completely in this recording with the impressive Gulli’s cantabile. This recording of the Quattro Stagioni is of a good sound quality at the same level as Bach’s Sonata no 1 in which Gulli solves the complex counterpoint of the work with a unique elegance.
Bach: The Art of Fugue / Duo Stephanie & Saar
DUO Stephanie & Saar’s third release on New Focus Recordings, The Art of Fugue, is the first ever complete piano duo recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s final enigmatic work. The duo performs the work’s different movements as either four-hand, two piano or solo piano works. Bach never specified the instrumentation of the work and this new version is a kaleidoscope of textures and colors, a probing journey that seeks answers and illumination. Dated 1748, some scholars see The Art of Fugue as an academic endeavor by an aging master paying tribute to the fugue, which was by then falling out of fashion. Others consider the work as a sort of “Da Vinci Code” of numerology, puzzles and musical coding. The mystery of Contrapunctus 14, notable for both the inclusion of Bach’s name as a theme and for its unfinished state adds to the mythology and cult status that surrounds the work.Bach found fugues to be a source of endless creativity. The Art of Fugue, a collection of fourteen fugues and four canons, is an exploration of the full spectrum of contrapuntal possibilities, all derived from one monolithic theme in D minor. From a purely technical standpoint, Bach’s compositional prowess is in full display as he employs inversion, retrograde, augmentation, diminution, multiple fugue subjects, mirroring and canonic writing- all while creating an intense and emotionally gripping musical experience. Bach was a deeply devout Lutheran, and while Th Art of Fugue has no direct religious connotations, the work’s reverence for “musical math” and the severity of the techniques used are in line with Bach’s devotional output. Bach’s need to exhaust as many possibilities of permutations from one theme is in essence a quest to find meaning, an unending spiritual journey reaching towards the divine.
Bright & Gipps: Piano Concertos / Peebles, Ward, McLachlan, RLPO
Separated by six decades – Bright born in 1862, Gipps in 1921 – both women shared a prodigious talent as pianists before turning to composition. Three works – Bright’s A minor Piano Concerto and Variations for Piano and Orchestra and Gipps’ Ambarvalia receive first recordings alongside Gipps’ G minor Piano Concerto.
Admired by Liszt and George Bernard Shaw, Bright’s Piano Concerto (1892) demonstrates, says Robert Matthew-Walker in his illuminating notes, her distinctive “creative mastery and expressive character...clearly that of a composer who knows the solo instrument intimately; beautifully written, supremely well-laid out for the keyboard”. Her Variations for Piano and Orchestra (1910) “is a remarkably impressive original composition, beautifully written for the solo instrument... skilfully orchestrated, shot through with much brilliant and quietly witty writing, technically fascinating and with unobtrusive master strokes of structural originality”.
A child-prodigy pianist and composer, Ruth Gipps studied oboe with Leon Goossens, piano with Arthur Alexander and composition with Gordon Jacob at the Royal College of Music.When her performing career was thwarted by a hand injury, she went on to compose five symphonies and several concertos, including the Piano Concerto in G minor, which boasts brilliantly virtuosic writing for soloist and orchestra.
Gipps’ Ambarvalia is a rich, short orchestral study of Haydn-Mozart size without timpani. Making her SOMM debut, the young British pianist Samantha Ward is the soloist for Bright’s Piano Concerto and Variations for Piano and Orchestra. Murray McLachlan returns to the label for Gipps’ Piano Concerto. His “adept fingerwork and energetic” contribution to Daydreams featuring the chamber and instrumental music of Arthur Sullivan “does full justice to the scores”, declared MusicWeb International. Also making welcome first appearances on SOMM are the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Charles Peebles.
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REVIEW:
This is a valuable and rewarding disc. The standards of performance are very high throughout. I don’t think that any of the pieces are ever likely to become staples of the repertoire but their complete neglect is unjustified and they are all well worth hearing. That judgement applies especially to the Ruth Gipps concerto. Ben Connellan’s recordings present the performances in excellent sound and the essay by Robert Matthew-Walker is characteristically informative and readable.
– MusicWeb International
Cyprus: Between Greek East & Latin West
Beethoven: Triple Concerto / Reincke: Piano Trio No. 1
Prolific in every aspect of music throughout his long and distinguished career, Carl Reinecke represented the complete musician with the belief that art should bring happiness to mankind. His imaginative transcription of Beethoven's bravura Triple Concerto sees the three instruments retaining their solo essence and sharing in the orchestral tutti to create a quintessential addition to the piano trio repertory. Heard here in its world premiere recording, Reineckes First Piano Trio inhabits the passionate and expressive sound world of Schumann and Mendelssohn.
Scarlatti: Complete Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 18 / Monteiro
The Great War (Live)
Pas de deux
24 PRELUDI PIANOFORTE OP. 38
Prokofiev: Cinderella
Shakespeare: Julius Caesar / Donmar Warehouse
Set in the present-day in the world of a women's prison, Julius Caesar could not be more timely as it depicts the catastrophic consequences of a political leader’s extension of his powers beyond the remit of the constitution. As Brutus (Harriet Walter) wrestles with his moral conscience over the assassination of Julius Caesar (Jackie Clune), Mark Antony (Jade Anouka) manipulates the crowd through his subtle and incendiary rhetoric to frenzied mob violence. There follows the descent of the country into factions and the outbreak of civil war. The Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy began in 2012 with an all-female production of Julius Caesar led by Dame Harriet Walter. Set in a women’s prison, the production asked the question, “Who owns Shakespeare?” Two further productions followed: Henry IV in 2014 and The Tempest in 2016, all featuring a diverse company of women. The Trilogy enthralled theatre audiences in London and New York and was shared with women and girls in prisons and schools across the UK. The film versions were shot live in a specially built temporary theatre in King’s Cross in 2016, and now offer screen audiences unique access to these ground-breaking productions.
Halina Czerny-Stefanska plays Chopin
In Remembrance
Chopin: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2
Mozart & Dvorák: Works for Violin
Bach & Pärt: Piano Works
Elgar & His Peers / Higgins, London Symphonic Concert Band
In January 1920 Elgar began arranging, for Chorus and Military Band, a much-shortened version of ‘For the Fallen’ from his Spirit of England. These were wartime settings of verses by Laurence Binyon. This new version had been commissioned to be performed at the unveiling of the Cenotaph in London on 11 November 1920 and was arranged, for Military Band, by Frank Winterbottom. As it was, the ceremony at the Cenotaph was curtailed and Elgar’s music never performed. Although he arranged With Proud Thanksgiving for orchestral accompaniment, this is the first time the listener can hear how Elgar originally conceived the piece. Twelve years later Elgar set, for similar forces, a poem by John Masefield, the Poet Laureate, written to commemorate the unveiling of the memorial to the dowager Queen Alexandra who had died in 1925. Unfortunately, the arrangement for Military Band has been lost and conductor Tom Higgins has made his own arrangement especially for this recording. Arrangements of Pomp and Circumstance Marches two and five are also included as is the version for Military Band of Elgar’s Severn Suite from 1930 and his arrangement of two Bach Chorales originally performed from the top of the tower of Worcester Cathedral in 1911. Elgar’s contemporaries are represented by Vaughan Williams his well-known Sea Songs and the complex and challenging Toccata Marziale. The disc is completed by the premiere recording of Sir Thomas Beecham’s March from 1946 and Walton O’Donnell’s charming Three Humoresques from 1923.
Bantock Rediscovered / Marchant
Somm Recordings is proud to announce a landmark recording for lovers of British music featuring 23 first recordings of piano pieces by Sir Granville Bantock, one of the most influential British composers of his age. Performed by Maria Marchant, Bantock Rediscovered is being issued to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Bantock’s birth in 1868. This is a major release supported by a full-page advert in Gramophone magazine and is sure to attract considerable attention for its treasure-trove of music newly rescued from neglect and the new light it sheds on a revered composer. Composed between 1894 and 1938, these immensely varied, beautifully crafted works illustrate fascinating aspects of Bantock’s artistry and music. The carefully chosen, exquisitely played programme reveals the breadth, delicacy and deliberateness of what Robert Matthew-Walker describes in his booklet notes as Bantock’s “always clever structuring and drily eloquent style”. Among the gems to be discovered here are Memories of Sapphire, three beautiful lyrical tone poems recalling a visit to North Carolina and dedicated to the composer’s mother; the richly impressionistic Barcarolle showing Bantock’s piano writing at its finest; the late, lively Parade March and the striking piano transcription of the symphonic overture Saul, with its early hints of the orientalism that would later prove so significant to Bantock’s music. Demonstrating Bantock’s deft ability to borrow from traditional music, the Two Scottish Pieces offer up a vivacious quickstep and reel. Heard in their entirety, the Twelve Piano Pieces carry themselves with a ‘light music’ gloss but reveal deeper feelings and more sophisticated meaning in the hands of a master composer.
Vaccai: Giulietta e Romeo
Music for Brass Septet, Vol. 6 / Septura
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REVIEW:
The lineup of three trumpets, three trombones, and tuba is unexpectedly expressive in Elgar’s Serenade in E minor (originally for strings). If you like English pastoral music, and the sound of brass, this album is irresistible.
– The Observer (UK)
Schreker: The Birthday of the Infanta - Suite / Falletta, Berlin Radio Symphony
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REVIEW:
Falletta obtains excellent playing from the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra with enormous climatic moments, opportunities for which are readily at hand in his late-Romantic, opulent orchestral scores. The sound quality from the German Radio is way beyond today’s norm. Unreservedly recommended.
– David's Review Corner (David Denton)
Sauret: 24 Etudes Caprices, Op. 64 Nos. 1-7 / Rashidova
A supreme virtuoso, the French violinist, composer and teacher Emile Sauret was acclaimed by the greatest musicians of the century, including Sarasate and Liszt. He wrote a series of charming genre pieces (available on Naxos 8.572366) but also a sequence of 24 Etudes-Caprices which marry virtuosity with every expressive opportunity available to the instrument. The result is one of the unsung but major cycles for solo violin spanning all twenty-four keys. The Azerbaijani-born British violin virtuoso, soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and orchestral director Nazrin Rashidova made her solo debut at the age of three in Baku and was awarded a gold medal by the Cairo Opera House for an exceptional violin recital three years later. Establishing FeMusa in 2008, Britain’s first female chamber orchestra in sixty years, is merely the latest in a series of achievements. She entered the Royal Academy of Music in London at the age of fifteen, where she had the privilege to play on a rare collection of violins by Antonio Stradivari. She studied with professors Erich Gruenberg, Felix Andrievsky and Lydia Mordkovitch. A prizewinner in several international competitions, she has appeared on international television and radio, played for royalty and other dignitaries, and has also performed in the US, Japan, Europe, and the Middle East.
