One of the popularly cherished notions about musical genius is that its products spring sui generis from the minds of composers. Originality is, to be sure, an important quality in nearly any compositional masterpiece. But as the accumulated trove of Western art music has grown over time, its substance and traditions have provided rich stimulus to composers’ imaginations. Each of the three compositions recorded here entails, among other things, an ingenious transformation of pre-existing musical material or styles. The eight-voice, Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth joins the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot in an exhilarating live performance of Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia. Morlot paired Berio’s Sinfonia with Boulez’s Notations and Ravel’s La valse, creating a sonic spectrum unlike any other. Hear every stunning detail of this recording in an immaculate 5.1 digital surround sound version engineered by 2017 Grammy winner for Best Surround Sound, Dmitriy Lipay.

The Ancient Greek word Kalon was used by philosophers to describe perfect physical and moral beauty. In this recording, the Albion Quartet and the Czech Philharmonic explore the different aspects of Kalon through the context in which beauty can exist in ugliness and darkness. This record is the result of Richard Blackford's doctorate at the University of Bristol, which investigates the use of polytempo. The recording is a way of applying the findings of his doctorate in a range of musical contexts. Kalon is unique as it explores the use of polytempo in the context of extended tonality and modality, which could be said surpasses the complexity posed by serialist works of a similar nature, such as Stockhausen's Gruppen or Carr�.

"Nicolas Horvath, with precise playing and imaginative interpretation has made Glassworlds 2 an indispensable reference for the serious enthusiast as well as marking an important milestone in the evolution of the music of Philip Glass." -- Sequenza 21

Astor Piazzolla's name is synonymous with Nuevo Tango, an experimental compound of traditional and contemporary influences, and this recording offers a bouquet of his finest music in wholly original arrangements for classical accordion and piano. This selection includes the unforgettable Milonga del angel as well as the evocative suite The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. The Double Concerto 'Hommage a Liege' is one of Piazzolla's most classically orientated works, by turns playful, catchy and lyric, while the examples drawn from his film music are among his most enduring. Geir Draugsvoll is considered to be one of the most versatile musicians on the classical accordion. He has performed with world class orchestras, conductors and musicians such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, and others. He has also released several albums, all to critical acclaim. Mette Rasmussen studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and at Artlife International in Paris. She has performed as soloist and chamber musician in Scandinavia, Switzerland, France and China, and has broadcast on radio and TV, as well as appearing at several festivals and important venues.

Although the composer once admitted that he took the title for Rain Tree Sketch from a can of shaving foam, the piece and several others in this invaluable collection share a watery theme which links them back to the music of Debussy as well as the more obvious influence of Messiaen. This collection of Takemitsu's piano music is filled with a quizzical air and often touches of oblique humor, as though someone is smiling, somewhere. With warm, softly resounding chords and pitter-pattering melodic motifs above, Takemitsu's piano so often evokes rain gently falling on earth and leaves. There are bright, brisk flashes of light as well as a pervasive undertone of melancholy, which in a work such as Les Yeux Clos can be accounted for by the work's nature as a memorial to a friend. The poetic title of For Away is matched by the distant reverie of it's notes: 'my expression of extolment,' according to the composer, 'and an offering to the Galaxy of Life - a galaxy that is not the sole domain of mankind.' This is among the most harmonically spare and experimental works on the album, whereas Litany draws inspiration from Eastern modes as well as their reinterpretation at the hands of Debussy and Messiaen. Perhaps the boldest piece Takemitsu wrote for piano is Piano Distance, which is notated without a clear metre in the hyper-distilled style of Webern. Born in 1987, the Belgian pianist Lukas Huisman has made a speciality of new music, studying with the likes of Ian Pace and Geoffrey Douglas Madge. Through these and other teachers he has immersed himself in the complex worlds of Brian Ferneyhough and Kaiksohru Sorabji, among others, requiring a phenomenal technique as well as an appetite for the unfamiliar and challenging.

As James MacMillan celebrates his 50th birthday he here conducts his large-scale, complex work, The Quickening coupled with the symphonic suite The Sacrifice: Three Interludes, taken from his opera, The Sacrifice, a work based on a medieval Welsh tale and focusing on issues of love and conflict. Co-commissioned by the BBC Proms and the Philadelphia Orchestra, The Quickening sets poetry by MacMillan's frequent collaborator Michael Symmons Roberts. Hailed as some of the most distinguished writing since that of Benjamin Britten, the powerfully imaginative score explores the themes of birth, new life and new impulses, but as MacMillan says, it also has its dark side out of which hope is glimpsed. Joining the BBC Philharmonic is the Hilliard Ensemble, who premiered the work at the BBC Proms, accompanied by the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and Youth Chorus. MacMillan was awarded the 2008 Royal Philharmonic Society Opera and Music Theatre Award The Sacrifice following its premiere in September 2007 by Welsh National Opera. As did Britten in the now famous Four Sea Interludes from his opera Peter Grimes, MacMillan uses the Interludes as opportunities to withdraw from and reflect on the action, and he says, 'the orchestra provides another dimension to the narrative and to the drama, which allows the imagination to travel deeper or in a different direction.' James MacMillan is one of the UK's leading contemporary composers, and several of his earlier compositions are available on Chandos under his direction, including The Confessions of Isobel Gowdie (Classic FM Award winner), and The Berserking. Also available: CHAN 10092, 10275, 10377, 9997.

Centaur is pleased to release another album by prolific composer David Loeb. The works are Setsune, Five Reveries, Kiri, Fantasia sobre “Como la rosa en el guerto,” Three Friends of Winter, Suite No. 4, Cycle for the Lunar New Year, and Canon. Composer David Loeb was born in 1939 to a family which took music and the arts very seriously. He studied first with Peter Pindar Stearns at the Mannes College of Music, and then received his master’s degree from Yale. His catalog of compositions is quite remarkably extensive and diverse. In addition to the typical assortment of works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and voice, he has also composed extensively for Asian instruments and for early music instruments.

Leo Brouwer is universally acclaimed as an innovative composer, and this fifth volume of his complete guitar works contains some of his longest and most ambitious pieces. Danzas Rituales y Festivas Vol. 2 covers the gamut of virtuosic techniques and includes a movement dedicated to Pedro Mateo Gonzalez, while Brouwer considers the Sonata del Pensador to be ‘one of my most valuable pieces.’ Rich in Cuban rhythms, introspection and astonishing virtuosity, Brouwer’s work is the result of a lifetime of musical exploration alongside a passion for music of the past.

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REVIEW:

Much of the disc does not call for extended periods of virtuosity, but the music requires an inner feeling for the composer so as to provide a shape to movements that are frequently slow moving and sparing in notes. The distinguished Spanish guitarist, Pedro Mateo Gonzalez, has an affinity to Brouwer.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

After his debut solo album with music by Bach, Bart�k and Boulez, Michael Barenboim's second album is also dedicated to works for solo violin and features compositions by Salvatore Sciarrino, Giuseppe Tartini, Luciano Berio, and Niccol� Paganini, sketching a short history of Italian solo violin literature. The four works seem very heterogenous at first glance but what unites them is their rich technical and stylistic spectrum. The juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary music works creates an inimitable sound cosmos and makes the works by Tartini and Paganini sound incredibly modern alongside 20th-century music. Michael Barenboim creatively navigates the sometimes obsessive and diabolical elements of the works and creates an inspired and unique interpretation. This release was recorded at the Jesus-Christus-Kirche Berlin in June, 2017.

He was "tremendously" impressed, Arvo Pärt recalls of the moment he stood in front of Anish Kapoor's "Marsyas" for the first time at London's Tate Modern. "Suddenly I found myself in a position from where I saw my life in a different light. At that moment, I had the strong feeling that I wasn't ready to die yet," said then-67-year-old Arvo Pärt. This was the creative impulse for "Lamentate". Arvo Pärt, who celebrates his 85th birthday on September 11, 2020, seems to have often been inspired to compose by external circumstances. This is demonstrated in the selection of works for or with piano, which Onute Gražinyte chose for her first recording. "Für Alina" is particularly important to the Lithuanian pianist. In 1976, Pärt dedicated it to a young woman who had decided to leave the Soviet Union for England. "I know Alina's mother personally and can sympathize with her indescribable pain", says Onute Gražinyte. The pianist was baffled by Pärt's simple musical notation. "First you ask yourself: What is this?" Her playing reveals: She understands. "Arvo Pärt has reached the core. It's no coincidence that he dedicated many piano pieces to children and that he intended the 'Vater Unser' (Our Father) to be sung by a boy soprano. It's the ideal, the purity that children are born with and the composer has found it again."

GRAMMY® Award-winning composer Michael Daugherty creates colorful musical portraits in this recording, featuring larger-than-life personalities drawn from 20th-century American culture. Tales of Hemingway is a dramatic cello concerto, evoking the turbulent life, adventures and literature of author Ernest Hemingway. American Gothic is a dynamic concerto for orchestra, reflecting on the creative world of Iowa artist Grant Wood. Once Upon a Castle is a virtuosic sinfonia concertante for organ and orchestra, inspired by the rich history of the Hearst Castle, built lhigh upon the California Pacific coast by billionaire Randolph Hearst, the subject of Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane. Under the baton of Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero, the GRAMMY® Award-winning Nashville Symphony is joined by Zuill bailey, one of the leading cellists of his generation, and GRAMMY® Award-winning organist Paul Jacobs.

Winner of the 2020 GRAMMY award for Best Choral Performance and a nominee for Best Contemporary Classical Composition!

Richard Danielpour’s dramatic oratorio The Passion of Yeshua- a work which has evolved over the last 25 years- is an intensely personal telling of the final hours of Christ on Earth. It incorporates texts from the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian gospels inspiring extraordinarily beautiful music that stresses the need for human compassion and forgiveness. Danielpour returns to the scale and majesty of Bach in the oratorio, creating choruses that are intense and powerful, and giving both Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene a central place in a work of glowing spirituality. Conductor JoAnn Falletta considers The Passion of Yeshua to be “a classic for all time.”

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REVIEW:

Naxos’ world première recording of The Passion of Yeshua (2017) does full justice to Danielpour’s vision, thanks to the strong involvement and fine vocal talents of half a dozen soloists and the highly committed, knowing and knowledgeable conducting with which JoAnn Falletta shapes the performances of the UCLA Chamber Singers and the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra.

– Infodad.com

Following the Seattle Symphony’s first Grammy®-nominated Henri Dutilleux disc comes the second installment in the Symphony’s venture to record a complete survey of the orchestral music of this late, great, long-lived, and most important French composer whose music has been authoritatively described as “sumptuous… fastidious… rigorous… seductive… non-dogmatic…” – Guardian. This time Ludovic Morlot and his musicians turn their attention to Dutilleux’s most well-known and exciting orchestral work – Métaboles. Augustin Hadelich joins for a performance of the violin concerto, L’arbre des songes, with the disc completed by a performance of the composer’s Second Symphony (“Le Double”), the recordings realized within the spectacular acoustics of Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, and, in the cases of Métaboles and the Symphony No. 2, recorded live in concert. Founded in 1903, the Seattle Symphony continues to be one of America’s leading symphony orchestras. Music Director Ludovic Morlot has been leader of the orchestra since September 2011. Constantly astonishing audiences with his phenomenal technique, poetic sensitivity and gorgeous tone, violinist Augustin Hadelich’s remarkable consistency throughout the repertoire, from Beethoven to Thomas Adès, is seldom encountered in a single artist.

SCHNITTKE Piano Concerto. 1 Improvisation and Fugue. Variations on a Chord • Victoria Lyubitskaya (pn); Mark Gorenstein, cond; 1 Russian St Academy O 1 • FUGA LIBERA 532 (44:11)


Alfred Schnittke (1943–1998) remains one of the seminal composers of the late 20th century, and any new recording of his music is welcome. His Piano Concerto was completed in 1979 and exemplifies his polystylism, bringing in echoes of Baroque and Classical music while undermining them with kaleidoscopic shifts of emphasis and cluster-filled interruptions. The composer himself described the result as musical “sleepwalking,” although the Concerto lacks the rambling quality of his austere late works.


Lyubitskaya’s playing is exceptionally clear, and she is ably supported by Gorenstein and the Russian State Academy Orchestra. The orchestra has a distinguished recording history, while Gorenstein was responsible for excellent Schnittke performances on the short-lived Popemusic label (albeit with a different band). As recorded here, the orchestral strings have that “glassy” sound we used to hear in early digital releases, despite this being a 2005 recording. The piano sound and balance are fine.


Lyubitskaya shines in the solo piano works, both written as student test pieces earlier in the composer’s career. She is more incisive than is Boris Berman on Chandos, underlining a stylistic link between early Schnittke and Shostakovich.


So this disc is recommended, but with the proviso that 44 minutes is unacceptably short timing for a full-priced CD, especially when other versions of the Piano Concerto are available. On the cheap Apex label you will find one by Viktoria Postnikova, conducted by her husband Gennady Rozhdestvensky (both close friends of the composer), which is the favorite in several online reviews. I find Postnikova heavy-handed and her approach unvaryingly monumental, preferring a more rounded performance by Ralf Gothoni on Ondine, if you can find it. The latter’s strings are better recorded, Gothoni’s pianism is subtler and at times genuinely dreamlike (cf. sleepwalking), while the couplings are substantial: the Third Violin Concerto and Third Violin Sonata with Mark Lubotsky.


However, if you don’t want much more than the concerto, Lyubitskaya will do you proud.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

Cellist Wilhelmina Smith’s second album release on Ondine continues exploring contemporary Nordic repertoire for solo cello. In her new album Smith has focus on Danish contemporary composers, Per Nørgård (b. 1932) and Poul Ruders (b. 1949). Both Nørgård and Ruders are known for their large-scale orchestral works. Nørgård, in particular, is known for his eight symphonies and has been hailed by many as one of the greatest living symphonists. It is therefore intriguing to look closer to his two very early lyrical solo cello sonatas, early masterpieces written just before completing his 1st Symphony. In 1980, the composer revised his second sonata by adding an extensive second movement, almost an entirely new sonata, to the existing work. Nørgård’s 3rd sonata “What – Is the Word!” from 1999 is a short “Sonata breve” that takes its title from a quote by Irish playwriter Samuel Beckett. Another major Danish composer of our times, Poul Ruders (b. 1949), has also written 5 symphonies alongside several concertos and three operas. Ruders wrote his 10-movement Bravourstudien in 1976, just at the brink of a major stylistic change. This work is a set of variations on a Medieval folk tune “L’homme armé”. In this work, however, the original theme is heard at the very end of the work.

These world premiere recordings feature wonderful works from Pawel ?ukaszewski. His works have been performed and even premiered by such renowned choral ensembles from London and Cambridge as BBC Singers, Trinity College Choir, Britten Sinfonia and Polyphony under the direction of prominent conductors Stephen Layton and Nigel Short.

Jose Serebrier is a conducting legend, and one of the most recorded classical artists of all time. He has received forty-five Grammy Award nominations, and eight Grammy wins. Along with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Serebrier presents works by Samuel Adler. The compositions chosen include Adler’s Symphony No. 6, Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, and Drifting on Winds and Currents. Cellist Maximilian Hornung, who has already been recognized for his recordings, joins the orchestra for the cello concerto. “Jose Serebrier is a top rate conductor/composer with a sense of choice and judgement second to none. He gets the very best from a youthful RSNO.” (MusicWeb International)

The Deepest Desire

Making their recording debut on Resonus Classics is Sonoro, one of the UK's newest and most impressive chamber choirs, founded in 2016 by Neil Ferris and Michael Higgins. Noted for their warmth of tone, rich blend of colours and vibrancy in performance, for their first recording Sonoro presents sacred music by Frank Martin and James MacMillan, with a programme featuring Martin's iconic Mass for Double Choir and a selection of works from MacMillan's considerable contribution to the choral repertoire, including his powerful setting of the Miserere. Sonoro's distinctive sound has propelled the ensemble to secure engagements from some of the UK's most prestigious venues and promoters, including the London Chamber Music Series at King's Place, and the Wimbledon International Music Festival. Sonoro has also performed live on BBC Radio 3 'In Tune' and been featured on London Live television. The choir's unmistakably rich and full sound has been realized by allowing each singer to be free to use all of their voice, matched with careful blending, creating warmth and resonance.

This collection draws together many of the much-loved and most-requested shorter choral works by John Rutter. Gathered from across the Collegium catalogue, 'Be Thou My Vision' includes all of the church anthems and other sacred pieces for which Rutter is justly famous, representing for the first time a handy compendium of the best-loved Rutter works in their definitive performances by the Cambridge Singers, directed by the composer. 'The recordings of Rutter conducting his own music with the Cambridge Singers remain gleaming beacons of irrepressible music-making.' - BBC Music Magazine

Onute Grazinyte and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra under Modestas Pitrenas play P�rt's music - especially the main work Lamentate - very expressively and communicatively. It is a pure distillate of music that echoes and has an effect long after the last sounds have been heard" wrote pizzicato about the album that was released in September 2020 in honor of Arvo P�rt's 85th birthday and awarded it the "Supersonic." The Gramophone Magazine stated "This is a wondrously thought-provoking anthology of P�rt's work. [...] You cannot buy that kind of innocent beauty but you can, and should, buy this disc." The acclaimed recording of P�rt's "Lamentate" with which Onute Grazinyte marked her recording debut will now be released on vinyl in a limited and numbered 180g edition of 1.000 copies. It will supplemented with Grazinyte's wonderful interpretation of P�rt's piano works "Pari intervallo" and "F�r Anna Maria - Nachdenklich". About her playing, pizzicato added in their review: "The longer you listen to the pianist, the more you feel how well and safely she moves in P�rt's musical universe.

Carson Cooman is many things musical - organist and Composer in Residence at the Memorial Church, Harvard University, writer, critic and consultant, concert organist, and above all a highly prolific composer of music in a wide variety of genres, from orchestral to song. His organ compositions come in many styles, from liturgical models, to more gritty and substantial pieces such as his organ symphonies and preludes and fugues. The music in this programme, most of which was composed in 2016 and 2017, is varied and consists of a delightful mix of secular concert works and liturgically based pieces. Erik Simmons is a fine organist, making his eighth Cooman organ album for Divine Art. He is playing the Rosales organ of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon, recorded through the Hauptwerk system. This is volume 8 of this highly praised series. Previous volumes have been heralded as momentous and groundbreaking by fans and critics alike.

An album on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Astor Piazzolla. The arde Trio offers two world premieres on its debut release: Fresh and new arrangements by Omar Massa, which are congenially embodied by the unusual instrumentation of the arde Trio, allow not only the great "classics" of Tango Nuevo music to resound anew on this album, but also the new compositions of Omar Massa, who leads Tango Nuevo into the 21st century and is described by the press as the secret successor of the great Astor Piazzolla. Experience a fascinating journey through time!

Classical Music

Star violinist Arabella Steinbacher presents Antonio Vivaldi’s world-famous Four Seasons alongside Astor Piazzolla’s Cuatro estaciones porteñas, creating a lively combination of baroque and tango. The enormous popularity of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons tends to make us forget the original and ground-breaking nature of these violin concertos. Coupling them with Piazzolla’s tango-inspired Four Seasons of Buenos Aires makes both pieces sound fresher than ever before, thanks to Steinbacher’s personal engagement with the repertoire and the inspired accompaniment of the Münchener Kammerorchester. Piazzolla’s music is performed here in a new arrangement for violin and string orchestra by Peter von Wienhardt, whose Strauss song arrangements on Steinbacher’s previous album Aber der Richtige ... (2018) were extensively praised by the press.

Arabella Steinbacher, a multiple award-winner with an extensive PENTATONE discography, is accompanied by the players of the Münchener Kammerorchester, who make their PENTATONE debut.

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REVIEW:

Both soloist and ensemble approach the contrasting styles – baroque energy and bluesy Latin passion – with supple mastery, bows biting into strings, rhythms accentuated, mood at times aggressive. Vivaldi’s Summer, with its rushing storms and prickly, insect-ridden heat, sounds more than usually wild, with Steinbacher fearless in the rapid, high-flying outbursts. What a player.

– Observer (UK)

The fusion between the string quartet, the perfect expression of the European 'classical' tradition, and the bandoneon, the musical embodiment of Argentina, is presented here in two quite different works. The Five Tango Sensations were originally written for Lutz Mommartz's experimental film Tango durch Deutschland. In 1989, Piazzolla resurrected five of the original seven pieces in response to a commission from the Kronos Quartet, renaming them Five Tango Sensations. This work occupies a special place in the ocean of Astor Piazzolla's music for two reasons: it is his only suite for bandoneon and string quartet, and it departs from the standard Piazzollian framework in both form and language. The suite Les Hommes de Piaf was originally a series of arrangements for string quartet and bandoneon based on tunes from the repertoire of Edith Piaf. But the composer's pen trumped the arranger's, imposing a texture in which the songs no longer play the leading role. Neither descriptive nor abstract, the suite Les Hommes de Piaf is merely a fantasised expression of states in which love can be by turns paradoxical, destructive, idealised, impossible or sensory, through a kaleidoscopic 'Piaf filter'.

Five works for string orchestra of composers, fellow countrymen and contemporaries Paweł Łukaszewski (b. 1968) and Mikołaj Górecki (b. 1971) are featured on this Dux release. +Mr. Łukaszewski has received numerous commissions for new works, and his discography runs to over 90 CDs. +Mr. Górecki's works have received performances in Europe, Canada and America. +The Baltic Neopolis Orchestra is a chamber string orchestra founded in 2008 by violist Emilia Goch.

The vast power of the Royal Courts of England and Scotland may be long gone but the sumptuous sounds of their worship are not lost. This disc brings together music of some of the most outstanding but now little-known composers of the 15th and 16th centuries, and introduces a major new work by one of this century's most remarkable composers. Robert Carver's mesmeric setting of the devotional text O bone Jesu has long been admired and has now proved an inspiration to James MacMillan who has chosen with this special commission for The Sixteen, to clothe the same text in his own musical language of reflective beauty.

One of the most important and prolific composers of the latter half of the 20th century, Hans Werner Henze wrote for guitar often, enjoying the evocative potential of the instrument and painting a diverse array of emotions and atmospheres in his compositions. The two Sonatas on Shakespearean Characters, featured on this album, portrays the timeless characters like Lady Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, and Ariel, personifying these characters with new and dramatic expression. Andrea Dieci is “a true star of the classical guitar.” (Corriere della sera). His previous recordings include Jappelli’s complete works, and guitar compositions by Piazzolla.

The great American composer, George Crumb's most recent compositions have been two large piano compositions, "Metamorphoses, Books 1 and 2", completed in 2019. Volume 19 of Bridge's Complete Crumb Edition, a series of recordings supervised by the composer himself, is made up entirely of Metamorphoses Book 1, performed by Crumb specialist, Marcantonio Barone. The work consists of ten movements, each based on a famous painting by artists including Paul Klee, Vincent van Gogh, Marc Chagall, James Whistler, Jasper Johns, Paul Gauguin, Salvador Dali, and Vasily Kandinsky. At 90, George Crumb continues to produce works of incredible detail and passion. Critic David Hurwitz wrote that "Bridge’s decision to embark on a complete edition of George Crumb’s music remains one of the most significant recording projects currently in progress, as well as one of the most artistically successful."

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REVIEWS:

Klee, Van Gogh, Chagall, Whistler, Gauguin and Kandinsky all give inspiration for a stylistically inclusive, vigorously inventive sequence: just 37½ minutes of music, but a disc of real substance.

– Sunday Times (UK)

The pianist Marcantonio Barone places Crumb’s evocative gestures with reverent care and gives them space to make their full effect, and he’s as responsive to the music’s savage or folk-like moments as he is to its quiet poetry. The recorded sound is ideally close so the piano’s resonances sound huge and all-enveloping, as they should. Those who already know Crumb’s music well might be a tad disappointed that this piece breaks no new ground creatively. But for those who don’t it offers a wonderfully concentrated, vivid introduction to his imaginative world.

– The Telegraph (UK)