Glaciers represent some of the most striking examples of nature’s power and artistry, while simultaneously revealing the impact of mankind’s actions. With pieces including a composition for Barack Obama’s 2015 GLACIER Conference in Alaska, Matthew Burtner’s GLACIER MUSIC breaks through the controversy around global warming. With electroacoustic compositions recorded on top of melting glaciers, GLACIER MUSIC makes the issue unavoidable: while we converse and debate over climate change, iconic pieces of natural history are slipping away. Matthew Burtner is an Alaskan-born composer, sound artist and eco-acoustician whose music and research explores embodiment, ecology, polytemporality and noise. First Prize Winner of the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music Competition (Czech Republic), a 2011 IDEA Award Winner, and a recipient of the Howard Brown Foundation Fellowship, Burtner’s music has also received honors and awards from Bourges (France), Gaudeamus (Netherlands), Darmstadt (Germany) and The Russolo (Italy) international competitions. He is Professor of Composition and Computer Technologies (CCT) at the University of Virginia, and Director of the environmental arts non-profit organization, EcoSono

This new recording captures the magic of the season as the RSNO and its Junior Chorus deliver a perfect selection of classic festive favourites in A Christmas Festival. These charming performances show why their joyous, fun-packed Christmas concerts, conducted by the inimitable Christopher Bell, are always a highlight of the Scottish seasonal calendar. The well-chosen programme finds traditional favourites, such as Jingle Bells, In A Cottage In A Wood and Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, sitting harmoniously alongside contemporary tunes from Michael Head and Howard Blake (The Snowman, The Bear). An unexpected but brilliant instrumental mash-up up of The Little Dummer Boy with Ravel’s Bolero gives centre-stage to the award-winning RSNO. Two fantastic medleys provide a one stop shop of Christmas tunes both old and new which you’ll be hard pressed not to join in with! At turns rousing, sentimental, cheering and familiar this is the perfect present this Christmas.

Around the year 1906, Perosi conceived the large-scale project to dedicate symphonic works for full orchestra to Italian cities, some of which had been the venues of his musical experience. Over the years that followed, the "Roma", "Venezia", "Firenze", "Messina", "Tortona", "Milano", "Torino" and "Genova" suites appeared, with, perhaps, a ninth, unfinished one for "Naples". The project was to have concluded with a tenth suite entitled "Italia", which would have included voices with the orchestra. Composer Alberto Gasco provided this interpretation of Perosi's intentions: "Maestro did not intend writing description music, nor creating a portrait of the cities themselves. Was this wise? I do not think so, and confirming my opinion is the fact that the Messina suite, as the composer himself decalres, was inspired by the horrific reality of the city in ruins. Therefore, little by little, Perosi arrived at the idea of creating a special character in the music of his suites. Entitling his compositions aftre Rome, Venice and Florence, through sound he conveyed the solemn majesty of the metropolis, the infinite languor of the city on the lagoon, and the carefree, pulsating Italian soul of the city of art, condensing emotional aspects into his works." Author Vittorio Podrecca offered this praise of the compositions: "Here, Perosi, with soul, reawakens the symphony by composing suites. Radiating through his noteworthy qualities are a limpidity of inspiration and design, sweetness of effects, sincerity of emotion, persistent elegiac poetry, and efficacious, tasteful orchestration."

The tale of a quick witted fox and her escape from confinement for a life in the forest that is by turns joyful and violent, The Cunning Little Vixen is an unsentimental parable of death and rebirth that lives through the instinctive and immediate world of nature, animal and human, which Janacek loved so much. Melly Stil's production for Glyndebourne find the "delicate balance between whimsy and mysticism" (Daily Telegraph) at the heart of the opera, which Vladimir Jurowski conducts "with lustrous style: you can hear the birds in the score, feel the sunshine and thrill to the starlit night sky in the final scene." (Opera Today)

Melly Still, stage director

Recorded live at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, June 2012

Bonus:
- Creating Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen

• Picture format: NTSC 16:9
• Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS 5.1
• Region code: 0 (worldwide)
• Subtitles: English, French, German, Dutch, Japanese, Korean
• Running time: 119 mins
• No. of DVDs: 1
  

REVIEW:

The leading roles in this performance are sung by Lucy Crowe as the vixen (whose name is Sharp Ears), Sergei Leiferkus as the forester who tries to domesticate her, and Emma Bell as the fox that Sharp Ears meets after escaping back to her forest, marries (at a ceremony conducted by a grasshopper), and bears more children than she can count (only eight of which we see on stage). It is also important to observe that costume designer Dinah Collin chose to capture animals by a combination of suggestion and connotation. Both vixen and fox are identified primarily by their tails (which is also how we in the audience learn of Sharp Ears’ ultimate fate); but the rest of the costume tends to portray them as Gypsies, which is to say characters not quite at home in their own land.

The instrumental side of the score is provided by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, Music Director at Glyndebourne and Principal Conductor of the LPO. He conducts with a keen sense of how Janáček tends to direct the flow of his music through the modulation of energy levels. While Jurowski is Russian, he also seems to have informed himself of the extent to which Janáček evokes Czech folk idioms, allowing the score to establish its unique position between symphonic music and indigenous source material.

Most importantly, however, this is an opera that takes a fairy-tale-like narrative and serves it up as a visual and auditory feast; and this Glyndebourne production delivers exquisitely on both visual and auditory levels.

-- SF Examiner

The Italian and international press were unanimous in their praise for Peter Grimes at La Scala, which revived the tradition of Britten's operas on the lyric stages of Italy. A strong British cast was marshaled by the baton of Robin Ticciati, who has already won golden opinions for his opera conducting.

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

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Also available on standard DVD

THE NOBEL PRIZE CONCERT 2010
(Blu-ray Disc Version) Ludwig van Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3 in C major, Op. 72b
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 82

Joshua Bell, violin
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
Sakari Oramo, conductor

Bonus:
- Interviews featuring Joshua Bell, Sakari Oramo, and Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Laureate in Literature.

Picture format:1080i Full-HD
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 91 mins
No. of Blu-rays: 1 (BD 25)

R E V I E W:



TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto 1. BEETHOVEN Leonore Overture No. 3. SIBELIUS Symphony No. 5 • Sakari Oramo, cond; Royal Stockholm PO; 1 Joshua Bell (vn) • ACCENTUS 10215 (Blu-ray: 91:25)

& Interviews with Joshua Bell, Sakari Oramo, and Mario Vargas Llosa (25: 18)

Accentus’s release commemorates the December 2010 Nobel Prize concert given in the Stockholm Concert Hall with Sakari Oramo conducting the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and featuring Joshua Bell (who receives top billing on the Blu-ray’s case) as violin soloist. The concert opens with a thundering performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3. The widescreen high-definition visual clarity, like the crisp and full-range audio (DTS HD or PCM), enhances the drama, making the hushed opening particularly atmospheric and reproducing the sudden outbursts and moving bass lines with startling realism. The climaxes rumble at the end. Oramo and the orchestra seem to revel in these sudden outbursts and enhance their effect with a boost in voltage.

Throughout the concert, the camera crew takes an approach similar to that in the old music scores for symphonic works that indicated active parts with arrows; in this case, the camera focuses on any woodwind or brass instrument (or percussion, of course) that might have been honored with an arrow in older times. Perhaps that’s not so distracting the first time you watch, but what about the second, third, or fourth? If you attend the dress rehearsal of a concert, then the performance, sitting in a seat in the hall from which you can view the entire stage, would you always train your attention on whatever seemed to be most prominent aurally, or might you allow your attention to wander freely? Perhaps it’s most telling that at the climaxes in Beethoven’s work, the camera pulls back for a shot that embraces the whole orchestra. I remember such a shot from the concert at the opening of Lincoln Center, when the cameras pulled back for the climax of the Polka and Fugue from Schwanda by Jaromir Weinberger. I’d like to watch the whole concert from this point of view, though I doubt most viewers would share this preference; in any case, perhaps a programmable choice of camera angles might be offered with Blu-ray’s greater storage capacity (such a choice seemed to be promised as features even in early DVDs).

Joshua Bell’s stage manner has always been characterized by what Jascha Heifetz, in a master class, once called “funny business”—swaying and grimacing even if the playing itself, heard without its visual analog, sounded a bit pallid. After finishing watching Bell’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, I reviewed movements of the concerto played on various DVDs by the warm-hearted David Oistrakh, the coolly elegant Nathan Milstein, the brilliant Michael Rabin, and the macho Ruggiero Ricci. And I’ve watched Heifetz’s truncated but electrifying version of the first movement with Fritz Reiner and the New York Philharmonic from the movie Carnegie Hall so many times that I didn’t need to return to it. There’s no funny business in any of these performances. The musical ideas emerge in the audible results rather than in any gyrations, however modest, that produce them.

So what does Bell actually do with the music itself? Well, the opening offers an opportunity for a violinist to write a bold signature, and Mischa Elman always took the opportunity to do so in that passage. So does Bell, though one violinist to whom I showed the passage thought his characterization “grotesque.” In any case, he’s expressive in the first theme, though he allows subsequent running passages to slip momentarily out of control. He enhances the music’s lyricism with portamentos that, however, don’t permit him to surpass in expressivity even the palest of the performances I’ve mentioned (Milstein’s). Nevertheless, he draws forth a pure and crystal-clear tone from the higher registers of the 1713 Gibson-Huberman Stradivari, and builds the passagework to an impressive climax, though his approach to the cadenza doesn’t generate the kind of voltage of Oistrakh’s or Heifetz’s performances. In the cadenza itself, Bell perhaps intentionally takes a lyrical tack; he certainly doesn’t hiss and spit as almost does Václav Hude?ek (on Supraphon 4055). After the cadenza, Bell shows how rich a sound his violin can produce on the G string. In the Canzonetta, the beauty of his tone and his relatively unmannered expressivity contribute to what turns out to be an especially communicative performance, though the middle section doesn’t sound as agitated as does, say, Heifetz’s (in 1957); in the return of the main melody, the recorded sound transmits a great deal of welcome orchestral detail. After an aggressive reading of the transitional cadenza, Bell launches into a performance of the finale that’s commanding not only for its brilliance but for its plaintiveness in the episodes as well. In Bell’s pounding, dance-like reading, the finale provides as robust a flow of adrenaline as does the first movement. Still, the whole concerto sounds more static in his reading than it does in the DVDs I’ve mentioned, or as I remember it from Elman’s performance with John Barbiriolli from 1929 or Milstein’s with Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1940.

Oramo’s and the orchestra’s performance of Jean Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, recorded, again, with startling fidelity, conveys a strong sense of the music’s elemental power. And that clarity allows for separation of the layers of sound in the opening. Ideas seem almost to bubble as from a boiling cauldron (even in the dance-like sections in the movement’s second half (or in what some have designated the second movement). In the Andante, the interplay of scalar passages and pizzicatos in the strings, set against woodwind sonorities, rises and falls in what Oramo has built into a series of grand dynamic arches (commentators have unsurprisingly often described various performances of this symphony as “built” in one way or another). The finale’s pervasive ostinatos sizzle in the recorded sound, and mount in the end to a majestic, almost Brucknerian, conclusion. But compare those climaxes to the even more magisterial ones in Leonard Bernstein’s video performance with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1988 (directed by Humphrey Burton), released in 2010 by Unitel. On the whole, while strength and clarity (analogous to that of the recorded sound) may be the hallmark of Oramo’s reading, Bernstein’s sounds more sumptuous—due in no small part, perhaps, to the Vienna Philharmonic’s smooth power—but hardly less idiomatic or insightful.

The concert as a whole creates an impression of visceral power, albeit somewhat diminished during the concerto. And for violinists, the opportunity to observe Bell’s instrument close up and in great detail may add an incentive that might compensate for what some viewers of my generation might take as foppish pirouetting (there, I’ve said it). Strongly recommended overall, in the last analysis.

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Also available on Blu-ray

THE NOBEL PRIZE CONCERT 2010
Ludwig van Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3 in C major, Op. 72b
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 82

Joshua Bell, violin
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
Sakari Oramo, conductor

Bonus:
- Interviews featuring Joshua Bell, Sakari Oramo, and Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel Laureate in Literature.

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 91 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

A collection of contemporary music.

Gathered for God is the collaboration of eleven talented composers joining forces to create music that celebrates God's love for us. The songs in this collection are great for a variety of liturgical uses. Marty Haugen's “The Reign of God Is Near” is the perfect complement for a triumphant entrance procession. The poignant text of John Bell's “Dolorosa” will bring comfort in times of sorrow. Liam Lawton's “Eternal Is Your Love” has a beautiful melody embracing an expressive refrain that simply begs to be sung. “Praise the God of All Beginnings,” by Michael Joncas, employs a festive text by Herman G. Stuempfle Jr. And that's not all. The collection also includes new music from other great composers like Chris de Silva, Tony Alonso, Rory Cooney, Gary Daigle, Francis Patrick O'Brien, Donna Peña, and Michael Mahler. This collection is a must-have!

From John L. Bell and the Wild Goose Resource Group comes a new collection of 21 shorter songs for public worship. The music in The Truth that Sets Us Free magnifies God and the experience of God’s people and effectively offsets the personal focus that most popular praise songs emphasize. This diverse mix of world music has biblical roots and references—some express exultant praise—others yearning, or anger. Many of the songs are suitable for most Sundays while others are better suited to a particular season or liturgical act. It is the hope of the Iona Community that this collection will add to the pool of similar material, which takes both God and the world seriously, since it was for the world and not just humanity that Christ came.

These global songs have been selected and edited by John Bell and Alison Adam, members of the Iona Community in Scotland. Both John and Alison have extensive experience teaching and singing world music with people of all ages. These songs are accessible—many of them instantly singable—and they have been chosen for use with children in a wide variety of worship and classroom situations. This handy collection is a valuable tool to help enlighten children to the ways of other cultures through the global language of music. Send the children home with these songs on their lips and soon the adults will want to sing along!

Conducted by Christopher Bell, Chicago’s Grant Park Chorus, “as fine a symphony chorus as any to be found anywhere in the nation” (Chicago Tribune), makes its a cappella CD debut with an all-American program of eight imaginative, moving, and sometimes whimsical works written between 1975 and 25, including four world-premiere recordings. Premieres include Abbie Betinis’s Toward Sunshine, Toward Freedom: Songs of Smaller Creatures. Lee Kesselman’s Buzzings: Three Pieces about Bees offers vignettes based on Emily Dickinson poems. Paul Crabtree’s Five Romantic Miniatures is a set of affectionate tributes to characters from The Simpsons animated TV series. The chorus made its commercial recording debut performing with the Grant Park Orchestra on the 211 Cedille Records release The Pulitzer Project, which attracted international attention. Chicago’s New City said the CD “spectacularly showcased” the chorus’s “remarkable transparency and flexibility.”

Clive Bell is Britain's leading player of the Japanese shakuhachi, and a founder member of Jah Wobble's Deep Space project. DAVID ROSS was drummer for the instrumental combo Kenny Process Team. But none of this would prepare you for Mystery Lights, their first duo recording. This is a spacious, intimate music, full of colour and melody, exploratory but highly accessible. Many instruments, both acoustic and electronic, familiar and unfamiliar, weave a spell hard to resist. This album was made in collaboration with Walter & Donald the budgerigars. Recorded live at "The Earl of Kilgorlin". CD includes a video playable on any PC.

Classical Music

Classical Music

For TRACKLIST/PERFORMERS SUMMARY, please expand note below:

One of the best parts of the Halle Christmas celebration is the inclusion of the entire Halle family- the Halle and Halle Choir, as well as Halle’s Youth Choir and Children’s Choir. This lovely collection of popular, rare, and newly discovered holiday gems will bring festivity to all of your holiday gatherings. Compositions include works from film composers such as John Williams and Nigel Hess, as well as choral superstars like John Rutter and John Gardner. Especially notable is the orchestral showpiece Noel!, which was written specifically for Halle and conductor Stephen Bell by Roderick Elms, and is receiving here its world premiere recording. “A lovely festive celebration and a reminder of what Christmas is all about” (Oldham Chronicle)

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TRACKLIST/PERFORMERS:

A Christmas Overture - Nigel Hess
O Holy Night Adam - arr. Battiwalla *
Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day - John Gardner ^
In Dulci Jubilo - arr. Pearsall *^
Noel - Roderick Elms
Somewhere in my Memory - John Williams ~
Fairytale Sleighride - Adam Saunders
Angels’ Carol - John Rutter *
Waltz, Winter Bonfire - Sergei Prokofiev
Personent Hodie - arr. Gustav Holst *
The Holy Boy - John Ireland
Jesus Christ the Apple Tree - Elizabeth Poston ^
A Christmas Carnival - Richard Bissill
In The Bleak Midwinter - Harold Darke/Christina Rossetti *^
Dance of the Tumblers - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Christmas on the Beach at Waikiki - Marta Keen arr. Alwyn Green ~
Sleighride - Leroy Anderson
We wish you a Merry Christmas *^

Conductor
Stephen Bell

Soloists/Artists
Hallé Choir *
Hallé Youth Choir ^
Hallé Children's Choir ~

Leroy Anderson (1908-1975); John Rutter (b.1945)Victor Herbert (1859-1924); Englebert Humperdinck (1854-1921)Robert Chilcott (b. 1955); Cesar Franck (1822-1890); et al Eton College Chapel ChoirRalph Allwood, conductorDavid Goode, organ Anderson: A Christmas Festival; Musical Sleigh Ride; Traditional:Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; Victor Herbert: March of the WoodenSoldiers; Bob Chilcott: Hey Now!; Cesar Franck: Panis Angelicus;John Rutter: Twelve Days of Christmas; Humperdick: Sandman's Song; Evening Prayer; John Williams: Somewhere in my Memory;Waldteufel: Skater's Waltz; Meakins: Penguin Song; Lane: Sleighbell Serenade; Britten: This Little Babe; Harrison: Christmas Hope;Koschat: Scheewalzer; etc.

This new release is the conclusion of a project exploring ways of transforming and developing the piano concerto. Pianist Kate Halsall developed these works centered around two pianos with varied electro-acoustical and chamber accompaniment. The pieces incorporate rock and jazz instruments, extended techniques, film, and pitched silences. The composers featured here are all part of the English new-music scene, and are developing reputations for innovation.

‘Handel: Operatic Arias’, originally released in 2005, saw soprano Emma Bell perform with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, directed from the harpsichord by Richard Egarr, in her second Linn recital disc. + The well-chosen extracts sample the whole of Handel's London operatic career, from his first (Rinaldo, 1711) to his last (Deidamia, 1741), and demonstrate his (and the singer's) wide range of moods, from defiance to resignation, from love to the wilder shores of hatred. + ‘Bell stamps her bold artistic mark on a group of peerless Handel arias. Magnificent stuff. 5 stars.’ (Classic FM)

Classical Music

Classical Music

A new-world virtuoso with old-world musicianship: the complete Decca recordings of JOSHUA BELL, capturing the first decade of the violinist's career on record. Decca signed the nineteen-year-old Joshua Bell in 1986 on the basis of privately made concerto tapes. Bell had first picked up a violin at the age of four, but he had been taking the instrument seriously for less than a decade. His musicianship and technical aptitude were nurtured and coached by Josef Gingold, a pupil of Eugène Ysaÿe. He made astonishingly rapid progress. Within months of signing for Decca, he had already made his first three albums, of concertos by Bruch, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Wieniawski, and recital encores. Unfashionably, Bell felt especially drawn to the Wieniawski, which reveals his affinity for older school of violin playing embodied by Gingold, Heifetz - and Fritz Kreisler, the central figure on a hugely successful 1995 recital album. But by then, Bell was already demonstrating the breadth of his musicianship, and striking up partnerships with the pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Olli Mustonen, and the cellist Steven Isserlis. These partnerships would last for decades to come, and yield deeply rewarding albums of French repertoire for Decca, including Chausson's Concert and Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Bell is now music director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, who accompanied him back in 1988 for that Bruch/Mendelssohn coupling. In a sense, therefore, this new Eloquence box brings us full circle to an appreciation of a violinist who has always taken his talent seriously. He went on to record concertos by Brahms, Schumann, Saint-Saëns, Barber and Walton, and his playing inspired the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis to write a concertante Air which he recorded for Argo. Previously only issued in the US, this Kernis album now joins the violinist's Decca discography in this new Eloquence box, which is compiled with original album covers and annotated with a new appreciation of the violinist by Tully Potter.

Feat. Drummer Steve Cushing (Lee Jackson, Magic Slim, Smokey Smothers) & Willie Black (bass) & special guest on one track - Big Time Sarah.

Guitarist fearlessly sets out on a new exploration of modern Chicago blues music on this inventive & creative effort - it's as good & honest a representation as you're likely to find of Lurrie's talents without having to pop into a Chicago blues club.

Vocalist/guitarist shows new facets in his blues talents, inc. his skills at smooth-swinging T-Bone-esque guitar, feat. Ken Saydak, Harlan Terson, Kenny Smith + 2 songs w. guitarist Dave Specter.