Sean Shibe returns to the classical guitar on Profesión, bringing together works by Agustín Barrios, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginastera. The album derives its name from Barrios’s “Profesión de Fe” (profession of faith), a poem which he often used as a preface to his concerts. The poem references indigenous mythological deities, and praises the power of the guitar as the ultimate conduit to the secrets of the divine South-American destiny. Barrios’s La Catedral and Julia Florida are combined with Villa Lobos’s 12 Études, while Ginastera’s Sonata completes the program.

These works by South American composers begin with homage and pastiche in reverence of the Old World, but build towards a totally original idiom - musical magical realism. The repertoire is voluminous, indulging in excess, and narcotic, and as such creates a counterweight to the reserved and introspective nature of Shibe’s acclaimed classical predecessor album Camino.

This will be Shibe’s first-ever album focusing on repertoire that was originally written for the classical guitar, and he plays a Hauser copy built for Julian Bream. It was considered one of the best instruments of the 1930s, and fits the sound world of this program like a glove.

REVIEWS:

It’s an extraordinary account [of the Villa-Lobos], bursting with nuance and personality and easily rivaling Julian Bream’s classic, late-1970s version.

— Gramophone

This is a gleaming and brilliant album that doesn’t fail to awaken the senses to the exhilarating world of un-adulterated acoustic sound.

— BBC Music Magazine

Nominated for a GRAMMY® Award!

Karina Canellakis offers the first fruit of her exclusive Pentatone collaboration with a recording of Bartók’s 4 Orchestral Pieces and Concerto for Orchestra, together with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, of which she is the Chief Conductor. The 4 Orchestral Pieces have a strong affinity with the stage works Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and The Wooden Prince, conceived in the same period. The Concerto for Orchestra is one of Bartóks final works, full of folk tunes, and utterly colourful and virtuosic for all the instruments. As such, it’s an ideal piece to showcase the congeniality between the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and its star Chief Conductor. Internationally acclaimed for her emotionally charged performances, technical command and interpretive depth, Karina Canellakis has become one of the most in- demand conductors of her generation. She makes her Pentatone debut as Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra that returns to the label after its participation in Gordon Getty’s Beauty Comes Dancing (2018).

Prior to 1991, students at Westminster Choir College organized services of lessons and carols during the season of Advent. Inspired by the famous Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge, these services were held in Bristol Chapel under the leadership of Sacred Music students and accompanied by student organists. Each year, for the past 30 years, we have gathered to witness this familiar tradition and to be moved by sound and word. This evening brings stability, beauty, and comfort to all who experience the music in this great space. This 30th Anniversary live recording at the Princeton University Chapel includes the Westminster Alumni Choir, Westminster Chapel Choir, Westminster Choir, Westminster Concert Bell Choir, Westminster Jubilee Singers, Westminster Symphonic Choir, Timberdale Brass, and alumnus Robert McCormick on organ.

TRACKLIST OF WORKS:

Disc 1:

• Who is This King of Glory?
• Nata Lux
• Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)
• Angel Tidings
• Toccata on Veni Emmanuel
• I Wonder as I Wander
• Missa Carolae
• Come, O Come Emmanuel
• Handel: Messiah, HMW 56
• Organ Improvisation
• In Splendoribus Sanctorum (Strathclyde Motets)
• Dame Russa Trepak
• Betelehemu

Disc 2:

• Come, All Ye Faithful
• In the Bleak Midwinter
• On This Day Earth Shall Rise
• Dona Nobis Pacem
• Hark the Herald Angels Sing
• Festival First Nowell
• Silent Night
• Ringing in the Season
• Joy to the World
• L’année d’or
• The Lord Bless You and Keep You
• Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella

On the occasion of conductor Georges Prêtre's 100th birthday in August, the label SWRmusic will release an 8CD box-set containing a wonderful collection of representative orchestral works by eleven composers, thus showing the fruitful collaboration between the French conductor and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSO). Most of the recordings are being released for the first time, with the exception of the works by Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss, which have previously been released by this label.

The Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1945 and has developed into one of Germany’s most important musical ambassadors over the following seven decades. World-renowned conductors, as well as some of the world’s greatest soloists, have been guests of the Stuttgart RSO, including Carlos Kleiber, Ferenc Fricsay, Karl Böhm, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Hans Knappertsbusch, Sir Georg Solti, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Kurt Sanderling, Gary Bertini, and Herbert Blomstedt, as well as Maria Callas, Mstislaw Rostropowitsch, Maurizio Pollini, Yehudi Menuhin, Alfred Brendel, Hélène Grimaud, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Elina Garanca, Rolando Villazon, Hilary Hahn, Sol Gabetta, and Lang Lang, to name just a few.

Nominated for a GRAMMY® Award!

Read our exclusive ArkivMusic interview with star Anthony Roth Costanzo

Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Gil Rose present the world premiere recording of The Lord of Cries, a breathtaking opera by John Corigliano and Mark Adamo. Telling the story of Euripides’s The Bacchae with the characters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the piece explores the power of sexual desire and humans’ need to blame and attack others for what they can neither resist nor accept in themselves. Corigliano returns to opera for the first time since his The Ghosts of Versailles, introduced by the Metropolitan Opera, made an international sensation in 1992. The brilliant cast—most of whom introduced their parts in the world premiere in 2021—is led by star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role. Multi-award winning composer John Corigliano’s music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. The Pentatone recording of The Ghost of Versailles, released in 2016, won two Grammy Awards. Composer-librettist Mark Adamo’s four previous operas, including Little Women (1998) have been staged, recorded, and broadcast hundreds of times on five continents. Under the leadership of conductor Gil Rose, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project has become an unsurpassed advocate for 20th and 21st century American music; they make their Pentatone debut with The Lord of Cries.

In her new album "Solitude," soprano Katharina Konradi embarks on a musical journey to explore solitude. On this journey, she is accompanied by poets and composers from different time periods. The Cosmos Quartet from Barcelona joins her on her journey. Art songs by composers such as Robert and Clara Schumann, Franz Schubert, and Hugo Wolf, as well as folk songs and French chansons, are waypoints on this journey on which they explore the various facets of solitude together. Miniatures for solo soprano by the Hungarian-French composer György Kurtág serve as transitional elements, providing subtle and sophisticated coherence. Among the special rarities of the recording are the two Catalan songs by the violinist, composer, and conductor Eduard Toldrà.

The soprano, born in Kyrgyzstan, captivates audiences and critics alike with her vocal brilliance and cultivated emotional depth. The Cosmos Quartet matches her with its honest elegance and compelling expressiveness. Although the Cosmos Quartet and Katharina Konradi only met at the beginning of rehearsals for "Solitude," a very special magic immediately revealed itself, inherent in the combination of Katharina Konradi's voice and the Cosmos String Quartet. "String quartet and voice blend incredibly well together – even though the four instruments already form a perfect sonic structure on their own. I always enjoy being surrounded by so many different colors while singing," describes Katharina Konradi about the collaboration.

The result of this collaboration and shared journey is an album characterized by emotionality, a variety of moods, and the highest musicality. It invites one to linger, to listen closely, to find tranquility in the beauty of music, and to draw strength from it.

For his series called Schubert+, pianist Can Çakmur juxtaposes the complete major piano solo compositions by the Viennese composer with works by others who were inspired by his music, thus providing the opportunity to see these works in a new light. While making up a near complete anthology of Schubert’s completed major piano music, each disc is also intended as a self-contained recital.

In this third instalment, Çakmur presents not only a work by the 20th-century composer Ernst Krenek but also Krenek’s completion of an unfinished sonata by Schubert. In the process, Krenek assimilated the Schubertian language so well that the result is astonishing. As Çakmur says, ‘I would find it difficult to spot where Schubert ends and Krenek begins if it wasn’t specified in the score.’ Krenek, whose career spanned more than seven decades, was a prolific composer who embraced a host of styles. For his Second Piano Sonata, composed in the 1920s, he pays homage to Schubert by adopting some of his techniques, though the music owes much more to early 20th-century Paris than to 19th-century Vienna. A fascinating and neglected work to be discovered through the prism of Schubert.

After many acclaimed releases on BIS, most recently ‘Sounds and Sweet Airs – A Shakespeare Songbook’ (BIS-2653), Carolyn Sampson’s latest recital with Joseph Middleton lives up to its name: it is an eloquent testimony to the English soprano’s love of her art. This programme artfully blends well-known and lesser-known lieder by German and Austrian masters such as Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf with French songs by Gounod, Poulenc and Franck, as well as works by Anglo-Saxon composers such as Hubert Parry, Samuel Barber and Ivor Gurney. Female composers are not forgotten, with rarely-performed songs by Rita Strohl based on slightly risqué poems by Pierre Louÿs, music by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Kaija Saariaho – who has recently passed away – and Deborah Pritchard, whose song presented here was composed especially for Sampson. And while Leonard Bernstein’s comically cheeky song ‘I hate music’, appears to be a call not to let music take itself too seriously, Errollyn Wallen’s ‘Peace on Earth’, which concludes the album, invokes calm and encourages us to find peace, a message that seems more relevant today than ever.

In September 2023, PMP is proud to release Anthony Braxton's "Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013", a limited deluxe 4-CD box set documenting the one-time meeting of an all-star trio featuring the legendary saxophonist and composer alongside Roland Dahinden (trombone), and Hildegard Kleeb (piano). This is the first album of the new Czech label PMP. Art Lange describes the impetus for the session in the liner notes: The 4 CD set box Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013 is built on the latest evolutional stage of Anthony Braxton's lifelong conceptualization and personalization of notation called Falling River Music. Braxton's systematic approach balances methodology and mythology, utilizing a variety of graphic designs as symbolic and representational characterizations of his sound vision. The scores incorporate numerical and alphabetical equations, abstract diagrams, and sections of conventional notation, along with spontaneously conceived, painted gestures connected to a web-like pattern of shorthand. In this album, Braxton explores the concept of "aesthetic networking "by having three musicians play from different scores simultaneously, creating a unique blend of impressions. The collaborative efforts of Roland Dahinden (trombone) and Hildegard Kleeb (piano) bring an intimate awareness of Braxton's language types and transformational procedures, resulting in rotating voicings, morphing tonalities, and labyrinthine counterpoint. Braxton's characteristic reed colors and personal lyricism are also showcased, along with occasional electronic elements, to enhance the overall sonic experience.

Franz Schmidt 150 (1874-1939)

“In conversations about Franz Schmidt the recurring theme emerging for many is that listening to a performance of his music at a young age became the turning point in their lives the realization of how powerful music can be,” says Jonathan Berman, whose longtime love of Franz Schmidt’s work has its origins in a performance preparation for his Fourth Symphony.

Berman’s passion for Schmidt’s work and the composer’s upcoming 150th birthday in 2024 were key reasons for the conductor to approach the BBC National Orchestra of Wales to record all four symphonies together – a major project that also marks Jonathan Berman’s CD debut.

The recordings were realized between 2020 and 2022 at BBC Hoddinott Hall, the home of the BBC NOW in Cardiff. In November 2023, Accentus Music releases all four symphonies in a high-quality box set that will also be made available across all digital platforms. BBC Music Magazine wrote about the digital pre-release of the first symphony in March 2021: “Jonathan Berman and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales deliver a terrific performance which provides a fine alternative to the excellent version from Paavo Järvi. […] What really makes this new recording so enticing is the sheer energy and enthusiasm with which conductor and orchestra communicate the vigour and optimism of the opening movement.”

Produced in association with BBC Radio 3 and BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

REVIEW:

Following their highly acclaimed streamed recording of his First Symphony, Jonathan Berman and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales have now completed their Franz Schmidt symphony cycle. Packaged together in this sumptuously designed and luxuriantly recorded set, the performances of all four symphonies, released in celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth, pay worthy tribute to an undeniably major late-Romantic Austrian composer who, despite the passage of time, continues to divide opinion.

With almost evangelical zeal, Berman staunchly defends Schmidt from his detractors by providing some insightful personal observations in the booklet notes and by investing sufficient energy and dedication in his interpretations to allow the music to speak directly and fervently to the listener.

Missa Criolla, by Argentine composer Ariel Ramirez (1921-2010) is a Spanish vernacular setting of Roman mass liturgy. Navidad Nuestra, composed in 1964, is subtitled"A folk drama of the nativity based on rhythms and traditions of Hispanic America"