Kellen Gray has reunited with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for a second instalment of African American Voices. Though representing differing schools of thought regarding African American classical music, the composers here are united by their roots in black history, culture and its rich musical heritage. Drawing upon jazz and spirituals – ‘I Want Jesus to Walk with Me’ serving as the source material – Margaret Bonds’ Montgomery Variations engages with African American history, namely the Montgomery bus boycott and the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. In this work, re-discovered in 2017, Bonds tackles the themes of strength, resistance, determination and faith. Bonds’ contemporary, the prolific composer Ulysses Kay cultivated a neoclassical voice, as his Concerto for Orchestra exemplifies, very much in line with William Grant Still and his teacher Paul Hindemith. A versatile musician, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson comes a generation later. In his Worship: A Concert Overture, we can hear a blend of Baroque counterpoint, elements of the blues, spirituals and black folk music.

REVIEW:

Margaret Bond (1913–1972) wrote her 1964 Montgomery Variations as a seven-movement theme-and-variations on the spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me.” Bond’s impassioned cri de coeur bypasses the constraints of academic cd’s and don’ts as it chronicles in boldly theatrical music the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement, from the Montgomery bus boycott through the tragic 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Bond dedicated the piece to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., though sadly never heard it performed during her brief lifetime.

Ulysses Kay (1917–1995) reflects in his 1948 Concerto for Orchestra the influence of several of his mentors – including Paul Hindemith – as a thoroughly tonal work conceived in mid-20th century, in a moment in which the music of the followers of the Second Viennese School reigned supreme in the classical music worlds of both Europe and America. Kay’s classically structured, richly orchestrated, harmonically dense, and contrapuntally complex composition remains at its core a consonantly melodic, post-Romantic work.

In his 2001 Worship: A Concert Overture Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932–2004) successfully amalgamates sacred and secular music, incorporating blues in his nobly elegant treatment of Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.

-- All About The Arts (Rafael de Acha)

Violinist Movses Pogossian continues his admirable advocacy for the work of Armenian composers with this extensive 4 disc collection of new works, a follow up to his Modulation Necklace release in 2020 (FCR244). Divided into four volumes that focus on instrumental chamber music, art song, and solo piano music, Serenade with a Dandelion is an invaluable resource to explore 20th and 21st century Armenian repertoire, performed with the utmost sensitivity and commitment by Pogossian and his colleagues.

The St. Louis Symphony and their music director Stéphane Denève present a program featuring two of the most accomplished American composers in history: Leonard Bernstein with his Serenade and John Williams with his Violin Concerto, both performed by star James Ehnes, one of the most exceptional North American violinists. John Williams himself was present at the recording of his violin concerto, working together with the St. Louis Symphony, Denève, and Ehnes.

Both works evolve around love: Bernstein’s Serenade was inspired by musings on love from Plato’s Symposium while Williams’s work was arguably inspired and eventually dedicated to his suddenly deceased wife. By combining these two concert pieces, this album puts the symphonic work of Bernstein and Williams at the center, two composers who weren’t afraid of crossing the boundaries between film music and “serious” classical genres at a time when these worlds were generally kept far apart. Especially in Williams' concerto, there are still hints of his work as a film composer; the slow movement brings to mind a scene of emotional gravity.

Widely considered one of the world's finest orchestras, the SLSO maintains its commitment to artistic excellence, educational impact, and community connections. The St. Louis Symphony, Stéphane Denève, and James Ehnes all make their Pentatone debut.

REVIEWS:

Dutch label Pentatone continues to champion American orchestras with the Saint Louis Symphony’s recording of violin concertos by John Williams and Leonard Bernstein. Williams dedicated the 1974 Violin Concerto No. 1 to his late wife, the actress Barbara Ruick. It’s a serious-minded, sometimes bleak affair, and Williams has called it atonal, though it seems harmonically straightforward enough.

With a 30-minute, three-movement sweep, Williams's concerto is expansive too. Canadian violinist James Ehnes is the thoughtful soloist, investing the music with deserved gravitas and fully on top of its technical challenges. Stéphane Denève leads a weighty reading, darkly dramatic in the opening “Moderato,” consoling in the glowing slow movement (which Ehnes plays like an angel), and incisive in the intermittently clangorous finale.

Bernstein’s Serenade has been recorded many times, but this astute interpretation is a welcome reminder of both its wistful profundity and its headstrong vigor. Ehnes and Denève open the debate spaciously with an expressive account of the “Phaedrus” movement. “Aristophanes” seems to channel graceful elements out of Candide, while a weighty “Socrates” gives way to the jazzy joie de vivre of “Alcibiades.” The violin sound is clean and clear, offset against a slightly resonant orchestra.

-- Musical America (Clive Paget)

Violinist James Ehnes’ discography is so extensive that it was only a question of when he’d get around to recording Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade, not if. What’s more striking about his new recording with Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) is that it pairs Bernstein’s 1954 effort with John Williams’ Violin Concerto No. 1.

The Williams dates from the mid-‘70s and was written right after the untimely death of his first wife, the actress Barbara Ruick. Its brooding, volatile aspect perhaps owes something to that context – the central “Slowly in peaceful concentration” unfolds like an elegiac barcarolle – though this is hardly funereal music.

In fact, the Concerto marked a turning point in Williams’ concert music, allowing him to cultivate what he called the “Romantic [Atonal], but in an American way”-style he’d long been striving for...there’s a motivic rigor here that’s straight out of the Brahms-Schoenberg line and the writing for violin and orchestra is thoroughly idiomatic...[here, it is] exceptionally well played and draws out the tight thematic relationships between each movement. The Canadian violinist makes the most of the introspective spots – the middle movement, the reflective episode in the center of the finale, especially – while also suffusing its bravura passagework with purpose and direction.

Denève and the SLSO are right with him, teasing out the music’s gentle echoes of Hollywood and sometimes mercurial shifts of character with surety and ease.

They make for an impressive combination, too, in the Bernstein. Take or leave the score’s programmatic allusions to Plato’s Symposium: the Serenade is one of the American composer’s freshest and most satisfying concert works.

Here, Ehnes plays with gorgeous tone – the clarity of his bow arm is just marvelous, as is his left hand’s ability to cleanly and purposefully get the music’s knotty double and triple stops to sing. Over the Serenade’s first three movements, too, there’s a strong sense of shape and propulsion: this is well-focused, graceful, spry Bernstein.

-- The Arts Fuse

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

Although Mozart composed them in his early twenties, the three symphonies presented here can in no way be regarded as early works. Written around the time of his departure from Salzburg for Vienna, these symphonies show that Mozart could deliver attractive, varied, orchestrally colourful and characterful music to suit a variety of public tastes. They also show a young and ambitious composer seeking to forge an impregnable reputation in Europe’s musical capital city. These symphonies truly opened a new chapter in Mozart’s symphonic output, as he demonstrated his absolute mastery of orchestral writing. In addition to the three symphonies as we know them, this recording also includes a minuet that may have been intended to form part of Symphony No. 34.

These three symphonies are performed here by the Philharmonia Orchestra, an ensemble that has performed them with the greatest conductors throughout its almost 80-year history. Here the conductor is the eminent Mozartian Michael Collins, whose recordings, notably that devoted to the Austrian composer’s clarinet concerto and quintet, have earned him the highest praise.

REVIEWS:

As a poetic exponent of Mozart’s music for clarinet, Michael Collins, unsurprisingly, shapes all three slow movements with a natural feeling for Mozartian line. His flowing tempos sound spot on.

There is always room in the Mozart discography for new recordings of this stature.

— 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

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.

The inspiration for Hugo Distler’s gem of a Christmas narrative can be found in the German-language protestant sacred music of the early baroque era, especially the music of Heinrich Schütz. Drawing on Schütz’s example, Distler composed his Christmas story exclusively for vocalists – soloists and a 4-8-voiced ensemble – in what is, in Distler’s own words, described as an “Oratorium mit kammermusikalishem Charakter." We also hear parts of the beautiful choral Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, which appears seven times during the course of the narrative. – every time in a new harmonic colour. The story of Hugo Distler’s life is a tragic one. Born in Nuremburg in 1908, he would go on to teach at the School for Church Music in Spandau before being appointed professor of church music in Stuttgart in 1940. Distler, who was a deeply religious man, has been recognized as a forerunner of the New German Church Music, an important musical movement which developed in the 1930s. The Nazis stigmatized Distler’s compositions as “degenerate art”, and when he received his conscription papers, he took his life. Sadly, Distler’s music is seldom performed outside of Germany even to this day. Hailed by Gramophone as “a choir worth listening to for their beautiful singing, which can deliver performances of pure, natural eloquence,” the 16 voices of the award-winning vocal ensemble Concert Clemens, founded by conductor Carsten Seyer-Hansen in 1997, has established itself as one of the leading vocal ensembles in Scandinavia. Their stylistic versatility has been seen in numerous collaborations exploring the connections between jazz and classical music as well as note-perfect interpretations of standard repertoire. The evangelist, tenor Adam Riis, is one of Denmark’s leading voices. Recorded in the DXD format by the Danish “Wizard of Sound”, Preben Iwan, in the resonant sonics of Skt. Markus Kirken, Århus.

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.