Although he had initially declined the commission, Delius was persuaded to write the incidental music for Hassan by the actor and director Basil Dean in July 1920, for performances he was planning for His Majesty’s Theatre, London, the following year. Much of the music was drafted within a few weeks, and the score would eventually prove one of the greatest successes of Delius’s career. Dean’s plans for the project encountered significant obstacles and delays, however, and he had to commission additional music from Delius to cover the production’s complex scene changes. The London première eventually took place on 20 September 1923 and was a critical sensation.

Flecker’s play is a sinuous double-narrative that intertwines the twin stories of the lovelorn but worldly-wise Hassan, confectioner at the court of the cruel and vindictive Caliph Haroun al Rashid (called Haroun ar Rashid in Flecker’s play), and the young lovers Pervaneh and Rafi, caught up in the aftermath of a failed uprising and condemned to a terrifying and brutally protracted death. In tone and setting, Flecker’s text drew on nineteenth-century English translations of One Thousand and One Nights as well as other heavily fictionalized accounts and travel literature. Very much a product of the racial and class-based attitudes of its time, the play revels in imaginary scenes of a despotic Eastern court and its gruesomely barbaric practices.

Following their début album, Belle Époque, the Orsino Ensemble turns its attention to music from Bohemia. There is a strong tradition of Czech wind playing, and hence a wealth of great repertoire on which to draw.

Antoine Reicha was a contemporary (and friend) of Beethoven. His E flat Quintet, published in 1817, demonstrates his harmonic ingenuity and talent for idiomatic instrumental writing. Mládí, described by Janácek as ‘…a sort of memoir of youth’, was composed in 1924 in celebration of the composer’s own seventieth birthday, and the mood of the piece is optimistic throughout.

Born in Brno, Pavel Haas studied at the city’s conservatory, under Janácek – indeed Haas is widely considered to be Janácek’s greatest pupil. Composed in 1929, the Wind Quintet typifies his quirky musical imagination and affinity for instrumental timbre.

Bohuslav Martinu came from the small town of Policka, on the Czech-Moravian border, but received his early musical education in Prague, where he also played second violin in the Czech Philharmonic. A government scholarship enabled him to move to Paris in the early 1920s to study with Roussel. Martinu immersed himself in Parisian musical life, the works of Stravinsky and the Jazz scene proving two considerable influences on his own compositions. His Sextet for Wind and Piano is considered one of his most successful Jazz-inspired pieces and, although an early work, demonstrates the natural melodic style so typical of his later works.

REVIEW:

Reicha’s Quintet pairs different combinations of instruments together with delightful felicity, and the bubbly horn writing is a constant delight. It’s a well-paced reading, too, coming in at 28 minutes. The Orsino Ensemble’s performance of Janáček’s Mládi is crisp and tight and I especially appreciated Walker’s pipy and lithe piccolo playing.

The church acoustic has been well judged and there’s no sense of billowy or unfocused sound, rather a warm, uncloying well-cushioned directness. There isn’t – or, at least, I’ve not been able to find – an exact competitor to this disc so the excellence of the performances stands in the Chandos team’s favor as does the adventurous repertoire. Carping critics like me may suggest alternatives in individual works but overall this is a highly effective disc.

-- MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

What would it mean to 'compose like a woman'? The present collection answers the question, in a literal sense, while undoing the premise on which the question was asked in the first place. In social and historical terms, it means enjoying privileges of upbringing, education, and/or wealth that were historically denied to the vast majority of women. It means, on the part of the women represented here, a single-minded determination in pursuit of their vocation, helping them to overcome prejudice and sexism in a cultural, social and political milieu that has consistently denied women the opportunity to find and express their own voice in music. Only with movements of emancipation in the last century, and much more rapidly in the last 50 years, has this situation begun to be addressed and corrected. What composing like a woman does not mean - as the music in this collection makes clear - is a definable set of qualities or characteristics to the music itself which would distinguish the work of female composers from the music composed by men.

This remarkable set gathers many individual recordings of music by women composers, which Brilliant Classics has quietly yet actively championed in their catalogue for decades, uniting it with exciting new outings, so that a comprehensive historical picture of the highly varied struggles and successes of women composers through the ages to our present time are chronicled and celebrated.

Other information:

- Recordings date from 1994-2024

- Booklet in English contains liner notes by Peter Quantrill

- The revival of interest in female classical composers reflects a growing recognition of their overlooked contributions to music history.

For centuries, women composers were marginalized, their works overshadowed by their male counterparts. However, recent efforts by musicians, scholars, and institutions have brought these composers into the spotlight, highlighting the richness and diversity of their compositions.

- This renewed focus stems from a broader movement toward inclusivity in the arts, challenging traditional narratives that have historically excluded women. The rise of feminist musicology has also played a key role, offering fresh perspectives on these composers' lives and works.

- This comprehensive box set offers a wide spectrum of works by female composers, from the Medieval mystic Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179), through the Renaissance Isabella Leonarda (baptized 1620-1704), Francesca Caccini (1587-1640) und Barbara Strozzi (baptized 1619-1677), traversing the Baroque and Classical eras, and arriving in the contemporary field, with composers such as Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) and Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969).

- A long due homage to the art and voice of female composers, spanning nearly a thousand years!

The central thread linking all the works featured in this recording is their assimilation of various elements of Jewish music, whether directly stemming from Chassidic folk traditions, or relating to material directly associated with religious worship. Each composer responds to this music in different ways, attempting in varying degrees to integrate it within the structural conventions of a Western European musical mainstream. By doing so, the music projects a multitude of emotions and feelings.

“There is not enough music which highlights and celebrates the diverse background of composers and the fact that this album focuses on Jewish musical traditions makes it a hugely important progression in how the classical music industry is moving into a more culturally representative industry.” -- Jocelyn Lightfoot, Managing Director of the LCO

On the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Ives - acclaimed by his champion Leonard Bernstein as the "first great American composer", who, "all alone in his Connecticut barn, created his own private musical revolution" - Sony Classical presents the most authoritative recording collection ever released of works by this eccentric, prophetic genius.

The 5-CD box set Charles Ives - The Anniversary Edition is a unique and provocative introduction only released previously 50 years ago on LP by Columbia Masterworks under the art direction of Henrietta Condak to celebrate Ives's centenary.

The first disc examines "The Many Faces of Charles Ives" through eight diverse works recorded between 1964 and 1970: Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic in The Fourth of July and The Unanswered Question; General William Booth Enters into Heaven, one of Ives's towering achievements, and The Circus Band are performed by the Gregg Smith Singers; baritone Thomas Stewart sings the moving song In Flanders Fields; organist E. Power Biggs plays Ives's Variations on "America"; composer Gunther Schuller conducts The Pond for chamber orchestra; and the Largo cantabile Hymn is performed by the New York String Quartet and double bass player Alvin Brehm. CD 2, "The Celestial Country", offers Ives's early cantata by that name, composed in 1897-99 for his conservative Yale composition teacher Horatio Parker. It is sung by the Gregg Smith Singers (accompanied by the Columbia Chamber Orchestra), who also perform arrangements of four of Ives's most powerful patriotic songs with the American Symphony Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski conducting. "The Things Our Fathers Loved", CD 3, contains 25 of Ives's songs, delivered by the soprano Helen Boatwright, who specialized in American song. She is partnered by John Kirkpatrick, who studied and worked closely with Ives and is still regarded as the most authoritative interpreter of his piano music. Gramophone in 1974 praised this famous recording as "the finest selection ever to appear" on LP of "what may well turn out to be considered his most important, characteristic and consistently inspired body of music."

No better Joplin cycle exists, and its first complete appearance on CD is long overdue.

Between January and April 1975, the classically trained, multi-award-winning jazz pianist and composer Dick Hyman – whose astounding résumé includes playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman, writing and arranging for Count Basie, and scoring most of the films of Woody Allen – went into RCA’s Studio A in New York City and set down the definitive recording of ragtime legend Scott Joplin’s piano works. In 1988, an hour-long selection from the five LPs was released on CD. Now at last, Sony Classical is issuing Hyman’s entire Joplin album on three well-filled silver discs.

This really is Joplin’s complete piano output. It even includes the six short exercises that form his 1908 School of Ragtime, with their printed prefatory remarks read by the 92-year-old Eubie Blake, a friend of Joplin and a distinguished ragtime player in his own right. Also here are Joplin’s less familiar marches and waltzes. And there’s a bonus: the set contains Hyman’s own twelve delightful improvisations on themes by Joplin, which he designed to demonstrate the composer's influence on the development of jazz harmony and melody. When the LPs were first released, Gramophone’s jazz critic wrote that “the eminently musical quality of Hyman’s playing is in evidence throughout the collection; he has the ability to characterize perfectly each piece and somehow to pinpoint every little harmonic subtlety and melodic felicity without in any way detracting from the conception as a whole.... He pays as much attention to matters of tempo, texture, phrasing and dynamics as though he were doing the twenty-four Chopin Preludes. Two for instance I particularly enjoyed were Cascades with its rippling lightness of touch and Scott Joplin’s New Rag in which Hyman’s cleanness of articulation and rhythmic exuberance are a joy. … Joplin well deserves this very handsome and well-recorded tribute.”

CONTENTS:

• Maple Leaf Rag
• Original Rags
• Swipesy
• Peacherine Rag
• The Easy Winners
• Sunflower Slow Drag
• The Entertainer
• Elite Syncopations
• The Strenuous Life
• A Breeze from Alabama
• Palm Leaf Rag
• Something Doing
• Weeping Willow
• The Chrysanthemum
• The Cascades
• The Sycamore
• The Favorite
• Leola
• The Ragtime Dance
• Eugenia
• Lily Queen
• Gladiolus Rag
• Nonpareil
• Heliotrope Bouquet
• Search-light Rag
• Rose Leaf Rag
• Fig Leaf Rag
• Pine Apple Rag
• Solace
• Sugar Cane
• Stoptime Rag
• Euphonic Sounds
• Country Club
• Wall Street Rag
• Felicity Rag
• Paragon Rag
• Silver Swan Rag
• Kismet Rag
• Magnetic Rag
• Reflection Rag
• Antoinette
• Cleopha
• March majestic
• Combination March
• Rosebud
• Great Crush Collision
• School of Ragtime (Exercises Nr. 1-6)
• Bethena (Concert waltz)
• Binks' Waltz
• Pleasant Moments
• Augustan Club Waltz
• Harmony Club Waltz
• New Rag
• +Dick Hyman-Improvisation on Peacherine Rag
• The Entertainer
• Elite Syncopations
• A Breeze from Alabama
• Something Doing
• Gladiolus Rag
• Heliotrope Bouquet
• Fig Leaf Rag
• Stoptime Rag
• New Rag
• Pleasant moments

REVIEW:

The ragtime genre came into full flower from the mid-1890s through the end of World War I, spearheaded by Scott Joplin (1868-1917), whose 1899 composition Maple Leaf Rag became the template and standard bearer for classic through-composed rags. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw newfound interest in Joplin as a serious composer, starting with the New York Public Library’s publication of Joplin’s collected works. Joplin’s 1902 rag The Entertainer figured prominently in the soundtrack for the 1973 Academy Award-winning film The Sting, launching a floodgate of Joplin releases. Even classical artists as unlikely as Itzhak Perlman, James Levine, and E. Power Biggs hitched their stars to the Joplin bandwagon.

However, the most comprehensive, intelligently produced, respectful, and artistically satisfying collection of Joplin’s complete piano works came from RCA Victor in a five-LP boxed set, featuring pianist Dick Hyman. No better Joplin cycle exists, and its first complete appearance on CD is long overdue.

The music is presented by genre, with the rags arranged in loose chronological order by composition, followed by marches and waltzes. Also included is Joplin’s charming “School of Ragtime” Etudes complete with Joplin’s introductory remarks read by composer/pianist and Joplin colleague Eubie Blake, who was 92 when he faced the microphone to speak. Hyman also offers the Grand Crush Collision march both in its original text and in his own ragtime transformation.

Although Hyman’s pianism embraces the entire history of jazz piano, his effortless virtuosity is firmly rooted in classical training. As Rudi Blesh aptly stated in his brilliant and insightful original booklet annotations, the pianist “takes ragtime seriously without becoming solemn and portentous, more as one must do in approaching, say, much of Mozart.”

Two further qualities make Hyman’s Joplin stand out: his intelligent tempo choices, and his ideal fusion of classical projection and jazz time keeping. Take Joplin’s 1899 hit Maple Leaf Rag, for example. Hyman’s vigorous pace, dynamic contrasts, and clear articulation convey pure joy with a soupçon of brashness, so unlike Joshua Rifkin’s effete and rhythmically stiff traversal. The Cascades’ descending runs are as crystalline and transparent as Rubinstein’s Chopin. By contrast, Hyman’s measured tempo and ear-catching inflections of phrase in Elite Syncopations give shape and breathing room to Joplin’s polyphony.

Note, too, Hyman’s lovely legato touch and subtly lilting rubatos in Weeping Willow, Gladiolus Rag, and Solace, while Something Doing is pure lightness and effervescence. The pianist’s characterful animation keeps the episodic Bethena concert waltz afloat and moving. And although Hyman clearly respects Joplin’s texts, the pianist is not above filling out the texture with discreet octave reinforcements in the left hand, as he does in the difficult Euphonic Sounds, a rag that foreshadows elements of stride piano. Because Hyman approaches each piece on its own terms, one gleans more variety and expressive scope from Joplin’s oeuvre than we experience from most other Joplin interpreters.

The original LP edition devoted the tenth side to twelve of Hyman’s improvisations on Joplin themes, which here are spread across the three CDs, most likely for timing considerations. They are sheer delights, from The Entertainer’s bi-tonal coda to a brief and unbuttoned Peacherine Rag that brilliantly burlesques Art Tatum’s 1940 recording of Harold Arlen’s Get Happy.

A Breeze From Alabama is pure, unadulterated barrelhouse and boogie-woogie, while in Joplin’s New Rag Hyman can’t resist interpolating Juventino Rosas’ Over the Waves–better known as the summer camp ditty “George Washington Bridge”. In short, Dick Hyman and Scott Joplin unquestionably belong to the coterie of symbiotic performer/composer pairings that include Schnabel/Beethoven, Gould/Bach, Gieseking/Debussy, Larrocha/Albéniz, and Hamelin/Alkan.

Full disclosure: I met Dick Hyman nearly 60 years ago when I was eight years old, and he has been a friend, a colleague, and a musical father figure to me ever since. We even played two pianos together in several concerts. I vividly remember hearing Dick preparing these Joplin pieces at the time of the 1975 sessions, and marveled at his absolute commitment to the material, his focus and his flexibility in the process of getting all of the music under his awesome fingers. Thanks to Sony/BMG for reissuing and gorgeously remastering an important recording project that belongs in every serious collection.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Jed Distler)

CORO Welcomes The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, to the label.

In their first recording for CORO, The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, under the direction of Mark Williams, explore the repertoire that has provided the bedrock of the college’s musical life for the last 500 years, all of which was written for the end of the day.

Much music associated with evening time is naturally calm and soothing, satisfying those seeking transcendental beauty in the form of unchallenging ‘sound baths’. However, this collection also seeks to challenge, contrasting contemporary settings with music from the 16th century. We hope, through this range of works, to capture something of that liminal space between day and night characterized by Evensong and to lead the listener into that ‘peace that passes all understanding’.

The album showcases works by composers from John Sheppard to Joanna Marsh and features much-loved pieces such as Hubert Parry’s Lord, let me know mine end and John Tavener’s The Lord’s Prayer, as well as new additions to the Evensong repertoire such as Grayston Ives’ In pace and Piers Connor Kennedy’s O nata lux.

Following their critically acclaimed albums of Schubert (BIS-2597), Mozart and Birchall (BIS-2647), works for clarinet trio (BIS-2535) and, more recently, Beethoven and Berwald (BIS-2707), the Wigmore Soloists now turn their attention to twentieth-century English chamber works which, while eschewing some of the continent’s modernist tendencies, are both deeply personal and supremely written, highlighting the specific colors of each of the instruments.

Howard Ferguson’s Octet, a direct and engaging work, was the first of his works to attract attention. Ferguson’s skill is brilliantly demonstrated in this tonally ambiguous work, which takes its instrumentation from Schubert’s famous Octet.

The main characteristic of Sir Arthur Bliss’s Clarinet Quintet, like those of Mozart and Brahms with the same instrumental line-up, is its intense, overtly emotional lyricism, but the sunny, extrovert aspects of Bliss’s character ultimately prevail in the brilliantly energetic finale.

Robin Holloway’s Serenade in C for octet is the most recent work on this disc, and also features the instrumentation of Schubert’s Octet, which the composer acknowledges as a model. Few contemporary composers display as keen a sense of humor as Holloway who wished here to give “an affectionate twist to tonal common practice and light-music clichés all the way from Biedermeier Vienna to Southend Pier”.

The performers write: ‘Selecting the repertoire for our album Path to the Moon, we wanted to explore a number of possibilities for binding together a programme. To place different works alongside one another is a wonderful way of bringing out new and unusual qualities in each piece. William T. Horton’s fantastic image The Path to the Moon immediately inspired a flurry of ideas, including works on the subjects of both night and the moon, as well as pieces which invoke the exploratory nature of humankind’s voyage to the moon. Britten wrote his Sonata for Cello and Piano only two years after the first object made by humans had touched the surface of the moon, in 1959. Humans throughout history and from all cultures have been drawn to and taken inspiration from the moon and we have tried to reflect this in our eclectic choice of song repertoire: from Toru Takemitsu to Nina Simone and from Lili Boulanger to Florence Price. As we hope you will hear on this album, Walker’s Cello Sonata rings with echoes of the sound-worlds of blues and jazz and is infused with a beautiful lyricism. We really believe that Walker’s Cello Sonata deserves to become a staple of the chamber music repertoire and are absolutely thrilled to offer you a recording of it in the context of our own exploration of a path to the moon.’

Franco Alfano possessed an innate melodic facility combined with a talent for unexpected timbres. From the neo-Classical Divertimento to the noirish post-war Nenia, the lightness of touch of Amour… Amour… to the impressionistic Una danza and luxuriously orchestrated Suite romantica, each work reveals a different aspect of this multifaceted composer. This release of world premiere recordings features the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano conducted by Giuseppe Grazioli who makes his Naxos début.

REVIEW:

Franco Alfano (1875–1954) remains a marginal figure in musical life despite a fair degree of coverage in record catalogs. Yet he is a thoroughly original composer, one who possessed an innate melodic gift combined with a talent for unexpected timbres, as can be heard in the lavishly orchestrated Suite romantica. The half-hour work is heard on this album in a very colorful and expressive, excellently performed interpretation.

With Una danza, completely different colors are expressed and one may hear an influence of Debussy. This is followed by Nenia, a somewhat melancholy solo piece for accordion, sensitively played by Davide Vendramin, which finds its counterpart in the Aria of the Divertimento, even if the outer movements are very lively and playful.

The program, pleasing and excellently played, ends with the Waltz Amour… Amour…, originally composed for piano in 1901 and orchestrated in 1928.

-- Pizzicato

This album showcases a selection of Ives’ shorter works for orchestra. Experiments, marches, arrangements, and enticingly incomplete fragments are included alongside the Four Ragtime Dances and Chromâtimelôdtune, one of Ives’ most startling creations. Ives specialist James Sinclair conducts. Includes seven world premiere recordings. Released to mark the 150th anniversary of Ives’s birth.

Known more widely as a composer of operas, Franco Alfano also composed a body of chamber music including the three string quartets heard here in world premiere recordings.

String Quartet No. 1 in D major was composed during the First World War between 1914 and 1918. The String Quartet No. 2 in C major In Tre Tempi Collegati, composed in 1925–26, is a smaller scale work than the first, and mostly much more tonal in harmonic structure. The String Quartet No. 3 in G minor was written in 1945 and premiered in Rome on 28 November 1947.

The Quartet comprises violinists Elmira Darvarova and Mary Ann Mumm, violist Craig Mumm and cellist Samuel Magill. The same ensemble can also be heard on the acclaimed Naxos album of Alfano’s Violin Sonata and Piano Quintet (8.572753). Alfano's Cello Sonata and Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano can be heard on 8.570928.

REVIEW:

The first two quartets date from a period that reached from the Great War to the mid-1920s. The opening of the String Quartet No. 1 is a Vivacissimo but the word stands feebly in the face of the torrid, angular tumult that is the first movement. An implacably melodious and fluently flowing Calmo was written as a memorial to his son who died while serving in the Italian military. It is followed by a Largo-Allegro Deciso. The first particle of this movement is a short extension of the mood of its predecessor but soon says a dry-eyed farewell with writing that is, at first, long on a tungsten determination. This is clearly relished by these four players. The music ends with a noble determination that seems to speak of a will to hold it together.

The tonality of the String Quartet No. 2 is placed under less stress than the First Quartet although it is by no means facile listening. It feels inventive. The second movement is marked ‘like a children’s song’. It is a delicate Thumbelina dance of a blossom. The final ‘danse villageoise’ accelerates all the way through.

The 1940s dealt blows to Alfano: much of his music was destroyed in the bombing of Turin and his wife died in 1943. It comes as little surprise that the writing of the first movement of the Third Quartet pierces a path into melancholy. Misty-eyed happiness is recalled but clearly it is not to be experienced again. Joy of a sort is grasped in the next movement, tipping over into the melodic complexity of the powerful Allegro finale. Alfano’s final String Quartet had a Rome premiere in 1947.

The CD’s notes could hardly be more needful – and incidentally meeting that need – when the music is otherwise unknown to all but a few. They are by the disc’s cellist, Samuel Magill. The performances are wondrously fervent, hot-house products. The sound is at your throat, heated and upon you with tiger-like ferocity.

-- MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)

For over 100 years the only opera by a woman to have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Der Wald is a taut, brooding drama where the simplicity of village life comes under threat from the uncontrollable desires unleashed by the darkness of the forest. Richly orchestrated, harmonically daring, and demanding a huge expressive range from the cast, the narrative drives relentlessly forward from wedding to tragedy in a single act, observed pitilessly by the eternal spirits of the forest. John Andrews conducts the BBC Singers, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and an international cast in the first ever recording of this work, using Smyth’s English version of the libretto.

Peijun Xu, born in Shanghai, is one of the leading violists of her generation. As a soloist, Peijun Xu has performed in renowned venues such as the Shanghai Concert Hall, the Laeiszhalle Hamburg or the Alte Oper Frankfurt. Her chamber music partners include Paul Rivinius, Evgenia Rubinova, Alexander Sitkovetsky and Veit Hertenstein. German violist Veit Hertenstein plays with “brigthly ringing, luminous and finly finessed sound (The Strad Magazine 2022).

Veit Hertenstein is Professor for Viola at the Musikhochschule Detmold, Germany since 2015.

Celebrating the sesquicentenary of Charles Ives’ birth, New England-based pianist and Ives scholar nonpareil Donald Berman releases a recording of the composer’s “Concord Sonata” using his own newly prepared edition which reveals fresh insights into the iconic work. Berman’s immersion into Ives’ sound world began under the tutelage of pianist John Kirkpatrick who gave the New York premiere of the “Concord Sonata” in 1939. Throughout many years of study and reflection, Berman discovered numerous notes and alterations that Ives made within the Concord’s manuscript pages, each one “a step toward realising his vision for a three-dimensional auditory experience.” Berman concluded that the first movement of the Concord, as Ives imagined it, is quite different than today’s commonly accepted version; his new edition includes two pages worth of material, masterfully recorded here for the first time.

The album opens with the elegiac “The St. Gaudens (Black March)”, referring to the eponymous sculpture in the Boston Common that depicts the Massachusetts 54th, the first Union army regiment of African American soldiers, that is known widely in its orchestral version as the first movement of Ives’ Three Places in New England.