Ever wondered where the worlds of progressive bluegrass music and microtonal synthesis might intersect? The EZRA ensemble is game to answer the question on their adventurous second album, Earth to EZRA. Convening in an intimate studio in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, the core quartet - composer and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Jones (guitars and vocals), Jacob Jolliff (mandolin), Max Allard (banjo) and Craig Butterfield (double bass) - teamed up with musical polymath Mark Stewart and keyboardist Xak Bjerken to craft a complex recording that is by turns whimsical, uplifting, haunting and otherworldly. And you can dance to it. More succinctly, Elizabeth Ogonek describes the project, in her liner notes for the CD package, as "a wild, surreal, and totally joyful album - a 'cycle' to be listened to from beginning to end." The sonic beast at the center of Earth to EZRA is a microtonal organ designed by David Rothenberg and built by synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog in the mid 1960s. The 478-key instrument divides the octave into 31 equal parts, but was never actually functional until 2023, when electronic music scholar and instrument builder Travis Johns began the meticulous process of making the organ playable.

Faik Bey Franz Della Sudda was Liszt's pupil from Turkey. Affectionately nicknamed 'Der Pasha' by Liszt, Della Sudda had a growing reputation among the musical press and society's elite for brilliant pianism and lyrically picturesque compositions. Prize-winning Turkish pianist, Zeynep Ucbasaran, performs this programme of all world premiere recordings.

At the invitation of Respighi’s great nieces, conductor Salvatore Di Vittorio has restored and edited the Berceuse and Lamento d’Arianna. His completion of the orchestration for the Tre Liriche is heard here in a premiere recording. Di Vittorio conducts the Chamber Orchestra of New York with the mezzo-soprano Alessandra Visentin as soloist.

REVIEW:

Alessandra Visentin’s contralto voice acts as a perfect bridge between the 18th and 20th centuries and therefore becomes an ideal voice for this project. The orchestral colors bloom wide and iridescent. Salvatore Di Vittorio more than capably holds the reins, reconciling the voice with the opalescence of the instruments.

— Il Trillo Parlante (Fabio Tranchida)

In celebration of his 80th birthday, this four-disc set spans more than five decades of Michael Tilson Thomas' compositional career. It features 18 works, from premiere recordings to remastered archival recordings available for the first time. The deluxe collection also includes an extensive booklet containing composer's notes, original essays, and a timeline of archival photos chronicling MTT's life as a pianist, conductor, composer, recording artist, and teacher. All proceeds from GRACE: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas will be donated to brain cancer research at the University of California, San Francisco Brain Tumor Center.

This album came to me in a fit of stillness. I had been moving so much and for so long that I forgot that my favorite thing to do is to just sit. Sitting in stillness involves watching, waiting, listening, and observing. It involves becoming aware of the edges of things - in my case, where my body ends and the chair begins, where a bird call starts and a melody has always existed, where a cloud has always been a storm and the storm is me. When I wrote these songs, I was sitting still and looking at the sea. Yes, the actual sea, but also the sea of my childhood and the sea of my recurring dreams. In the process of writing, I've learned that if I look long enough, rooms that I didn't previously have access to emerge, floating in front of me like hard working tugboats, pulling behind them all the postcards that I've written to myself. I've learned that if I listen long enough, a vine will always grow out my head and become a phone cord, connecting me to all the times I've wanted to tell you I love you and have held it back. - Alex Sopp

Anton Bruckner 200 (1824-2024)

Released to coincide with Bruckner's 200th birthday in 2024, this 18-CD set brings together the entire recorded cycle of Bruckner's symphonies in the Capriccio label's The Complete Versions Edition. Markus Poschner's acclaimed recordings of Bruckner's symphonies feature all of the versions identified as having significant revisions and changes in the authoritative Neue Anton Bruckner Gesamtausgabe (New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition), making this the most comprehensive Bruckner Symphonies cycle available today.

The Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin continues it's PENTATONE Mozart series with the composer's 29th and 33rd symphonies. These works are coupled with his ravishingly beautiful Clarinet Concerto, performed by Ernst Schlader in the original edition for basset clarinet. Schlader, a specialist in historical instruments, has written an essay on the basset clarinet for the album booklet that includes a rare historical image showing the original shape of the instrument used in the years after the concerto's premiere. The first release of this series was longlisted for the Preis der deutschen Schalllplattenkritik. The Akademie fur Alte Musik is generally seen as one of the best period-instruments ensembles of today, and has a substantial Pentatone discography, including CANTATA with Bejun Mehta (2018), Handel's Concerti grossi Op. 3 and 6 (released in 2019 and 2020), Telemann's Miriways (2020), Handel's Messiah (2020), Haydn's L'isola disabitata (2021), La Passione with Christina Landshamer (2022), a recording of Mozart's Paris and Haffner symphonies and Oboe Concerto with Xenia Loffler (2023), and Telemann's Ino (2024).

Misha Dichter was born in 1945 in Shanghai, where his Polish parents had fled to by way of the trans-Siberian railroad in order to wait out the war. In 1947 the Dichter family moved to Los Angeles where Misha began studying piano. His first significant teacher was Aube Tzerko, who had studied with Artur Schnabel. “He literally started me from scratch,” Dichter recalled. But the hard work finally paid off when he was accepted into Rosina Lhévinne's class at the Juilliard School.

“In the fall of 1965 I saw a poster in the Juilliard coatroom announcing the third annual Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow,” recalls Dichter. “I had just lost a few local competitions in Los Angeles, so I thought, why not just go for the big one?” The young pianist’s Silver Medal victory in 1966 led to a contract with RCA Victor, for whom he made the three acclaimed albums reissued here, and to the international career of this “most polished pianist” (High Fidelity).

It was inevitable, perhaps, that Dichter’s début release for the label would be given over to the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor Concerto, the same work that catapulted the competition’s first winner Van Cliburn to international stardom. Dichter was to perform the Tchaikovsky at Tanglewood, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf, so RCA duly set up recording sessions.

Dichter’s second RCA Victor album juxtaposed selected Brahms piano pieces with Stravinsky’s 3 Movements from Petrushka, and with his third RCA release, the pianist devoted himself to Beethoven and Schubert. Arthur Rubinstein approved of Dichter’s Schubert, to the extent that he famously invited his younger colleague to his Paris home, where a film crew captured Dichter playing Schubert’s B-flat Sonata D 960 in Rubinstein’s presence. Dichter holds an equally special affinity for the A major Sonata D 959 – “it still represents to me what paradise looks and sounds like.”

Silenced - Unsung Voices of the 20th Century, featuring tenor Ian Koziara and pianist Bradley Moore, shines a light on art songs by composers Franz Schreker, Vitezslava Kapralova, Viktor Ullmann, and Alexander von Zemlinsky, whose musical achievements were overshadowed by the oppression of the Third Reich. This recording marks the first time many of these art songs, traditionally performed by sopranos, are being recorded in the tenor voice.

Described as "an exciting Wagner tenor" (New York Times) and "a wonderful artist" (Washington Post), Chicago native Ian Koziara has performed at leading venues worldwide, including the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, Glimmerglass, Teatro La Fenice, and Opera National du Capitole, among others. He sings regularly at Oper Frankfurt, where he recently starred in Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang.

Bradley Moore has served as associate Music Director at the Houston Grand Opera and assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera and Salzburg Festival. He has performed as a piano soloist with orchestras including the National Symphony Orchestra and Buffalo Philharmonic, and has collaborated in recital with artists such as Renée Fleming and Susan Graham.

This recording explores the operatic and chromatically rich German harmonies of early 20th-century composers Franz Schreker (1878-1934) and Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942), alongside the esoteric textures of Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944), who wrote his Holderlin-Lieder and Drei Lieder, Op. 37 during his internment at the Terezin concentration camp. Vitezslava Kapralova (1915-1940), the least known and shortest-lived composer on the program, was a trailblazer as the first Czech woman to become a professional conductor and the first woman ever to conduct the Czech Philharmonic. Kapralova possessed extraordinary talent and technical virtuosity, and her passion for song and poetry are reflected on this program in sets such as Dve pisne, Op. 4 and Jablko s klina, Op. 10. Tragically, Kapralova's career was cut short by her untimely death at age 25.

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.

This Land is a probing, nuanced reflection on the kaleidoscopic diversity of stories and journeys that have converged and collided throughout American history, from an art-ist renowned for her musical explorations off the beaten path. Downes celebrates the beauty of the American experiment while offering an unflinching acknowledgement of it's flaws and failings, ultimately embracing the power of hope and humanity as a pathway to finding common ground and building a brighter future. At the heart of this deeply personal collection is Edmar Colon's radical new reimagining of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, celebrating the centenary of it's premiere while reflect-ing on an American century of immigration and transformation. An iconoclast and trailblazer, Lara Downes' dynamic work as a sought-after soloist, a Billboard Chart-topping recording artist, a producer, curator, arts activist and advo-cate positions her as a cultural visionary on the national arts scene. She was honored as 2022 Classical Woman of the Year by Performance Today. She returns to PENTA-TONE after her 2023 album Love at Last.

Four-time Grammy-winning sextet, Eighth Blackbird (8BB), "one of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet" (Chicago Tribune), presents the world premiere recording of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang's composition as explanation, based on Gertrude Stein's seminal 1926 lecture of the same name. Called "Super Chamber Music" by David Lang, this multidisciplinary work incorporates elements of chamber music, theater, and performance art; it has the groundbreaking ensemble not only performing the music, but also speaking and singing Stein's text.

For the performance, the 8BB players committed themselves to a rigorous education process, including lessons in acting, diction, and the art of theater. Musical America praised 8BB's live performance of Lang's work as "every bit as witty, circular, and self-referential as Stein's own prose; it's rare, not to mention utterly satisfying, to hear a work that so completely embodies it's text. To invoke Stein, one suspects Composition as Explanation will be a work of our time for many times to come."

In 2016, 8BB asked David Lang to propose a project that they could perform at the Chicago Arts Club in conjunction with the Club's centennial year. In his research, Lang discovered that Stein had spoken at the Club in 1934; this led him to employ Stein's text as the basis for the piece.

Flautist Ana de la Vega made a sensation in 2018 with her debut recording of Mozart and Myslivecek flute concertos, now returning in an affordable stereo re-issue. With sensuous melodies and elegant virtuosity, Mozart's Flute Concertos in G major (K. 313) and D major (K. 314) are the most cherished pieces composed for the instrument. Here they are brought together with the recently rediscovered Flute Concerto in D major by Josef Myslivecek, de la Vega works together with the English Chamber Orchestra on this acclaimed album.

Mary Elizabeth Bowden, praised for her “splendid, brilliant” artistry (Gramophone), celebrates the narrative power of the trumpet with "Storyteller: Contemporary Concertos for Trumpet." Bowden is joined by the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra and conductor Allen Tinkham in a collection of new concertos that redefine the trumpet’s voice in modern classical music. This recording, a testament to Bowden’s commitment to expanding the trumpet repertoire, features world premiere recordings of works by James M. Stephenson, Clarice V. Assad, Vivian Fung, Tyson Gholston Davis, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Reena Esmail, showcasing the richness and versatility of contemporary classical trumpet music.

With the world premiere recording of the environmental oratorio Earth Vigil, Grammy Award-winning choir Conspirare and conductor Craig Hella Johnson celebrate their long-time artistic relationship with composer Robert Kyr. Earth Vigil tells a tender and moving story of two characters and their dramatic journey amidst great challenges caused by the intensifying climate crisis. This extraordinary new work invites us to remember the wonder and beauty of the natural world and of our lives together on this planet. As it comes to a close, the final scene compels us forward with a profoundly hopeful and emboldening song. Soprano Awet Andemicael and baritone Stephen Lancaster give voice to the leading characters.