An album with a mission to defy classification, BariTenor is a tour de force for Michael Spyres. It ranges wide, encompassing repertoire normally assigned to both tenors and baritones. Programming 18 arias by 15 composers, it covers three centuries of opera in Italian, French and German, setting mainstream works beside relative rarities, and rediscovering �tienne M�hul's Ariodant, first heard in 1799. Michael Spyres has achieved renown as a multi-faceted tenor, but 'baritenor' is the term he uses to describe his voice, which balances brilliant high notes with a robust lower register. "Having started off as a baritone, I spent 10 years turning myself into a tenor. Voices like mine have existed as long as opera has existed, and the entire programme of this album is linked by the baritenor technique. I am making an honest attempt to explore the baritenor as a forgotten vocal phenomenon... For me, this album is more than a dream come true." Joining Spyres are the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg under it's Chief Conductor Marko Letonja, and the male singers of the chorus of the Op�ra du Rhin.

OURS

October 18, 1987 was a very special day for the two brothers Michael Brecker & Randy Brecker. For years both had conquered the stages of the world together with their band Brecker Brothers and earned the reputation of being among the world's leading jazz musicians on their instruments, the saxophone and the trumpet.

Japanese SHM-CD pressing. Universal. 2022.

NEARNESS OF YOU: THE BALLAD BOOK

Part of Universal Japan's 'Everything Jazz - Vol. 2' reissue campaign. Features the high-fidelity UHQCD format. Green label coating. *UHQCD (Ultimate High Quality CD) is an upgraded version of HQCD, a high fidelity CD format developed by Memory-Tech. 2025.

Gershwin Rhapsody - Jean-Yves Thibaudet & Michael Feinstein / Commemorating the 1924 premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet collabs with Michael Feinstein, the 'one-man encyclopaedia of the Great American Songbook' to celebrate the magic of Gershwin. Gershwin Rhapsody sees best-loved Gershwin melodies sit alongside world premiere recordings of 4 rediscovered Gershwin songs: 'Graceful and Elegant', 'Dance of the Waves', 'Sutton Place' and 'Under the Cinnamon Tree'. The album also includes a medley based on Rhapsody in Blue comprising a selection of piano duos, solos and Feinstein vocals featuring the music of George & Ira Gershwin. The two also perform a Gershwin-esque setting of Vincent Youman's classic tune, 'Tea for Two' and the programme rounds off with 'Jasbo Brown Blues' from Porgy & Bess. Michael Feinstein and Jean-Yves Thibaudet extensively toured this programme around the US under the title 'Who Could Ask For Anything More?' including a date at Carnegie Hall on December 13th.

LATE AUTUMN SUNSHINE

A focused portrait of Britten alongside a little-known but significant British contemporary, marking both the 50th anniversary of Britten's death and the centenary year of Arthur Oldham's birth. Under Michael Waldron, the London Choral Sinfonia pairs Britten with the one composer he privately mentored: Arthur Oldham. The program brings together familiar works by Britten with a substantial selection of Oldham's choral music, placing the two composers in direct conversation. At the center is Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, a cycle of nocturnal poetry (Tennyson, Blake, Keats and others) framed by the horn's natural harmonics in the Prologue and Epilogue. Horn soloist Annemarie Federle and Tenor Nick Pritchard trace it's shifting atmosphere, with string accompaniment from the London Choral Sinfonia. Britten's Te Deum in C appears in the rarely heard orchestrated version for strings and harp, presented here as a world premiere recording. Oldham's music completes the program: the cantata Laudes Creaturarum on the text of St Francis of Assisi (with Carolyn Sampson), the carol Remember, O thou man, and the ceremonial Sacerdos et Pontifex for chorus and organ - also recorded here for the first time.

ACROSS ... IN GRIEF AND DETAIL

Harry Partch is an American visionary and stubborn individualist... He has built his own musical world out of microtones, hobo speech, elastic octaves and percussion instruments made from hubcaps and nuclear cloud chambers. Recently ... an army of young music lovers stormed New York’s Whitney Museum to hear Harry Partch and his thirteen disciples produce a music that was totally personal and eclectic in the best sense. African polyrhythms, and ancient Greek modes, bits of Babylonia and the pulse of the American diesel engine all gathered into a richly erotic, primitive, fresh and stirring drama of sound.

-- Newsweek


Includes bonus tracks: The Instruments of Harry Partch.

SCHUBERT: ARPEGGIONE SONATA, P

"We have an enjoyable disc of a range of music from two talented and influential brothers who inhabited a transitional period between baroque and early classical. Their career paths were quite different, Giovanni being born and then dying in Milan while Giuseppe eventually settled in bustling London for the last twenty or so years of his life. Giuseppe’s more cosmopolitan existence is reflected in his music on the disc which displays a pragmatic ability to adjust his style. The violoncello piccolo concerto, for example, is very italianate, clearly influenced by Vivaldi whereas his delightful oboe concerto, excellently played by Hans-Peter Westermann, is more Handelian in style. His recorder concerto is also very tuneful and is a standard repertoire piece for skilled players. Michael Schneider is a distinguished performer and I thought his playing one of the best things about the disc which otherwise contains renderings that are highly competent but not particularly special. He features also in Giuseppe’s Trio in F major for 2 recorders which for me was the most enjoyable work in spite of its three movements lasting little more than five minutes. The slow movement with the recorders’ clashing semi-tones and tones is exquisitely intense.

Giovanni died a quarter of a century after his brother and his two chamber works here (he does not get a concerto on this disc of "concertos"!) were probably written after his brother’s death and are understandably more classical in feel. Both involve transverse flute and I liked the spirited playing in works that I found neatly formed but relatively dull compared with brother Giuseppe’s contributions."

-- John Leeman, MusicWeb International reviewing DHM 77852

Since its inception in 1972 one of SteepleChase’s enduring policies has been to discover new talents who deserve recognition. Michael Feinberg, bassist/composer originally from Atlanta, Georgia is one of them. Feinberg with seven leader albums up his sleeve may not be labelled as a new comer but this is his debut release on this label which prides itself with the rich tradition of great bass players such as Red Mitchell, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Sam Jones, Jay Anderson, Scott Lee, just mention a few. Feinberg leads here a formidable band with two horn-front by one of the most influential saxophonists Dave Liebman on soprano and young elite Noah Preminger on tenor whose SteepleChase debut album, by the way, is on its way. "Feinberg’s original material is fresh and refreshingly free of empty complexity, giving his group... material that they can stretch out on without getting lost in technique. " (Irish Times) “He’ll be attracting widespread attention before you know it." (Jazz Espress) “… he is showing signs of being a towering personality on his instrument." (Jazzdagama.com) "There are, quite simply, few players like him. A couple playing today that come to mind immediately are Dave Holland and Boris Kozlov” (Ilikejazz.com)

MOZART: STRING QUINTETS NOS 3

This set contains both ADD and DDD recordings.

REVIEWS:
BBC Music (4/98, p.73) - Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5) - "...Haydn's usual playfulness and inventive wit...are expertly realised in the clear sounds and open textures of the players' period instruments on this elegant and enjoyable recording."

A thoughtful performance of Mussorgsky's masterpiece, with Ghiaurov conveying a dignified and reflective portrait of Tsar Boris.

Mussorgsky's original Boris Godunov, without benefit of Rimsky-Korsakov, has become more or less accepted now, for recordings as well as on the stage; though that begs the question of what is the original. David Lloyd-Jones, in his authoritative edition, uses the word "initial" for the 1869 version which was turned down by the St Petersburg Imperial Theatres, and "definitive" for the work's enlargement by the Polish act and Revolutionary scene (with the St Basil's scene dropped) for the 1874 production. As is now common, this new recording includes both the Revolutionary and the St Basil's scenes. The scoring is the original, of course, though the singers generally take (insignificant) variants which suggest they are using the 1874 Bessel vocal score.

The performance is a thoughtful one, sometimes with rather too much thought with Tchakarov, and not enough raw energy. Fortunately the best is at the centre, with Ghiaurov's reflective, melancholy Tsar Boris. His first words, "Skorbit dusha" ("My soul is sad"), suggest the burdened sinner, much as Boris Christoff does but with a deeper tinge of sorrow; and this note runs through his performance. He is very tender with his son Fyodor (sympathetically sung by Rossitza Troeva-Mircheva), and plays the histrionics of the hallucination scene down. The death scene, too, is sung simply and well, with few extra effects (a sob early on before the word "umyrayu"—"I am dying"—and a final groan). The music does not need them: there is no greater demonstration of what all that 'realism' meant to the Russians than the melodic line as it steadily loses its human warmth and disintegrates into oblivion. It is not a performance that attempts the rugged majesty of Boris Christoff, and if it loses something in dramatic impetus by that much, it conveys musically and with much dignity a portrait of Mussorgsky's bowed Tsar. Ghiaurov is in places a little free with the rhythm, which does not matter much, and changes the odd word (not surprisingly substituting "k nam" for "vsye" on the high F where Mussorgsky inconsiderately placed it).

Christoff, on his EMI recording under Clutyens, sang both Pimen and Boris; but though it was an impressive tour de force, the idea is not really advisable. Here, there is a good contrast with the graver voice of Nicola Ghiuselev, who is a sombre but by no means ascetic Pimen, remembering his youthful indiscretions with penitence but, for once, as if they could actually have happened. He delivers the final address to the Boyars superbly.

The remainder of the cast give varying performances. Stefka Mineva is an unseductive Marina, her powerful tone and pronounced wobble standing up better to the tense exchanges with Boris Martinovich's alarming Rangoni than to the love duet with Grigory, or the False Dmitry; he is sung, with a skilful sense of a man possessed, by Mikhail Svetlev, giving a well-sustained performance. There is a plausible villain of Shuisky from Josef Frank. But the more extrovert scenes suffer from a lack of exuberance. The crowd at the start is hustled along by a policeman of implausible gentleness; Stefka Popangelova's Nurse does not sound as if she is enjoying her romps with the children very much; Penka Dilova's Hostess is rather tame with her song about the grey drake; and as Varlaam, Dimiter Petkov has clearly been sustaining himself with nothing stronger than lemonade as he clambers up to sing his boastful song about service under Ivan the Terrible. The Holy Simpleton, as "yurodivy" is here translated, sounds too knowledgeable in Mincho Popov's performance. The chorus are rather well-behaved for a Russian crowd under pressure; they are also too often behind the beat, and tend to swallow their final syllables (which affects the phrasing). The recording, good with the orchestra, is less than kind to the chorus. With the discs comes a well-produced booklet containing rather short background essays, and a transliteration of the text plus English, French and German translation.

-- Gramophone [4/1992]

WEINBERG Solo Violin Sonata No. 1. Violin Sonatas: No. 1; No. 4. Sonatina • Yuri Kalnits (vn); Michael Csányi-Wills (pn) • TOCCATA 0007 (78:08)

Violinist Yuri Kalnits and Michael Csányi-Wills recorded their program of violin music by the Russian composer Mieczys?aw Weinberg in two sessions: August 26–30, 2008, at Champs Hill, Coldwaltham (Sonata No. 1, Sonata No. 4, and the Sonatina), and July 13–18, 2009, at Moviefonics Studio in West London (the solo sonata). This constitutes the first volume in what will apparently be a complete set of the composer’s violin sonatas. Toccata bills the recordings of the First Sonata and the solo sonata as recording premieres.

The program opens with the three-movement First Sonata, which, according to David Fanning’s notes, Weinberg composed in 1943 after settling in Moscow. The sonata’s opening passages combine firmly tonal lyricism with sardonic punctuation, and although the harmonies eventually cloud over and grow less securely centered, they remain within a tonal orbit; and although its lyricism gives way to both slashing and motoric passages, in the manner of Dmitri Shostakovich, who inspired Weinberg, its melodic patterns hardly seem to cultivate unbroken ground. Kalnits sounds ardent—almost romantic—in his tone production (though he strops a keen edge on the angular passages), not only in the opening Allegro but especially at the outset of the Adagietto second movement. The engineers have captured his tonal glow, especially in the lower registers (they seem to have placed Csányi-Wills’s piano a slight distance behind Kalnits’s violin). The duo move alertly back and forth between the finale’s alternate cheerfulness and vigor and bring the sonata to an imposing conclusion.

The five-movement Solo Violin Sonata, 24-odd minutes in duration (in this performance), from 1964, inhabits an entirely different universe, less centered tonally, more dissonant, and less flowing both rhythmically and melodically. Thrusting in its first movement in a manner similar to that of Béla Bartók’s Solo Violin Sonata, it takes no prisoners—and neither does Kalnits, who enters into its more dour spirit, cavorting among its thorns. In the second movement, which begins after what sounds like an inconclusive final passage in the first, he shrieks his way through the predominantly double-stopped textures and effectively contrasts the aggressive pizzicatos with the more playful and lyrical sections to which they give way. Kalnits forcefully hammers the dissonant double-stops and chords of the ensuing Lento until quieter passages bring the movement to a close. The Presto, which begins almost immediately, recalls the finale of Bartók’s Solo Violin Sonata thematically, but without its ethnic outbursts. In fact, the entire sonata sounds like an internationalized version of Bartók’s, carrying its harmonic implications even further and stretching the violinist’s technique even less mercifully. Kalnits possesses ample resources to follow wherever Weinberg leads.

The Fourth Violin Sonata, from 1947, returns listeners to fringes of the First Sonata’s tonal world, although this sonata sounds much darker in the duo’s searing reading of its first movement. They dispel this atmosphere in an irresistible burst of energy in the second movement’s first section, and follow its biting premise through the cadenza that leads to the solemn conclusion. The duo’s expressive intensity makes this sonata a spellbinding emotional journey of discovery for listeners, as it must have been for the performers. Violinist Stefan Kirpal and pianist Andreas Kirpal also took this journey, on cpo 777 456 (David Fanning wrote the booklet notes for both releases), exploring the first movement’s more reflective side—as, for example, in the dark, complex opening contrapuntal piano solo—but no more ardent in the eloquent violin solo, and just about as incisive and visceral in the Allegro sections of the second movement. The Kirpal duo takes 19:58 for the journey, while Kalnits and Csányi-Wills completes it in 13:44. But how much of the atmosphere Andreas Kirpal creates in the opening piano solo would you trade for any added excitement in what follows?

The Sonatina, which Fanning assigns to 1949 and describes as an attempt to respond to the Soviet criticism that engulfed Soviet composers at the time, sounds more straightforward in its first movement, in which Kalnits alternately soars and engages in muted, plaintive conversation with Csányi-Wills, especially at the end. Violinist and pianist continue to explore this haunted ambiance through the second movement’s opening section, while he and Csányi-Wills wax extroverted in the middle section, which begins almost with the abrupt discontinuity of a separate movement. In their reading of the finale they mix ferocity with vigorous burlesque.

The release should provide a most auspicious introduction to Weinberg’s violin music, offering a chameleon-like variety that extends from the feral onslaught of the Solo Sonata to the profundities of the Fourth Sonata and to the outright melodiousness of the First. Strongly recommended for repertoire, performances, and recorded sound.

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Includes such famous works as the Greensleeves and Tallis Fantasias as well as The Lark Ascending.

"...Recordings of a work like the Trout always have a problem due to the difficulties of balance between piano and a small string ensemble. In this instance the engineers have avoided the pitfalls and have come up with a good balance. A fresh sounding, lively performance appeals with the important piano part played tastefully by Emanuel Ax and a pleasing degree of shading and contrasts from the strings. Good ensemble playing from a highly regarded group... The String Quintet version of Eine Kleine Nachtsmusik makes a welcome second item. More normally heard in a chamber orchestra version, this minimised Mozart (an option from the time of its composition) is a refreshing change. To hear the five lines (two violin parts not a doubling) is a delight, and the 'authentic' movement of recent years must take some credit for the greater appreciation the reduction gives... [An] attractively compiled CD..." -- Harry Downey, MusicWeb International

Original Booklet with Synopsis and liner notes is included, although there is no libretto.

R E V I E W S

Haydn's last opera, written to inaugurate the reopening of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket in 1791 after a disastrous fire, took as its subject the Orpheus legend, not as it had been adopted by Gluck 30 years earlier, but based on Ovid: Eurydice receives her fatal snakebite while fleeing from Prince Arideo, to whom her father, King Creonte, had affianced her against her will; and there is no happy ending—Orpheus, after his journey to the underworld, loses her for ever, and he is then killed by the Maenads. At least, that is what Haydn would have set had he finished the work; but owing to the crazy rival patronage of George III and the Prince of Wales, the King refused a licence to the theatre manager and went so far as to ban even extracts from the new opera—this from so famous and popular a composer as Haydn! So Haydn stopped work on it, and as no complete libretto exists it is impossible to tell what is actually missing. Large gaps there conspicuously are: principal characters lack arias which would certainly have been their due; there are loose ends in the story, such as what happens after Creonte's call to arms (in a stirring aria) to avenge Arideo's attempted abduction of his daughter; and there is the briefest and most perfunctory treatment of such essential dramatic moments as Orpheus's confrontation with Pluto and of his desperate attempts not to look at Eurydice as he brings her back to earth. Even the main title of the opera remains mystifying, as the only reference to it in the text is when Amor (here called Genio) urges Orpheus to be philosophical about his great loss.

Nevertheless, what remains includes some fine music, as can be heard here. From the outset of the overture Haydn makes much use of broken phrases to express pathos; there is a long love duet at the end of Act 1, a charming folky chorus of little Cupids to begin Act 2; particularly rich are the accompanied recitatives throughout, that by Eurydice as she is bitten by the snake being most moving; the chorus of Furies in Hades is extremely striking, with powerful orchestration; and there is a spectacular bravura aria for Genio, seemingly intended for some leading soprano castrato. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand why Haydn wrote such cheery music for Creonte's aria about life not being worth living without love, and for Orpheus's ''Mi sento languire, morire mi sento''. This live Frankfurt performance is in general very acceptable, though had it been transferred to the studio some details could have been improved: for example, ensemble of the (period) woodwind might have been much better, and there might have been fewer mistakes in the singers' Italian. Marilyn Schmiege makes an appealing Eurydice and copes fairly well, flexibly if not absolutely cleanly, with her first florid aria, in which she likens her laments to those of the nightingale; Christoph Pregardien produces a nice messa di voce at the start of Orpheus's first solo (with harp obbligato) in which he tames the forest's wild beasts threatening his beloved's safety, but the part frequently descends too low for his pleasant light tenor, into a register where he is weak; and Claron McFadden adds to her reputation with some brilliant coloratura, though she is fractionally sharp in places: the chorus, which plays a large part in the action, is excellent.

-- Lionel Salter, Gramophone [4/1992]

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" - Busoni: Turandot Suite

Includes work(s) by Ernesto Lecuona. Ensemble: Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Michael Bartos. Soloist: Thomas Tirino.

}Gramophone (2/97, p. 80) - "Here is a glittering centenary tribute to Cuba's King of Charmers....the performances are irreproachable and BIS's presentation and recording are vivid and enthralling..."{