Bradbury and Roberts are two of the most respected British instrumentalists of today. They renew their working relationship, following previous collaborations, in this very fine performance of three great German works. "Bradbury's technique is faultless, as is Roberts's" - Fanfare (USA)

The two works on this new release are BBC Broadcast recordings from 1973 and 1977. Included on this album are The Song of Akhenaten Op. 5, and The Water and the Fire, both by Anthony Milner. The Water and the Fire is arguably the climax of Milner’s choral writing, and is widely regarded as a visionary piece. Featured artists on these recordings include soprano Janet Price , soprano Hazel Holt, tenor John Elwes, and baritone Stephen Roberts.

A musical and spiritual celebration of unity, reconciliation, and discipleship, this collaboration by Haas and Roberts breaks down the rigid categories that divide liturgical music and our congregations. These two composers unite with a prophetic community of instrumentalists and singers coming together, joining a circle of synergy, clapping, praying, and singing with full voice. The title song utilizes Herbert Brokering's ever-popular text, "Earth and All Stars," and a wonderful call-and-response melody by David Haas. Leon Roberts contributes three gospel psalm arrangements: "Let Us Go Rejoicing," "To You, O Lord, I Lift My Soul," and "This Is the Day." "E Na Lima Hana" is based on a Hawaiian text written by Joe Camacho. Open your ears and heart to this vibrant new music that fuses traditions and genres.

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The Intimacy of Creativity is a first of its kind, an annual partnership devoted to promoting an intimate dialogue between composers and performers. Distinguished composers, together with selected composer fellows from Hong Kong and around the world, present and revise their compositions after in-depth discussions with world-renowned performers during public open discussions. The revised compositions are presented at preview concerts on the campus of HKUST and world premiere concerts in downtown Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is recognized as Asia's foremost classical orchestra. Jaap van Zweden, one of today's most sought-after conductors, has been the orchestra's Music Director since the 2012/2013 concert season.

This CD stands on it's own merits as an exceptional program of early sacred music, transcribed for and performed by the ethereally beautiful voices of Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens. However, like their earlier CD (dda25062) it has an added rationale, as the 'virtual sound-track' to the superb new novel 'Sacred Hearts', by Sarah Dunant. The music on the CD refers directly to many of the scenes and events in the book, allowing the reader/listener to more fully absorb themselves into the ancient world and characters so wonderfully portrayed.

Suor Leonora d'Este (1515-1575), Lucrezia Borgia's daughter, was a princess, a nun, and a musician. She left little to illuminate her history, but an obscure book of motets may at least help us understand her musical life: the Musica quinque vocum motteta materna lingua vocata, published in Venice in 1543. The book is anonymous, but it contains clues to its origins that lead us to the door of Leonora d'Este's home, the convent of Corpus Domini in Ferrara, perhaps even suggesting that she was its unidentified composer. The music here is the earliest published polyphony for nuns. This recording by Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens allows it to be heard for the first time through carefully researched performances.

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GOUVY Oedipe à Colone • Joachim Fontaine, cond; Christa Ratzenböck ( Antigone ); Joseph Cornwell ( Polynice ); Stephen Roberts ( Thésée ); Vinzenz Haab ( Oedipe ); Kantorei Saarlouis; La Grande Société PO • CPO 7778252 (2 CDs: 93:05 Text and Translation)


Back in 34:3 I reviewed a premiere recording of Louis Théodore Gouvy’s secular oratorio Iphigénie en Tauride , conducted by Joachim Fontaine. While admiring the composer’s “usual fastidious craftsmanship and superior technical command of orchestration and of vocal and instrumental part-writing,” I expressed reservations about “a lack of dramatic contrast and real passion” and added: “The music is too cultivated for its often harrowing subject....Instead, one elegant and decorous set piece follows another, all inhabiting a temperate emotional climate zone that fails either to inflame or chill. There is also a certain stasis and lack of flow from one number to the next.” Having had a similar reaction to another one of the composer’s oratorios, Électre , I speculated that “Gouvy may deliberately have been cultivating a degree of emotional restraint in these works in order to convey a stylized sense of classical antiquity that would have fit 19th-century sensibilities.”


Fontaine now leads the same choral and instrumental forces, though with mostly different vocal soloists, in the premiere recording of yet another oratorio by Gouvy on a mythic Greek subject, Oedipe à Colone . What a difference from Iphigénie ! Here there is no such emotional restraint or stasis; the beautiful and inventive music positively surges with genuine dramatic contrast and intense passion. While still remaining mostly within the melodic and harmonic bounds cultivated by Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Max Bruch, the richness of orchestration reflects Gouvy’s expressed admiration for the masterful orchestration (though not the vocal writing) of Wagner. This is by far the finest oratorio I have heard (and I’ve listened to a fair number) from the half-century interval between Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius . At its premiere in Leipzig on December 6, 1881, it enjoyed a tremendous success—indeed, to such a degree that Gouvy told his sister that it was the happiest day of his entire life. While it received further performances during his lifetime, upon his death it immediately fell into the same neglect that all his works have, until recently, so unjustly suffered.


The libretto of Oedipe has a somewhat complex lineage. As with Iphigénie , Gouvy once again did not write or commission an original libretto, but instead borrowed and adapted an existing one penned by the 18th-century librettist Nicolas-François Guillard (1752–1814). In this case, the original tragedy of Sophocles was first adapted by the great 17th-century tragedian Pierre Corneille (1606–1684). Guillard then turned it into a libretto for a tragédie lyrique by the composer Antonio Sacchini (1730–1786), premiered in 1785 at the royal court in Versailles.


The action of the plot, divided in the oratorio into three parts, is subsequent to that of the better-known Oedipus Rex . Oedipe (the French name for Oedipus), having blinded himself after learning that he had unwittingly fulfilled the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, was exiled from Thebes with the consent of his sons Etéocle (Eteokles) and Polynice (Polyneikis), to wander as an exile with his daughter Antigone as his guide. In Part 1, the citizens of Colonus offer sacrifices to Poseidon in thanksgiving for the safe return of their king, Thésée (Theseus), who brings with him Polynice. The latter, having lost out in a power struggle with Etéocle for the throne of Thebes and being now also an exile, is filled with shame and remorse for having spurned his father. He has gathered a band of armed supporters and hopes to launch an attack to regain the Theban throne. The two men kneel before the altar to discern the will of the gods and implore their favor, but are answered first by ominous silence and then by a thunderstorm that extinguishes the altar’s sacred flame and terrifies the people.


In Part 2, Oedipe and Antigone approach Colonus, which the gods have prophesied is where the blind refugee shall at last find rest. Oedipe longs for death, while Antigone pleads for him to live. The exiled king experiences a terrifying vision of being pursued by the Eumenides, and curses Polynice for betraying him, before Antigone brings him back to his senses. The two of them unknowingly trespass on the sacred precincts of the temple; Thésée confronts and denounces them for sacrilege. Antigone begs for mercy and reveals the identities of herself and her father. The people react with horror and demand that the accursed pair be driven away, but Thésée angrily opposes the mob and, taking pity on the duo instead, offers them refuge.


In Part 3, Antigone and Polynice are reunited. Antigone brings her brother to their father so that Polynice can confess his guilt to Oedipe, beg forgiveness, and seek support for his scheme to dethrone Etéocle, offering to restore his father to the throne instead by way of atonement. Oedipe, however, rejects him and curses both of his sons, whereupon Polynice flees in horror. Oedipe then declares to all that the hour of his death has come, as he will descend to a secret burial place at the banks of the river Acheron. Antigone begs to be allowed to join him, but is commanded to live instead. Thésée leads Oedipe away as the people implore the mercy of the gods for the exile’s final moments.


In reviewing Iphigénie , while I was a bit cool toward the work itself, I thought it received a fine performance from a very good, though not great, quartet of soloists. Here, to my considerable frustration, the situation is reversed: I am unabashedly enthusiastic for the music, but have reservations about the solo quartet. Easily its best member is the one holdover from the recording of Iphigénie , Vinzenz Haab, whose soft-grained, mellow bass-baritone makes a most sympathetic figure of Oedipe, even if it lacks the granitic timbre needed to make the most of the passages of imprecation. While all of the other singers are sensitive interpreters who capture all the varied dimensions of their roles, they all have problems with control of vocal production. Baritone Stephen Roberts as Thésée has a persistent unevenness to his vibrato that verges on a full-scale wobble; tenor Joseph Cornwall as Polynice has an attractive voice that repeatedly becomes unsteady when he attempts to push and swell a note for intensified expression; soprano Christa Ratzenböck lacks vocal sheen and turns both harsh and squally to some degree in her upper register. None of them is so defective as to be unlistenable, but compared to their predecessors in the recording of Iphigénie they are collectively a disappointing step downward. By way of compensation conductor Joachim Fontaine, who I previously said “has a conscientious command of the score, though I can imagine podium maestros who would give the work considerably more punch,” here delivers a first-rate interpretation that combines and balances elegant lyricism and dramatic urgency in equal measure. As before the orchestra and chorus are excellent, and CPO once again provides its trademark excellent recorded sound, detailed booklet notes, and a trilingual French-English-German libretto. Despite my reservations about some of the soloists, this recording is enthusiastically recommended, especially as another version is unlikely to appear any time soon.


FANFARE: James A. Altena

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This second release from Globe Music celebrates the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death by recording the music from two legendary and Tony and Olivier award-winning productions that enjoyed sold-out runs on Broadway, the West End, in the cinema and at Shakespeare’s Globe. Featuring Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry. (Globe Music)

The organist and harpsichordist John Worgan (1724–90) was one of the most highly respected musicians in the London of his day: Handel admired his playing, and Burney described him as ‘very masterly and learned’. All that survives of his harpsichord music are a ‘New Concerto’, an independent Allegro non tanto and two collections, one of six sonatas and the other of thirteen teaching pieces, but they encompass an eclectic variety of styles and a surprising range of emotions – proud, spirited, witty, impulsive, touching, vivacious – making Worgan sound something like an English Domenico Scarlatti.

Reiko Füting’s features chamber works performed by members of NYC’s most celebrated contemporary ensembles, including the Int’l Contemporary Ensemble, Either/Or Ensemble, and the Mivos String Quartet. This collection of works illustrates Füting’s interest in the philosophical and artistic conception of memory, as well as the significant role past works of literature, music, and art play in shaping his compositional forms and musical material. Interspersed between the album’s longer works are vocal settings of haikus from Reiner Bonack. In addition to composing, Reiko Füting (b. 1970) is an avid performer who has appeared in Europe, Asia, and the US. Since 2000, Füting has been teaching composition and theory at Manhattan School of Music, where he serves as the chair of theory department.

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Christopher Roberts’s five intimate and virtuosic movements/pieces for a trio of double basses are here performed by the composer and two other virtuosos of the instrument, Mark Morton and James Bergman. This music, much of it inspired by the composer’s life in Papua New Guinea (where he ran off to after Juilliard to study music’s “natural prosody”), subtly extends the double bass’s standard playing techniques with such expressive elements as bowing patterns inspired by the sound of hornbills in flight. Famed bass virtuoso Bertram Turetzky called Trios “A magnificent piece! There’s nothing like it. Roberts has a truly original voice.” And composer Michael J. Schumacher declared that “Roberts has arrived at a new American music by traversing the heart of Papua New Guinea...and the result is something unique.” Writing in The Wire magazine, Julian Cowley called this recording of Trios “An elegantly reverberant, harmonically rich and gracefully delineated composition for resonant strings.” Writing in Seattle’s The Stranger, Christopher DeLaurenti proclaimed this CD “A remarkable disc.... Recommended.” And noted music critic and author Greg Sandow wrote, “Trios for Deep Voices is thoughtful music, beautifully worked out, and very absorbing to listen to. It’s wonderfully individual, both in its sound and its construction. Clear some space in your life, both literally and figuratively, and give it a listen.”

The music of Buxton Orr (b. Glasgow, 1924), was hardly over-exposed during his lifetime but has encountered even more neglect since his death in 1997. This CD takes a step in the right direction, presenting Orr’s mildly modernist, elegant and honest music in first recordings of four of his chamber works for strings.

REVIEW:

All of the performances are passionate, committed and of the highest quality as is the recording which does not get between the performers and the listeners. The music needs to be ‘Listened to’ and, more than once. It is not fashionable, it does not always come out to meet you half way but it is approachable and emotional and has its own strong rewards.

The reason why the disc has taken over a decade to emerge, and I do recall it being mentioned many years ago, is that the company which originally recorded it lost interest and abandoned the project. Well done Toccata for picking up these most valuable pieces

-- MusicWeb International

This program completes the Comédie et Tragédie project with Tempesta di Mare, and consists of suites made up of orchestral excerpts from three dramatic works of the French stage, spanning seventy-three years, all highlighting the importance of dance as a part of drama.

The comédie-ballet was the brainchild of the French comedic actor, singer, dancer, and playwright Molière. After ten years of collaborating with Lully, a Suite from whose Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme features in Volume 1, he turned to Charpentier. The outcome was Le Malade imaginaire whose fourth performance would prove Molière’s last, as he died on stage.

Scylla et Glaucus is the only stage work by Jean-Marie Leclair, the foremost violinist of his generation and a composer whose late opera shows the clarity of his orchestration and places its focal point on the strings, as one would expect.

Les Fêtes de Polymnie is contemporary with Leclair’s opera but more forward looking in its approach, and famous for the ingenuity of Rameau’s colorful orchestration, particularly obvious in the overture.- Chandos

Review:

I particularly liked Tempesta di Mare's vigorous, spiky strings in Leclair's 'Air des silvains' and the 'Premier air de demons'…delightful music, delightfully played.

– Gramophone

This release is a re-issue of a 1992 recording, when Richard Hickox was serving as Associate Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Elgar wrote his Caractacus in 1898 for the Leeds Festival. The work shows his invention and orchestration skills, foreshadowing his most famous work, the Enigma Variations. A review by Gramophone asserted that “There can be nothing but praise for Richard Hickox’s fluent, sensitive direction and enthusiastic, full-blooded backcloth provided by the LSO… A typically ripe, wide-ranging Chandos recording into the bargain.”

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REVIEW:

Although the work itself is uneven, this 1992 recording is yet another classic recording from the late maestro, and well worth hearing when done as brilliantly as this.

– MusicWeb International

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This delightful recording contains many of your favorite hymns, carols, and songs that will help cheer your heart and your home. Blending secular and sacred music, Christmas in the City presents an hour of the beautiful sounds of the Christmas season. Listeners will be captivated by the brilliant reverberation of handbells and handchimes performed by the skillful and talented ringers of Chicago Bronze.

Roberts's new recording, Science of Love, finds the longtime stalwart of the creative Downtown music scene returning to New York City, after raising a family in Ithaca, NY, in an effort to rekindle the vital, creative energy that only the metropolis can provide. Roberts discovered inspiration in droves, which allowed him to create a unique program of original music unlike anything he had done in the past. // Of course, Roberts has been well known for playing alongside music greats, like Bill Frisell, Tim Berne, and Joey Baron. He has also put together singular and celebrated ensembles of his own that cover a wealth of musical ground, including folk, rock, modern classical, gospel, and world music influences.

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TOMKINS / GIBBONS / BYRD: Consort and Keyboard Music

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