“This music is drawn from the interaction of the people playing it.” (Christian Wolff) “With the present recording, it is impossible to imagine it could be anyone but Malcolm Goldstein and Matthias Kaul playing, with their very personal vocabularies.” (Peter Niklas Wilson) This production received the quarterly German Record Critics' Award. At their first face-to-face encounter, at a milk bar in Frankfurt’s main train station, Goldstein and Kaul decided to play several concerts as a duo. Since then they have given many concerts in Germany and abroad. The focus of their collaboration is on improvisation or compositions that give the performers a great deal of free play. For more information on Matthias Kaul please visit his website: www.matthiaskaul.de

Includes work(s) by Charles Davidson. Ensemble: Finchley Children's Music Group. Conductors: Nicholas Wilks, Bradley Lubman. Soloists: Douglas Webster, Amy Goldstein.

This release features three exciting chamber works by female composers, written during the first three decades of the twentieth century. This project was initiated by pianist Joanna Goldstein. Joanna Goldstein (piano, University Orchestra director) is Professor of Music at Indiana University Southeast. She was also formerly the Dean of the School of Arts & Letters until 2001. In addition to her piano studio, she directs the Indiana University Southeast Orchestra. Joanna earned her Bachelor of Music degree summa cum laude at Temple University, her Masters of Music at The Juilliard School and a Ph. D. from New York University. She also studied at the Academy for Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria as a Fulbright-Hays Scholar and has received numerous honors including winning the Philadelphia Orchestra Young Artist Competition on two occasions, the National Arts Club Competition and the Mason-Hamlin Competition. She is joined here by Steven Moeckel, Nicholas Finch, and Bruce Heim.

To make Mozart’s Piano Concertos K. 466 and K. 467 more accessible to the public, the 19th c. composer Ignaz Lachner left the piano parts untouched and made splendid string quartet transcriptions of the orchestra parts with added bass. These chamber versions of two of Mozart’s greatest and most popular concertos sound almost as natural as if Mozart had transcribed them himself. Admired for his musical intelligence, dynamic personality, artistic vision and innovative programming, the NY Times called out pianist Alon Goldstein’s “brilliance and imagination” following a recent live recital.

Classical Music

In the autumn of 1912 Jean Sibelius was commissioned to compose music for Poul Knudsen's surreal pantomime, Scaramouche, an experience that Sibelius soon regretted taking due to reservations about the production. Rarely performed today, Scaramouche is a curiosity within the Sibelius' discography. With the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Lief Segerstam featuring soloists Bendik Goldstein (viola) and Roi Ruottinen (cello).

“The few documents I had collected gave me the feeling that I was standing on the threshold of a wonderful cave, like that of Ali Baba, which I had the opportunity to explore at will. Since that time I must confess that I cannot remember how many people I have contacted, nor communities and towns visited, nor how often I have stayed, for short or longer periods, in five countries of the eastern Mediterranean. My investigations were in no way limited to poetry and song. Folklore constitutes a whole world, and I was anxious in particular to know that of my people.” Alberto Hemsi wrote these words just two years before he died, in a retrospective as a foreword to the last and tenth volume of his opus magnum, the collection of works for voice and piano known as Coplas Sefardies. More than fifty years earlier, at the beginning of the 1920s, he had begun to collect examples of the folklore of the Sephardi Jews – “his people” – and to arrange them for concert performance. The present release features the world premiere recording of the original version

Mozart himself saw the advantages of creating more accessible versions of his concertos in reduced instrumentation. Ignaz Lachner followed common 19th-century practice by leaving the piano parts of these concertos intact and making splendid transcriptions of the orchestra parts using only a string quartet with added bass. K. 488 and K. 491 are two of Mozart’s greatest and most popular piano concertos. These chamber versions throw an intense and intimate new light on familiar music. Alon Goldstein is one of the most original and sensitive pianists of his generation, admired for his musical intelligence and dynamic personality. His career as a soloist has taken him all over the world, working with leading orchestras and conductors. The Fine Arts Quartet ranks among the most distinguished ensembles in chamber music today, with an illustrious history of performing success and an extensive legacy of over 200 recorded works.