A WQXR-FM Best Classical Recording for 2019

Twentieth-century African American composer Margaret Bonds receives long overdue recognition with the world premiere recording of her crowning achievement, The Ballad of the Brown King. With an expressly written libretto by Bonds’ friend Langston Hughes, this Christmas cantata which focuses on Balthazar, the dark-skinned king who journeyed to Bethlehem to witness the birth of Jesus Christ, is beautifully interpreted by New York City-based The Dessoff Choirs and Orchestra, outstanding soloists soprano Laquita Mitchell, mezzo-soprano Lucia Bradford and tenor Noah Stewart, under the baton of their charismatic conductor, Malcolm J. Merriweather. Bonds authority Dr. Ashley Jackson contributes the inspired liner notes. This unique seasonal album also includes a selection of specially arranged songs, including a setting of Hughes’ seminal poem I, Too, Sing America, performed by baritone Merriweather and Jackson on solo harp.

REVIEW:

Nearly 60 years after its premiere, conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather and the phenomenal New York-based Dessoff Choirs have at last provided a way experience Margaret Bonds’ genius cantata, The Ballad of the Brown King. After luxuriating in this sumptuous setting of the Nativity story (with a libretto by Langston Hughes), be sure to listen to Bonds’ heart-rending Three Dream Portraits, sung forcefully by Merriweather himself.

–WQXR-FM (105.9 FM, NYC - Zev Kane)

American-Australian harpist Emily Granger makes her solo debut recording, In Transit, with a collection of contemporary works that reveal the breadth and beauty of harp music from her two countries.

Memories and moods infuse Tristan Coehlo’s evocative title track as well as the composer’s The Old School, recalling an artists’ residence in Australia’s Blue Mountains where he first met Emily. Laura Zaerr’s rhythmical River Right Rhumba is inspired by West African drumming, whilst Sally Greenaway’s Liena, named after Melbourne-born harpist Liena Lacey, draws upon jazz and Latin dance music. Ross Edwards evokes a fantasia in his hypnotic The Harp and the Moon, whilst Libby Larsen’s bold Theme and Deviations is a tease on the traditional musical form. Sally Whitwell’s Undiminished is just that both harmonically and in spirit. Emily’s virtuosity is on full display in Kate Moore soaring Spin Bird, inspired by Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and in Nancy Gustavson’s Great Day, steeped in colorful glissandi showing off the harp in all its glory. Turning her hand to arranging, Emily has adapted Elena Kats-Chernin’s Blue Silence, originally for cello and piano, underscoring the works calming, healing and meditative properties; and Augusta Read Thomas’ Eurythmy Etude “Still Life”, originally for solo piano, stemming from the Greek meaning for beautiful and harmonious rhythm. Emily closes the album with Deborah Henson-Conant’s The Nightingale, one of her earliest musical memories as a young harpist.

Harpist to Queen Victoria, the Welsh composer John Thomas (1826–1913) also wrote prolifically for his own instrument, both for solo harp and for duos of two harps or harp and piano – a combination where the different sounds of the two instruments enhance the clarity of the texture. Thomas’ original works use the elegant Romantic style of his own day, but he often drew on Welsh folksong for his inspiration and also left a generous legacy of transcriptions, especially of operatic favourites. Although some of his music was intended for the Victorian drawing room, other pieces require a virtuoso technique – and all of it has a thoroughly engaging melodic appeal.

Jheronimus Vinders (fl.1525/6) is best known for the oft-recorded lament on the death of Josquin Desprez (d.1521), O mors inevitabilis, which has led many to presume that he was a disciple or even a pupil of the great master. Now that his surviving works have recently been published in a modern edition, we are better able to place him among his contemporaries. He belongs to a rather small group of Flemish musicians who form the link between the Josquin generation and that of the mid-sixteenth century, featuring composers such as Clemens non Papa and Crecquillon. He boasts a wonderfully imaginative ear with a preference for dark sonorities, and his music often surprises and delights. This is the first recording devoted to a selection of Vinders’s works along with the polyphonic models that inspired them.

Anna Noakes, concerto and recording soloist with BBC Concert Orchestra and RNSO has performed at the QEH, Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room as soloist, recitalist and chamber musician as well as at many of Britain’s most respected Festivals, such as Cheltenham, Brighton, Leicester, Salisbury, City of London and Dartington. Her playing has inspired composers such as Simon Holt, Martin Yates, Cecilia McDowall, John Ashton Thomas, Dave Heath and Martin Butler to write for her. Anna has recorded numerous CD’s for Dutton, ASV, Naxos and Guild of both solo and chamber music, many of which have received Gramophone Magazine’s coveted “Critics Choice”.

Anna broadcasts for BBC Radio3 and Classic FM and works as Guest Principal Flute with the LPO, Philharmonia, RPO, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and ENO’s together with ECO, Northern Sinfonia, CLS, Locrian Ensemble and Britten Sinfonia. She is also in demand to record the music for Film and TV, scores that include, Kingsman, Golden Circle, James Bond, Lord of the Rings, Stardust, Hugo, Arthur, Chicken Run, Golden Compass, Black Swan, Narnia series, Harry Potter, Shrek, Da Vinci Code, Bridget Jones and Love Actually to name a few.

Professor of Flute at Trinity College of Music for seventeen years, Anna has given masterclasses for BFS, RAM, RNCM, GSMD, DIC Dublin, Cork School of Music and is currently the woodwind coach for both World Youth Orch, LSSO and Cambridge University. Anna is a founder member of the South American Folk Ensemble ‘INCA’ and was for ten years the Artistic Director of the Yoxford Arts Festival.

The inherently civilised music of the composer and pianist Jean-Michel Damase (1928–2013) reflects, to an endearing degree, the combination of subtlety, mastery and – as we hear in this collection – the inspiration and lasting high quality of wind playing in his native France. This inherent quality for long encouraged the country’s composers to write with a particularly sensitive ear for the possibilities of wind instruments – few national composers in the twentieth-century could write for such soloists and ensembles with the felicity and natural inspiration as the French exhibited.

Saint-Saëns's chamber music broke new ground in France at a time when public taste tended to favour opera and opéra-comique. His first Sonata for violin and piano, one of the earliest composed in France, is a masterpiece of boundless beauty. Its emotional impact and its highly poetic content are served by the composer’s perfect mastery of formal architecture. It has also been proposed as the model for the ‘Vinteuil Sonata’ which runs through Marcel Proust's novel cycle ‘In Search of Lost Time’. The second Sonata, composed in Egypt, is very different from its predecessor: more serious, classical, and intimate. While the writing is more melodic, the composer prophesied that the sonata would not be understood “until the eighth hearing”. These two masterpieces are complemented by the Fantaisie for violin and harp, a virtuoso work in which the use of the harp rather than the piano produced a delicate, refined, even magical sound reminiscent at times of Fauré and Debussy, and by the charming Berceuse, one of Saint-Saëns’ best-known miniatures. Originally for violin and piano, it is performed here in an arrangement for violin and harp that, again, emphasizes the subtleties of Saint-Saëns’ writing.

Recorded at the height of the international Covid lockdown, Oliver Davis’s sixth album for Signum is a feat of both technological as well as artistic achievement. Following from draws together artists from across the globe for a selection of moving works for a variety of forces – recording a violinist in Los Angeles, a piano duo in The Netherlands, a guitarist in Argentina and the Budapest Scoring Orchestra conducted by Péter Illényi in Budapest. Davis’s previous albums with Signum have reached the top 10 on both iTunes Classical and UK Specialist Classical Charts multiple times, receiving numerous five-star reviews and well over a million streams on Apple Music. British composer Oliver Davis has parlayed a long record as a composer of film and television scores into a successful career as a composer of orchestral music that in performance have attracted top-notch London orchestras and soloists. He has also been active as a composer of ballet – most recently premiering Lineage with choreographer Edwaard Liang at New York City Ballet’s prestigious Fall Fashion Gala.

Sony Classical is proud to announce the release of the brand-new album from LAVINIA MEIJER, a pioneering and exciting musician and composer, and one of the most important harpists of her generation. Four years in the making, Are You Still Somewhere? sees Meijer combine original compositions with her long stated dream of interpreting modern composers and musicians for harp. Works by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ólafur Arnalds, and Alexandra Streliski all feature, as do collaborations with Dutch pianist Pieter de Graaf and punk legend Iggy Pop.

Lavinia Meijer has always pushed boundaries. Born in South Korea and adopted by a Dutch Austrian couple aged 2, she was only 9 when she stated playing the harp. By 11, she’d already been admitted to the prestigious Utrecht Conservatory, and by 14 was playing with symphony orchestras. Known for her passion in broadening the possibilities of the harp – both in terms of sound and appeal – she’s garnered worldwide critical acclaim for her intelligent, inventive interpretations of both orchestral repertoire and more contemporary music, playing alongside the likes of Philip Glass and Ólafur Arnalds, and performing works by Radiohead in classical venues.

Over the years, she’s been experimenting with electronic music, jazz, theatrical music, and avant rock. It was these experiments that led her to the ideas behind Are You Still Somewhere?, and provided inspiration for her own compositions. “I miss certain elements in the existing repertoire of the harp,” says Meijer, “particularly with regards to bringing the instrument into the new century, making it an instrument of today and tomorrow.”

Exploring different genres – pop and rock, dance and folk, jazz and electronica – led her to discover new elements and new sounds in the harp; to open up possibilities. “Really, it’s a way for me to connect myself to the world,” she says.

Her new compositions reflect this; that musical culture is connected to society, and the world we live in. Inspired by events, large and small, around her and in her own life, Are You Still Somewhere? concerns self-reflection and inner growth, topics that have come to the fore over the last couple of years. Family too; looking back, longing, and living with one’s regrets are raked over in ‘Mom & Dad’, a track that features spoken word poetry from Iggy Pop. Melancholic and sombre, it’s a deeply emotional piece; few works here conjure such raw feelings.

So too ‘Another Lonely Night’, one of Meijer’s own works that confronts the youth suicide epidemic in her native homeland, and the pressure felt by teenagers to conform and succeed. Based mainly on two chords, the music climbs up and up, a sonic visualization of climbing up inside a building all the way to the top. ‘Stay In The Dark’, a work by mysterious neoclassical pianist Lambert, is another work that hues towards the darker end of the spectrum. “He uses very subtle night sounds, making it seem you are captured in the dark,” Meijer explains. The use of ‘lost sounds’ from the last century, discovered in an archive in the Netherlands, add to the moody atmosphere and sense of the nocturnal.

Are You Still Somewhere? is a record that showcases Meijer’s evolution as an artist and composer, but one that also speaks to her past. Defiantly individual, it brings the full scope of her talent as a harpist to the fore, and marks out new possibilities with her instrument; she pushing boundaries further than ever. “I’ve played with DJs, with pop, rock artists, jazz, and world music; it’s all possible with just one harp,” she says. “I want to show that it’s not just part of ancient history, but it’s contemporary and will keep developing itself. Are You Still Somewhere? is my way to prove that.”

REVIEW:

The album’s title implies loss and loneliness and, yes, much of it does have a feel of sitting in an empty room staring bleakly into space. Aside from brief moments from the likes of Preisner and Sakamoto, most of the material is by Lavinia Meijer herself, who is joined at the end by Iggy Pop.

-- BBC Music Magazine

TRACKLIST:

1. Showing Me (Lavinia Meijer)
2. Saman (Ólafur Arnalds)
3. Plus tôt (Alexandra Streliski)
4. Les Marionettes (Zbigniew Preisner)
5. Are You Still Somewhere? (Lavinia Meijer)
6. Porcelain (Lambert)
7. Another Lonely Night (Lavinia Meijer)
8. Stay in the Dark (Lambert)
9. Born (Lavinia Meijer)
10. DAMnation (Lavinia Meijer) feat. Pieter de Graaf
11. Solitude (Ryuichi Sakamoto)
12. Mom & Dad (Lavinia Meijer, Iggy Pop) feat. Iggy Pop