Bach, the lute, and the lautenwerk (lute-harpsichord) have fascinated me for years. Upon investigating Bach's connection with the two instruments, one is immediately faced with the striking absence of one vital piece of evidence: though we know that many lautenwerks existed, none, to our knowledge, have survived into our time. The lautenwerk, the name by which it is usually known in German and English, was a harpsichord like instrument of one or two manuals with the same range as lute, but somewhat lower than the harpsichord. It was strung with gut rather than brass. - Nigel North, London, June 1994

Guitar Recital: Timofeyev, Oleg - OVCHINNIKOV, V.A. / KUSHEN

McFarlane, Ronn: The Scottish Lute

Mendelssohn, Felix: Cello Sonata No. 2 / Ben-Haim, P.: Songs

Festive music for the holiday season performed by an outstanding mixed chorus with pipe organ, harp, flute and bellringers! Recorded in the glorious cathedral acoustics of Saint Ignatius Church, San Francisco. "...Magical...the sound is impressively transparent." --Fanfare

The tradition of transcribing, arranging and adapting the music of Johann Sebastian Bach can be traced to the master himself: Bach made a lifelong habit of arranging works, his own and those of other composers. Indeed, Bach ranks among the most skilled and prolific arrangers in the history of music. Arrangements of his work by others can be considered in two broad catagories. In the first are contained those transcriptions which do not incorporate substantial changes to the original compositions, for example Liszt's Six Preludes and Fugues. In the second category are found those arrangements which display a creative intent on the part of the arranger - one can think of Mozart's transcription for string trio of six fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier, each preceded by an original prelude (KV 404a), or Gounod's Méditation sur le premier prélude de piano de S. Bach (1853), to which the words of the Ave Maria were subsequently added. It is to this latter genre of creative Bach transcriptions that the works contained on this disc belong. - Thomas Labé

Organ Recital: Guillou, Jean Victor Arthur - BACH, J.S. / HA

*First Recording on CD.

Pianist Ramon Salvatore, a champion of American music, harvests a program of attractive, distinctive yet neglected works by four prominent, living composers on his first recording for Cedille Records.

The disc offers debut recordings of Robert Palmer's neoclassically seasoned Third Sonata (dedicated to Salvatore) and Paul Bowles' evocative Carretera de Estepona. Other works include Bowles' Six Latin American Pieces, John LaMontaine's dramatic Piano Sonata, Op. 3, and Hunter Johnson's Piano Sonata, which The New York Times described as "an engrossing combination of Hindemith-like counterpoint and American blues."

The composers, who received advance copies of the recording, praise it robustly. Palmer notes "a clarity and understanding of every part of the work that is truly outstanding." He describes Salvatore as a "superb musician" and likens him to the late John Kirkpatrick for his dedication to popularizing neglected American masterpieces.

Bowles calls the recording of his pieces "the best I had heard." Johnson declares the recording of his Sonata "a knockout in every respect. I would call it definitive -- everything exactly right -- one by which to measure all other performances of it." To LaMontaine, it's "nothing less than stupendous."

Salvatore's interest in American music extends back into the 19th century, but he devotes this recording to "a lost generation of works" by American composers whose personal styles blossomed in the 1930s and 1940s -- styles marked by new harmonies and rhythms an ocean apart from European influences that once dominated American music.

Includes fugue(s) for org by Johann Pachelbel. Soloist: Antoine Bouchard.

BACH, J.S.: Sonatas, BWV 1001, 1003 and 1005

Vladimir Horowitz's concerts are the stuff of legends. An excellent showman in addition to being one of the greatest pianists of all time, he always had an answer to the applause and requests for encores. ENCORES is a collection of some of the pieces he prepared for such occasions.
These selections include some of more crowd-pleasing pieces from the classical repertoire, five of which were transcribed for piano by Horowitz himself. The inclusion of "Danse macabre" and "Wedding March and Variations" illustrate his popular approach to encores. His gift for dramatic flourish is particularly evident in the tracks recorded in concert. Horowitz had an uncanny knack for playing off of an audience while performing even the most technically complex pieces. Concluding with his transcription of John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever," this album is a tribute to one of the pianists--and showmen--of the century.

CORBETTA / VISEE: Suites for Guitars and Theorbos

GLAZUNOV: Piano Music, Vol. 4

Frescobaldi, G.: Harpsichord Music

Includes prelude(s) for keyboard by John Bull. Soloist: Colin Tilney.

In the late 1850s, Brahms was doing a number of things involving symphonies and pianos. He was having a heck of a time getting his first symphony to fly, and while working on a D minor sonata for 2 pianos, he decided to turn that work into a symphony. However, finding the pianistic ideas intractable, he ended up with his Piano Concerto No. 1. A few years later, he embarked on a multi-movement "symphony serenade" for small orchestra, which was published in 1860 as the Serenade No. 1 in D major, along with its companion, No. 2 in A major.
Despite the initial notion that these might be proto-symphonies, they are relaxed, genial works, well suited to the name "serenade." Brahms also published them in four-hand piano scores, an arrangement to which they adapt quite nicely. They sound wonderfully fresh here, given invigorating performances by the German piano team of Silke-Thora Matthies and Christian Kohn.

Includes branle(s) by Jean Baptiste Besard. Soloist: Ronn McFarlane.
Includes pavane(s) by Anonymous. Soloist: Ronn McFarlane.
Includes pavane(s) for lute by Vincenzo Capirola. Soloist: Ronn McFarlane.
Includes saltarello(s) for lute by Simone Molinaro. Soloist: Ronn McFarlane.

Brahms: 25 Variations & Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24,

Selections recorded in August 1988, April and December 1992, June 1993, January 1994, and April 1995.

Bach, J.S.: Goldberg Variations (Arr. J. Guillou)

This disc includes both ADD and DDD recordings.

The revival of the lute and its repertoire in the later twentieth century has been so thorough that it is difficult now to remember how much a "distant shore" the instrument seemed to musicians even a few generations ago. Like the cornett or the viola da gamba or the harpsichord, it was an instrument - and a repertoire, and a set of performance practices - that was all but dead for many years, that needed to be revived more or less from scratch. As for the lute music of the later Baroque period, it represents an instrument long past its heyday: even late-Baroque musicians themselves considered the lute a distant shore - an anachronism.