Recorded in: St George's Church, Cambridge 11-13 August 1997 & 28 January 1998 Producer(s) Adrian Hunter Sound Engineer(s) Ben Connellan

Vol. 4 in Barry Douglas’s monumental, well-regarded solo piano Brahms project prominently features the composer’s first published work, his C major Sonata, op. 1.The influence on Brahms of his predecessors Beethoven and Schubert is obvious, not only in the virtuoso demands on the performer but also in the opening, which recalls both Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata and Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy.Two other impeccable and impressive works, the Schumann Variations, op. 9, and the Paganini Variations, Op. 35 (Book 1) are included, along with several short keyboard character pieces.

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The famous Swiss-American lute player Peter Croton plays on his Carpe Diem debut a collection of fantasias by the two Italian lute-composers Francesco Spinacino & Francesco da Milano. The 15th century saw the lute emerge as a solo instrument, and the terms ricer car and fantasia were used for works created without preexisting models. The ability to improvise was apparently as widespread then as it is in jazz today. Peter Croton, also known for his contemporary and jazz-related musical projects, explores this beautiful musical world with the heart of a true improviser, free of limiting preconceptions and sparkling with creativity.

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This hybrid SACD of Coviello is, if you will, something for the brave, for it holds masses of sound at the ready, which can be a challenge for some stereo systems (and neighbors). + For the first time all four organs of Freiburg Minster are simultaneously operated by one player. Organist Gerhard Gnann has chosen original Bach works and romantic adaptations of his music for this program. + The acoustic conditions for this were also a big challenge, but sound engineer and label co-owner Moritz Bergfeld fully mastered the challenge. + The result is far more than just an audiophile experience.

"The Mighty Handful, or Mighty Five as they are sometimes called, are Mussorgsky, Balakirev, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and César Cui. Together they embody the nationalist tradition in 19th-century Russian music. They are rarely programmed as a group, so Philip Edward Fisher's decision to fashion a recital from the works of all five has considerable appeal...Borodin's Petite Suite comes over as a work of exquisite grace and melodic charm that deserves to be much better known. It suits Fisher's refined style rather well, too..."

- The Guardian, London

On his first solo recital disc for Chandos, Philip Edward Fisher performs piano works by members of the so-called ‘Mighty Handful’, a group of five Russian composers – César Cui, Alexander Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov – who in the 1860s banded together in an attempt to create a truly national school of Russian music, free of the perceived stifling influences of Italian opera, German lieder, and other western European forms.

The Mighty Handful were all self-trained amateurs. Borodin combined composing with a career in chemistry; Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer; and Mussorgsky had been in the Guards, then in the civil service, before taking up music. They tried to incorporate in their music what they heard in village songs, in Cossack dances, in church chants, and the tolling of church bells; in short, the music of the Mighty Handful was brimming with sounds that echoed Russian life. From the more traditional, Chopin-esque Nocturne by Cui through to the technical innovations and strong Caucasus folk elements of Balakirev’s Islamey, the works here all show the composers’ strong connections with the past and the compositional innovations that would come to influence the likes of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, and help change the course of Russian music for years to come.

A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music and The Juilliard School, the pianist Philip Edward Fisher is widely recognised as a unique performer of refined style and exceptional versatility. He has performed across Europe, Africa, and North America where he made his New York debut at Alice Tully Hall in 2002, performing Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, and has also appeared at the Merkin Concert Hall and the Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.

At home he has given performances at the Purcell Room, Wigmore Hall, Barbican Centre, and Royal Festival Hall in London, Usher Hall in Edinburgh, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, and Symphony Hall in Birmingham. He has appeared as a soloist with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra, Toledo Symphony Orchestra, and Juilliard Symphony Orchestra, and worked with performers such as exclusive Chandos artist bassoonist Karen Geoghegan, the tenor Robert White, pianist Sara Buechner, and violinists Elmar Oliveira, Philippe Graffin, and Augustin Hadelich. In 2001, Philip Edward Fisher received the Julius Isserlis Award from The Royal Philharmonic Society in London. - Chandos

Skriabin - Prokofiev - Rachmaninov

The 21 Mazurkas Scriabin penned over a period of some 15 years (from 1888 to 1903) are musical treasures from one of the most remarkable tone-poets Russia ever produced. Long neglected by pianists, they were for the most part relegated to the limbo of early efforts, or often regarded as inferior ñ albeit interesting ñ imitations of Chopinís more ìauthenticî creations. Doubtlessly, the mystery and melancholy of Chopinís Mazurkas found a sympathetic echo in the hypersensitive soul of the young composer, whose affection for the Polish master began in boyhood and was indeed never to wane. Yet, in adapting the dance most indigenous to Poland and most closely associated with Chopin, Scriabin, even at the early age of 16, by his very nature, could do no less than transform it into something striking and original. It could not be helped: his vision was unique, a way of apprehending the world very much estranged from commonplace notions of reality, where angels, dark imaginings, intense nostalgia, and imitations of unseen realms were the norm. Refracted through the prism of an extraordinary sensibility, his mazurkas would become essentially mazurka-fantasies. They would take on an allure of pieces improvised in the bleakest hours of the night, where subterranean, atavistic passions unexpectedly surge forth and an eerie desolation sets in. At other times, they would beguile by sheer charm and sensuality, often self-indulgently so. The American pianist and critic John Bell Young, himself a noted exponent of Scriabinís music, wrote on hearing an advance copy of this recording: ìTerrific! He is a Scriabinist to the manor born.î Le Vanís recording of Brahmsí Sonatas no. 1 & no. 3 has been acclaimed internationally as was his release of Lisztís Complete Cello/Piano Works with cellist Guido Schiefen for Arte Nova (BMG), awarded best chamber music disc for the year 2000 in the Neue Musik Zeitung. Le Van has resided for several years in France where he is Artistic Director of the International Franz Liszt Festival.

The works featured on this new album are by German composer Esaias Reusner (1636-1679). Reusner was a child prodigy who traveled and performed at courts across Europe with his lutenist father, Esaias senior. Reusner released two collections of lute suites, “Deliciae testudinis,” and “Neue Lauten-fruchte.” These pieces are taken from the latter. These pieces are performed by world-renowned Japanese lutenist, Toyohiko Satoh. Satoh gave his first public recital in Tokyo in 1965, and moved to Europe shortly after. He studied lute with Eugen Muller-Dombois at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland.

This release marks the beginning of a series organized around the nationalities of the composers in the Segovia Archive. The pieces recovered from the archive were dedicated to Sergovia or commissioned by him, involving composers from eight countries. The Spanish composers recorded here are to be followed soon by an album of French composers.

Beethoven has always been a part of the concert repertoire of exclusive Chandos artist Louis Lortie, and it rose again to the top of his agenda as he prepared to complete his recorded cycle of the composer's sonatas earlier this year. Sonatas Nos 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31 and 32, newly recorded, will be released for the first time as part of a box set of the entire canon, which will be available at the bargain price of 9 CDs for the price of 3. This box set of the complete piano sonatas is a must for all lovers of Beethoven and great piano playing. The compositions are bold and beautiful, challenging, witty and fresh. They seem to encompass all aspects of human sensibility and aspiration, and the superb playing of Louis Lortie takes the music to another level. His recording of the composer's 'Eroica' Variations, which won an Edison Award, was described by Gramophone in glowing terms: 'His account... is spacious and magisterial, virile yet sensitive, and the wide range of dynamic nuance and keyboard colour is there to illumine Beethoven's textures and not highlight the artist's pianism. He succeeds in communicating the power of Beethoven's imagination: the part-writing in the fugue emerges with a masterly clarity, and is beautifully weighted and balanced.' Highlights among the new recordings are that of the sublime Sonata No. 30, composed in 1820 - 22, which displays all the characteristics of Beethoven's last creative phase: rich harmonic structures, a fascination with intricate counterpoint, and a strict adherence to classical and baroque forms. Also worthy of a separate mention is Sonata No. 22, a veritable study in contrasts. Its two complementary themes - a gracious, dignified 'feminine' theme resembling a minuet, and a stamping, assertive, 'masculine' theme - gradually influence one another in the course of the movement until they become thoroughly integrated and combined in the final passages.

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REVIEWS:

Time and again a faultless pianistic sheen and mastery are allied to the finest musical perception. Here, surely, is vital and living proof that you can maintain an individual and distinctive voice while remaining scrupulously true to the composer. Nothing is forced or rushed, everything is subtly nuanced and phrased beneath an outwardly urbane surface. These are performances to treasure and revisit.

– Gramophone

Lortie seems less interested in metaphysical profundity than in textural stylishness; spending enough time with this set to grasp Lortie's aims and insights is nevertheless genuinely rewarding.

– BBC Music Magazine

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14.99

Dupré: Le chemin de la Croix

Audite continues the three-part complete recordings of Louis Vierne's organ symphonies with the third and fourth symphonies. Recorded at the Goll organ of St. Martin in Memmingen, the recording is characterized by the warm, soft sound of the organ. It's sound creates unobtrusive power and fullness, making a symphonic effect in the church interior and yet always remaining clear.

M. Zalewska: Harp solo

Bob van Asperen and AEOLUS have now realized the third volume of the Louis Couperin Edition. The valuable harpsichord from the Villa Medici in Rome has been recorded here for the first time in high resolution and with Surround-Sound technology. The Super Audio CD contains some of the wonderful harpsichord suites composed by Louis Couperin (an uncle of François Couperin), who lived in Paris in the 17th century. The album's title, 'Chaconne de Mr Couperin', refers to the genre of the chaconne, which is characteristic - together with the related genre of the passacaille - of Couperin's work. The thick booklet even provides the score of a recently discovered piece by Couperin. The Couperin Edition will be made up of four volumes of harpsichord alone, and additionally offer the composer's other preserved and seldom heard works.

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2009 release. The best of Bach's fugues on a single subject are contrasted with fugues likewise on a single subject by some of his prominent contemporaries and predecessors. This is Colin Tilney's third release on Music and Arts, following the widely acclaimed 1993 Bach English Suites, recorded on the same Italian harpsichord as Fugue, and the 1995 CD Scarlatti High and Low.

Having already garnered a number of accolades sisters Mona and Rica Bard present a specially programmed pas de deux through eighty years of French piano music. At one and at two pinstruments they create a panorama of piano sound to animate the sometimes playful often elegant but always masterful music of Milhaud Ravel Bizet and Poulenc.

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Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, 1/93; Gramophone nomination as best recording of the year in its class, 1993. '...monumental (and genuinely virtuoso) reading of Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano. This truly phenomenal recording will surely remain a yardstick in Alkan performances for many years to come...' -Michael Stewart in Gramophone '...the outstanding pianistic event of the year...Marc-André Hamelin [is] a superman of the piano and a titanic presence in concert.' -Adrian Corleonis in Fanfare '...blazing conviction and superhuman virtuosity. One of the great piano recordings of the century...' -Donald Manildi in American Record Guide

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The average birthdate of these eight composers is 1900, and the youngest of them, Oscar Peterson, is sixty-seven. So this is a nostalgic look at the music of black composers; there is no Anthony Davis here. William Grant Still's music has flowed into the cracks of our national musical heritage; I call a composer great who has created a single masterpiece, and Still's “A Black Pierrot“ from his Songs of Separation is as haunting a song as Schubert or Wolf ever composed. Three Visions are evocative miniature tone poems and the Seven Traceries are impressionist sound paintings.

Howard Swanson's The Cuckoo is a light, gay scherzo and trio, with the bird cuckooing away in one hand while the other flies all over the keyboard. Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943) studied with Nadia Boulanger, earned degrees from Oberlin and Eastman, conducted choral societies, performed before presidents, and was awarded honorary doctorates from Harvard and Oberlin. His In the Bottoms depicts “black man's slave camps at the river's edge.“ The five pieces go from somber contemplation to a gay dance. Ulysses Kay's three Inventions are brief, formal pieces. John Wesley Work, Jr., studied at Columbia and Yale and became chairman of the music department at Fisk University. His Big Bunch of Roses starts with a Negro folk tune and develops in a colorful and relaxed way. Oscar Peterson's The Gentle Waltz is languorous and jazzy and sweet, Duke Ellington's Come Sunday is a soft, flowing hymn with a touch of the blues; both pieces are played in arrangements by jazz pianist Denny McErlain.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was another master composer; every work of his I have heard is at least worthy, often inspired. His suite of three waltzes—Allegro molto, Andante, Allegro assai— stands out even among all this lovely music. It has warmth, individuality, melodic charm, and a sturdy, upright dignity without a hint of pomposity that is his own special character. Monica Gaylord studied at Juilliard and Eastman and has played throughout the United States and Canada. She has a beautiful touch for these winning works, and when it comes to Coleridge-Taylor's heroic final coda, she peals forth bronze thunder; if this were a live recital, it would bring down the house. The pianist also writes the notes, in which she shows herself to be a knowledgeable historian and a fine writer. A fine recording rounds out the assets of this lovely disc.

-- James H. North, FANFARE [3/1993]

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This winsome collection of 20th-century music was warmly welcomed by James H. North on its original release in 1992 (Fanfare 16:4), and I can only second his endorsement. He called it "nostalgic," and I guess he's right—although to my mind, that's not so much because of the age of the composers (as he pointed out, their "average birthdate" is 1900), but rather because they all aim (at least, in the works here) for a soft-edged accessibility that went increasingly out of fashion as the century wore on. Indeed, even Dett's musical evocation of slave camps abstains from brutality. Fortunately, Monica Gaylord has the subtlety of touch this predominantly gentle recital requires. While she's perfectly capable of ringing out the splashy final numbers of the Coleridge-Taylor and Dett sets, she's at her most impressive extracting the delicate impressionistic colors from Still's Traceries or coaxing out the rhythms of Ellington's meditative Come Sunday. Fine sound and erudite notes by the pianist only add to the attractions. A first-rate reissue.

-- Peter J. Rabinowitz, FANFARE [3/1999]