This set includes a Blu-ray Audio disc playable on Blu-ray players only and a standard CD playable on all CD players.

In the Light of Air is a tetralogy of works that together form a structure of a single piece. The four movements bear the titles Luminance, Serenity, Existence, and Remembrance and are connected by short transitions to form a seamless flow throughout the work.

REVIEW:

The meditative, texturally rich landscapes of 'In the Light of Air' for viola, cello, harp, piano, percussion, and electronics by this young Icelandic composer are haunting, beautiful, and unsettling by turns. The sonic possibilities of the cello are explored in the intense 'Transitions', powerfully rendered by Michael Nicolas.

-- New York Times

Classical Music

Denis Azabagic may not be a household name just yet, but judging from what is heard on this disc, that will soon change. Azabagic was born in Bosnia Herzegovina and in 1993 became the youngest musician to win the Jacinto e Inocencio Guerrero competition in Madrid. Since then, Azabagic has won virtually every major international guitar competition, including the prestigious Foundation of America award. This recording features Azabagic in a program devoted to the music of Spanish composers.
Azabagic's masterful performance of Federico Moreno's 'Torroba's Sonatina' balances the works rhapsodic soul with flights of technical fancy. This young guitarist's repertorial choices are fascinating. The darkly colored tone poem 'La Catedral' by Augustín Barrios Mangoré impresses with its pious eloquence. Azabagic's playing is especially impressive in the work's surging Andante religioso second movement.
This is a most impressive recording by a startlingly talented young musician with a very promising future.

The second installment of Stefano Molardi’s survey of the complete organ works of J.S. Bach offers a program built around the mood and emotional impact of the featured works (either by similarity or contrast), centering around one of the greatest of the master’s cycles, the Dritter Clavierübung, a set of chorale preludes structured as an “organ mass”. Mr. Molardi selected two historical organs that Bach may have known, or at least of a kind he may have been familiar with, for these recordings.

Classical Music

Classical Music

This release is a brilliant overview of the works of Giuseppe Martucci- a composer whose work has been unjustly neglected for years. In reality, he was one of the most important late romantic Italian composers. With a happy mix of Wagner and Verdi, these pieces show his dramatic chromaticism alongside his bel canto style melodies. In addition to composing, Martucci was also an accomplished conductor, teacher, and pianist. In fact, he toured extensively as a soloist. Italian pianist Alberto Miodini plays these pieces with strong dedication and feeling. Miodini is a member of the famous Trio di Parma.

Franz Liszt was not necessarily known for the composition of sacred music. Piano pieces are what etched his name into history. The piano pieces included on this release, however, are works that were inspired by the Divine. A deeply religious man, particularly in his older age, Liszt composed a great deal of “religious” piano music, including his Ave Maria, Angelus, Miserere, Legendes, Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude, and many more. Performing these works is Italian pianist Irene Russo, who is making her Brilliant Classics debut with this two-disc release. The album also includes extensive liner notes and an artist biography.

Oehms presents the final volume of pianist Michael Korstick's cycle of Beethoven sonatas. Korstick, who has been named "Dr. Beethoven" by fellow students during his studies at Julliard, has become one of the most important German pianists to date.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Guitarist Eliot Fisk is known worldwide as a charismatic performer famed for his adventurous and virtuosic repertoire. He is also celebrated for his willingness to take art music into unusual venues (including schools, senior centers, logging camps, and prisons). After 45 years before the public he remains, as his mentor Andres Segovia once wrote, "at the top line of our artistic world."

Daniel Stepner, a specialist in early music, whose postions have included concertmaster of Boston Baroque, Concertmaster of the Boston Handel and Haydn society, and violinist for the Boston Museum Trio, among others, turns in great performances.

Classical Music

Russian Piano Music

Pieces from the Daniel Croner Tablature

The eminent Martha Argerich is one of the most loved and admired classical pianists of all time. She quickly gained worldwide reputation for her exciting performances. This release is the fifth in DOREMI’s special series of rare archival broadcasts featuring the artistry of the young Argerich from early in her spectacular career which spanned more than five decades. This release features Mozart’s Concerto No. 20, recorded on June 16, 1966, and Bach’s Toccata in C minor, Schumann’s Fantasie in C Major, and Chopin’s 3 Mazurkas, recorded in Milan on March 14, 1966.

Classical Music

Chopin: Piano Concerto in E minor - Works for Piano Solo

Powerful and moving … thoughtful and rousing.

This seems to be the sixth CD of Locklair's music to have been published, although individual works of his have appeared on numerous other releases on a number of labels. Two discs of his orchestral music have been reviewed on MusicWeb International in recent years.

The CD opens as it ends, with superb music and musicianship. The title of Rubrics: a Liturgical Suite comes from the Common Book of Prayer, the service instructions (rubrics) of which inspired Locklair when he was commissioned to write the work in 1988. This is reported to be "one of the most frequently played organ works by an American composer" - movements were performed both at Ronald Reagan's funeral and Barack Obama's inauguration. It is certainly an imaginative, striking work, with a particularly breathtaking finale. Locklair's website gives the timing as 11'00, so at 14'00, Keiser is presumably taking this rather more slowly than Locklair envisaged. Unfortunately, there is a noticeable technical 'blip' in the third movement.

The Salem Sonata was a private commission to celebrate the restoration - reassembling, in fact - of a Moravian Church organ originally built in Salem in 1800. The four short movements all bear a Biblical subtitle, and all possess an appropriate degree of dignity and pomp. Another wonderfully tuneful, memorable work. Celebrations - Variations for Organ was inspired by a phrase in the Book of Isaiah: "... thanksgiving, and the voice of melody". The original theme itself does not appear until near the end, when it bursts joyfully onto the scene. A thoughtful and stirring piece, with a glorious ending worthy of Widor, very beautifully played by Keiser.

Along with the Salem Sonata and Celebrations, In Mystery and Wonder ( The Casavant Diptych) was composed in 2003. It was a commission by the Canadian organ builders, Casavant Frères, and according to Locklair's liner-notes, numerous first performances of one or both movements of this work were given around the world on the same November weekend in 2004. To allow a wide range of organists to participate in the premiere, which marked the 125th anniversary of Casavant, the first part of the Diptych, an Aria, is relatively easy to play, with the following Toccata being much more technically demanding. Consequently, both sections may be performed separately. For all its relative simplicity and serenity, the Aria, subtitled 'God Moves in a Mysterious Way ...', is a powerful, moving piece. The Toccata, on the other hand, is a noisy, virtuosic scherzo, aptly subtitled '...His Wonders to Perform'!

PHOENIX Processional dates back to 1996 as a stand-alone organ piece, but it has another existence as part of a work entitled PHOENIX Fanfare and Processional, which began life in 1980 as a bare three-minute Fanfare for brass sextet, and which in 1985 melded with the new Processional for the amended forces of organ, brass quartet and percussion. Locklair describes it as a popular recital and ceremonial piece, and it is easy to hear why - though very simple, the Processional is a rousing work.

The three-movement Aeolian Sonata is dedicated to the spirit of Americans in the wake of '9/11'. It is uplifting and magnificent, appropriately making use of the old Aeolian mode and the notes A and E. The first movement, 'Aus tiefer Not', is pretty much a relentless sequence of huge chords with some melodic flourishes in between, ending with some window-rattling ultra-deep sounds. The second movement, 'Shalom', is a fittingly tranquil affair to follow. The final movement is a boisterous toccata, entitled 'Laudate Dominum'. Locklair's website gives the timing as 12'00, so at 14'34 Keiser is once again taking this rather more slowly than Locklair intended. Nevertheless, as elsewhere on this disc, Keiser's technique and insight are beyond doubt. Unfortunately, the recording of the Sonata is almost spoiled by a very obvious editing join half-way through the second movement.

The CD case is made of card, with a standard plastic tray for the disc. The booklet slides in between two layers of card, the front cover itself, featuring Locklair in a typical pipe-in-mouth pose, and the inside cover, showing a close-up of the organ pipes against a stained-glass window. The booklet itself is a paragon - full notes by Locklair on all the pieces, biographies of composer and organist, a full-page colour photo of the organ and the inside of the church, a description and full specification of the organ, and technical data regarding equipment used for the recording. Much thought has obviously gone into the recording process, and the result is a first-class, very natural sound.

Dan Locklair has written a fair amount of organ music yet to be recorded. On the evidence of this disc, a follow-up CD by Loft Recordings would be doing lovers of sublime organ music a good deed.

-- Byzantion, MusicWeb International

Szymanowski: Phantasy, Masques & Harnasie

MENDELSSOHN Organ Sonatas, op. 65 • Jonathan Dimmock (org) • LOFT 1112 (77:44)


Felix Mendelssohn, in addition to being one of the most respected composers, conductors, and one of the greatest pianists of his day, was also one of the finest organists and improvisers of his age. At least on two occasions he produced large-scale collections for the instrument: the Three Preludes and Fugues, op. 37, and the Six Organ Sonatas, op. 65. The sonatas come from the last decade of his life, but rather than being a grand forward-looking statement, they are a synthesis of his lifelong interest in Baroque forms and textures (Bach in particular here) and his own personal style, a fusion that can be seen as early as the youthful Characteristic Pieces, op. 7.


As with many organ recitals, the overall success of a performance is dependent on a variety of factors. The mechanical ability of the organist and his or her personal taste in registration are both important keys. (Mendelssohn himself states that “much depends in these sonatas on the right choice of the stops. … I have given only a general indication of the kind of effect intended to be produced, without giving a precise list of the particular stops to be used.”) Another of the important factors is the instrument that is chosen for the recording and the acoustic of the recording space itself. These last two facets do not always come together fruitfully. Oftentimes, even when an attractive-sounding organ is chosen, the space is less than ideal. Other times, the reverse can be said. Happily, when both of these aspects, along with a talented organist, come together, there is the possibility of a great recording, as is the case here.


Jonathan Dimmock, who has held posts everywhere from Westminster Abbey in London to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, chooses the beautiful-sounding 1787 Holzhey organ in the Kloster Weißenau in Ravensburg, Germany, an organ which, according to him, is virtually unknown. And, if that is true, it is a pity. The organ, while being on the smaller side, has some very attractive features; Dimmock so properly describes its sound as “strong, without being strident, warm, without being muddy, clear, without being self-consciously bright.” These all take place in a stunning acoustical setting. Dimmock, throughout, chooses excellently balanced and nuanced registrations that characterize these sonatas well, from the aggressive opening of the First Sonata to the calm chorale of the Sixth Sonata’s theme. His ease of the difficult pedal passages, along with his free, almost improvisatory way, does much to bring life to these compositions, which in some hands sounds simply mundane.


Though, like many composers, Mendelssohn is remembered for only a handful of works, these lesser-known sonatas provide a well-balanced view of his freedom in formal structures (sonatas that, rather than using sonata-allegro structures, are built more like multimovement suites), elaborate counterpoint, melodic invention, and improvisational skills that were such a part of their composer. Dimmock’s performances are sensitive to many of the details that make this music special: he is lively at times, dramatic when necessary, and equally meditative when called for. Heartily recommended.


FANFARE: Scott Noriega

Classical Music

Classical Music