Storyville Records is pleased to announce the release of In Rome, a new album by Danish bassist Thomas Fonnesbaek alongside esteemed jazz musicians, pianist Enrico Pieranunzi, saxophonist Rosario Giuliani, drummer Roberto Gatto and singer Valentina Ranalli. The album is set for release on November 1, 2024. This recording consists of 11 original compositions, 9 by Pieranunzi, 1 by Fonnesbaek and 1 by Gatto. Thomas Fonnesbaek is considered one of the most important and distinctive bassists on the European jazz scene today. His virtuosic technique, "Nordic sound" and ability to craft cohesive solos place him in the lineage of Danish bassists like Niels-Henning orsted Pedersen, Bo Stief and Jesper Lundgaard, while also showing kinship with greats like Dutch bassist Hein van de Geyn and prominent Swedish bass players. Nevertheless, Fonnesbaek's style is uniquely his own, honed through a self-taught journey that captivates audiences with a rare ability to evoke Duende - the inexplicable power of attraction that moves listeners emotionally, a concept coined by Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. For those who have had the privilege of experiencing Fonnesbaek live, they will recognize this Duende in his playing. He often takes risks that challenge both his fellow musicians and audiences, creating moments of magic. In Rome captures these moments, highlighting Fonnesbaek's collaboration with some of Europe's finest musicians. At the core of the album is the partnership between Fonnesbaek and Enrico Pieranunzi, one of Europe's most revered pianists. Pieranunzi, known for his collaborations with the likes of Chet Baker, Mark Johnson, Paul Motian, and the legendary film composer Ennio Morricone, brings his extensive jazz and classical music background to this recording. Having recorded numerous albums together, Pieranunzi and Fonnesbaek share a musical chemistry that fuels this project. Joining the trio is Roberto Gatto, a drummer celebrated in European jazz circles. His elegant, sensitive approach enhances the group's interplay, while Rosario Giuliani on saxophone and Valentina Ranalli on vocals further elevate the music. In Rome is a testament to the creativity and mastery of European jazz. This album is jazz at it's finest!
Ingrid Haebler (born in 1929) belongs to the same generation of Viennese pianists as Badura-Skoda, Brendel, Gulda and Demüs. In 1954 (approx. the period when the recordings on this album took place) she won the ARD competition, then as today a quality seal and a guarantee for a successful career (which she enjoyed). However, considerable disagreement has long surrounded her interpretations: for some she is a model because of her flawless technique and the absolute poise of her music-making; for others, she is virtually a symbol of academic discipline. However, her recordings were considered good enough to be used in the faked recordings of the pianist Joyce Hatto – which, when uncovered, led to one of the big and quite unique scandals in the history of music performance.
In this recital, Véronique Gens and Hervé Niquet bring back to life a neglected aspect of France’s Romantic heritage: songs with orchestral accompaniment. Aside from a few pieces by Debussy and Duparc, and Berlioz’s famous Nuits d’été, orchestral mélodies form a virtually forgotten continent. In collaboration with the specialists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, Alpha now revisits these musical landscapes, taking us from Brittany (Hahn) to Persia, whose beauties Fauré and Saint-Saëns exalt in very different ways. Mélodies by Chausson, Gounod and Dubois and rarely heard instrumental pieces by Massenet, Fauré and Fernand de La Tombelle round out the journey with their musical reveries.
The guitar output of a landmark figure in Argentinean classical music, fusing national melodies and dances with European forms in a fusion of perennial appeal. Carlos Guastavino (1912-2000) became internationally renowned, after the Second World War, for song-cycles and works for his own instrument, the piano, which refracted his Argentinean identity, and the culture of his home nation, through European classical idioms. Without plugging himself in to the current of modernism which coursed through the work of American contemporaries, from Copland and Carter in the US to Chavez and Revueltas in Mexico, and down to Brazilian composers such as Claudio Santoro, Guastavino nonetheless belonged to their age, and spoke of his time through his music. Composed between 1967 and 1973, his three sonatas for the guitar embody sonata form in both the progress of their individual movements and their larger, three-movement structures. The First Sonata is dedicated to his brother, Jose Amadeo, who played the guitar as an amateur, and inspired Carlos to write for the instrument. Jose Amadeo died by his own hand while Carlos was at work on the sonata, and it's central movement is an elegy to his memory. The Second, more Romantic in tone, deploys native rhythms such as the Zampa as well as jazzy harmonies. The Third returns to the Zampa but in a more intricately worked style. Here, the central movement is a smoky Milonga, evoking a mood more familiar from the tangos of Astor Piazzolla. Leonardo Palacios sets the sonatas in their context with transcriptions of five short pieces originally conceived for piano: Apegado a mi, Vidala del Secadal, Santa Fe para llorar, the seventh of Guastavino's Cantos Populares and finally the Bailecito (Little Dance) which established his fame worldwide. As a Uruguayan guitarist with decades of experience as a performer and teacher, Palacios brings both technical refinement and idiomatic sensitivity to Guastavino's music: he also contributes the booklet note to this album, giving the listener an invaluable sense of the composer's place in his world.
For it's sixth album on the Arcana label, Voces Suaves presents a programme dedicated to one of the most influential composers of the seventeenth century, the great Giacomo Carissimi. The album features Carissimi's most famous work, the masterful oratorio Jephte, alongside two of his rarely performed virtuoso motets. It also includes the astonishingly theatrical Cristo smarrito by Domenico Mazzocchi, Carissimi's contemporary in Rome. The works on the album showcase the expressive power of Carissimi's musical language, as well as the remarkable virtuosity of the singers who originally performed his music. Instrumental interludes by Carissimi-found in the collection of his pupil Marc-Antoine Charpentier-have been interpolated into the score of Jephte, creating a unique version of the oratorio as it may have been performed in Rome during the composer's lifetime.
Pergolesi: Stabat Mater - Vivaldi: Nisi Dominus / Engeltjes, PRJCT Amsterdam
PENTATONE
CD
$14.99$19.99Save 25%Mar 22, 2024
PRJCT Amsterdam and its artistic director Maarten Engeltjes present two of the greatest vocal works of the baroque era: Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Vivaldi’s Nisi Dominus. While Vivaldi’s virtuosic piece contemplates the helplessness of people when God does not support their efforts, Pergolesi’s portrait of the weeping Mary at the Cross embodies what the “nameless” parents of a deceased child go through. In the Stabat Mater, Engeltjes’s counter-tenor blends together seamlessly and soothingly with Shira Patchornik’s soprano voice, resulting in an interpretation that is both profound and deeply relatable.
PRJCT Amsterdam is a young, innovative baroque ensemble centred around counter-tenor Maarten Engeltjes, and founded in 2017. Engeltjes is one of the most sought-after counter-tenors of today, working with several of the most esteemed early music groups and conductors. After having won multiple major baroque competitions, soprano Shira Patchornik is quickly establishing herself as an important singer on the opera and concert stage. All artists make their Pentatone debut.
Barbara Strozzi, a Venetian singer and composer who lived between 1619 and 1677, stands out as a rare jewel in the musical landscape of the Italian Seicento. The adoptive (and perhaps natural) daughter of Giulio Strozzi, a man of letters belonging to the illustrious Florentine family, she rejected the alternative prospects of matrimony or life in a convent in order to devote herself entirely to her one true passion: music. Moreover, she aimed to assert herself not merely as a performer, but also as a composer, thereby transgressing the strict rules of the period. Over the course of twenty years she published over a hundred and twenty cantatas and other works for solo voice, a number unequalled by any of her contemporaries. In her most significant works she combines the absolute originality of her formal structures with extraordinarily intense and exuberant poetics of the "affects." In these respects her vocal writing is comparable only with that of the century's greatest Italian composer, Claudio Monteverdi. After five successful albums with Giuliano Carmignola and Mario Brunello, the Accademia dell'Annunciata, conducted by Riccardo Doni, offers us a portrait of this extraordinary artist, arguably the greatest Italian composer of all time. In an era when the music scene was almost exclusively male, Barbara Strozzi managed to carve out a unique place for herself, becoming one of the most fascinating personalities of 17th-century music, a figure that is today given voice by soprano Laura Catrani.
Silvestrov: Echoes of Harmony - Piano Music, Vol. 3
Brilliant Classics
CD
$14.99Oct 11, 2024
21st-century piano music by the most distinguished Ukrainian composer of our time, recorded by a Polish pianist who has already won acclaim for his interpretations of Silvestrov's music. With the album 'Melodies of Silence', Tomasz Kamieniak demonstrated his affinity with the music of Valentyn Silvestrov, as international critics have recognised. 'The spectrum of piano literature is referenced,' according to Gramophone, 'thus making Silvestrov's endeavour as inclusive as it is extensive. Kamieniak is an enlightening guide, and one looks forward to future instalments in a project like no other.' This second instalment continues to document the fertile creativity which Silvestrov has found in the last quarter-century, especially in the field of music for the piano and for choirs. Begun seemingly as a distraction from large-scale works, this concentration on the piano has resulted in some 30 hours of music, organised into several dozen cycles of short pieces, most of them hardly more than a couple of minutes in length. Silvestrov then organised these into 'meta-cycles', each of them lasting in excess of an hour, intended to be performed as an unbroken continuity. 'Echoes of Harmony' can thus be viewed as a natural extension of 'Melodies of Silence'. The movements pay tribute to established genres: serenades, pastorals, waltzes and bagatelles. Characteristically for Silvestrov, the music continually seems to evoke a lost, Schubertian past, while also reflecting on the impossibility of recovering it. This approach creates a sense of fleeting time, where the music seems to stretch infinitely, suspended in space. There's no clear endpoint in these miniatures, allowing the music to linger, dissolve, and pause. Silvestrov is himself an accomplished pianist, who draws a deep range of sonority from the piano, and his pieces encourage interpreters to find a centre of stillness both in the music and in themselves, without recourse to the kind of chill-out aesthetic of many contemporary piano composers. Kamieniak enjoys a personal friendship with the composer, and his booklet introduction reflects both on the nature of these pieces and on their shared history. 'Does the composer leave room for interpretational latitude?' he asks 'Will micro-rubatos, micro-accelerations, micro-dynamics resonate with every listener? Questions abound, and among the more pertinent ones is whether a composer as rigorously attuned to his vision as Silvestrov will ever find satisfaction in interpretations by artists other than himself.' At any rate, Kameniak has become one of the composer's most insightful interpreters. - Valentin Silvestrov was born in 1937 in Kiev, Ukraine. He followed composition lessons with Boris Lyatoshynsky. In 2022 he fled from Ukraine following the Russian invasion in February. He lives in Berlin. - Silvestrov's musical style might be labeled Post-Modern. Using traditional tonal and modal techniques, Silvestrov creates dramatic and emotional textures, qualities which he suggests are otherwise sacrificed in much of contemporary music. "I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists," Silvestrov has said. - The album Echoes of Harmony, featuring a collection of piano miniatures spanning from 2005 to 2021, form a cohesive, large-scale musical narrative. Silvestrov's fondness for bagatelles shines through in these works, representing his favoured genre in recent years. Under the broad umbrella of this genre, one encounters miniatures, including Serenades, Waltzes, Elegies, Pastorals, Tangos, Minuets, Preludes, Postludes, Mazurkas, Lullabies, Musical Moments, Barcaroles, and more. Music of touching simplicity and charm, offering consolation and peace. - This album is the successor of pianist Tomasz Kamieniak's highly successful CD "Melodies of Silence" by Valentin Silvestrov.
Enrique Granados was one of the leading figures of the late-19th-century Spanish nationalist and impressionist school of musicians. The much-loved Danzas espanolas is a collection of piano pieces that represents Granados's refined blend of Romantic lyricism and Spanish folk imagery. This charming and charismatic journey through Spain is presented here in a colourful transcription for two guitars. Fabio Rizza's 2024 arrangement of the evocative Capricho espanol completes the programme.
D O W L N D R A K E merges the worlds of soprano Annelies Van Gramberen and singer-songwriter Sim Van Thienen to create a bold sonic universe. Together, they weave the melancholic songs of the English troubadours John Dowland (1563-1626) and Nick Drake (1948-1974) into a layered tapestry of loops, electronics, and guitars, with Annelies' voice as a shining guide through the shadowy paths of the human soul.
A remarkable album of concert works by legendary composers of Hollywood’s Golden Age will be released on the Quartz label on 5 April, 2024. The recording features music for violin and piano by Erich Korngold, Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, Miklós Rózsa, Robert Russell Bennett, Jerome Moross and Heinz Roemheld. Much of the music is rarely heard and the album features three world premiere recordings.
Australian-born violinist Patrick Savage researched and compiled the program during COVID lockdowns and performs the works alongside pianist Martin Cousin.
Formerly Principal First Violin for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and first violin in the Tippett Quartet, Patrick is now a free-lance concertmaster, soloist, studio session player and West End musician. He is also a composer for feature film, theatre and video games, and his film scores include the cult horror THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE and the forthcoming puppet horror, ABRUPTIO.
Each of the composers represented on this album were Academy Award-winners or nominees and made an extraordinary contribution to the art of film scoring during Hollywood’s Golden Age - the heady years of frenetic film production from the 1920s to the 1960s. Between them they composed scores for some of the most famous cinema of the era.
Extraordinary music-makers were drawn to Los Angeles from across the United States and around the world, including those forced to flee the rise of Nazism in Europe. But even the most gifted of composers that made their name in cinema often faced an uphill battle for acceptance in the classical world. Professional jealousy may have been a factor, as well as snobbery: how could a composer for popular entertainment be taken seriously as an artist?
This prejudice led to music of great value remaining in obscurity, but despite a resurgence of interest in film composers of those years, the works by Herrmann, Roemheld and Moross are recorded here for the first time.
Entartete Musik / Lefort, Van Reyn, Brussels Philharmonic Soloists
Antarctica
CD
$16.99Sep 01, 2023
In 1938, at the Reichsmusiktage in Düsseldorf, the Nazi regime opened an exhibition around music with the theme: 'Entartete Musik'. They collected examples of what they considered degenerate music. Gustav Mahler, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Mischa Spoliansky; these were just a few names on the long list of depraved composers. On this album, this music and more.
John Dowland's Lachrimae cycle is among the finest surviving instrumental dance music of the turn of the seventeenth century. This long awaited recording with the Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra features new a instrumentation by Skip Sempe: 6 viols, 5 recorders, 2 cornetti, 3 trombones, 2 virginals and harpsichord. Skip Sempe's new performance order of the twenty-one Lachrimae dances revives the tradition of Pavan and Galliard pairs, rather than treating them as isolated movements. The idea of a 'Renaissance Orchestra' in which all the different instrumental consorts are brought together is the overlooked message of these sixteenth and seventeenth century publications. Large ensembles, for large or commemorative occasions, were every bit as much the 'composer's intention' as were smaller, intimate groups. This missing link has been proposed and provided by the concerts and recordings of the Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra since the first years of the twenty-first century, and is one of their remarkable achievements in 'cutting through the noise'.
Music for Viola & Piano by Schumann, Sibelius et al. / Piva, Filistovich
Brilliant Classics
CD
$10.99$13.99Save 20%Feb 16, 2024
On this unique and originally programmed journey, the violist Massimo Piva takes the kind of fantasy journey (Fantasiereise) that forms one of the cornerstones of German Romanticism. It is in the context of highly wrought, fantastic tales that Schumann’s style is formed from a literary point of view: Hoffmann's short stories and Jean Paul's novels, inhabited by bizarre characters and surreal situations, are his polar stars. On the musical side, he had an 18th-century heritage of fantasies by composers such as Mozart or C.P.E. Bach to draw upon, in which the notion of the fantasy is still linked to the Baroque idea of improvisation.
This is the background to the Marchenbilder Op.113, which Schumann worked on feverishly in March 1851. As a masterpiece in his late style, the collection shivers with obsession and fevered dreams. Placing them side by side illuminates the degree to which Reinecke was inspired by Schumann’s example in his own Fantasiestucke Op.43. But this recital moves on into less familiar territory, where the viola’s personality as a melancholy guide takes us to repertoire by Vieuxtemps (an F minor Elegy), Wieniawski (Rêverie in F sharp minor) and Sibelius (Rondo in D minor) by composers much better known for their prowess as violinists, and as violinst-composers.
The recital reaches a natural chronological end with the pre-eminent poet of the viola in the early decades of the 20th century, Frank Bridge. No violist he, but inspired by the artistry of Lionel Tertis, Bridge came to write a good deal for the instrument such as the Two Pieces featured here, and found its mellow, soulful voice a natural fit for his own as a composer. As a former member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Orchestra Mozart, Massimo Piva worked extensively with the conductor Claudio Abbado. As a member of the Quartetto Prometeo he has performed both modern and classic repertoire across Europe, working with composers including Sciarrino and Fedele, and recorded the complete works for string quartet by Hugo Wolf on Brilliant Classics (94166).
Babadjanian, Krenek & Smetana: Epochs & Cultures in Dialogue
Oehms Classics
CD
$19.99Jan 17, 2025
The debut album by the young Trio Contrasti takes us on a journey through time with a mosaic of sounds in which epochs and cultures enter into dialogue. Romanticism gave the art world a new paradigm of thought. Music took the leading position among the arts; the freedom of formal design, initiated by the content, unfolded. The quest for national self-identification and the rapid development of national styles in art began. Romanticism opened the way for a dialogue between epochs and cultures that continued into the 20th century. Three works that have no direct connection to each other are nevertheless in a common context. When viewed through the prism of a romantic paradigm, they can be seen as milestones on the path through epochs and cultures.
Fauré, Ravel, Enescu & L. Boulanger: Music for Violin & Piano / Prouvost, Ciocarlie
Enphases
CD
$20.99Oct 20, 2023
We know Gabriel Fauré the composer well but little the pedagogue. This recording aims to highlight the influence of the composer in France and even in Europe when, in 1896, he became professor at the Paris conservatory taking over from Massenet. The program of this disc wishes to bring together one of the work of his last period and compositions by his illustrious students: Ravel, Lili Boulanger and Enescu.
Clarke: Sonatas for Violin, Viola & Piano / Ingolfsson, Stoupel
Oehms Classics
CD
$19.99Jan 19, 2024
Born in London in 1886, violinist/violist Rebecca Clarke was also a composer who produced a significant number of works; her songs and chamber music were particularly notable. Although her output became neglected after the Second World War, it experienced a renaissance in the 1970s. The performances on this album take the listener on a journey through the eloquence and profundity of Rebecca Clarke’s creative world. This is OehmsClassics’ second album featuring Judith Ingolfsson (violin, viola) and Vladimir Stoupel (piano), furthering the label’s commitment to presenting musical discoveries.
Filigrane - Piano Works by Boulanger, Debussy, Franck, Ravel et al. / Franqué
Genuin
CD
$20.99Mar 01, 2024
The internationally acclaimed pianist Adriana von Franqué takes a musical journey through Paris on her GENUIN debut album. The world-concerting musician, known for innovative concert formats and unusual program selections, focuses on the delicate and poetic aspects of the "City of Lights". With a sensitivity for sound and clarity, she plays music by Lili Boulanger, César Franck, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Simon Laks from Warsaw. The result is floating, atmospheric, finely crafted music that seems to incorporate the Tuileries Garden, the banks of the Seine, or the intricate lacework of the Eiffel Tower…
September 8, 1960 Oscar Pettiford, American bassist/cellist/composer with unparalleled recognition died abruptly at age 38 due to a virus disease in Copenhagen where he had made his permanent residence.
He was one of American jazz players Denmark welcomed in in the 60s and 70s. A few weeks after Pettiford’s passing a circle of Danish jazz fans organized a memorial concert presented here to raise fund for his children with a star-studded program that included Stan Getz, Alice Babs, among others.
The city of Petersburg has a complex history, merging diverse cultural influences into a distinct profile. The forces generated amid the constant interplay of repression and the yearning for freedom find expression in experimentation. This led the Günter-Kim duo to explore the cosmopolitan city in search of traces. In the process, the cello-piano duo has discovered various compositions related to Dmitri Shostakovich: Boris Goltz, Galina Ustvolskaya, Boris Arapov… and, as a world premiere recording, Leonid Gorokhov. The duo's arrangements of Shostakovich's Spanish and Jewish songs symbolize a thoughtful approach to foreign cultures. This stands in stark contrast to the current somber reality: Petersburg, once the gateway to Europe, is on the brink of closing itself off.
Johnny Hodges (1906-70) known for his pure tone and personalized style had been the stalwart of Ellington Orchestra throughout its history except for a period in the 50s. Hodges left immeasurable inspiration to the generations to come. He led this Ducal All-star septet to give concerts in Europe during the spring of 1961. The existence of the Copenhagen concert has been rumoured among the fans but never materialized until now making this album a historical augmentation of Hodges’ discography.
Duke Jordan (1920 – 2006) was approached in NY by Marcel Romano, musical consultant of the French film Les Liaisons Dangereuse directed by Roger Vadim in 1959 to audition for the soundtracks. It laid down the groundwork for Jordan’s rise to the star composer status. All too famous “No Problem” is not included in this sketching but a few of the tunes we come to appreciate later are here in their prototypes. This recording made in a NY studio has never been heard (except maybe by Vadim). SteepleChase is proud to announce the world premier release of the album of cultural/historical significance.
SAKOBI is a new project of the Vilem Spilka Quartet. The band consists of Radek Zapadlo on saxophone, Vilem Spilka on double bass and Martin Kleibl on drums. Since they have been together for a long time in other ensembles, they are closely connected musically. Radek Zapadlo has been successfully active on the Czech jazz scene for two dozen years, most recently alongside Matej Benko, Ondrej Ruml, playing in the Cotatcha Orchestra, his own Four in Blue formation and the aforementioned Vilem Spilka Quartet. Martin Kleibl, after an eight-year stint with the Brno Philharmonic, oscillates in genre from classical to pop, plays in the OK Percussion duo with European-class marimbist Martin Oprsal, accompanies singer Petr Bende and is the driving force behind the Vilem Spilka Quartet. For the SAKOBI project, Vilem Spilka replaced his main instrument, the guitar, with the double bass, which he began to play during the pandemic of the cover band. The trio's debut recording is released by Bivak Records. All members contributed to the album not only as players but also as composers. Zapadlo contributed the melancholic dirgeCesta za modrým sluncem (Journey to the Blue Sun), while Martin Kleibl's Na ceste (On theRoad) is typical uplifting Latin jazz. Vilem Spilka added the rest of the repertoire, his individual opuses revealing a variety of musical and non-musical inspirations-from his native Brno to Japan, to which the cryptogram in the band's name refers. In the spirit of Japanese realities, the debut album is titled Banzai!, something like a shout of Hurrra or Yeehaw! Stylistically, the album is more or less unclassifiable, drawing on the traditions of jazz and other African-American styles, as well as folk music from Moravia and beyond.
Saxophonist and playwright Archie Shepp (b. May 24, 1937 in Fort Lauderdale. FL) then 26 years old visited Copenhagen in the fall of 1963 as a member of the famed New York Contemporary Five.
Though Shepp at that time was the passionate practitioner of Free jazz, this recording in which he shared the bandstand with Sweden’s legendary baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin is something quite different from what one normally expects from Shepp in the 60s. It is Shepp playing straight jazz with audible enjoyment showing off his broad range of expression.
“The topnotch rhythm section is composed of the late Catalonian pianist Tete Montoliu and a pair of “young lions,” Swedish (Danish ed) drummer Alex Riel and Danish bassist Niels–Henning Ørsted Pedersen, seventeen years old when the recording was made. Montoliu’s swinging, straight–on solos are a breath of fresh air.” (Jack Bowers – AAJ) 180g Audiophile Vinyl
Mezzo-soprano Hermine May and pianist Manuel Lange invite you into Wagner's world of Tristan and Isolde where insatiable yearnings are awakened, passions heightened and where the fervent desire to transcend reality finds supreme love beyond death in Liebestod.
Liszt: Weihnachtsbaum & Two Movements from Christmas
Piano Classics
CD
$19.99Oct 11, 2024
Christmas chez Liszt, imagined by one of the UK's most exciting piano virtuosos. Composed and compiled by Liszt between 1873 and 1881, the 'Christmas Tree' suite has more to offer than carol transcriptions and twinkly sketches of festive joy. It begins with one of the composer's typically free transcriptions of a plainsong Christmas hymn harmonised in the 17th century by Michael Praetorius, and takes in the procession of the Magi towards Bethlehem and a lullaby at the cradle, but also cuts away to contemporary times with a sparkling scherzo to depict the lighting of candles on the tree. The last four of the suite's twelve movements bear only tenuous connections to the festive season, yet they bring some of the most memorable inspirations of all: evocations of evening bells, of 'Yesteryear' in the composer's searching late style, and then Hungarian- and Polish-themed themed pieces. As Mark Viner remarks in his detailed booklet introduction to the album, there is nothing quite like Weihnachtsbaum even in Liszt's own prodigiously varied catalogue. It is impossible to categorise, and yet every bar sounds uniquely Lisztian. Perhaps even less familiar to most listeners, on account not least of it's sheer scale, is the vast three-part oratorio which Liszt based on the life of Christ. Liszt made solo-piano transcriptions of two Christmas-themed orchestral movements from the oratorio's first part, picturing in turn the Shepherds at the Manger and, once more, the 'march' of the Magi. In complement, Mark Viner presents the composer's pianistic translation of the ancient carol Christus natus est. Mark Viner's recordings for Piano Classics have attracted international acclaim. 'The melodies in his hands are not simply played, they are sung on the piano!' (Fanfare, reviewing a previous Liszt album, PCL0116). 'If Alkan could play it as Viner does here, no wonder he was the only pianist in front of whom Liszt was hesitant of playing.' (Gramophone, reviewing Viner's latest volume in his Alkan cycle, PCL10275).
The 4th volume of the Complete recordings of Dussek's Violin Sonatas, containing the two Sonatas Op.69 and the early Sonata Op.4. Johann Ladislaus Dussek (1760-1812) was born in rural Bohemia. He led a restless life, travelling Europe as a keyboard virtuoso and settling in several European capitals, notably Paris and London, where he became a fashionable pianist and teacher. His close connection to piano manufacturer Broadwood resulted in important innovations, notably the extension of the keyboard to 6 octaves. Dussek's style is rich, harmonically expressive and pianistically challenging, Classicism on the brink of Early Romanticism. This new recording presents the 3 Sonatas Op.1 and the Sonata Op.12 No.1. Carl Friedrich Cramer writes in the "Magazin der Musik" in 1783: "These sonatas are the only ones of their kind. Rich in new thoughts and traces of the author's great musical genius. Very brilliant, and appropriate to the instrument. The accompaniment of the violin is so artificially combined with the piano part that both instruments are kept in constant attention; so that these sonatas require a violin player who is just as skilled as a piano player." Played by Julia Huber, a prizewinner of the Locatelli Competition Amsterdam, and concertmaster of L'Orfeo Baroque Orchestra Linz and La Stagione Frankfurt. Miriam Altmann studied piano, fortepiano and harpsichord, she specializes in the Early Classical repertoire and recorded works by Gyrowetz. Both musicians play period instruments.
