No better Joplin cycle exists, and its first complete appearance on CD is long overdue.

Between January and April 1975, the classically trained, multi-award-winning jazz pianist and composer Dick Hyman – whose astounding résumé includes playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman, writing and arranging for Count Basie, and scoring most of the films of Woody Allen – went into RCA’s Studio A in New York City and set down the definitive recording of ragtime legend Scott Joplin’s piano works. In 1988, an hour-long selection from the five LPs was released on CD. Now at last, Sony Classical is issuing Hyman’s entire Joplin album on three well-filled silver discs.

This really is Joplin’s complete piano output. It even includes the six short exercises that form his 1908 School of Ragtime, with their printed prefatory remarks read by the 92-year-old Eubie Blake, a friend of Joplin and a distinguished ragtime player in his own right. Also here are Joplin’s less familiar marches and waltzes. And there’s a bonus: the set contains Hyman’s own twelve delightful improvisations on themes by Joplin, which he designed to demonstrate the composer's influence on the development of jazz harmony and melody. When the LPs were first released, Gramophone’s jazz critic wrote that “the eminently musical quality of Hyman’s playing is in evidence throughout the collection; he has the ability to characterize perfectly each piece and somehow to pinpoint every little harmonic subtlety and melodic felicity without in any way detracting from the conception as a whole.... He pays as much attention to matters of tempo, texture, phrasing and dynamics as though he were doing the twenty-four Chopin Preludes. Two for instance I particularly enjoyed were Cascades with its rippling lightness of touch and Scott Joplin’s New Rag in which Hyman’s cleanness of articulation and rhythmic exuberance are a joy. … Joplin well deserves this very handsome and well-recorded tribute.”

CONTENTS:

• Maple Leaf Rag
• Original Rags
• Swipesy
• Peacherine Rag
• The Easy Winners
• Sunflower Slow Drag
• The Entertainer
• Elite Syncopations
• The Strenuous Life
• A Breeze from Alabama
• Palm Leaf Rag
• Something Doing
• Weeping Willow
• The Chrysanthemum
• The Cascades
• The Sycamore
• The Favorite
• Leola
• The Ragtime Dance
• Eugenia
• Lily Queen
• Gladiolus Rag
• Nonpareil
• Heliotrope Bouquet
• Search-light Rag
• Rose Leaf Rag
• Fig Leaf Rag
• Pine Apple Rag
• Solace
• Sugar Cane
• Stoptime Rag
• Euphonic Sounds
• Country Club
• Wall Street Rag
• Felicity Rag
• Paragon Rag
• Silver Swan Rag
• Kismet Rag
• Magnetic Rag
• Reflection Rag
• Antoinette
• Cleopha
• March majestic
• Combination March
• Rosebud
• Great Crush Collision
• School of Ragtime (Exercises Nr. 1-6)
• Bethena (Concert waltz)
• Binks' Waltz
• Pleasant Moments
• Augustan Club Waltz
• Harmony Club Waltz
• New Rag
• +Dick Hyman-Improvisation on Peacherine Rag
• The Entertainer
• Elite Syncopations
• A Breeze from Alabama
• Something Doing
• Gladiolus Rag
• Heliotrope Bouquet
• Fig Leaf Rag
• Stoptime Rag
• New Rag
• Pleasant moments

REVIEW:

The ragtime genre came into full flower from the mid-1890s through the end of World War I, spearheaded by Scott Joplin (1868-1917), whose 1899 composition Maple Leaf Rag became the template and standard bearer for classic through-composed rags. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw newfound interest in Joplin as a serious composer, starting with the New York Public Library’s publication of Joplin’s collected works. Joplin’s 1902 rag The Entertainer figured prominently in the soundtrack for the 1973 Academy Award-winning film The Sting, launching a floodgate of Joplin releases. Even classical artists as unlikely as Itzhak Perlman, James Levine, and E. Power Biggs hitched their stars to the Joplin bandwagon.

However, the most comprehensive, intelligently produced, respectful, and artistically satisfying collection of Joplin’s complete piano works came from RCA Victor in a five-LP boxed set, featuring pianist Dick Hyman. No better Joplin cycle exists, and its first complete appearance on CD is long overdue.

The music is presented by genre, with the rags arranged in loose chronological order by composition, followed by marches and waltzes. Also included is Joplin’s charming “School of Ragtime” Etudes complete with Joplin’s introductory remarks read by composer/pianist and Joplin colleague Eubie Blake, who was 92 when he faced the microphone to speak. Hyman also offers the Grand Crush Collision march both in its original text and in his own ragtime transformation.

Although Hyman’s pianism embraces the entire history of jazz piano, his effortless virtuosity is firmly rooted in classical training. As Rudi Blesh aptly stated in his brilliant and insightful original booklet annotations, the pianist “takes ragtime seriously without becoming solemn and portentous, more as one must do in approaching, say, much of Mozart.”

Two further qualities make Hyman’s Joplin stand out: his intelligent tempo choices, and his ideal fusion of classical projection and jazz time keeping. Take Joplin’s 1899 hit Maple Leaf Rag, for example. Hyman’s vigorous pace, dynamic contrasts, and clear articulation convey pure joy with a soupçon of brashness, so unlike Joshua Rifkin’s effete and rhythmically stiff traversal. The Cascades’ descending runs are as crystalline and transparent as Rubinstein’s Chopin. By contrast, Hyman’s measured tempo and ear-catching inflections of phrase in Elite Syncopations give shape and breathing room to Joplin’s polyphony.

Note, too, Hyman’s lovely legato touch and subtly lilting rubatos in Weeping Willow, Gladiolus Rag, and Solace, while Something Doing is pure lightness and effervescence. The pianist’s characterful animation keeps the episodic Bethena concert waltz afloat and moving. And although Hyman clearly respects Joplin’s texts, the pianist is not above filling out the texture with discreet octave reinforcements in the left hand, as he does in the difficult Euphonic Sounds, a rag that foreshadows elements of stride piano. Because Hyman approaches each piece on its own terms, one gleans more variety and expressive scope from Joplin’s oeuvre than we experience from most other Joplin interpreters.

The original LP edition devoted the tenth side to twelve of Hyman’s improvisations on Joplin themes, which here are spread across the three CDs, most likely for timing considerations. They are sheer delights, from The Entertainer’s bi-tonal coda to a brief and unbuttoned Peacherine Rag that brilliantly burlesques Art Tatum’s 1940 recording of Harold Arlen’s Get Happy.

A Breeze From Alabama is pure, unadulterated barrelhouse and boogie-woogie, while in Joplin’s New Rag Hyman can’t resist interpolating Juventino Rosas’ Over the Waves–better known as the summer camp ditty “George Washington Bridge”. In short, Dick Hyman and Scott Joplin unquestionably belong to the coterie of symbiotic performer/composer pairings that include Schnabel/Beethoven, Gould/Bach, Gieseking/Debussy, Larrocha/Albéniz, and Hamelin/Alkan.

Full disclosure: I met Dick Hyman nearly 60 years ago when I was eight years old, and he has been a friend, a colleague, and a musical father figure to me ever since. We even played two pianos together in several concerts. I vividly remember hearing Dick preparing these Joplin pieces at the time of the 1975 sessions, and marveled at his absolute commitment to the material, his focus and his flexibility in the process of getting all of the music under his awesome fingers. Thanks to Sony/BMG for reissuing and gorgeously remastering an important recording project that belongs in every serious collection.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Jed Distler)

Spiegel i'm Spiegel Celebrating Arvo Part at 90 This album, titled after one of Arvo Part's most beloved works, is a meditative tribute marking the composer's 90th birthday on September 11, 2025. On Spiegel i'm Spiegel, music becomes a mirror: between composers, across centuries, and within the listener. At it's heart are three works by Part-Fratres, Da pacem, and Spiegel i'm Spiegel-each embodying his signature language of stillness and spiritual clarity. They are framed by pieces that resonate with his sensibility: Olivier Messiaen's contemplative Louanges, Johann Sebastian Bach's luminous Sonata for Viola da Gamba, and Alfred Schnittke's brooding Cello Sonata. Performed by Onute Grazinyte and Edward King, with the Aidija Chamber Choir led by Romualdas Grazinis, this collection invites deep listening. From Bach's elegant counterpoint to Messiaen's timeless devotion, each work reflects a shared search for the eternal. A sonic meditation on peace, prayer, and presence-this is music that mirrors the soul. Recorded at Studio Residence Paliesius, May 2025

A Tree Is a Song presents first recordings of a collection of recent secular choral works by Cecilia McDowall, performed by The Rodolfus Choir under Ralph Allwood and Elinor Cooper. Written between 2012 and 2024, the programme sets texts by poets including Heather Lane, Seán Street, Kate Wakeling, Sheila Bryer, Virginia Woolf, and Shakespeare. Several works feature obbligato cello played by Leo Popplewell. The pieces respond to a wide range of subjects, from nature and community to remembrance and the COVID-19 pandemic. Recorded in London in 2024, the album documents McDowall's distinctive approach to text setting, choral texture, and contemporary vocal writing.

This 7-SACD collection includes recordings made by Brazilian-born conductor John Neschling of the orchestral works of Ottorino Respighi, alongside Puccini the best-known Italian composer of the first half of the twentieth century. Widely praised by the press, including BBC Music Magazine, which described them as ‘the finest-ever survey of the composer’s orchestral output undertaken by a single conductor’, these recordings reveal Respighi’s extraordinary range.

His transcriptions of works from the baroque period bear witness to his great musical refinement and are an example of the way in which people dared to adapt to current tastes at the beginning of the 20th century. His original compositions, whether symphonic poems, ballets or symphonic works, often call for a large orchestra, sometimes with the addition of numerous percussion instruments, piano, organ and even, in Pines of Rome, a phonograph, present a synthesis of the musical traditions of his native Italy and contemporary romantic, impressionist and neo-classical trends while remaining resolutely closed to modernist developments and atonality. Respighi’s lavish sound palette and the spirit that fills his scores were to find an echo in Hollywood film music, and John Williams considers him to be one of his most important influences.

Past praise of the previously released recordings included in this set:

Respighi: The Birds; Ancient Airs & Dances

These performances are uncommonly airy. Much of this music is suffused with an autumnal melancholy, and Neschling and his orchestra capture that very well.

-- Fanfare

Respighi: Metamorphoseon, etc.

All of the performances here are expert, but conductor John Neschling deserves particular credit for keeping things movement purposefully forward in the first two long, and mostly slowish, movements of the Belkis suite. The same work’s vulgar (let’s not kid ourselves) concluding Danza orgiastica also sounds more musical than usual–less like a back-alley gang bang–but with no loss of energy. The Liège orchestra plays with great bravura, and BIS’s SACD sonics, typically, are just terrific. In short, a very worthy entry in this ongoing series.

-- ClassicsToday.com

Respighi: Roman Trilogy / Neschling, Sao Paulo Symphony

The São Paulo Symphony Orchestra is a superb ensemble by any standards, and displays their virtuosity in the three Respighi symphonic poems.

-- SA-CD.net

The present edition contains the complete productions released by cpo between 1993 and 2018 on the subject of Michael Haydn's symphonies and wind concertos. During the course of a quarter of a century, as might well be imagined, a wealth of material accumulated that could not be put to renewed use without considerable cuts. Nine authors had contributed information about the sources and special qualities of the music to the original releases, which necessarily led to duplications, repetitions, and other redundancies that were to be avoided in the compilation. Moreover, it took some time for the numbering system currently in use for the works to be implemented. The authors initially continued to refer exclusively to the »Thematisches Verzeichnis der Instrumentalwerke von Michael Haydn« (to which we have assigned the letter P) that Lothar Perger had presented in the Denkmaler der Tonkunst in osterreich (DTo). The »enumeration« by the American musicologist Charles H. Sherman (1929-2018) later began to Appear in the booklets. Sherman initially compiled a provisional catalogue and then in 1993 published Johann Michael Haydn: A Chronological Thematic Catalogue of his Works in collaboration with T. Donley Thomas. This chronological listing (MH) and the P numbers, which soon will be 120 years old, are used whenever possible for the identification of the works recorded here. Our wish is that this unique edition may bring you great pleasure.

Coming soon

Sir Andrew Davis was a talented keyboard player as a child and teenager, and after study with Peter Hurford, at St Albans, he spent four years at the University of Cambridge as organ scholar at King's College, under Sir David Willcocks. It was this period of his life that sparked his love for and appreciation of the organ works of J.S. Bach, which remained a lifelong passion. Sir Andrew made all the transcriptions on this album for the BBC Philharmonic, and four of them were recorded in November 2023. Sadly, Sir Andrew died before the final recording sessions for the album could take place (September 2024): we are immensely grateful that he completed the arrangements, and very thankful to Martyn Brabbins for completing the recording with the sense of style, love, and affection that Sir Andrew would have admired.

This first recording of the Eule Organ of Magdalen College, Oxford (opened in January 2023) features a wide range of music performed by Alexander Pott. From Wagner to Delius, the repertoire showcases the instrument's German Romantic heritage as well as it's suitability for English 20th-Century transcription, thanks to it's distinctive voice, colour, breadth and sensitivity.

Led by it's Director Matthew Martin, The Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, joins forces with the Academy of Ancient Music in Michael Haydn's rarely heard masterpieces: the Requiem and Missa Sancti Hieronymi. The four soloists are all ex-choral scholars of Caius Choir, showcasing the distinguished musical tradition of this student group. Unjustly neglected, Joseph Haydn's younger brother was a talented composer in his own right. Written after the death of his infant daughter and his patron, the deeply emotional Requiem is a masterpiece that combines complex colourful textures and forms with imaginative orchestration and vocal writing. Mozart was a great admirer and it is thought that Haydn's Requiem formed the prototype for his own better known masterpiece. In contrast, the later Missa Sancti Hieronymi is lighter and more optimistic. Unusually scored for oboes, bassoons, trombones and continuo (with no upper strings), it exudes transparency and joyful energy. This recording will undoubtedly put these neglected works back into mainstream repertoire.

If you’ve seen the Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro”, you’ve seen and heard The Orchestra Now, the exceptional ensemble that appears in the movie’s Tanglewood Music Festival scene. The Orchestra Now (TON), a New York-based graduate-level training orchestra comprised of the most vibrant young musicians from around the globe, was founded by conductor, educator and music historian Leon Botstein, whose insatiable curiosity has resulted in rescuing countless musical works from oblivion. Their first recording for AVIE, “The Lost Generation”, brings together three German-speaking composers who were contemporaries of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, but whose music became supressed by historical events of the 20th century.

In November 2022, TON gave the US premiere of Hugo Kauder’s Symphony No. 1, a “splendid” work that “made a splash” (New York Classical Review). The largely self-taught Moravian-born composer had a distinguished career in Vienna until he was forced to flee the Nazis and arrived in New York in 1938. The first of Kauder’s five symphonies was dedicated to Alma Mahler. Whilst his musical language is rooted in the tradition of Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler, he forged an individual voice with his ease and flexibility of harmonic and metrical shifts.

German-born, Austrian composer Hans Erich Apostel studied with Schoenberg and Berg. His works incorporated his mentors’ expressionism and 12-tone methods in equal measure. The Nazis deemed Apostel’s music “degenerate”, but he lived out his life in Vienna until his death in 1972. His Variations on a theme by Haydn, performed frequently in the mid-20th century, is an homage to the second movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 103, the “Drum Roll, which itself comprises variations on a theme.

Adolf Busch, one of the most celebrated violinists and chamber musicians of the 20th century, was also a prolific composer. A staunch opponent of Nazism, he left his native Germany, arriving first in Switzerland and eventually the United States in 1939. A late Romantic compositional style imbues his Variations on an Original Theme, originally for piano four hands and presented to his wife as a Christmas present in 1944. Busch’s longtime chamber music partner and son-in-law, the pianist Rudolf Serkin, frequently performed the work with his son Peter, who made this orchestration of his grandfather’s composition, in a familial labor of love.

Saxophonist Pat Posey goes to extremes for his solo debut album, they/beast. Introducing the tubax – a German-invented, modified version of the contrabass saxophone – Pat plays deep, dark renditions of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3, Melodies for Saxophone by Philip Glass, Bach-inspired Mo’ingus by Brooklyn-based composer-saxophonist Shelley Washington, and Pat’s own Hymn.

REVIEWS:

Pat Posey’s solo album they/beast displays the Tubax›s incredible sound with a wide variety of materials, from Bach cello suites to Philip Glass› Melodies for Saxophone. If listening to Paul Desmond’s alto sax is like sipping a fine white wine, Posey’s Tubax is like drinking a delicious porter. Its lows are glorious and Posey dexterously wrestles it through some very complex material. they/beast is a unique and sonically adventurous treat.

-- The Whole Note

The growling, guttural timbre and harmonic timbre and harmonic overtones are perfectly showcased…Posey displays colossal lung power and technique…fiendishly virtuosic…a dazzling, unsettling spectacle by a musician pushing the creative envelope.

-- BBC Music Magazine

The tubax has an amazing low register, and in the hands of a player like Pat Posey, it can be nimble and produce astonishing multiphonics … Posey’s own Hymn (2022), a real tour-de-force of inspiration, beauty, quirkiness, and earblowing sounds. Fantastic album.

-- American Record Guide

Classical Music

These selections were recorded in November 1995 and June 1996.

Ingrid Matthews plays a baroque violin on this recording.
REVIEWS:
American Record Guide (7-8/00, pp. 83-84 - "...Matthews...has excellent taste, does a wonderful job of characterizing each movement, and is very good at bringing out all the voices in the fugues....This superb recording
is...my top recommendation....A very auspicious debut...a major talent..."

"The opening and closing choruses of the Ascension oratiorio contain some of Bach’s most irresistible, catchy music, and this chorus and orchestra really give it their all, from the brilliant trumpets and insistent syncopated rhythms to the invigorating choral singing...once you get into this Bethlehem Bach Choir production, it’s impossible not to like it."

-- David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

SERENADE

This selection is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording.
This selection contains a track featuring excerpts from Tim Page's 1982 audio interview with Glenn Gould about the 'Goldberg Variations.'

Sony Classical is pleased to announce the second solo album by exceptional young American organist, Cameron Carpenter, All You Need is Bach. Bach’s great keyboard masterpieces provide an ideal platform for Carpenter’s formidable creative gifts and the seemingly limitless possibilities of his dream instrument – his signature International Touring Organ. The album takes is cue from The Beatles’ classic “All You Need is Love”, where Bach’s Invention No. 8 in F major proudly rises out of the coda’s collage-like texture. Works include Contrapunctus IX from The Art of Fugue, Organ Sonatas in D minor and E-flat major, Prelude and Fugue in B minor, Invention No. 8 and, as the centerpiece, the great Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. The latter holds a special place in Carpenter’s affections. “It is undoubtedly one of the Top 10 masterworks of all music, no matter how you evaluate it.”

A virtuoso composer-performer unique among organists, Cameron Carpenter’s approach is to smash the stereotypes of organists and organ music. Described as “extravagantly talented” (New York Times), and “smasher of cultural and classical music taboos,” (The New Yorker), Cameron is the first organist ever nominated for a Grammy Award® for his debut album, Revolutionary. All You Need is Bach is the second recording made on Cameron’s new International Touring Organ. The organ, designed by Cameron himself, is a mobile digital organ that is artistically and sonically equal to any of the world’s great organs and will challenge the way the world thinks about organs.

Issued complete for the first time, including several albums new to CD, is the Philips catalogue of the Netherlands Wind Ensemble - an ensemble that made a defining contribution to Dutch musical life in the 1970s. The Netherlands Wind Ensemble began life in 1959 as a wind quintet, but soon expanded to play Classical-era serenades and divertimenti which were hardly known at the time but have since been recognised and enjoyed as masterpieces of entertainment music, notably the Gran Partita of Mozart, the late Octet by Beethoven and the wonderful Octet-Partitas by his Viennese contemporary, Franz Krommer. Starting to record for Philips in 1968, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble immediately won critical praise for the technical precision of it's playing as well as the brilliance and wit of it's interpretations, whether led by it's regular conductor Edo de Waart (himself a former oboist and member of the ensemble) or played as true chamber music. The ensemble made one of the first comprehensive recordings of Mozart's wind music, including miniatures, no less delightful for their brevity and rarity, and a precious but little-known collaboration with the much-loved Dutch soprano Elly Ameling. The youthful, funky vibe of the Netherlands Wind Ensemble was captured by Philips both in exceptionally vivid recordings as well as kooky cover designs, which are reproduced on the sleeves of the issues. A booklet essay by Peter Quantrill outlines the history and character of the ensemble, drawing on a new interview with Edo de Waart. The repertoire extends into the nineteenth century with a classic account of the Wind Serenade by Dvorak - the ensemble's debut on disc - as well as ingenious arrangements of overtures and arias by Rossini, and a unique collection of 'little marches by great masters'. The Netherland Wind Ensemble's long-standing commitment to modern music is represented by the wind music of Richard Strauss and Stravinsky, and the pioneering Jazz Symphony by the Franco-American 'bad boy' of classical music in the 1920s and 30s, Georges Antheil, recorded live at the 1976 Holland Festival.

2018 release. Since 1939, the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert has become a tradition and the world's most famous classical music event. The list of names of leading conductors who have led the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concerts reads like a veritable who's who of great maestros: Herbert von Karajan, Lorin Maazel, Claudio Abbado and Gustavo Dudamel to name a few. For the New Year's Concert 2018 world-renowned conductor Riccardo Muti returns to conduct the New Year's Concert for the fifth time. He has conducted the Vienna Philharmonic for over 500 concerts, has a very close connection to the orchestra and is one of the most engaged New Year's Concert conductors. Italian conductor Muti holds two music directorships: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini. A prolific recording artist, Muti has received dozens of honors, titles, awards and prizes throughout his career. The Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert is unique and has often been imitated, but not equaled, with a live broadcast on television in over 90 countries around the world with over 40 million viewers. The repertoire for the New Year's Concert features works by members of the Strauss Family - Johann Strauss, father and son, as well as Eduard and Josef Strauss. Old favorites from their works are played alongside others that have never been recorded or are rarely heard. All of them programmed around two fixed points in the concert, The Blue Danube Waltz and the Radetzky March.

Kellen Gray has reunited with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for a second instalment of African American Voices. Though representing differing schools of thought regarding African American classical music, the composers here are united by their roots in black history, culture and its rich musical heritage. Drawing upon jazz and spirituals – ‘I Want Jesus to Walk with Me’ serving as the source material – Margaret Bonds’ Montgomery Variations engages with African American history, namely the Montgomery bus boycott and the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. In this work, re-discovered in 2017, Bonds tackles the themes of strength, resistance, determination and faith. Bonds’ contemporary, the prolific composer Ulysses Kay cultivated a neoclassical voice, as his Concerto for Orchestra exemplifies, very much in line with William Grant Still and his teacher Paul Hindemith. A versatile musician, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson comes a generation later. In his Worship: A Concert Overture, we can hear a blend of Baroque counterpoint, elements of the blues, spirituals and black folk music.

REVIEW:

Margaret Bond (1913–1972) wrote her 1964 Montgomery Variations as a seven-movement theme-and-variations on the spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me.” Bond’s impassioned cri de coeur bypasses the constraints of academic cd’s and don’ts as it chronicles in boldly theatrical music the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement, from the Montgomery bus boycott through the tragic 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Bond dedicated the piece to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., though sadly never heard it performed during her brief lifetime.

Ulysses Kay (1917–1995) reflects in his 1948 Concerto for Orchestra the influence of several of his mentors – including Paul Hindemith – as a thoroughly tonal work conceived in mid-20th century, in a moment in which the music of the followers of the Second Viennese School reigned supreme in the classical music worlds of both Europe and America. Kay’s classically structured, richly orchestrated, harmonically dense, and contrapuntally complex composition remains at its core a consonantly melodic, post-Romantic work.

In his 2001 Worship: A Concert Overture Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932–2004) successfully amalgamates sacred and secular music, incorporating blues in his nobly elegant treatment of Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.

-- All About The Arts (Rafael de Acha)

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BRSO) in 2024, the BR-KLASSIK label is releasing previously unreleased recordings of concerts worth listening to, available on CD and as a stream.

Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony remains today one of the greatest and most powerful creations of the Late Romantic period. The immense symphony, longer and more monumental than others, incorporates texts from the collection of poems by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim entitled “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”. Composed over a period of four years from 1892 to 1896, with particular focus during the summers of 1895 and 1896 spent at the Attersee in Austria, it was premiered in its entirety on June 9, 1902, at the 38th “Tonkünstler Festival” in Krefeld. Mahler conducted the Städtische Kapelle Krefeld and Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchestra at this momentous event, which garnered great acclaim from his contemporaries. Between 1902 and 1907, the composer conducted his Third Symphony a further 15 times.

Among the symphony's six powerful movements, the slow fourth movement necessitates not only a large orchestra but also a mezzo-soprano solo for a setting of the “Midnight Song” (“O Man! Take heed!”) from Friedrich Nietzsche's poetical-philosophical work "Thus Spoke Zarathustra." In the cheerful fifth movement, the mezzo-soprano soloist is joined by a children’s choir and a female chorus for the song "Es sungen drei Engel" from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn." The symphony presents a significant challenge for all its performers, and this concert recording from December 2010 features a prestigious lineup: Mariss Jansons conducting the Chor and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, with the Tölzer Knabenchor, and solo parts sung by Nathalie Stutzmann.

What happens when the illustrious brass sections of the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic come together? The answer: The Philharmonic Brass Making it's debut in Vienna's Musikverein in April 2023 the group will come together for recording, tours and education work. Comprising some of the best-known faces in the brass world from Berlin, Vienna and their friends, the group includes Sarah Willis, horn and Paul Halwax, tuba. Their Debut album 'Overture!' was conducted by Tugan Sokhiev and released through Decca Classics. Now it's time for the following up album through the new label Supreme Classics: Italiana! Conducted by Maestro Riccardo Muti includes virtuoso arrangements of some of the best-known music including Verdi's Sinfonia di Nabucco, Rossini: Guillaume Tell - Overture and many more.

Having completed the entire trilogy of Handel's Concerti grossi, the Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin presents a recording of the first six Concerti grossi, Op. 6 by the composer, ensemble leader and violin virtuoso Arcangelo Corelli, who received the almost cult-like reverence during his lifetime. The composer had been experimenting with this one of the most distinctive forms of instrumental music of the Baroque era since the late 1670s, but it was only towards the end of his life that he sought to publish these compositions and selected only twelve exemplary pieces from what was probably a much larger collection. He laid the foundations of this instrumental form for future composers such as the aforementioned Georg Frederic Handel, who paid tribute to the Italian Baroque master with his two opuses. The Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin and it's two concertmasters, Mayumi Hirasaki and Georg Kallweit, who demonstrate their extraordinary virtuosity, only prove why they are regarded as one of the most influential period-instrument ensembles of today. The Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin has a substantial PENTATONE discography, including the Diapason d'Or awarded CANTATA with Bejun Mehta (2018), Handel's Concerti grossi Op. 3 and 6 (released in 2019 and 2020), Telemann's Miriways (2020), Handel's Messiah (2020), Haydn's L'isola disabitata (2021), La Passione with Christina Landshamer (2022), a recording of Mozart's Paris and Haffner symphonies and the Oboe Concerto with Xenia Loffler (2023), Telemann's Ino (2024), and a recording with Mozart's symphonies Nos. 29 & 33 and the Clarinet Concerto with Ernst Schlader (2024).

Under the motto "Dancing Organ," Czech organist Michael Bartek has compiled a varied program of dance pieces from different eras, including original compositions and some virtuoso transcriptions. In addition to popular works, there are also a few surprises to discover. This is performed on "his" Kuhn organ in the Richterswil Church near Zurich. For this SACD, the sound has been optimally captured in stereo and 5.1 surround sound. Unter dem Motto "Dancing Organ" hat der tchechische Organist Michael Bartek ein vielseitiges Programm von Tanzstucken verschiedener Epochen - Originalkompositionen und teils virtuose Transkriptionen - zusammengestellt. Neben popularen Werken gibt es auch so manche uberraschung zu entdecken. Als Instrument dient ihm "seine" Kuhn-Orgel in der Richterswiler Kirche, nahe Zurich. Fur diese SACD wurde der Klang optimal als Stereo- und auch als 5.1 Surround-Aufnahme eingefangen.

The currently hottest German brass ensemble with great concept albums presents Christmas classics in completely new arrangements for the first time?. All-time classics like "Driving Home for Christmas", "It's beginning to look like Christmas", "Santa Claus is coming to town", "All I want for Christmas", "Let it snow", "White Christmas", "Frosty the Snowman" give this Christmas album a unique sound?

This album marks the culmination of two special Hallé collaborations and includes four major pieces from one of the most distinctive of current British compositional voices. Delyana Lazarova (Hallé Assistant Conductor 2020-23) and composer Dobrinka Tabakova (Hallé Artist in Residence 2022-23) were both born in the historic city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Working together for the first time during their time with the orchestra they formed a strong musical connection in which the Hallé musicians displayed a close understanding of the intricacies and dialect of Tabakova’s musical language. This album contains two of Tabakova’s major orchestral works. The three-part Earth Suite, which the composer says was inspired by ‘the overwhelming force of Nature’, recently drew ‘exquisite playing’ from the Hallé (Bachtrack, April 2023).

Orpheus Comet features fast rhythmic material combined with atmospheric transparent orchestrations and a glorious climax featuring quotations from Monteverdi. The two significant concertos for strings and soloists included on this album solidified Tabakova’s reputation as an outstanding contemporary voice and display the composer’s close affinity with string instruments. Ukrainian-British Maxim Rysanov, is one of Tabakova’s longest collaborators who premiered the Concerto for Viola and Strings in 2004, a piece described as being ’saturated with an inner, captivating and natural energy’ (Culture Magazine, Nov 2004). The Concerto for Cello and Strings (whose score was described as ‘gorgeous’ by the Daily Telegraph, Australia) is here performed by Guy Johnson, one of the most exciting British cellists of his generation.

The Concerto Koln goes on a journey of discovery and contrasts the famous Johann Sebastian Bach with the now unknown Johann Adolf Scheibe?. The ensemble is accompanied by the excellent soprano Marie Sophie Pollak. Together they present the two rivaling composers in a way, where instrumental and vocal composition by Bach and Scheibe alternate on the album?.

Learn more about this recording on the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast!

Mandolinist Alon Sariel continues his series of Bach transcriptions with Plucked Bach II. On his first Plucked Bach album, Sariel played the Cello Suites on a wide range of plucked instruments. Yet in this new recording, he performs works for the lute, organ and violin - all performed on 'only' two types of mandolins. By offering a distinctive and groundbreaking interpretation of his own transcriptions and arrangements, Sariel manages to breathe new life into some very well-known works by Johann Sebastian Bach.

The iconoclast Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565) for the organ receives a contemplative and intimate character on the mandolin. Excerpts of the Lute Suite (BWV 998) and the Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major (BWV 1006) are drawn in a whole new palette of colors. For Bach's Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Minor (BWV 1003), Alon Sariel shows the in-credible suitability of the mandolin for Bach's music. And as an encore, you will hear his rendition of Ysaÿe's dazzling Obsession. Alon Sariel is one of today's most versatile performers, known as a multi-instrumentalist in the realm of plucked strings with a growing reputation as a fascinating Bach interpreter.

Mulgrew Miller, one of the most important pianists of jazz' modern era, proudly delivers his brand-new album Solo in Barcelona via Storyville Records. The occasion of a present-day release of a sol o recording by this remarkable musician is a very rare and extraordinary occasion. This album, which was recorded on February 2, 2004 in Barcelona, is truly a rare gem for the admirers of a man and piano player, who was loved by so many fans and the entire jazz global community. With his unique take on arrangements from Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Cole Porter, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, MM shows us why he is considered a modern legend. On this solo album, MM's piano embarks on an extraordinary musical journey. With each note, he effortlessly paints a vivid tapestry of emotions, traversing a rich musical landscape that spans genres and styles characterized by versatility, proficient soloing and tasteful restraint. He plays like a modern-day exponent of Art Tatum with the deepest musical roots, but with the freshest, most forward-thinking, profoundly original voice that's uniquely his own. Live in Barcelona shows how he is able to tell us a story and swing like very few others. A real master on the piano. The highlight is perhaps his 'Excursions in Blue', playing the blues like it should be done - in the moment! Solo in Barcelona is a beautiful documentation of Mulgrew Miller playing solo material that has not been recorded before. MM was one of the most influential jazz pianists of his generation. Renowned for his technical mastery, improvisational genius and deep musicality, Mulgrew Miller worked with Miles Davis, Betty Carter, Woody Shaw, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and his own trio around the globe. Still missed by his big audience. Mulgrew Miller (1955-2013) was a world-renowned jazz pianist and composer. His illustrious career spanned over four decades, during which he performed with legendary jazz artists and received critical acclaim for his exceptional musicianship. His unique approach to the piano and his profound contributions to jazz have solidified his place as one of the greatest pianists in the history of the genre. With this exceptional solo album, MM invites listeners on a personal and intimate musical journey, as he displays his extraordinary command of the piano. His nuanced phrasing, exquisite dynamics and deep understanding of harmony create an enchanting and captivating listening experience.