Gates of Dream features a selection of solo and chamber works for the flute family by the Romanian composer Doina Rotaru as performed by Serbian flutist Iva Ugrcic.
Rotaru works with archetypes and symbols that she carefully weaves into liquid-like heterophonies, blending archaic Romanian influences with contemporary techniques and structures. With the flute as her chisel, she sculpts inventive sonorities while drawing from the past evoking a melancholic atmosphere and feeling of a painful beauty.

Award-winning flutist Iva Ugrcic (pronounced Ooo-gr-cheech) is one of the most exciting and adventurous flutists in the international pantheon. Winner of The American Prize in Woodwind Performance 2023, named BRAVA Magazine’s 2022 “Woman to Watch” and “Musician of the Year for 2018” by The Well-Tempered Ear, Ugrcic is known for her technical brilliance, expressive musicianship, and remarkable versatility. She has garnered international acclaim for her performances, both as a soloist and a collaborator in chamber and orchestral settings in venues across the world.

Three world premiere recordings!

The breadth of Anton Rubinstein’s contribution to the development of Russian culture in the 19th century cannot be overstated. His multifaceted genius can be divided into three areas: Rubinstein the composer, the pianist, and the educator. This third release in the series of recordings of his works for piano and orchestra focuses on Rubinstein’s role as a pianist. Hailed by The New York Times as a pianist of a fiery sensibility and warm touch, Anna Shelest is an international award-winning pianist who has thrilled audiences throughout the world. Champion of esoteric repertoire, Anna’s collaboration with the legendary conductor Neeme Järvi on a project of recording the complete works for piano and orchestra by Anton Rubinstein has been praised by Gramophone Magazine for “…power and agility… effortless effect… nuanced and incisive all around.”

Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983) came of age in the explosively creative days of 1920s Paris. Well-known as the only female member of Les Six, the group of composers which included Darius Milhaud, Louis Durey, Georges Auric, Francis Poulenc, and Arthur Honegger, her circle of friends also included Charlie Chaplin, Picasso, Modigliani, Diaghilev, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Monteux. This recording features works originally for solo piano, as well as transcriptions and excerpts from ballets and film scores. The music spans 60 years and represents some of Tailleferre’s best and most significant work, some of it rarely played or recorded. Praised by The Boston Globe as “a musical and expressive player” who is “sensitive and poetic, and excels in everything that requires elegance, proportion, balance, taste, and wit,” the award-winning Vietnamese American pianist Quynh Nguyen was named one of the “19 Young Stars of Tomorrow” by Musical America. She has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, to wide critical acclaim. The Flower of France marks her debut recording on the Music & Arts label.

Following on the success of their widely acclaimed Music & Arts release J.S. Bach: Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord, Stephen Schultz (Baroque flute) and Jory Vinikour (harpsichord) are joined by Alexa Haynes-Pilon (viola da gamba), and Mindy Rosenfeld (Baroque flute) in superlative performances of François Couperin’s four Concerts Royaux; works which stand among the pinnacles of the Golden Age that was French music during the reign of Louis XIV. This state-of-the-art recording was produced and engineered at Skywalker Sound by two-time Grammy Award winner Jack Vad (2012, 2021).

REVIEWS:

This set is essential for its simple grace. The annotator, Gonzalo Ruiz (an excellent oboist who doesn’t play here), explains King Louis XIV’s restrictions on sharing this royal court music until he was old. He allowed it to be published just before he died, but Couperin had composed it many years earlier. There are four suites. Couperin didn’t specify the instrumentation for this chamber music beyond some general suggestions. Ensembles make their own arrangements to suit their personnel and strengths...Anything with theorbo or archlute usually pleases me with a satisfying low-bass crunch. But there is nothing wrong with this more sparing arrangement or performance by the Schultz team.

Some of the pieces are played entirely by Vinikour as harpsichord solos, or with his harpsichord starting them and other players soon joining in. Haynes-Pilon sometimes plays the bass line with her viol, sometimes up in the violin range. The two wooden flutes have beautifully pure tone, and Schultz and Rosenfeld phrase gracefully with them. The pieces sound splendid here as elegant and lightweight entertainment, of the kind that would soothe a stressed king and please his guests. It’s not too fast (like Musica ad Rhenum’s) or too stern (like Rousset’s), but just right.

-- American Record Guide

Johann Sebastian Bach's six Partitas for Harpsichord are among the greatest and most inspired works of all keyboard literature. They represent the composer's genius at the height of his maturity, matched only by his Goldberg Variations. They are performed here by Colin Tilney on a copy of an instrument by Christian Zell, Hamburg, 1728, built by Colin Booth, Wells, England, 1984. Colin Tilney is internationally known for his harpsichord, clavichord and fortepiano playing, with many solo recordings on DG (Archive), EMI Electrola, Decca, Hyperion, Dorian, Doremi and CBC SM 5000. Originally working in London as an accompanist and repetiteur, in 1979 he moved to Canada, first to Toronto, where he taught at the Royal Conservatory of Music and founded the chamber group Les Coucous Benevoles; more recently (2002) to Victoria where he is on the staff of the Music School at the University of Victoria. J.S. Bach: Partitas for Harpsichord is his eighth recording for Music & Arts.

REVIEW:

Colin Tilney’s tempos in Bach’s music have considerably slowed down with age (the harpsichordist is 87 at this writing), and he never was a sprinter to begin with. As a consequence, his Six Partitas rarely reflect the music’s dance roots. Indeed, movements dependent on rhythmic momentum, like the Fifth Partita’s Praeambulum, No. 6’s Air, No. 3’s Courante, and all of the Gigues often leave a ponderous impression. Rhythmic amorphousness prevails in No. 1’s Praeludium, where Tilney’s loosely held duple meter soon settles into a tuple meter groove. However, Tilney retains his masterful legato finger technique, and the ability to make the quills on his resplendently engineered harpsichord sing, as No. 1’s Sarabande, No. 2’s Sinfonia, and No. 4’s sensitively ornamented Allemande bear out.

Given the performances’ leisurely trajectory, it’s not surprising that they spill over to three CDs rather than the usual two. While my reference Bach Partitas on harpsichord remain those of Trevor Pinnock (Hänssler), Igor Kipnis (Warner Classics), and Jory Vinikour (Sono Luminus), the sheer beauty that Tilney creates in Bach’s more reflective movements may well be worth the price of admission.

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Few things small enough to fit in the palm of the hand can inspire wonder about the limitless potential of human creativity. A collection of early Renaissance devotional objects- elegantly precise boxwood carvings of miniature rosaries, prayer beads and altarpieces, on display as part of a major international exhibition- served as the direct inspiration for this musical program. These objects draw viewers into a private and intimate world of meditation; religious scenes carved with precision and poetry evoke a bygone world of intense spiritual devotion- sometimes tormented, sometimes luminous, but always fascinating. The music in this program is designed to elicit similar sensations in listeners. Originating in northern European circles, contemporary with those who produced these boxwood carvings, these spiritual pieces are not intended for grand cathedrals or public ceremony, but for personal meditation, private chapels and rooms, family houses and assemblies. Like the beads and rosaries, their craftsmanship is precise, superb; rich in subtle details, they lead us to wonder, and to contemplation.

Recording all the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti on the piano is an undertaking of great moment and fascination: a journey through shared cultural experience, as well as one that explores the subtle thought processes of a musical genius, with his Italianate approach to art. This is the fifth volume in this outstanding series. Carlo Grante is one of Italy’s foremost concert pianists. He has performed in such major venues as the Vienna Musikverein, the Berlin Philharmonie’s Chamber Music Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, and more. He has appeared as soloist with all of the world’s major orchestras. In 2014-2015, his series “Masters of High Romanticism,” featuring three recital programmes each devoted to Chopin, Chumann and Brahms, was taken to major halls in New York, Vienna and Berlin. Though best known for his Scarlatti, Mozart, and Chopin interpretations, Grante has had many contemporary works dedicated to him, including Adolphe’s Chopin Dreams. He has released nearly 50 recordings.

"People loved him because of his good nature, even if they did not understand his art." Thus wrote Sibylla, Duchess of Württemberg, Froberger's last patron and his "humble forsaken pupil". She places a finger squarely on two fundamental aspects of Froberger's life: his modest and unostentatious character and the extreme subtlety of his music. A pupil of Frescobaldi and exponent of Couperin, Froberger's complete works remained unpublished until 1897 and it is only in the last half-century that more and more keyboard players have started to feel the persuasion of his secret and inward music. The present recording explores some of the music in the earliest of the three surviving Froberger autographs housed in the Austrian National Library, the Libro Secondo of 1649. Colin Tilney is internationally known for his harpsichord, clavichord and fortepiano playing, with many solo recordings on DG (Archive), EMI Electrola, Decca, Hyperion, Dorian, etc. For Music &Arts he earlier recorded Bach's English Suites on an antique Italian harpsichord, the French Suites on clavichord, an album of fugues by Bach and his forerunners, and a Scarlatti disc.

The first two volumes in this series -the only one ever recorded with the same pianist playing all works - met with high critical acclaim. Jonathan Woolf wrote in MusicWeb International "...beautifully played, and recorded, the first box in Music & Arts' series [CD-1236] is profoundly impressive." And Jed Distler wrote in Gramophone: "My review of Volume I praised Grante's thoughtful virtuosity and stylistic insights, together with his wide range of agogic stresses, articulations and embellishments, not to mention an acute sense of textural diversity an registral differentiation that have as much to do with Grante as with the vintage Bösendorfer grand used. These words apply even more to Volume 2 [CD-1242] where Grante's highly detaile fingerwork goes right to the heart of each sonata's character." " "Sales Inventory