Naxos Sale 2026
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Fuga: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-3
Telemann: Sonatas for Bassoon & Guitar
A Vaughan Williams Anthology
Ralph Vaughan Williams is one of Britain’s most illustrious composers, and this specially curated selection of works demonstrates the sheer breadth of his achievement. As a major 20th century symphonist he is represented by four of his nine symphonies, all in critically acclaimed recordings (‘A clear top recommendation’ wrote Gramophone of A Sea Symphony). Popular orchestral works such as the celebrated Tallis Fantasia and The Lark Ascending are also included. Vaughan Williams’ chamber works are performed by the Maggini Quartet, his greatest contemporary champions; while the sublime Mass in G minor shows the composer’s high standing in the English choral tradition.
REVIEW:
More Vaughan Williams—and very welcome, too. While admirers may favour other performances, every take here on the composer’s exquisite scores is more than competitive. This curated selection of works is a measure of RVW’s achievements. As a major 20th-century symphonist he is represented by four of his nine symphonies, all in much-praised recordings, while winning orchestral works such as the celebrated Tallis Fantasia and The Lark Ascending are also included. Vaughan Williams’ chamber works are performed by the Maggini Quartet, his greatest contemporary champions; while the sublime Mass in G minor is a solid addition.
-- Classical CD Source (Barry Forshaw)
Ex Aequo
Brouwer: Reactions - Songs & Chamber Music / Beaty, Skoog, Sato, Nelson, Wang
Margaret Brouwer’s music has for decades been admired for “inhabiting its own peculiarly bewitching harmonic world” (The New York Times). These recently composed pieces reflect her musical representations of particular events: Rhapsodic Sonata charts an internal journey of love, whereas Declaration is a set of songs that addresses ideas of violence and war. Composed at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I Cry – Summer 2020 outlines a process of isolation and restriction. All Lines are Still Busy is a satirical monologue that should intrigue anyone who has been placed “on hold “during a telephone call.
REVIEWS:
Reactions – Songs and Chamber Music presents a rewarding glimpse into Brouwer’s rich compositional world and the broad tonal range it encompasses…[Brouwer] draws on her vast knowledge of classical music to create personalized expressions that render into compositional form the essence of a particular subject matter or emotional state.
-- Textura
Naxos presents a portrait CD of American Margaret Brouwer, born in 1940, featuring chamber music & songs. The program opens with an impassioned performance of the Rhapsodic Sonata for viola and piano by Eliesha Nelson and Shuai Wang. This pianist also acts expressively in the song cycle Declaration, sung very eloquently and sensitively by mezzo-soprano Sarah Beaty. The shorter pieces ‘I Cry – Summer 2020’ for violin & piano and The Lake for tenor & piano are also heard in very appealing interpretations.
-- Pizzicato
The American composer has the expressive skills to evoke the passions she sets out to describe – love, ecology, racism, even being trapped in telephone hell…Brouwer’s musical language – tonal with deft sprinklings of harmonic spice – draws the instruments into ardent and wistful conversations.
-- Gramophone
Wranitzky: Orchestral Works, Vol. 4 / Štilec, Orchestra Pardubice, Czech Chamber Philharmonic
Malipiero, Ghedini, Casella: Music for Cellos and Orchestra / Shugaev, Uryupin, D. Prokofiev, Rostov Academic Symphony Orchestra
Xiaogang Ye: Seven Episodes for Lin'an / Ollu, Malzew, German State Philharmonic of Rheinland-Pfalz
Berners: Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement / Lloyd-Jones, Cleobury, RTÉ Sinfonietta, BBC SSO
Lord Berners was an eccentric novelist, painter, and aesthete, but it is as a composer that he is best remembered. Berners saw the play Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée (better known as the author of the pamphlet that inspired Bizet's Carmen) in 1917 and ‘was at once fascinated by the grace, the spirit and the character of this little work’. Abandoning operatic tradition, this light and transparently orchestrated version of the narrative unfolds concisely and continuously. The amusing tale is one of domestic bickering and a minor miracle brought about by an act of charity, ‘held together in the style of a symphonic poem’.
REVIEW:
Berners’s one-act setting has all his virtues. The music is ever tuneful, with clear, conversational vocal lines. The accompaniment is elaborately scored, but always transparent and lucidly voiced. Think of Walton’s Facade with a coherent story.
The Caprice is cute orchestral whimsy, suave and witty but never trivial. Putting it on the first track was a good idea. Drawn from some of the opera’s better bits, it makes the overture the opera lacks.
Performances of both works are good, with alert conducting and deft orchestral playing. The singers have steady pitch and pleasing tone quality with good enunciation. There’s no libretto, but it’s sung in English.
-- American Record Guide
Delibes & Minkus: La Source / Kessels, Paris National Opera Ballet & Orchestra
Review:
At last! While we have plenty of filmed productions of Coppélia to watch and enjoy – whether vintage, bang up to date or downright wacky – and a very good one of Sylvia, this new release finally brings the first of Delibes’s three ballets, La source, to a wide audience via Blu-ray and DVD.
The usual explanation for La source’s historical neglect has been that the contribution of Delibes’s co-composer Ludwig Minkus diminished the overall quality of the score. But that suggestion isn’t an adequate one – or even necessarily accurate. In the first place, we need to be clear that “co-composers” doesn’t mean that each of the score’s individual numbers was a sort of high-quality-Delibes-watered-down-by-workmanlike-Minkus hybrid. In fact, the way in which the collaborative process worked was a very practical one – even if we have no idea why it was adopted – with each man allocated responsibility for different parts of the score. Minkus was entrusted with Act 1 and the second scene of Act 3, while Delibes was responsible for Act 2 and Act 3’s first scene. That turned out, in practice, to be a pretty even split, for Minkus ended up providing about 45 minutes worth of music and Delibes penned about 44[.]
It is certainly true that there are differences between the two men’s scores. To some extent, those derive from the mundanely practical point that each composer was writing music for very different sections of the story. Minkus’s focus in Act 1 was on establishing the ballet’s various characters and generally setting the scene, while the finale to Act 3 offered few opportunities as it gave him only six minutes to wrap up the whole drama. Delibes, on the other hand, was tasked with creating the music underpinning the more glamorous jollifications at the khan’s court, which allowed him to concentrate on writing livelier material that was characterised by far more colour, glitter and exotic sensuality.
There is, however, a second and somewhat more fundamental explanation for the perceived contrasts between the two composers’ scores, for Minkus and Delibes had rather different conceptions of what writing music for the ballet actually meant. The former was a composer of the old school who, as Ivor Guest wrote in his booklet essay for the aforementioned Bonynge CD, “specialised in composing music for the ballet, a field not highly regarded in musical circles but which nonetheless demanded a special gift to satisfy the ballet-master’s requirements – to produce melodious numbers for the dances and suitably descriptive passages for the action, and above all to deliver to a deadline”. That has led some critics to perceive Minkus as little more than a hack journeyman who churned out unmemorable material on demand, even though audiences who have come to appreciate the manner in which his skilfully-wrought scores underpin such popular ballets as Don Quixote and La bayadère might beg to differ. In reality, his music was in no way “inferior” to that of the next generation of ballet composers: it simply aimed to achieve a very different - but certainly no less legitimate – musical and dramatic purpose. The first embodiment of that subsequent generation, Delibes himself, was, on the other hand, a composer whose conception of ballet was developing into something rather more ambitious. No less a figure than Tchaikovsky, the originator of the modern “symphonic” style of ballet score, regarded Sylvia as “the first ballet in which the music constitutes not just the main, but the sole interest. What charm, what grace, what melodic, rhythmic and harmonic richness. I was ashamed. If I had known this music earlier, then of course I would not have written Swan Lake”.
It is far too easy, in fact, to assert glibly that any contrasts between the two composers’ contributions are necessarily qualitative in nature. Indeed, when listened to blind and without foreknowledge of who actually composed what, the score of La source – skilfully edited and occasionally augmented here by Marc-Olivier Dupin - actually emerges as a pretty seamless whole.
In reality, there were two other much more significant causes of the ballet’s failure to maintain a long-term place in the repertoire. In the first case, its plot was undeniably involved, and it is notable that the production under consideration omits several of its complicating plotlines. Moreover, the fact that there are no less than three central female figures and that easily confused names were selected for some of the central characters (Naïla/Nouredda, Djémil/Dadjé) does not help. The inconsistency of some of the participants’ on-stage motivations can also be puzzling from time to time – though, in the absence of any other modern production with which to compare it, that may be a feature unique to this particular one.
The second legitimate reason for La source’s relatively rapid descent into obscurity is simply accidental. It successfully maintained its place in the repertoire for a decade and there is no reason to doubt that regular revivals might subsequently have been mounted. However, a disastrous fire in 1873 destroyed the drawings, models and plans on which the original production had been based and, rather than recreate them from scratch, it no doubt seemed easier to ballet impresarios at the time to move on to different projects.
This new Blu-ray/DVD release preserves a new production of the ballet dating from almost 150 years after its premiere. Conservatively choreographed by Jean-Guillaume Bart for the Paris Opera Ballet, it follows the original story’s broad outlines and uses much of the Minkus/Delibes score. Booklet notes author Laure Guilbert is nevertheless at pains to stress that this production is in no way a “reconstruction” of the original but instead has a character and identity of its own. Those last words might be enough to strike fear in the heart of traditionalist ballet fans, but in reality the French choreographer (gushingly described by Ms. Guilbert as a man who “fervently cultivates his attachment to the classical universe… a lover of dance who has transformed [it] into an odyssey throughout the near- and far-flung realms of the art”) is owed a real debt of gratitude for his achievement in returning La source to the stage. There are, it’s true, a few significant problem areas that would have benefited from attention. In the case of the plot, Nouredda’s motivation and reactions as she experiences her character’s trials and tribulations can be somewhat opaque or even downright puzzling. In addition, the stage production itself is visually rather disconcerting. There is, to my own eyes at least, a jarring mismatch between Christian Lacroix’s detailed and often gorgeously elaborate costumes and Éric Ruf’s essentially impressionistic set designs. The latter are highly imaginative and attractive in their own right (especially a set of prominent and exquisitely lit ropes, lowered over the stage from the flies, that represent trees) but they are clearly not intended as any sort of realistic depiction of the settings and that doesn’t gel with the detailed, elaborate and convincingly “realistic” clothing sported by the dancers. Neither element can be described as wrong in itself, but another producer might have chosen to integrate them more effectively.
The quality of the dancing, meanwhile, is generally high, with the women, in particular, demonstrating confident assurance in their own technical skills. Ludmila Pagliero as Naïla performs with delicacy and an appropriate sense of otherworldliness; she presumably impressed not only the theatre audience but the company’s management, too, as within a year of this performance she had been promoted to the top rank of danseuse étoile. Meanwhile, the nature of her role as the princess Nouredda means that the other leading female dancer, Isabelle Ciaravola, tends to spend a disproportionate amount of time on stage looking depressed and generally mopey – although there are also moments, as already noted, when she looks bizarrely happy even though her circumstances are at their worst. If her acting is somewhat questionable, the same cannot be said, however, of Ms. Ciaravola’s dancing which is, invariably, both sensitively and often rather beautifully delivered. Of the men, Karl Paquette combines sheer energy with attention to detail in a winning performance that suffers only from an uncharacteristically drab and featureless costume, little suited, in my opinion, to the hero of a classical ballet. The role of Nouredda’s brother Mozdock, concerned about her only as far as she serves his own political ambitions, is taken by Christophe Duquenne who delivers an effectively villainous turn while leading his energetic and well-drilled soldiers in several lively numbers. Dancing as the elf Zaël, Mathias Heymann is the audience’s favourite as he leaps his way enthusiastically and repeatedly across the stage, creating a genuine character out of his role. The dancer portraying the libidinous khan, Alexis Renaud, makes the most of his opportunities but does not create as much of an impression as the other men. The rest of the company make a very positive contribution, to the extent that I thought that the numbers in which the primary focus was on the corps de ballet were among the most effectively delivered in the whole performance.
On the technical side, I was particularly impressed by the effectively realised stage lighting which has been very well captured on film. The sound, as relayed on this recording, is also more than merely acceptable and allows us to appreciate plenty of felicitous detail from the orchestra, led on this occasion by Koen Kessels who will be known to many as music director of the Royal Ballet. Meanwhile, the experienced François Roussillon’s film direction focuses our attention to everything that we need to see while not distracting us unnecessarily or drawing undue attention to itself.
This is an important release for balletomanes. It is, I think, unlikely that there will be an alternative version of La source any time soon...I repeat, therefore, my original reaction to the release of this new and well-produced Blu-ray disc – at last!
Rob Maynard
Mozart: Cosi fan tutte
Delibes - Minkus: La source, ou Naïla
Curzon: Robin Hood Suite etc. / Cápová, Leaper, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
Soler: Keyboard Sonatas nos. 93-95 / Konnov
Sousa: Music for Wind Band, Vol. 23 / Brion, Her Majesty's Royal Marines Band and Choir, Plymouth
John Philip Sousa’s fame as ‘The March King’ came about in part due to the tireless touring of Sousa’s Band, attracting worldwide acclaim with thousands of concerts. This final volume in the series explores some of the lesser-known corners of Sousa’s output. These include fantasies and humoresques that use renowned classical works and fashionable melodies of their day. Also featured are the rarely heard processional hymn with choir We March, We March to Victory and The Fancy of the Town, which offers up a world tour of traditional and popular songs.
REVIEW:
"Over the Footlights in New York" treats themes from several classical sources. 'Fancy of the Town' is an arrangement of several songs, some well known, some not. Sousa called the flowing 'What Do You Do Sunday, Mary?' a “humoresque”, though despite the title, ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad’ and ‘Oh Susanna’ pop in. We March, We March to Victory (with chorus) is a spirited rouser that somehow seems banal.
The rest of the program is made up of Sousa arrangements. All these works are light, upbeat, and typical of turn-of-the-20th Century music-in-the-park Americana. The performances are well played and recorded, and the notes are nicely written and informative.
-- American Record Guide
Büchner: Woyzeck / Directed by Ulrich Rasche
Please note: this is a recording of spoken theatre, not opera.
One of the most important dramas in the German language, Georg Büchner’s fragile fragment is based on the case of the soldier J.Ch. Woyzeck, who stabbed his lover to death in 1824. Büchner explores the question of our dependence on social conditions, while also addressing the role of individual freedom and of fatalistic determination in our lives. Rarely has the hopelessness of Büchner’s Woyzeck been so movingly portrayed as it is in this production. Ulrich Rasche’s sets conjure up a series of breathtaking images, each of them reflecting the situation onstage. This production opens up a direct route to the narrative that is hard to resist.
“Büchner's Woyzeck has never been seen like this. Gutted and yet filled. Abstract and at the same time of concentrated force." -Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Hildalgo & His Anonymous Peers: The Guerra Manuscript, V. 6
Jiang Li: Art of the Chinese Xiao & Hulusi
Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 5 "Emperor" & 0 / Giltburg, V. Petrenko, RLPO
These works share the common key of E flat major but represent two very different stages in the composer’s life. The Piano Concerto "No. 0," WoO 4, was written when Beethoven was 13 years old and is one of his earliest works. With the orchestral score lost, this extant version for piano solo written in Beethoven’s hand includes the tutti sections reduced for piano. The radiant ‘Emperor’ Concerto shows the 38-year-old Beethoven at the peak of his creative powers, and remains a glorious example of his spirit triumphing over life’s adversities.
REVIEW:
Boris Giltburg’s recording of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto is offered with a scintillating twist, the ‘other’ E-flat concerto composed when the composer was 13. This brings Giltburg’s Beethoven concerto cycle to a close, his ebullience and physicality the reverse of plain-speaking, brilliantly partnered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under Vasily Petrenko.
Given such forces this is never simply ‘another’ Emperor, but one boldly and exuberantly conceived. Giltburg makes you listen with new ears to one of the most familiar and greatly loved works in the repertoire. The Piano Concerto No 0 (played in Beethoven’s original piano reduction) may be a protracted jeu d’esprit, but Giltburg’s relish of its tonic, virtuoso aplomb sets the pulse racing. Naxos soundworld is of an exceptional clarity and focus.
-- International Piano
Excellent performances of the Emperor and the rarely heard Concerto No. 0. The sound reproduction on this Naxos CD is vivid and well balanced. Those looking for an excellent performance of the Emperor and who are attracted to its lesser coupling, will certainly find this a most rewarding disc.
-- MusicWeb International
Pluddemann: Ballads, Songs & Legends
Two Classic Political Film Scores - Revueltas: Redes - Copland: The City / Gil-Ordóñez, PostClassical Ensemble
Berners: Ballet Music - Les Sirenes; Cupid & Psyche / Sutherland, Lloyd-Jones, Royal Ballet Sinfonia, RTÉ Sinfonietta
Lord Berners excelled in the ballet medium where he enjoyed collaborations with leading choreographers and conductors with whom his natural flair for spectacle and design could be explored to the full. In 1946 he wrote Les Sirènes, set on a French beach in 1904 with an exotic cast – the music is atmospheric, graceful and full of allusions to other composers. Cupid and Psyche was not a critical success but its music transcended weaknesses in the scenario and the suite is both orchestrally deft and thematically memorable.
REVIEW:
Lord Berners, otherwise Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, as well as being an eccentric English aristocrat was also a composer of some significance, respected by Stravinsky and commissioned by Diaghilev while he was only a student. His particular interests settled on ballet, which had increased greatly in importance thanks to Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes. Although Diaghilev died in 1929 and his company with him, successors took up the cause in Britain and a number of composers of the time wrote for the ballet. These included Vaughan Williams and Walton as well as Constant Lambert, who was a friend of Berners and may have helped him with aspects of his works.
Here we have the last two of Berners’ five ballets, preceded by the elegant Fanfare he wrote for the St Cecilia’s Day concert in 1931 in aid of the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund. This is his shortest piece. Then we have the whole of his ballet Les Sirènes. The original sirens were dangerous creatures who lured sailors onto rocks with their singing. They have been represented as human-headed birds and also as mermaids. For this ballet, Berners drew on Moths, a novel by Ouida about a woman forced into a loveless marriage to a domestic abuser. Berners’ choreographer, Frederick Ashton, also introduced seagulls into the story. The result is a complicated plot, set out at length in the booklet. The music consists of ten numbers, written with Berners’ usual verve and charm, and involving a good deal of quotation and pastiche. The opening is like Fauré, there is a Tchaikovskian waltz, a Chopinesque mazurka, a bit of Spanishry, some cod Orientalism and so on. The whole thing is a light-hearted romp. However, a work which would have been enjoyed in the 1920s was out of touch with the mood of the times in 1946 and it was not revived after its initial run.
Cupid and Psyche was an earlier work, first given just before the Second World War when it was even more of a flop. This is a shame because it is based on the wonderful story of Cupid and Psyche from the novel The Golden Ass by the Roman writer Apuleius. It may be a retold folk tale or it may be Apuleius’ own invention. However, the adaptation for the ballet was in some ways inept: it was obviously not sensible at the time to present the god Jupiter as a fascist leader with a Mussolini salute. Berners rescued seven numbers as a suite, which is what we have here. It is similar to Les Sirènes but is generally a weaker score. There is a touch of melancholy, appropriate to the subject, and the ghost of Ravel, specifically his Daphnis and Chloé, hovers at some distance behind the work.
The performances here are cheerful and effervescent, light in touch but also precise. In Les Sirènes there is a wordless mezzo-soprano in two numbers and a wordless chorus in three, nicely done by the singers listed. This recording was first issued with a slightly different coupling on the Marco Polo label in 1995. With this Naxos reissue I believe that all of Berners’ small output is now available. I am sure he would have been surprised; I hope he would have been pleased.
--MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)
Santoro: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 "Brasilia" / Thomson, Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra
Claudio Santoro was one of Brazil’s most eminent and influential composers. Over a 50-year period, he wrote a cycle of 14 symphonies that is widely acclaimed as the most significant cycle of its kind ever written in Brazil. The two selected works in this inaugural volume of the first complete recording of his symphonies focus on the 1950s, a period when Santoro sought a more direct and communicative idiom using Brazilian elements. His use of folk-based material is nonetheless highly creative, sometimes indeed abstract, as in key moments of Symphony No. 5. The Symphony No. 7 is one of his most complex and intense works, a celebration of his country’s new capital Brasília in music of striking modernity.
REVIEWS:
Claudio Santoro (1919-89) composed fourteen symphonies over the course of about fifty years, making him one of the most noteworthy twentieth-century Brazilian composers in large forms. On evidence here, they are uneven in quality, with the problems occurring when you might expect – in the larger, more complex outer movements. I’m thinking especially of the Fifth Symphony, whose opening Andante mosso–Allegro moderato consists of a series of crescendos leading, essentially, nowhere. The thematic material isn’t too memorable either. The situation improves in the central scherzo and slow movement (a set of variations), but the same “sound and fury signifying nothing” returns in the finale. Santoro’s style incorporates obvious Brazilian elements without ever turning blatantly “folksy.” Clearly the idiom is his own.
This is even more evident in the Seventh Symphony, subtitled “Brasilia,” and designed for the dedication of the country’s new capital city. A more ambitious and successful work than the Fifth, this time with the scherzo played third rather than second, the music evolves from the relative harmonic simplicity of its opening to a more challenging language in the finale–from rural to urban, you might say. Whether this was Santoro’s intention I have no idea, but I like the result. There’s a good bit of stomping and pounding in this symphony–indeed in both works–with some enthusiastic use of the bass drum, but it all seems to be part and parcel of the music’s boldness and energy, and its confrontational gestural language never sounds merely gratuitous.
Certainly the Goiás Philharmonic under Neil Thomson has every reason to be proud of its achievement here. This is not easy music to play. Santoro’s writing for the violins, in particular, sounds positively wicked, with lots of passage-work at high speed, often reaching upwards into the nether regions of the instrument. The scherzos too offer plenty of rhythmic kinks to keep everyone alert, and the crispness of the orchestra’s response can only provoke admiration.
-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)
Neil Thomson conducts strongly committed readings of these fine works, and Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra play with confidence. The recording is very fine and the notes are exemplary. This first instalment of the Naxos cycle of Santoro’s symphonies augurs well indeed.
-- MusicWeb International
The journey is navigated with aplomb by Neil Thomson and the Goias Philarmonic Orchestra. Deftly woven counterpoint is contrasted with off-beat rhythms and expansive melodies that showcase each section of the orchestra to effect.
-- BBC Music Magazine
