The concertos and chamber works on this album show Villa-Lobos’s unceasing enthusiasm for new colors and sonorities in his music. The Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra was his last work for the instrument and written for Segovia. A cornerstone of the repertoire, it contains soaring melodies and rhythmic vitality couched in virtuosic writing. Exploring the instrument’s full harmonic and chromatic possibilities, the Concerto for Harmonica is also deftly orchestrated. New and daring sonic combinations are to be heard in the two chamber works demonstrating the composer’s extraordinary gift for seductive lyricism.

REVIEW:

The more you listen to Villa-Lobos, the more it seems as though he had a giant block of characteristic music that allowed him to cut off chunks of different shapes and sizes that he called “Guitar Concerto”, “Harmonica Concerto”, “Sexteto Místico”, etc. It’s not that it all sounds the same–it’s just so much the product of a single, unique personality. This splendid program consists of chunks featuring unusual instruments, or combinations of instruments. The best known work here is the Guitar Concerto, an almost impossible piece as regards balance of forces that’s marvelously played by Manuel Barrueco. The problems of audibility are easily solved on recordings, as here, by placing the soloist well out in front of the orchestra, but I’m happy to report that performance noises are still minimal.

The Harmonica Concerto is a rarity, and sounds atrociously difficult to perform. If you don’t know the instrument well, you would never imagine its wide range of pitch and expression, and surprisingly pleasant basic timbre. José Staneck must have lips of steel just to get through the piece, but he does much more than that, offering moments of real sensitivity and grace. The Sexteto Místico is a brief work in one movement scored for–get this–flute, oboe, alto saxophone, guitar, harp, and celesta. There’s nothing like it anywhere else, and the sheer sound of it is so captivating that it almost doesn’t matter what notes the musicians are playing. Fortunately, it seems that they offer the right ones.

The most “normal” piece here is the Quinteto Instrumental for flute, harp, and string trio, a substantial work in three movements as long as any of the concertos (about 17 minutes). Villa-Lobos revels in the music’s exotic sounds and luscious textures, and you will too. The uniformly first-rate performances by members of the São Paulo Symphony under the vital and sensitive direction of Giancarlo Guerrero are excellently engineered, making the whole disc a joy from start to finish–a true voyage of discovery and delight.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

This set consists of previously released recordings. - ArkivMusic

Heitor Villa-Lobos once confessed that he loved to write string quartets, stating ‘one could say that it is a mania.’ His 17 quartets form a substantial part of his chamber music output, covering a long career that embraced national pride and musical experimentation leading to the rarefied atmosphere of the final masterpieces. Often drawing on the musical folklore of Brazil, these quartets are an outpouring of spontaneous and daring invention. Ranging from austere polyphony to compelling expressiveness and virtuosity, they represent one of the most distinctive bodies of chamber works in 20th-century music.

REVIEWS:

Villa-Lobos once confessed that he loved to write string quartets, stating ‘one could say that it is a mania.’ His 17 quartets form a substantial part of his chamber music output, covering a long career that embraced national pride and musical experimentation leading to the rarefied atmosphere of the final masterpieces. Often drawing on the musical folklore of Brazil, these quartets are an outpouring of spontaneous and daring invention. Ranging from austere polyphony to compelling expressiveness and virtuosity, they represent one of the most distinctive bodies of chamber works in 20th-century music. 6 CDs. Danubius Quartet. Original 1992–1994 Marco Polo releases.

-- Records International

Established in 1983, the Danubius Quartet was a Hungarian group – this set was recorded in Budapest – so while they may lack the Latinamericanlo’s Brazilian ‘accent’, they nevertheless hail from Europe’s great centre of string playing. Their brightly projected sound is ideal for Villa-Lobos’s life-affirming music.

-- Limelight

Wolf-Ferrari is famous for his operatic works in which he invented a new idiom by transplanting 18th-century Venetian culture into the 20th century. But almost all of the composer’s orchestral music dates from his final years and occupies a different expressive realm. The Suite veneziana resonates with melancholy, and the Triptychon is a contemplative, passionate masterpiece of orchestration. Subtle use of counterpoint transforms the Divertimento into a playful exploration of themes, while Arabesken pays tribute to an old friend, the Venetian painter Ettore Tito (1859–1941). His own elegantly simple melody, known as ‘Tito’s theme’, is turned by Wolf-Ferrari into a sequence of sumptuous orchestral variations culminating in a powerful fugue.

Acknowledged by Sir Arthur Sullivan as his musical heir, Edward German enjoyed huge acclaim during his lifetime. His dances are ‘charged with the fragrant essence of the greenwood’ and the Overture to Nell Gwyn, with its richly English themes, explains Elgar’s liking for German’s music. The gloriously romanticized Gipsy Suite pays subtle homage to Dvořák; the dances from Henry VIII were responsible for his early celebrity; and Tom Jones (on 8.660270-71) and Merrie England were two of his greatest stage successes. Conductor Adrian Leaper is a prominent conductor in Naxos’ roster and in addition to those light music discs he has also recorded formidable recordings of Elgar and Wieniawski (8.572952), and Havergal Brian (8.572014), among many others.

Famous today for his Trois Gymnopédies, Erik Satie was an eccentric and solitary figure who was nevertheless viewed by some as a prophet of French musical modernism, his striking creativity championed by Ravel and Debussy. From tragedy and trauma in his early years, through his time as a pianist and Parisian provocateur at Le Chat Noir cabaret, and as house composer to the mystical Rose+Croix cult and beyond, Satie’s eventful life is told in this fascinating revue of a composer whose unique music is still influential today. The narrative, written by musicologist Davinia Caddy and read by actor Lucy Scott, is illustrated with musical excerpts from works including Gymnopédie No. 3, Gnossienne No. 3, Sports et Divertissements, Trois Morceaux en forme de poire and Relâche, among others.

Between 1879 and 1880, as he approached his 40th birthday, Giovanni Sgambati completed his Piano Concerto in G minor, a work on which he had been working for about two years. It was a significant moment for Italian instrumental music: it was, in fact, the first Romantic piano concerto by a composer from the country that had given the world both the instrument, invented by Cristofori almost two centuries earlier, and the genre itself.

The Piano Concerto displays an assured compositional hand. It constitutes not only a new beginning for Italian piano music but also a synthesis of the possibilities offered by the genre. An extremely difficult work to play, it is not immediately accessible on a first hearing, given the density of its material, but reveals more about Sgambati’s inventiveness and technical mastery every time you listen to it.

The Sinfonia festiva (Ouverture de fête) was composed in 1878 or 1879, making it contemporaneous with the Piano Concerto and proof of Sgambati’s growing dedication to orchestral music. It is a short but mature work, confidently written, clearly inspired by the dance-like character of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Three main themes, the first lean and lively, the second more lyrical, the third impudent and leaping, are organized according to the principle of sonata form, with a development section in which the initial motif pops up time and again, wandering between tonalities, sometimes giving the impression of formal freedom, sometimes of obeying rondo form.

REVIEW:

A pupil of Liszt, Giovanni Sgambati (1841-1914) stood out among 19th-century Italian pianists for his advocacy of the German school and classical models. His massive three-movement Piano Concerto in G minor (1880) might be described as a hybrid that fuses the similarly scaled Brahms D minor concerto with piano writing marked by Lisztian bravura.

Imagine Liszt reworking the echt-Hungarian finale of Brahms’ Violin Concerto for piano on his own stylistic terms, and you’ll get an idea of what Sgambati’s third movement sounds like. Similarly, the grandiose first movement owes much of its existence to the arpeggiated flourishes in Beethoven’s Emperor concerto first movement and motives from Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasy.

Recorded live in 2013, the (late) pianist Massimiliano Damerini handled the daunting piano part with brilliance and confidence. He positively opens up and thrives in front of an audience.

Both conductor and orchestra make a splendid case for the delightful Sinfonia festiva (‘Ouverture de fête’), presented in its world premiere recording here.

  -- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Early music specialist Federico Maria Sardelli conducts his Modo Antiquo ensemble in this live performance of Cavalli’s Il Xerse – a highly innovative dramma per musica premiered in 1655. Recorded during the the 48th Festival della Valle d’Itria in Martina Franca, Italy, the cast includes the countertenor Carlo Vistoli and soprano Ekaterina Protsenko. A Blu-ray and DVD of this performance were released in June this year on the Dynamic label (DYN-57983 & DYN-37983).

REVIEW:

Francesco Cavalli’s Il Xerxe was first performed in Venice in 1655. The plot essentially consists of the efforts of the Persian Xerxes to win over the beautiful vassal Romilda, who is, however, in love with the king’s brother, Arsamene. The other main characters are also involved in the intrigues: Amastre, the woman already promised to the Persian king, and Adelanta, Romilda’s sister, who would love to see herself on the Thorn.

Countertenor Carlo Vistoli sings the title role with a warm and round, well-managed voice, which also convincingly conveys the character of the fickle figure. With her powerful voice, Gaia Petrone succeeds in interpreting Arsamene in a vocally worthy and credible manner. Ekaterina Protsenko sings a very attractive Amastre, and Caterina Lippo is also convincing as Romilda. The other roles are satisfactorily cast as well. Frederico Maria Sardelli leads the excellent Orchestra Barocca Modo Antiquo in a spirited, flowing and energetic performance.

-- Pizzicato

Angel Stanislav Wang (b. 2003, California), winner of the 2022 Jaén Prize International Piano Competition, presents his debut recital featuring Liszt’s monumental Sonata in B minor, and Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor accompanied by the Bretón String Quartet, plus excerpts from Granados's Goyescas and the competition imposed work Poema a un amor eterno by Laura Vega.

The cello was a vital part of Catalan musical expression in the first half of the 20th century. Pablo Casals as composer and cello virtuoso was its revolutionary force, and his student Gaspar Cassadó joined him in writing superb transcriptions and expressive original works with a strong sense of tradition and national melodic flavour. Casablancas’ Cant per a Frederic Mompou ‘Remembrança’ pays homage to another great friend and colleague, while Enrique Granados’s soulful Madrigal is accompanied by delectable arrangements of piano works with cello such as the Goyescas.

Italian piccolo virtuoso, Francesco Viola, presents this highly personal album of concertos for his instrument by Eastern European composers. Baksa’s Grande concerto piccolo and Viola’s arrangement for piccolo of Hida’s Oboe Concerto are both world premiere recordings. Viola is accompanied by the Nationaltheater-Orchester Mannheim conducted by Salvatore Percacciolo.

Anton Rubinstein’s remarkable virtuoso career during the 19th century coincided almost exactly with the final developments of the modern piano. The increasing popularity of the instrument combined with Rubinstein’s formidable execution earned him enormous popularity as a performer. The Six Preludes and Fugues in Free Style are major works, each piece dedicated and alluding to famous composers and performers of the day. The charming Three Pieces are small-scale character works, while the Concert Étude in C major is a witty display piece in which ‘wrong notes’ are instantly corrected, like an errant pupil attempting to disguise mistakes.

Few composers have achieved greater success with their first published composition than Erno? ? Dohna?nyi with his Piano Quintet in C minor, Op. 1. Written in 1895 and praised highly by Brahms, who is believed to have organized a Viennese performance shortly afterwards, it heralded the emergence of a major new talent. The harmonic ambiguity of the 1914 Piano Quintet in E flat minor points to the composer’s awareness of ongoing developments in European music. Still underestimated, it ranks among the most important works of Dohna?nyi’s ‘middle period’.

2024 Centenary of his death - Gabriel Fauré (1845 - 1924)

Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet in C minor was one of the first of its genre in France, composed as part of the ‘Ars Gallica’ idea of strengthening French music against German cultural domination. Fauré didn’t entirely escape the influence of Brahms however, and both he and his pupil George Enescu share a spiritual closeness to German late Romanticism in the melancholy complexity of expression in these chamber masterpieces. The monumental first movement of Enescu’s First Piano Quartet contrasts with the rhythmic momentum of the last, in a work that integrates French impressionism with the unmistakable folk music characteristics of his native Romania.

The stellar Fine Arts Quartet returns to Naxos with an album of Dvorák gems and surprises. The Second String Quartet is a fascinating example of early experimentation that would foreshadow the modernistic innovations of Schoenberg and his contemporaries. The Bagatelles are heard here in their original instrumentation featuring the harmonium.

REVIEW:

Did Antonín Dvořák suspect that his second string quartet was musically ahead of its time? Was he himself perhaps surprised, even shocked, by its harmonic boldness? Did he not yet feel confident enough as a composer? All of this could explain why the first private performance of the B flat major quartet did not take place until 63 years after it was written – in 1932 – from a reconstructed score. In the meantime, the quartet has been recorded more often than it has been heard in the concert hall.

In its complete recording, the Fine Arts Quartet has now also reached this second string quartet and places it in relation to the Bagatelles op. 47 and the Rondo op. 94.

In both works, the Fine Arts Quartet touchingly captures the Bohemian character, the folk song-like quality that is a basic element in Dvořák’s music. Lots of charm, a soft sound and supple bowing provide the necessary lightness and a slight smile behind the notes.

This grace can also be found in the string quartet – here, however, it comes across more as intimate passion, which is transformed into convincing expressivity through the daring harmonies. Despite the quasi-rhapsodic structure of the work, the Fine Arts Quartet never allows the songfulness of Dvořák’s music to be forgotten by finely differentiating the forward-looking harmonies so that the composition never becomes piecemeal. This also applies to the dance-like moments, which appear again and again and form an exciting symbiosis with Dvořák’s new ideas in this interpretation – in a quartet that also formally dispenses with classical structures.

-- Pizzicato (Guy Engels)

César Franck's only symphony came at a time when the French music world was seeking to rival the great Austro-German tradition. The 'darkness-to-light' narrative of the Symphony in D minor owes a debt to Beethoven and there is a unique power within its distinctive themes, innovative cyclic form, and general gravitas. Franck's student Ernest Chausson was no doubt inspired by his teachers thematic metamorphoses, but the anguished influence of the ever-present Wagner is also ever present.

The published score of Chausson's Symphony in B-flat includes many errors which conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud meticulously corrected after careful study of the composer's autograph manuscripts.

This album presents a selection of Suppé rarities and classics. Poet and Peasant and Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna are two popular examples of Suppé’s mastery. The previously unrecorded Fantasia Symphonica was rediscovered in Viennese archives by Ola Rudner who conducts the Tonkünstler-Orchester on these recordings. Includes two world premiere recordings.

Ernani was Verdi’s most successful opera until he composed Il trovatore. James Conlon conducts this acclaimed live performance from the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino featuring the stellar soprano Maria José Siri. Also available on Dynamic DVD (DYN-37972) and Blu-ray (DYN-57972).

Taro’s Wonderful World was conceived by conductor/composer Fabrice Bollon and author Julia Liebermann as an introduction to or initiation into classical music both for children and adults unfamiliar with the genre. A digital-only version with German narration is also available (9.70356); the CD version does not include any narration. World premiere recording.

This selection of transcriptions celebrates childhood in a variety of ways, featuring popular works – Schubert’s Erlkönig, Granados’s atmospheric Tales of Youth, Mozart’s elegant Sonata facile, Schumann’s Scenes of Childhood and Debussy’s Children’s Corner – presented in a totally natural and idiomatic manner within the guitar’s distinctly expressive soundworld.

The latest instalment in this popular series takes us through the life and times of Franz Schubert. Written by Davinia Caddy, narrated by Leighton Pugh, and featuring a wide selection of musical excerpts from the Naxos catalogue and affiliated labels.

Richard Strauss’s Josephs Legende is a ballet in one act composed for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1914. Fabrice Bollon conducts the Staatskapelle Halle in a work of alluring sensuality and soaring themes.

REVIEW:

All in all, the result is a thoroughly suggestive interpretation, which of course cannot completely take over the scenic element. Nevertheless, the dramaturgical contours are beautifully worked out, and everything leads up to the apotheosis, when Joseph and the Archangel disappear into other spheres. Once again, Fabrice Bollon allows the Staatskapelle Halle to make full use of its potential and to immerse itself in the story, which is not always the case in the tutti passages, which sound somewhat distant – perhaps in order to avoid any pathos. Nevertheless, this remains a rewarding recording of Richard Strauss’ first ballet score.

-- Pizzicato

Paul Reale is best known as an esteemed educator but his composing career blossomed in the latter part of his career. The three works on this album – the Cello Concerto “Live Free or Die”, Piano Concerto No. 1 and Piano Sonata No. 6 ‘The Waste Land’ – all display Reale’s signature use of expressive melody, Baroque counterpoint, references to many types of jazz, and extensions of tonality. World premiere recordings.

Zdenek Fibich was one of the most important Czech composers of the second half of the nineteenth century, after his Czech predecessor, Smetana, and near-contemporary, Dvorák. His Symphony No 2 in E flat major, Op 38 is one of his greatest orchestral works, holding in perfect balance the dual influences of the Czech Nationalist School (and particularly Dvorák) as well as Austro-German models such as Schumann, Weber and Wagner. Most of the main themes derive from some of his own piano pieces but they are integrated and developed in masterly fashion. At Twilight is a lusciously scored orchestral piece, whilst the Idyll is gently melancholic.

As a leading virtuoso who premiered Beethoven’s final violin sonata with the Archduke Rudolph, Rode was at the center of European musical life, his compositions sitting at the apex of the French violin school. The final volume in this acclaimed series presents one of his most inspired pieces, the Violin Concerto No. 11 in D major, lyrically expressive and full of good-humored zest. Violin Concerto No. 12 in E major is notable for the ingenious ways in which, through trills, staccato, spiccato and cadenzas, Rode heightens the music’s bravura. Violinist Friedemann Eichhorn studied with Valery Gradow at the University of Music in Mannheim, with Alberto Lysy at the International Menuhim Music Academy in Gstaad, Switzerland, and with Margaret Pardee at The Juilliard School in New York. He performs with many renowned orchestras across the globe, and his previous recordings for Naxos were highly acclaimed.

Rossini’s operas have remained amongst the most popular in the repertoire but over the last decade of his life he turned largely to piano music. The Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age) occupy thirteen volumes, and the deliciously informal and comic fourth is called Quatre hors d’oeuvres et quatre mendiants. Its theme is food, and Rossini lavishes all his abundant abilities of characterisation in his descriptive passages, not least the introduction of a parakeet.