Includes work(s) by Samuel Barber. Ensemble: Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Conductor: Marin Alsop.

Following successes with the Firebird (Naxos 8571221) and Petrushka (Naxos 8571222) Stravinsky's ballet the Rite of Spring was the most ambitious and controversial result of his collaboration with Sergey Dyagilev's Ballet ruses the premiere performance in 1913 leading to a riot in the theatre. The Rite of Spring portrays atmospheric and dramatic pagan rituals which culminate in a sacrificial dance during which the Chosen One dances herself to death. The Dumbarton Oaks concerto represents Stravinsky's later neoclassical style referring to Bach in it's compact scale and transparency of language.

Giovanni Legrenzi was one of the most gifted and influential composers of his generation, playing a decisive role in the establishment of Baroque style in northern Italy in the latter half of the 17th century. Drawing on the example of Monteverdi, Harmonia d’affetti devoti for two, three, and four voices with organ bass, was intended for liturgical use, but the sung texts depart entirely from tradition, being chosen to maximize the expressive power of their musical settings. This world premiere recording reveals Legrenzi’s extraordinary melodic refinement, rhythmic vitality and perfect elegance, all designed to rouse listeners to feelings of stupore et maraviglia (‘wonder and amazement’).

Classical Music

String quartet-mates Bogdana Pivnenko, Taras Yaropud, Kateryna Suprun, and Yurii Pogoretskyi join forces with pianist Iryna Starodub to bring some of Ukraine's most brilliant twentieth-century music to the world.

Boris Lyatoshynsky was a leading member of a new generation of Ukrainian composers that emerged in the 1920s. His expansively conceived Ukrainian Quintet finds him at his most emotionally overt, with a heartfelt Lento e tranquillo second movement. Dedicated to Lyatoshynsky, Valentin Silvestrov’s Piano Quintet dates from the start of his Modernist odyssey of the 1960s, while Victoria Poleva’s withdrawn and secretive Simurgh-quintet is part of a style that embraces spiritual themes and musical simplicity, referred to as sacred (or 'holy') minimalism in the West.

REVIEW:

Violinist Bogdana Pivnenko and her team make a strong case for the Poleva's Simurgh-quintet, showing great sensitivity, yet also enough dynamic range to create a sense of momentum towards the ending. The pioneering nature of this disc will hopefully encourage more exploration of this repertoire.

-- Gramophone

 

This sixth Naxos American Classics album of the music of Richard Danielpour presents world premiere recordings of Richard Danielpours' last three string quartets. No. 7 includes the appearance in the finale of soprano Hila Plitmann. Each of these three quartets is informed by a particular theme: String Quartet No. 5, subtitled ‘In Search of La vita nuova,’ reflects Richard Danielpour’s relationship with Italy over the decades, conveying a sense of journey and discovery expressed in its ultimately elliptical trajectory. Concerned with the quartet as a metaphor for family, String Quartet No. 6 explores ideas of distance, time and ultimately, leave-taking. String Quartet No. 7, subtitled ‘Psalms of Solace,’ pursues the search for the Divine, successive movements taking intellect, the force of will, and romantic love as their subject before the appearance in the finale of a soprano voice.

It is only since the bel canto era in the 19th century that the tenor voice really took off as a leading character in operatic roles, often playing the heroic figure against a love-interest soprano and a villain baritone. This collection of some of opera’s most iconic arias takes us from the dark emotional crises of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Puccini’s Tosca, to the seductive Rodolfo in La Bohème and Donizetti’s show-stopping high Cs in La Fille du régiment. Tenor showpieces that are so famous they have taken on a life of their own include ‘Nessun dorma’, made immortal by The Three Tenors at the 1990 World Cup.

The soprano voice occupies the highest-sounding line of music (in Italian ‘sopra’ means ‘over’ or ‘above’) and it is subdivided into various types. The coloratura is the virtuoso, suited for rapid ornamentation such as in Mozart’s Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte). Puccini’s Mimì (La Bohème) is an example of the lyric soprano, full of drama and well-rounded sound. More powerful than the lyric but retaining her softer qualities is the spinto, exemplified by Madama Butterfly, while the dramatic soprano, with her huge reserves of stamina, can be heard in works by Wagner. This quintessential collection of best-loved arias confirms that the soprano, in all her variety, sits at the very heart of the operatic experience.

Valentin Silvestrov’s elusive post-modern style is rich in nostalgia for the lost music of a barely remembered past filled with beauty and spiritual aspiration. Ode to a Nightingale is a masterly response to Keats’ unsentimental reflection on human mortality, contrasting with the beauty and affecting intimacy of the Cantata No. 4 and the resonant emotional world of its companion piece, the Concertino. Starkness set against elegiac melancholy are the shared features of Moments of Poetry and Music and the Seventh Symphony – an embodiment of Silvestrov’s dual musical nature of anguish and tenderness. Valentine Silvestrov’s music has become widely acclaimed and appreciated through numerous recordings, and he has been dubbed ‘one of the greatest composers of our time’ by the likes of Alfred Schnittke and Arvo Part. Naxos and Grand Piano have added to his catalogue with significant releases and ‘beautiful, sensitive performances that make a strong impression even though they never raise their voices.’ (Fanfare)

Using a polyphonic musical language that draws on medieval Byzantine chant, Petros Petridis can be considered one of the most important proponents of the Greek National School. The Requiem for the Emperor Constantine Palaiologos mourns the end of the Byzantine Empire with elegiac lyricism culminating in an ultimately uplifting finale. The Third Symphony is a musical tribute to France, Petridis’s adopted home, while the Concerto Grosso enriches an older form with contemporary color. All of these works are eminently representative of this composer’s significant aesthetic and creative achievements.

Silvius Leopold Weiss was acknowledged as the greatest lutenist of his age, composing over 600 pieces for the instrument organized into suites or sonatas. In these arrangements for guitar, Danijel Cerovi? has selected the only two of Weiss’s sonatas to have been given poetic titles, Sonata No. 29 ‘L’Infidèle’ (‘The Infidel’), with its bell-like sonorities and triumphant conclusion, and Sonata No. 28 ‘Le Fameux Corsaire’ (‘The Famous Pirate’), thought to refer to the buccaneering pirate Blackbeard. Cerovi? also includes two of the great Tombeaux, elegies of profound and poignant depth. Danijel Cerovi? is an internationally acclaimed recording artist, touring musician and pedagogue from Montenegro. He is frequently invited to play at international festivals and concert halls, as a soloist or chamber musician, and performs with orchestras all over the world. He has also given masterclasses at international conservatoires, festivals and competitions.

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REVIEW:

A delight; early lute music meticulously and lovingly arranged for guitar seemingly without any loss in the innate musicianship of the original. Mood changes impress by their subtlety and inner charm rather than any attempt to impress.

– Lark Reviews

Fazil Say is one of the world’s most prominent pianists but he is also a much-admired composer with a substantial catalogue of works. He combines both these accomplishments in his two Violin Sonatas, the first of which is suffused with Turkish motifs and dances, such as the horon. The second sonata takes as its theme the abuse of nature and the need to resist despoliation. His Violin Concerto is subtitled ‘1001 Nights in the Harem’ and is full of rich melodies and atmosphere, and features an array of Turkish percussion instruments. One of the most creative and versatile artists of his generation, German-born Friedemann Eichhorn’s artistic activities range from performing early Baroque music on period instruments to classical and contemporary works with renowned orchestras and chamber music partners. Among many other pieces, Eichhorn rediscovered and first recorded the complete violin concertos by French virtuoso Pierre Rode. He studied with Valery Gradow, Alberto Lysy and Margaret Pardee and graduated from the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts, the International Menuhin Music Academy and The Juilliard School. He also earned a PhD in musicology at the University of Mainz.

Feted for his Savoy operas with librettist W.S. Gilbert, Sir Arthur Sullivan also regularly produced music for important royal or national occasions. In 1897, to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, he was commissioned to write a ballet for the Alhambra Theatre in London. Conforming closely to the theatre’s established style, this single-act ballet was a spectacular pageant, featuring ‘specialty’ dances, startling dramatic effects and grand tableaux, notably military ones. Significant research and reconstruction of the score has made this recording possible.

Goethe’s Faust exerted a powerful influence on Romantic composers, offering Robert Schumann a number of unforgettable scenes drawn mainly from the mystical second part of the epic poem which he incorporated into this immensely moving large-scale cantata. Opening with the first love scene between Gretchen and Faust and concluding with the climactic scene of Faust’s redemption, Schumann created a sweeping panorama of dramatic episodes with Mephistopheles’ trickery ultimately overcome as legions of celestial beings bear Faust’s soul to heaven.

Although Paderewski is more readily associated with his career as a legendary virtuoso pianist, his modest output of 70 orchestral, instrumental and vocal works deserves to be more widely known. Prominent among his vocal output is a series of early songs that reveal natural flowing patterns while exploring both melancholy and folk idioms. The Douze Mélodies, written at the end of his compositional career, is the most original and striking Polish set of songs of the period, notable for dissonance, chromaticism and a palette of rich and unusual musical colors, to which this orchestral arrangement adds a whole new dimension. Little known, the early Suite in G major offers youthful warmth and brio.

The fifth Naxos recording of works by Kenneth Fuchs with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by JoAnn Falletta, won the Grammy Award in 2018 for Best Classical Compendium. This new album reveals his mastery of the band medium and features the exceptional United States Coast Guard Band, in definitive performances of seven works for symphonic winds by one of America’s leading composers. Kenneth Fuchs is one of America’s leading composers, and has written music for orchestra, band, voice, chorus, and various chamber ensembles. This release features the alto saxophone concerto Rush, in its version with wind ensemble, presented by soloist Greg Case, who is co-principal saxophonist of the United States Coast Guard Band and has been a member since 1997.

Carl Czerny’s instructional exercises may be his lasting legacy but there remain numerous largely forgotten pieces that reveal important elements of his compositional range. The four Romantic Fantasies named after Sir Walter Scott’s famous Waverley novels are piano duets of epic breadth. In them Czerny ingeniously develops popular Scottish melodies, including the use of the ‘Scotch snap’, to generate a vivid programmatic quality that explores numerous genres. Scherzos, fugal passages, chorales and marches are all featured, and raise the music – full of beauty, virtuosity and unpredictability – to orchestral proportions.

REVIEW:

Though the majority of Czerny's more than 800 works were for solo piano, there were also works intended for use in public concerts, such as the four Romantic Fantasies for piano duet composed in 1832. Each is of sizeable proportions and based on a novel by Sir Walter Scott, Czerny having been an avid reader. They used the stories that were recounted in Waverley, Guy Mannering, Ivanhoe and Rob Roy, and in his thematic material he appropriately used Scottish and English traditional melodies. Technically they are highly demanding, particularly in the many mercurial passages for the right hand of the ‘Primo’ pianist, and proved a very testing time for Pei-I Wang in Waverley. The second Fantasy, in a mood of quiet suspense, leads to the military atmosphere that opens Ivanhoe, and finally he cast Rob Roy as a weighty finale. Mid-way through the disc the North American-based duo exchange places, Samuel Gingher becoming the ‘Primo’, the young duo here offering World Premiere Recordings made in 2019. A discovery that has given me considerable pleasure.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

This is the third volume in the series of orchestral music by Milanese-born Elisabetta Brusa (b. 1954). Sharing its neo-tonal language with her Nittemero Symphony, which can be heard here, the imposing, vividly immediate and approachable Symphony No. 1 is her first work for large orchestra. The symphonic poem Merlin evokes the great magician of legend through rich orchestral colors and powerful rhythms. Volume 2, described by Gramophone magazine as ‘a collection not to be missed’, can be heard here.

Béla Bartók’s formative years as a composer in Budapest were stimulated by fashionable musical salons hosted by the wealthy Emma Gruber (later Zoltán Kodály’s wife). His landmark Rhapsody, Op.1is dedicated to Gruber, while the earlier Variations are a romantic homage to his talented colleague Felicie Fábián, composer of the theme. The virtuoso Etudes focus on hand flexibility for pianists –the pieces For Children are based on Hungarian and Slovak peasant songs partly collected by Bartók. These revelatory sounds caused Bartók to change his approach to composing. He likened the arranging of a peas-ant melody to ‘the mounting of a jewel’, producing extremely effective miniature masterpieces of graceful perfection.

From the mid-1820s onwards Auber’s career was filled with success. His opéras-comiques and grands operas won repeated acclaim for their myriad qualities of Parisian elegance. The fifth volume in this series features two of his Sicilian operas and both center on well-delineated female characters. Brimming with grace, charm and lyricism, the extensive ballet from Zerlineexemplifies why Auber’s music was so popular. Philippe Musard’s QuadrilleNo.2on themes from Zanetta shows the extent of Auber’s contemporary popularity and is a revealing cultural souvenir of the period.

This first volume of Brahms’ complete songs spans a period of nearly 25 years. A prolific composer of Lieder, Brahms’ adherence to traditional form was accompanied by a modern approach to compositional style. Thematically, most songs explore ideas of love, loneliness and solitude, perfectly exemplified by the Vier Gesänge, Op.43. In a similar way the Sechs Lieder, Op.86 share a common theme of a farewell to life. This volume contains some of his greatest songs, including Die Mainacht, as well as little-known jewels such as Versunken.

To mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, Russian born arranger Paul Struck has arranged two of the composer’s great mid-period chamber masterpieces for soloist and string ensemble. Expanding the sonorities of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata – Beethoven’s most important chamber work for violin – allows the sonata’s concertante quality to emerge in a new light. The Cello Sonata No. 3 equally succeeds in conceiving the piano part for ensemble, while exploring fullness of sound and maintaining transparency of texture.

STRAVINSKY, I.: Soldier's Tale Suite / Octet / Les Noces (Tianwa Yang, Virginia Symphony Chorus, Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players, Falletta) The three works on this recording were composed at a crucial juncture in Stravinsky's musical life. The Soldier's Tale, a small-scale theatrical work for instrumental septet, narrator and two speakers completed in 1918 [Naxos 8.573537]. It is performed here in the suite premièred in 1920. The Octet marked a new element in Stravinsky's writing, inaugurating a turn to neo-classicism, whilst Les noces (The Wedding) is a ballet cantata impelled by dramatic motor rhythms, and once again saturated in his Russian background. Scored for pitched and unpitched percussion, vocal soloists, and mixed chorus, it is a pivotal work in Stravinsky's development.

Richard Strauss's orchestral music includes several works with autobiographical significance, including Ein Heldenleben (Naxos 8.554417). Scored for large symphony orchestra, the Symphonia domestic depicts the joys and worries of married life with Strauss, his wife, child and other family members deftly portrayed in a variety of situations, including a 'cheerful quarrel' in which the father has the last word! The Symphonic Fragment from the opera Die Liebe der Danae, based on mythic themes, was arranged by one of Strauss's great champions, conductor Clemens Krauss.

Rossini Hayward, one of the most creative guitarists of his generation, has written a sequence of Christmas carol arrangements that range across the centuries and over continents. These beautiful pieces respect the original carols while bringing to them ingenious new features. Seven of the arrangements involve overdubbing by Hayward himself with voice, percussive effects or guitar, adding new colors, but showing that he always ‘understands the charm and power of simplicity’ (Classical Guitar).

Includes works by:

• Ebel, Eduard (1839-1905)
• Gauntlett, Henry J (1805-76)
•Gruber, Franz Xaver (1787-1863)
• Hopkins, John Henry (1820-91)
• Nielsen, Carl August (1865-1931)
• Nordqvist, Gustav (1886-1946)
• Schulz, Johann Abraham Peter (1747-1800)

REVIEW:

The results are delightful.

-- The Arts Desk

Gottlieb Muffat was the most important Viennese harpsichord composer of the 18th century. He inherited and developed a compound style that fused high Italian Baroque with the lightness of the French school. From his father, Georg – one of the greatest organ and orchestral composers of his own generation – Gottlieb absorbed a gift for ballet movements. This is the third and final volume in Naoko Akutagawa’s critically acclaimed series of Muffat’s Harpsichord Suites.

Vincent Persichetti's organ music holds an important place in 20th-century repertoire. Steeped in tradition and yet open to the currents of modernity, he developed a thoroughly distinctive musical language. The selections from his Hymns and Responses for the Church Year, Op. 68explore traditional form with a refreshing harmonic palette, while the Dryden Liturgical Suite contrasts meditative elements with virtuoso bravura. Persichetti's most extensive organ piece, the Auden Variations, is supremely contrapuntal and accomplished, whereas the Sonata for Organ, though convention-ally structured, daringly explores free tonality.

All three of the works in this program reveal a young composer on the threshold of greatness, serving as his passport to the vast new world of orchestral music prevailing at the beginning of the 20th century. Inspired by the tone poems of Richard Strauss, Bartók’s Kossuth dramatically commemorates the struggle for Hungarian independence in 1848 with an alluring and provocative orchestration. The Two Portraits set moods of love and painful heartbreak into stark contrast, while the First Suite is a showcase of symphonic effects which caused a sensation in Vienna at its première in 1905.

Christophe Dejour’s arrangements of music by Albeniz and Granados performed by Trio Campanella have won much acclaim. For this recording he has made three pioneering arrangements that further expand the instrument’s repertoire and compass. Dejour’s arrangement of Gesualdo’s Canzon Francese del Principe is both expressive and idiomatic, and he explores two great 20th-century works in Berg’s milestone Piano Sonata, Op.1and Bartók’s profound and complex Sonata for Solo Violin which was inspired by Bach.

Saint-Saëns composed many original works for the violin. He also took the art of arrangement to new heights of refinement, believing his transcriptions were independent of their models, following the precedent of composers such as Liszt. This album presents early or alternative duo versions of some of Saint-Saëns’s most popular works, in which the declamatory style of the originals – such as the ever-popular Danse macabre or the habanera-infused Havanaise–is made more intimate and subtle. Composed for the exclusive use of Queen Elisabeth of Belgium in 1918, the Airde Dalila here receives its world premiere recording.