SZYMANOWSKI: Songs with Orchestra

CINEMA CLASSICS, Vol. 11

Etude, classical favorites for relaxing and dreaming. Baroque period music performed by Capella Istropolitana; Concentus Hungaricus; CSSR State Philharmonic Orchestra, Kosice; Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra; Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra, Kosice also appearing is the Moyzes Quartet Performing arrangements by Chopin, Corelli, Gluck, Bach, and more.

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor "Resurrection"

101 GREAT ORCHESTRAL CLASSICS, Vol. 6

Flanked on this recording by the Missa brevis in G major, the only example of a 'Pastoral' Mass by Mozart, and the emotive Missa brevis in F major, the precocious Mass in C major was composed at the age of only 13. It is a dramatic setting of sizeable proportions, with the Gloria and Credo themselves the length of a Missa brevis setting. The 'Dominicus' Mass shows a deepening of Mozart's contrapuntal and harmonic language, with more adventurous and memorable melodies for the soloists.

Symphonic in scale and with great dramatic power, Rachmaninoff's Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor is an underappreciated masterpiece, depicting a tremendous range of human emotions. The turbulent and brilliant Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor is heard in the 1931 revised version which clarifies textures and streamlines the work, heightening it's emotional impact. The Isle of the Dead employs Georgy Kirkor's 1957 transcription which Boris Giltburg has revised significantly. Giltburg's authority in Rachmaninoff has been universally acknowledged, with his performances termed 'characterful, sensitive and technically dazzling' by BBC Music Magazine (Naxos 8.574528).

REVIEW:

For all his technical ability and mastery of what is possible on the piano, Boris Giltburg is not a merciless technician, but a pianist who immerses himself in the music.

In the two Rachmaninoff sonatas, Giltburg draws us into a music that takes off without harshness, almost floating, and clearly tending toward Scriabin. The contrasts are made all the more exciting by the spontaneity of the playing, as are the magnificent, exciting melodic arcs with which he makes the piano sing.

The transcription of the symphonic poem ‘Isle of the Dead’ is also very successful, because Giltburg and Kirkur have obviously felt the dark and demonic secrets of this music very well. With his imaginative playing, Giltburg gives the piano a very active role, allowing it to act rather than merely reproduce impressions. The music of the Isle of the Dead shimmers in many colors and is full of dramatic power, full of life.

— Pizzicato

Daron Hagen is a multi-award-winning composer with a lifelong commitment to emotionally accessible and heartfelt music-making. Everyone, Everywhere is a sweeping cantata composed to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Taking a variety of texts, it charts the articles of the Declaration, opening in fanfare optimism and ending in tenderness, to form a passionate cry for justice and peace. The other settings, utilising texts by W.B. Yeats and President Abraham Lincoln, are both ardent and intimate.

This album presents a diverse selection of world premieres commissioned by the award-winning guitarist, Gabriel Bianco, from composers who have lived and worked in his native Paris. These range from the swirling Spanish motifs in Matthieu Stefanelli's Ellipsis for four guitars, featuring the Quatuor eclisses, to Camille Pepin's hypnotic Autumn Rhythm and Thomas Viloteau's festive A Night in Bastille - just a few of the highlights in this programme of new guitar music from the City of Light.

Francesco Cilea is best remembered for his operas L'Arlesiana and Adriana Lecouvreur, but his final opera Gloria is a genuine rarity. Set in medieval Siena against the backdrop of conflicts between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, Gloria is a tragic tale of love and revenge that can be seen as a variation on the story of Romeo and Juliet. Filled with beautiful melodies accompanied by rich and refined orchestral sonorities, Gloria reveals itself after years of neglect as a precious masterpiece in this acclaimed production from the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari.

A native of Ukraine, Alexey Shor now lives and works in New York. His music has received prestigious performances and recordings in collaboration with leading international musicians. Joining a long tradition of music inspired by literary sources, From My Bookshelf is a series of musical character portraits that range from the tortured soul of Quasimodo to the dashing D'Artagnan, with plenty of fantasy and romance in between. The engaging and virtuoso Flute Concerto No. 1 combines traditional Classical forms with unexpected harmonic language and intricate rhythmic vitality.

Yasunori Imamura, whose recording of Bach's complete lute works has been described as a 'magnificent interpretation' (Naxos 8.573936-37), turns his attention to the Cello Suites. Imamura has chosen to perform these iconic suites on the theorbo, the most important plucked instrument in the lute family, with a range very similar to the cello. Certain technical elements, such as the playing of arpeggios are, in fact, easier on the theorbo whose unique timbres and resonances bring a new sonic quality to these much-loved works.

FANTASIA

Orff: Carmina Burana

Balakauskas's Requiem is an intimate chamber work in character and scoring, performed by a mezzo- soprano, choir and chamber orchestra. The composer himself claims to have created an emphatically traditional work, though it would appear that here he upholds the old division between the spheres of musica sacra, with it's cultivation of true-and-tried values, and that of the innovation-seeking musica profana. The musical language of the Requiem, compared with Balakauskas's earlier works, is more restrained, the modal structure based on medieval principles. The very first sounds of the Requiem are representative of it's style: a characteristic succession of parallel fifths on the underlying D in the strings, the functional centre of the whole work, and choir voices moving in the spirit of a twelfth-century L�onin organum. As the work develops, the pedal point moves through a circle of fifths, and returns once again to D in the last part of the Agnus Dei (finalis in Dorian mode). In the Confutatis the composer introduces bitonality, as if to illustrate the text. There are other illustrative sections in the work as well, such as the shout of the trombone in the Tuba mirum. Yet, according to the composer, the relationship here between the music and the text is objective, and the music is as it is supposed to be when speaking the word of God. The soloist and choir parts maintain a comfortable range, and are based on the old psalmodic principles of antiphonal and responsorial singing, with the occasional inclusion of the orchestra, as when instrumental sound blocks play against the choir, as at the beginning of Sanctus. The choir melodies are frequently sung in a homo-rhythmic organum. Meanwhile the solo part, first heard in the Tuba mirum, is given embellishments, in the spirit of Gregorian chant melismata, which give the music it's distinctive elegance. Among the various unexpected connections, there is the beginning of the Rex tremendae, men's voices accompanied by low strings, reminiscent of the composer's reference to yet another source, Georgian hymns. The rhythmic structure of the Requiem is related to the technique of the ars nova mensuralists; according to the composer, the score could even be non-metered. The whole of the composition has no characteristics of culminative development, and the soft contrasts are derived by combining parts of diverse character, once again with an orientation to the aesthetic of the Renaissance and earlier times.