Intended for the army by his father, Johann – the founder of the waltz dynasty – Josef Strauss instead turned first to engineering and then, in a glittering career from 1856 until his premature death in 1870, to full-time composition and conducting. Josef was especially enamored of the music of Offenbach whose operettas and operas traveled successfully from the Parisian stage to Vienna. It was Josef’s custom to take the most attractive and suitable motifs from Offenbach’s stage works and fashion them into quadrilles, works performed to huge acclaim by his virtuoso orchestra.

The Chinese composer Bright Sheng was born in Shaghai and studied there and in the Unnited States, where he has established a reputation as a composer. He has won awards both in China and in America. The present release includes works evoking th spirit of China, a celebration of it's landscape, it's culture and of the sad history of 1937.

Domenico Barbaja (1777-1841) was the legendary impresario who dominated European operatic stages for thirty years. The ruthless mogul was at the very heart of the bel canto era in which beautiful singing, allied to flawless technique, was brought to perfection. This release celebrates his legacy in exploring how Barbaja influenced the way opera was written and performed, by commissioning a series of masterpieces from the greatest composers of the time, such as Rossini, Donizetti and Weber, and staging them in his magnificent opera houses, performed by the most glamorous singers of the age.

LA PLUS BELLE MUSIQUE DE FILM

The ‘My First’ album series from Naxos is the ideal springboard for a lifelong journey through classical music. Each selection is carefully tailored for younger listeners and includes famous tracks as well as unexpected gems. The booklet is full of information on every piece of music. Unique and imaginative, these CDs will open a door to a wonderful world that children and parents can discover together.

An orchestra has lots of different instruments producing lots of different sounds. Whether they’re playing on their own or all at the same time, it can be a tremendously exciting experience to listen to them. From Wagner’s grand ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ to Tchaikovsky’s gentle ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’, you can hear on this album how the character of an orchestra changes all the time!

Mass of Tournai / St. Luke Passion

Bohm: Chorale Partitas - Preludes and Fugues

Although Brahms arranged many of his own works for piano, either played through to friends or published in this form for a wider public, he also turned his attention to the music of other composers.

Severac: Piano Music, Vol. 1: Cerdana - En Languedoc

A pupil of Pizzetti, the Italian composer, critic and pianist, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco is today better known for his guitar works and film scores. From 1940 to 1956 he worked for various film studios in Hollywood, contributing to some 250 productions, and in 1946 he became an American citizen. These highly evocative and atmospheric piano works of his youth, which include depictions of flora and fauna, pastimes and the sea, suggest the lyricism of Pizzetti and the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel.

These four works by the Australian composer, Graeme Koehne, portray a musical individualism defined by the writer James Koehne as 'freestyle composing'. The infectious rhythms and tunes to be found in Unchained Melody, Powerhouse and Elevator Music reflections.

The music of 'Playtime Imagination' was chosen specifically to stimulate the imaginations with melodies and harmonies that are as free and boundless as the world of make-believe. Using the acclaimed Williamson's 'Little Hands' activities as starting points, watch where your child takes his of her dreams!

Hanno Koivula and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra turn in very good performances of these two works. Symphony No. 7, a beautifully luminous piece that has helped to establish Rautavaara's high reputation outside of his native Finland, sounds as lovely as ever in this expertly paced and confidently played rendition. In terms of timings, it falls midway between the premier recording by Segerstam (Ondine) and its slightly leaner immediate successor (Vänskä on BIS), and the bottom line is that there's very little to choose between them. If this performance has any drawbacks, it lies in the somewhat thin sounding violins in the first and third movements, a problem exaggerated by the bright and vivid recorded sound. For this reason Segerstam's recording remains the performance of choice, but only by a hair.


Angels and Visitations presents the composer in a more aggressive mood, a fact that leads some listeners to prefer it to the symphony's melancholy mellowness. Gorgeous string tone is also less of an issue here, and the orchestra's exciting brass and percussion sections make their presence felt to impressive effect. In fact, this coupling offers an excellent overview of Rautavaara's mature style, and even if you own one or all of the previous recordings of this music, you may well want to hear this disc as well. The important point is this: Rautavaara's music rewards the attention, and the fact that large works such as the Symphony enjoy multiple recordings speaks eloquently of their quality and of his importance in today's contemporary music scene. [2/15/2003]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Like Haydn and Mozart or Bruckner and Mahler, Debussy and Ravel are frequently paired, although the differences between them are at least as striking as the similarities. The senior of the two, Claude Debussy (1862-1918), was more prolific and perhaps more innovative than Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), though this does not diminish the latter's achievement. While both composers are often referred to as 'Impressionists', this needs to be qualified: Debussy objected to this characterization, writing in 1908 'I am trying to do "something different"-an effect of reality... what the imbeciles call "impressionism", a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics, since they do not hesitate to apply it to [the Romantic English painter] Turner, the finest creator of mysterious effects in all the world of art'; Ravel saw himself primarily as a 'Classicist', indeed, Stravinsky notoriously dismissed him as a 'watchmaker'. Whatever fine distinctions may be drawn, the music of both these composers- rich, subtle, abounding in ravishing melodies and exquisite harmonies-has become central to the concert repertoire. 'Debussy isn't very fond of the piano,' remarked his teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, Antoine Fran�ois Marmontel, 'but he loves music.' Marmontel was an astute judge: despite precocious talent, Debussy developed slowly as a composer for the instrument. In the process, while not forgetting admired models from the past such as Couperin, Rameau, Chopin and Schumann, he would revolutionize music with his use of unusual tonalities (modal, pentatonic, whole-tone, bitonal), novel modulations and other technical innovations. Debussy saw music as 'not even the expression of a feeling, it's the feeling itself', noting that 'music is not, in essence, a thing that can be cast into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of colors and rhythms.' 'The sound of the sea, the curve of the horizon, the wind in the leaves, the cry of a bird registers complex impressions within us. Then, suddenly, without any deliberate consent on our part, one of those memories issues forth to express itself in the language of music,' he wrote. 'There is no theory. You merely have to listen. Pleasure is the law.' Ravel also studied at the Paris Conservatoire, undertaking further studies with Gabriel Faur� and Andr� G�dalge, and feeling the influence of such contrasting composers as Emmanuel Chabrier and Erik Satie. The luminous precision of his own compositional style embraced Lisztian bravura and Renaissance melancholy, the clarity of a Baroque composer such as Couperin or Rameau and the brooding romanticism of Mussorgsky, fairy tales and foreign locales (Spain, the Near East, Madagascar), Mozart and American jazz, Saint-Sa�ns, Schubert and Schoenberg... However, as Ravel's biographer Vladimir Jank�l�vitch has commented, 'no influence can claim to have conquered him entirely... Ravel remains ungraspable behind all these masks' and his music was no more 'nostalgic', 'modernist' or 'impressionist' than that of Debussy. Indeed, he was always his own man. It is said that when George Gershwin met Ravel, he asked whether he could study with him, to which the Frenchman replied, 'Why do you want to become a second-rate Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?' But when Ravel discovered how much money the American earned, Ravel suggested that he should study with Gershwin!

The names of Romantic composers John Field (1782-1837) and Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) are not often as closely linked as those of Field and Chopin (the latter's Nocturnes having been inspired by the former's), yet as masters of early Romantic piano music they travel very well together indeed. John Field was born in Dublin, the son of a violinist, but moved with his family to London in 1793, perhaps taking violin lessons from Haydn's friend Salomon. He became an apprentice of Clementi, appearing in a series of important London concerts, and later touring widely. After concerts in Russia, he remained in St Petersburg, where he became a fashionable teacher and performer, moving to Moscow in 1821. Illness brought him, in 1831, to London again, a visit followed by a continental tour and a final return to Moscow, where he died. Although Field wrote seven piano concertos and a series of chamber compositions for piano and strings, his chief claim on posterity lies in his eighteen Nocturnes. These 'night pieces' feature song-like melodies over arpeggiated accompaniments whose moods are often lyrical and dreamy. Felix Mendelssohn, grandson of the distinguished Jewish thinker Moses Mendelssohn, was born in Hamburg, the son of a banker. The family moved to Berlin, where Mendelssohn was brought up, able to associate with a cultured circle of family friends. He was associated with the revival of public interest in the music of J.S. Bach and in the early 1830s travelled abroad for his education, spending time in Italy and also visiting England, Wales and Scotland. He was later conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, where he also established a Conservatory, his stay there interrupted briefly by a return to Berlin. He died in Leipzig. Prolific and precocious, Mendelssohn had many gifts as composer, conductor and pianist. His style of composition combined something of the economy of means of the Classical period with the Romanticism of a later age. The 19th Century was the age of the piano, a period in which the instrument, newly developed, became an essential item of household furniture and the centre of domestic music-making. Short piano pieces always found a ready market, none more than Mendelssohn's eight albums of Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words), a novel title that admirably describes the length, quality and intention of these short pieces. However, he also composed a significant number of other piano pieces, including the Preludes, Christmas Pieces, the Barcarolle and Piano Sonata in E major, which while less well known are no less deserving of our attention and enjoyment. While echoes may be heard of Mozart and Beethoven, Mendelssohn's music always has it's own exquisite personality, and his originality is currently becoming more deeply appreciated. Perhaps the extraordinary popularity Mendelssohn enjoyed during his lifetime has counted against him (Queen Victoria is said to have liked his music better than that of Chopin), and while many of his piano pieces are ideal as parlor recital items, Mendelssohn's graceful sophistication places them above countless more sentimental examples by far less talented temporaries.