Claudio Santoro’s remarkable final decade, in which he allied more traditional and eclectic styles to his earlier experiments. Both the Concerto Grosso and the Three Fragments on BACH were written for student orchestras, but are nonetheless substantial pieces which show his command of writing for strings. The Eleventh Symphony is one of the densest and most dramatic of the cycle, its finale exploding into an evocation of the opening of Brahms’ First Symphony, while the Twelfth Symphony is an unusual ‘sinfonia concertante’ for nine soloists and orchestra.

REVIEW:

I am enjoying getting to know some of this music in ‘The Music of Brazil’ series from Naxos. Santoro’s works have already featured and here we have a further pairing of two of his later symphonies (of a total of 14). They are complemented here by Concerto grosso for string quartet and Three fragments on BACH. Three of the four works here are world premiere recordings. Some of the music features some beautifully percussive ‘Latin’ orchestration and rhythm whilst there is also much that is reminiscent of Soviet traditions of the early/ mid twentieth century. The whole CD makes for enjoyable, interesting listening.

-- Lark Reviews

Concertante orchestral works for more than one keyboard instrument saw a revival after the First World War with the neo-Baroque trends of the time helping to revitalize the neglected concerto grosso genre. Recorded here in a new version with three pianos, Martin’s Petite symphonie concertante reflects the dark tensions of the Second World War, while Poulenc’s delightful Concerto for Two Pianos is infused with the spirit of Mozart in its rich and eclectic stylistic tapestry. Shostakovich’s Concertino, in a new orchestral version, shifts between superficial Soviet entertainment and heartfelt expressiveness, and the songs quoted in Aryeh Levanon’s Land of Four Languages symbolize a hope for peace and harmony in Israel.

From the late Romanticism of the music from Pearl Harbor to the delicacy and refinement of The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Anna Scheps brings the full resources of the piano to bear on some of the most beautiful and rousing film scores of the last half century. Her arrangements for piano exude eloquent virtuosity and Lisztian rhapsodic lyricism as well as razor-sharp dynamism in the case of Mission: Impossible. She also includes the evocative sound world of Isaac Albéniz and the sparkling elegance of Scarlatti sonatas to create an album of ambitious bravura and poetry.

REVIEW:

There’s no doubting the virtuosic talent on display here and some of the arrangements are rather insightful, taking familiar cinematic ditties to new musical heights.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Baroque works for oboe have long been fertile ground for transcription to the trumpet and there are several examples here of this refashioning. The sequence of concertos and sonatas include examples from Handel’s Italian years, and from Johann Gottfried Stolzel, who was strongly influenced by Vivaldi. Telemann’s marvelously inventive Concerto in D Major is performed on the modern flugelhorn. In addition, there is the only known surviving work from Johann Michael Fasch, younger brother of the more famous Johann Friedrich.

Polish by birth, Fryderyk Chopin made his name in post-Revolutionary Paris and is often depicted as the archetypal Romantic artist – blessed with extraordinary talent but consumed by the flame of genius, tormented by intense and tempestuous relationships and doomed to an early death. But how much of this story is based on fact? This account of Chopin’s life and times separates myth and reality. Illustrated with numerous musical examples, the narrative, written by music historian Dr. Davinia Caddy and narrated by actor Lucy Scott, takes us from his youthful beginnings as ‘a second Mozart’ to the darkness and light of his life and the brilliance of his work.

Also available: Schumann-Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 / Alsop, ORF Vienna RSO

Robert Schumann’s works lie at the center of German Romanticism, with an essentially lyrical style that reflects his quintessential place among the great German composers. From 1840 Schumann switched from writing, primarily, piano music and Lieder, to writing orchestral music, with the joyful First Symphony written in just four days, and the uplifting tone of the Second Symphony a remarkable triumph over depression and illness. But the effectiveness of Schumann’s orchestration in his symphonies has been the cause of much debate. Gustav Mahler’s re-orchestrations from the early1900s provide models of tasteful modification that are suited to the larger orchestras of today.

Learn more about this release in this Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast episode!

REVIEWS:

Mahler, king of the large orchestra, actually lightened Schumann’s textures in these arrangements. The results, when played with such passion and precision as here, are hugely rewarding.

-- BBC Music

Both works on this program benefit from unusually fine accounts by Marin Alsop and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. For my money these really committed performances are of even greater significance than are the Mahler re-orchestrations.

-- Audio-Video Club of Atlanta

Marin Alsop may have done real credit to this revision, as she gives them the greatest attention and makes her orchestra sound appropriately powerful and grandiose.

-- Pizzicato

Anthony Hedges was a popular and versatile composer with some 300 broadcasts to his name in Britain and abroad. He wrote prolifically in a variety of genres, often in response to commissions, from music for massed children’s choirs and youth orchestras to operas and chamber music. His scenic imagination and atmospheric tone pictures are full of warmth and color, such as can be found in the Four Breton Sketches and Scenes from the Humber, which captures the spirit of the city of Hull, where he spent many years teaching. The delightful Heigham Sound shows his vivacity and compositional élan.

The unique instrumentation of the three works in this album was pioneered by the innovative Lou Harrison, whose 1959 concerto encapsulates his culturally wide-ranging aesthetic. More conventional instruments work alongside calibrated extras such as wash tubs and flowerpots in a work of color, languorous elegance and kinetic energy. The companion works were composed in its honor: Robert Xavier Rodríguez’s Xochiquetzal evokes the ancient Mayan world in imaginary folk music to form a synthesis of time periods and cultures, while the economical serenity of Kati Agócs’s concerto also includes bitonal effects and zesty syncopation.

Meyerbeer was a precocious composer and this album traces some of his very earliest works. Der Fischer und das Milchmädchen was his first stage work, a charming rural vignette that contains all the essential features of a ballet-divertissement couched in writing that enchantingly evokes the 18thcentury. Collaborating with his teacher, the Abbé Georg Vogler, Meyerbeer composed DerAdmiralin1811. The following year saw Wirt und Gast with the vivid Oriental exoticism of its Janissary music, while Romildae Constanza, his first Italian opera, shows his complete assimilation of Rossinian models.

REVIEWS:

Convincing performances of some delightful, largely unknown, scores.

I have had cause to praise the players of the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice on this website before...On this occasion their skilled sensitivity to the demands of the music is again well to the fore and they give us completely idiomatic accounts that are characterised, as appropriate, by delicacy or finely controlled energy. Several passages, especially in the earliest works, offer considerable opportunities for solo woodwind players and, whether from the flautist, oboist or clarinettist, those are invariably finely delivered. To employ a well-worn but nonetheless very useful cliché, all 34 musicians perform as real chamber players who are constantly listening intently to each other – as well as taking their musical lead from their conductor. Dario Salvi is, of course, something of a specialist explorer of the lesser-known byways of music composed in the second and third quarters of the 19th century and, by skilful control of orchestral colour, orchestral balance and dynamics he creates performances that could hardly, I think, be more idiomatic.

-- MusicWeb International

With specially made instruments and a range that can emulate that of a whole orchestra, the acclaimed Guitarra a Seis bring us a colorful program that includes works written specially for the ensemble. Opening with a real feast for the ears in Bach’s lively Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, we further encounter the magical moods of Ravel’s Ma mere l’Oye, a blend of Bulgarian folk and modern music from Atanas Ourkouzounov, Tobias Krebs’ jazz-infused Suite Panamericana, and Sergio Assad’s humorous Juan Sebastian’s Bar, which alludes to Bach and Beethoven but is Brazilian through and through.

Through much of history the language of women has been told through men, but La Femme turns this narrative upside down. All of these composers share an unrelenting will to be artistic, often in opposition to the societies in which they found themselves. From the very earliest medieval verses by Kassia via the blind virtuoso Maria von Paradis’ famed Sicilienne and Holocaust victim Ilse Weber’s moving Wiegla, to powerful modern statements by the likes of Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Flaka Goranci’s own contribution, The Speech of Love - this entire project is dedicated to all creative women in music.

CONTENTS:

• Suad Bushnaq: The Borrowed Dress (From "The Borrowed Dress")
• Dima Orsho: Those Forgotten on the Banks of the Euphrates
• Jasmin Reuter: Salomea
• Trad.: Ой не світи місяченьку
• Weber, I: Wiegala
• Paradis: Sicilienne in E-Flat Major
• Nourbakhsh: The Window
• Flaka Goranci: The Speech of Love
• Pejačević: Blumenleben, Op. 19
• Ella Milch Sheriff: Zeh hayofi
• Annamaria Kowalsky: Perpetuo (Encore Version)
• Kassia: Pelagia
• Vratchanska: Peperuga
• Nazife Aral Güran: 3 Concert Etudes for Piano
• Trad.: Со маки сум се родила
• Zebeljan: Sarabande for Chamber Clarinet, Violin & Piano
• Caccini, F: 36 Solo Songs & Duets, No. 29, Chi desia di saper

REVIEWS:

This is a very interesting concept album, highlighting not only the creativity and artistry of women but also giving priority to their beliefs and passions. Sources range from the mediaeval period to the present day with an emphasis on the more contemporary. A variety of styles and media are employed – art song, piano solo, western and eastern influences, acoustic instruments and electronic timbres. This is a far-reaching project to educate and inspire and a very enjoyable program.

-- Lark Reviews (Stephen Page)

This disc celebrates female composers and highlights their battle against prejudice. It should be a given that members of half of the world’s population can lead, innovate, make discoveries and create art as well, or better than, the other half. Flaka Goranci has showcased composers whom we should know better. I look forward to hearing more from her and from them. She is also the leading performer, and her stunning voice is ably and sympathetically accompanied by the World Chamber Orchestra conducted by Konstantinos Diminakis.

Goranci has outstanding collaborators. Dima Orsho sings alongside her in Arabic. Zoryana Kushpler performs the Ukrainian folk song. Violinist Maximilian Bratt, cellist Teodora Miteva and pianist Donka Angatscheva make a faultless contribution. This brilliant disc should be cherished and shared around. It shows how women are the equal of men. It comes with my highest recommendation.

-- MusicWeb International

Ferdinand Ries was a friend and pupil of Beethoven and was praised by Robert Schumann for his ‘remarkable originality.’ He was also one of the great piano virtuosos of his age and perfectly placed to compose works for his instrument that honor the Classical tradition of Haydn and Mozart while foreshadowing the Romanticism of Schubert and Chopin.

In Susan Kagan, an acknowledged authority on the composer, these works have found an interpreter of sympathy and eloquence who brings the composer’s fluency, poignancy, and drama fully to life: “Ries could not have asked for a better pianist and proponent than he has found in Susan Kagan.” (Fanfare)

Johann Simon Mayr was among the most successful Italian opera composers prior to Rossini, and while he was long remembered as Donizetti’s teacher his excellent music is now gaining the recognition it deserves.

L’accademia di musica is a single-act farsa or comedy, its narrative a variation on the familiar situation of an elderly rich man trying to seduce and marry his young maid and the complications and intrigues that ensue, including ‘play within a play’ and a concert held as part of the opera. With its vaudeville finale and metaphorical touches, this opera simultaneously recalls 18th-century traditions and anticipates Rossini.

The trumpet has had many concertos written for it by composers from the Soviet era and beyond. Appealing in its unabashed melodies and colorfully nostalgic feel, Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto became popular in the West, while Weinberg’s emotive Trumpet Concerto in B flat major was summed up by Shostakovich as a ‘symphony for trumpet and orchestra’. Shostakovich’s own playful Concerto No.1, Op. 35 is recorded here with Timofei Dokschizer’s extended trumpet part, bringing it closer to the Baroque ‘double concerto’ model that the composer may initially have intended.

Featuring Vaughan Williams’ masterly and intensely personal Five Mystical Songs, this album reflects on the sources of inspiration of some of his sacred choral works, alongside gems of 19th- and early-20th-century English church music. Often setting the poetry of the King James Bible, the finely spun melodies and sensitivity to word-rhythm of composers from S.S. Wesley to Herbert Howells result in a uniquely British form of expression.

REVIEWS:

An exquisite performance of The Call by Roderick Williams and Martin Ford is a highlight of this Vaughan Williams collection. As ever, the Vasari Singers are confident advocates for repertoire that they and their conductor know very well, scrupulously adhering to every musical detail and editorial mark.

-- Choir & Organ

Particularly thrilling is the performance of `Lord, Who Hast Made Us for Thine Own’, a stirring Psalm setting by VW’s close friend Gustav Holst, which makes inventive use of the hymn tune Lasst uns Erfreuen. With frequent modulations and variations, like having the basses sing the tune in augmentation under the upper voices, the work builds ecstatically with repeated exclamations of “Alleluia!”

Most of these anthems are well known and often performed, so perhaps the work on this album with the main appeal is 5 Mystical Songs with texts by the 17th Century metaphysical priest-poet, George Herbert. VW wrote them for a baritone soloist and offered several choices for accompaniment: orchestra with optional SATB chorus as performed at the premiere, piano only, piano and string quartet, and wind ensemble. The version heard in this program is a very effective new arrangement by Martin Ford for baritone, chorus, and organ based on the basic keyboard reduction in the vocal score and the full orchestral score.

Roderick Williams brings all the wonders of his superb artistry to this performance—his glowing tonal warmth, superb shaping of the text, and impeccable articulation of it. I heartily concur with Paul Althouse, who in a review a few years ago wrote that Williams is a singer “who has a voice you’ll never tire of”.

-- American Record Guide