Anton Bruckner 200 (1824-2024)

Released to coincide with Bruckner's 200th birthday in 2024, this 18-CD set brings together the entire recorded cycle of Bruckner's symphonies in the Capriccio label's The Complete Versions Edition. Markus Poschner's acclaimed recordings of Bruckner's symphonies feature all of the versions identified as having significant revisions and changes in the authoritative Neue Anton Bruckner Gesamtausgabe (New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition), making this the most comprehensive Bruckner Symphonies cycle available today.

Award-winning composer and educator Wenchen Qin's unique musical language is influenced by his multicultural background, integrating Eastern and Western elements. All the works on this release are infused with literature, mythology and a fascination with nature. The Cloud River revitalises the sheng - an ancient Chinese instrument - with new playing techniques. With the sheng also playing a leading role, Poetry of the Land ruminates on how the land provides great inspiration.

CLASSICS AT THE MOVIES: DIVAS

Pavane - Classical Favorites for Relaxing and Dreaming composed by Various. Naxos Night Music. Listening CD. Published by Naxos

Muzio Clementi was famous throughout his lifetime as both a composer and a virtuoso performer, appearing at the court of France and competing with Mozart in Vienna.

MERULO: Missa Apostolorum / Toccata / Magnificat

Pastorale: Classical Favourites for Relaxing & Dreaming

This winning compilation of 20 familiar Christmas carols features four different church choirs and ensembles, chief among them the Worcester Cathedral Choir and the Choir of Tewkesbury Abbey. These selections are sincerely and lovingly performed by four superb English choirs.

One of Lithuania' leading artistic figures, Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis pursued a career as a painter as well as a musician, seeing all art as springing from the same source.

This fourth volume of Naxos' acclaimed edition of Igor Markevitch' Complete Orchestral Music presents two of his most intriguing works: Rebus, an enigmatic ballet commissioned by Leonid Massine but never performed as such, and Hymnes.

Franz Xaver Richter' Sonate da camera have many of the same musical characteristics that make his symphonies so distinctive: ingenious part-writing, rich, expressive harmonies and delightfully unexpected melodic twists.

Maurice Saylor�s setting of Lewis Carroll�s The Hunting of the Snark is written for a chorus and �Snarkestra�, Saylor�s word for his quirky, misfit pit-band. This includes all manner of percussion and woodwinds, as well as such exotica as harmonica, bass accordion and washtub, instruments �reviled by society at large�, in Saylor�s words. To the nonsense text he brings a riot of colour and wit as well as a series of traditional devices such as refrains, sea shanties, and a chorale. The result is music of vibrancy, excitement, and even dangerous volatility. The three silent film scores are pacey, dapper and splendidly jazzy.

Siegfried is the third part of the great Wagneriantetralogy, The Ring, and was first staged at Bayreuth in 1876. As the work opens, Mime sits by the forge in his cave in the forest, hammering out a sword and complaining about his endless labor. He can make swords strong enough for giants yet Siegfried breaks them in two like children's toys, but if he could join together the blade of the great sword Nothung, Siegfried would be able to kill the dragon giant Fafner, and then Mime could gain possession of the ring. He continues his work and his complaint. Siegfried comes cheerfully in from the forest. He is leading a bear, jokingly provoking it to attack Mime, who cowers in fear. Siegfried sets the bear free and it trots back to the wood. He had sought a friend in the forest, sounded his horn and been joined by the bear. Mime has forged a sword for Siegfried, who takes the offered weapon, looking at it critically.

David Popper was one of the most important cellists of the 19th century and is remembered for the etudes of his High School of Cello Playing. Popper premiered chamber works by Brahms and championed Schumann's Cello Concerto, and his own four concertos span an illustrious 50-year career. Each shares a lyrical Romantic spirit: the playful First Concerto, an enjoyable prelude to the more dramatic and virtuosic Second, and the single-movement Third, a masterpiece in melodic compactness. The Fourth Concerto was dedicated to 'my great colleague' Alfredo Piatti and is recorded here in it's version with piano.

John Rutter's own recording of his beloved Requiem--with his Cambridge Singers on Collegium--already has been reissued on a CD that includes the Magnificat. That performance, in its setting for choir and orchestra, remains the Requiem of choice, although this new version--with Rutter as recording producer--offers a first-rate rendition of the composer's alternative chamber arrangement of the Requiem along with several rarely-heard--or never-before-recorded--choral and organ works. The Clare College Choir, with whom Rutter has a history both during his days as a music student and later as the choir's director, gives the kind of technically solid and interpretively meaningful performance that we would expect, considering the composer's hands-on involvement and well-known concern for accuracy, both musical and sonic. Like Caroline Ashton on Rutter's Collegium disc, Clare's Elin Manahan Thomas delivers the soprano solos with a clear, ringing, effortlessly natural quality, and the choir is a model of responsiveness and sensitivity in phrasing and dynamics, preserving ideal balance across registers and among vocal sections.


The reason Rutter fans will have to have this is for the premieres and for the handful of rarely-heard organ works--and any listeners who believe this composer to be rather predictable and one-sided in style will find numerous surprises to jar their impressions. Two of the premieres--the anthems Arise, shine and Come down, O Love divine--show a more complex Rutter, whose harmonic style and concept of textual development takes us into richer and far more intellectually/musically challenging territory than we're used to, a nod both to Howells and to Britten. The organ pieces--both for solo (Toccata in seven) and duet (Variations on an Easter theme)--show a thorough command of the idiom and are laced with Rutter's usual catchy rhythms and inventive melodic twists. One of the highlights is the anthem for choir and flute, Musica Dei domum, with its beautiful instrumental solo and organlike choral utterances. The sound, from Berkshire, England's Douai Abbey, provides ideal space and resonance for these eminently singable--and listenable--pieces, works that belong in the collection of every true lover of choral music. [4/26/2003]
--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com