This first collection of Grieg piano music, beginning a complete set, concentrates on his early piano works. The major work is the Piano Sonata, Op. 7, a piece so exciting and successful that you have to wonder why he never wrote another piano sonata. Only a few major pianists have taken up this piece, so we're lucky to have this fine version. The other early works (including Grieg's Op. 1) aren't so interesting, but in the Moods we hear an interesting successor to the Lyric Pieces. This is a highly recommended collection, very well played, well recorded, and very inexpensive.

Classical Music

The Spanish-born, Mexican-based composer Rodolfo Halffter' chamber music embraced influences from both the Old and New Worlds, his compositional approach shifting freely between nationalism, neo-classicism and the avant-garde.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Froberger was the most famous keyboard virtuoso of the mid-seventeenth century. This recording of his elegant, colorful and intricately expressive dance music in the French lute-style, arranged here in chronological order, is the first to employ all available sources in a new edition by Glen Wilson. An online essay accessible at www.naxos.com/notes/573493.htm explroes in depth his views of the many problems of performance practice and explains the famous programmatic pieces, which shed light on events in Froberger's life, including a near-drowning of a travellign companion in the Rhine.

We're sorry, but due to demand we have temporarily sold out of our stock on this title. We expect more stock to arrive by Wednesday of next week.

Michael Haydn spent much of his career in Salzburg and won a considerable contemporary reputation as a composer, since overshadowed by the achievement of his elder brother, Joseph Haydn.

Prokofiev first attempted to write an opera at the age of nine. His mature operas include The Love for Three Oranges, written in 1919, The Fiery Angel and War and Peace, the last based on Tolstoy's novel. His later ballets include Romeo and Juliet, and Cinderella. Both ballets as well as the first mentioned opera are known to concert audiences from orchestral suites based on them. Prokofiev wrote seven symphonies. Of these, the Classical Symphony, a work written in 1916-17 with the work of Haydn in mind, is the best known. Of Prokofiev's five piano concertos the third is best known, written in the composer's instantly recognizable musical language, from the incisive opening to the motor rhythms that follow, in a mixture of lyricism and acerbic wit. More overtly romantic in feeling are the two fine violin concertos. His early Cello Concerto was followed in 1952, fourteen years later, by a Cello Concertino, completed by the cellist Rostropovich and the composer Kabalevsky after Prokofiev's death. Prokofiev, himself a formidable pianist, completed nine piano sonatas out of a projected eleven. His music for piano also includes piano versions of music from the ballets Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella.

"The Naxos recordings by the Kodaly Quartet are outstanding in every way and would be highly recommendable even without their considerable price advantage. The digital recording has vivid presence and just the right amount of ambience: the effect is entirely natural."

-- Penguin Guide [2003/4 Edition]

Florent Schmitt life spanned both the late Romantic and 20th century eras and he counted Erik Satie and Maurice Ravel among his close friends. For most of his career he worked as a music critic and early on perceptively predicted the influence jazz would have on the future of serious music. His compositional output was comprised of a mish-mash potpourri of styles which included scores for theatre, including ballet and stage plays, including this collection of incidental music for Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra featuring the Buffalo Philharmonic conducted by JoAnn Falletta.

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Review:

The performances are admirably stylish, while the Buffalo Philharmonic boast nicely dexterous strings and woodwind.

– Gramophone

Puccini' fascination with exotic locations, doomed heroines, high drama and tragic romance are brought to centre stage in this immensely moving selection from his greatest operas.

Even so great a composer as Beethoven wrote music that is now almost completely neglected and unperformed. This sequence brings together a portfolio of such works that focuses on his variations on popular operatic music of the time by Giovanni Paisiello, Peter Winter and Andre Gretry, and includes the witty and inventive variations on an arietta by Vincenzo Righini. The Piano Sonata in C major, WoO 51 was found among Beethoven's papers after his death and published in 1830. While it lacks a finale, it too offers a revealing look at an overlooked composition as do the two charming and unusual waltzes. A laureate of the 2016 Queen Elisabeth International Piano Competition, Larry Weng has been critically acclaimed by The new York Times. He also garnered critical praise for his 2015 New York debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall from the New York Concert Review, and from Harry Rolnick of ConcertoNet for his performance of Ravel's Alborada del Gracioso. He has played in major venues around the world as both a soloist and chamber musician. As of the 2017 season, Weng is a full-time member of the Icarus Quartet. Weng graduated from the highly selective joint degree programme between Columbia University and The Juilliard School under the tutelage of professors Jerome Lowenthal and Matti Raekallio. He continued his studies with professor Boris Berman at the Yale School of Music, earning his Doctor of Musical Arts in 2019.

Classical Music