One of the great Elizabethan masters of the lute also was the period's most celebrated composer for the instrument. Four centuries later, a fellow Englishman-Nigel North-became the leading interpreter of Dowland's beautiful, melancholy creations. This set begins with the Fantasies (or Fancyes), which match melody with improvisation. Next come the pavans including the most famous of it's time, the Lachrimae Pavan. Disc three explores the principal dances of the era: pavans, galliards and almains. Go from My Window; Walsingham, and more dances and songs complete this tribute to the English Orpheus!

Benjamin Britten was a viola player as well as a pianist and wrote a significant body of chamber music for stringed instruments. The works on this recording - which contains important world premiere recordings - were written between 1925 and 1937, with the exception of the masterpiece for viola, Lachrymae. Each reveals some characteristic aspect of Britten's voice, from the variety and wit of the Suite for Violin and Piano, Op. 6 to the little-known but absorbingly imaginative Reveille and the remarkably assured 1930 Elegy, written when he was just seventeen.

Though he wrote a great deal of church music, and also composed for the theatre, Justin Heinrich Knecht is best remembered for his Grande Simphonie ‘Le Portrait musical de la Nature’. Elegantly scored and completed in 1785, this eventful five-movement symphonic work of nature-depiction predates Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony by almost a quarter of a century. Knecht’s older French contemporary Philidor was the leading chess player of his time in addition to being a popular stage composer, whose overtures reveal the influence of the Italian school in their sparkling drama.

The musical selection on this disc is a fascinating compound of romanticism, modernism and the expressive sensibilities of contemporary composers, including Swedish guitarist Johannes Möller himself. He has captivated audiences throughout the world with charismatic and soulful performances, achieving ‘miracles with his lucid, spacious playing’ (London Evening Standard). His ability to communicate a musical message to listeners of any cultural background, age or level of musical experience has brought him an international career and numerous prestigious prizes.

With the belated success of his Third Symphony ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ Gorecki emerged in the 1990s as a composer of world stature. Between 1988 and 1995 he wrote three string quartets for the Kronos Quartet that are among his most important mature works. String Quartet No. 1 reveals chorale-like themes, so much a feature of his later writing, as well as hectic, dance-like motion, while the Second Quartet’s wider range of expression explicitly evokes Beethoven. Genesis I: Elementi offers a powerful contrast- a string trio from 1962 of uncompromising immediacy. The Tippett Quartet appear regularly at King’s Place, the Purcell Room, Wigmore Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Bridgewater Hall, and perform regularly on BBC Radio 3. They have performed at the BBC Proms and toured Europe, Canada and Mexico. Their broad and diverse repertoire highlights the Tippett Quartet’s unique versatility. Their impressive catalogue of recordings has been released across several labels to universal acclaim and with classical chart-topping success.

One of the most prominent Bohemian composers working in Vienna during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Leopold Kozeluch was a prolific composer of instrumental music including seventeen symphonies. They are notable for mellifluous themes, sophisticated structures and, at times, a lyricism that seems to foreshadow the youthful works of Schubert. This unique recording draws on the original sources and corrects a number of mistakes encountered in previously published versions. This second volume of the complete edition of the symphonies of Leopold Kozeluch follows a first that was released in March 2017 and given a 9/9 score by ClassicsToday.com with plaudits for both conductor and orchestra: “Marek Stilec leads lively, smartly paced performances, and gets fine playing from the ensemble.”

Ferdinand Ries is remembered as Beethoven's one-time pupil, secretary and copyist, but the discovery of his many compositions showed him to be a forward-looking composer in his own right. The 1799 Cello Sonata in C minor is among the first of it's genre, the 15-year-old Ries already showing remarkable talent in it's 'Sturm und Drang' moods. The Trio, Op. 63 was admired in it's day for it's ingenuity of modulations' and fashionable London society lapped up the exotic themes of works such as Introduction and a Russian Dance and the virtuosic Trois Airs Russes Varies.

The eighteen ‘Ungarischer Romanzero’ are transcriptions of popular Hungarian melodies made partially in collaboration with violinist Ede Remenyi. The manuscripts are not always complete, with space for performers to add their own elaborations, or to follow Liszt’s own hints on his own performances of pieces that give valuable insights into his Hungarian influences in their rawest form. The ‘Hungarian National Melodies’ provide opportunities for amateur players, while the hugely popular Rakoczi March became the unofficial national anthem of Hungary, also being used by Berlioz and other composers. Pianist Warren Lee made his televised debut with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of six and was the first prize winner of the 1995 Stravinsky Awards International Piano Competition and the Grand Prix Ivo Pogorelich. His discography includes many acclaimed albums of solo and chamber music repertoire. The ‘American Record Guide’ called him a “first-rate artist” while Fanfare noted that he is “a pianist to watch out, whether as a soloist or chamber musician.”

Also available: Marx: Orchestral Works, Vol. 2

Joseph Marx was one of the leading figures of Austrian musical culture during his lifetime, but his music was out of step with 20th-century Modernism and most of his music disappeared from concert programmes after his death. The Natur-Trilogie is a richly impressionistic work that brims with lyrical passion, portraying the moods of Marx’s untouched native landscapes while displaying his magical feel for harmony and orchestration. This recording’s original release was the first time the Natur-Trilogie had been heard in its complete and original form, and was considered ‘a major discovery’ by MusicWeb International. This recording was first released in 2003 on the ASV label, and is the first in a four-volume set of Joseph Marx’s orchestral works to be re-released on Naxos. Of the original release, MusicWeb International wrote: “This is unambiguously the work of a nature ecstatic. If you already count Bax’s nature canvasses among your favorite works, then you will be losing out if you do not get this excellent release.”

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REVIEW:

This lush and mostly un-Germanic music first appeared on an ASV CD release back around 2002. This sequence of three meaty, rhapsodic yet interlocked pieces makes up a single triptychal work: the slightly more than hour-long Natur-Trilogie. Marx's impressionistic South German voice soaks into this music the quintessence of lyrical expression.

– MusicWeb International

Beethoven was commissioned to write his first stage work- a ballet score for Die Geschopfe des Prometheus ('The Creatures of Prometheus')- for the dancer and choreographer Salvatore Vigano, nephew of composer Luigi Boccherini. In the myth, Prometheus is punished by Zeus for stealing fire for the benefit of mankind; in the allegorical ballet, Prometheus brings Enlightenment ideas of art and science to humanity. The overture remains popular and the finale- the theme of which Beethoven was later to use in his 'Eroica' Symphony- offers a heroic conclusion.

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By the 1940s Heitor Villa-Lobos was widely recognized as Latin America’s greatest composer. Working in the United States gave him new perspectives, and his later symphonies move away from the folk influences and exotic effects of works written in the 1920s and 30s, such as the Bachianas Brasileiras, towards more concise, sometimes neo-classical, models. The Eighth and Nineth share a transparent lightness of touch while the Eleventh, described as a work of ‘immediate charm,’ is the perfect introduction to the later work of Villa-Lobos. Since its first concert in 1954 the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra has developed into one of today’s leading orchestras. An indispensable part of Sao Paulo and Brazillian culture that promotes deep cultural and social transformation, the orchestra has released over 60 recordings and has toured throughout Brazil, Latin Aerica, the United States, and Europe. In 2012 Marin Alsop was engaged as principal conductor, and in 2013 she was appointed music director. That same year the orchestra went on a fourth European tour, performing to great acclaim at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, the PHilharmonie in Berlin, and at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

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REVIEW:

Isaac Karabtchevsky's sure-footed pacing conveys a deep understanding of these scores. The orchestra is wonderfully on point, which makes an enormous difference in music as finely shaded as this. An absolutely essential release.

– Gramophone

A central element in Liszt's life was his religious conviction. Harmonies poetiques et religieuses, one of his most famous religious works, was inspired by the poetry of Alphonse de Lamartine. Excerpts featured on Vol. 3 of this series were critically acclaimed. Vol. 53 presents the 1847 cycle in it's first version; one that follows the poetic works that inspired it more closely than the more frequently performed and recorded later version. Wojciech Waleczek is recognized internationally as a pianist with uncompromisingly high standards in performance. The artist, born in 1980, has been pursuing a robust concert career playing as soloist with symphonic orchestras, solo piano recitals and chamber music concerts in the 27 countries of Europe as well as in Kazachstan, Jordan, Tunesia, Palestina, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Guyana, Suriname, Canada and the USA.

Brahms’s string concertos are indissolubly linked with the musicians for whom the works were written. He wrote his Violin Concerto for Joseph Joachim, and inn it he combined what a contemporary critic termed ‘the great and serious’ with songful lyricism, melodic beauty, and a fiery Hungarian finale. To mend a breach with the violinist, Brahms later composed a concerto with the unusual combination of violin and cello, the latter played at the premiere by Joachim’s colleague Robert Hausmann. Neither instrument predominates in a work of reconciliation that embodies both drama and reflection. Highly acclaimed Naxos artists Tianwa Yang and Gabriel Schwabe are featured on this recording, as well as Antoni Wit, one of Naxos’s best-selling and best-known conductors.

REVIEWS:

[Yang] plays the concerto with great passion and expressivity, highlighting many details and indulging in more sliding than we usually hear today. Behind all this I sense a directness, a desire perhaps to expose the virtuosic elements of the piece. Conductor Wit is also a musician who does not tend to linger, but I am not sure they are always on the same page. Yang leans toward aggressive playing, while Wit is more mellow—more Eastern European. If you like the concerto with a minimum of philosophizing, you’ll like this performance because it is very well done.

– American Record Guide

In Yang’s and Schwabe’s hands the Double Concerto enjoys an incarnadine reading which benefits from a sweet, close-quarters recording. What we hear evinces both concentration and brio. When a performance of the Double really works it communicates a nicely elongated storminess, as is the case here and with the classic recording by Leonard Rose, Isaac Stern, and the Philadelphia conducted by Eugene Ormandy.

Yang makes tense but re-creative work of the Violin Concerto. Elder statesman Antoni Wit has been facilitating with Naxos for many years. He and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin work in commodious harness with the two soloists.

– MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)

Born into a working-class family, George Dyson became one of the most important musicians and composers of his day. The previously unknown Choral Symphony was written as an examination work while Dyson was studying at Oxford, and it was only recently discovered at the Bodleian Library. Dyson relishes his dramatic chosen text from Psalm 107 on the expulsion from and homecoming of the Jews to Israel, a narrative that inspires trademark features that would make his later works so attractive. Its seascape finale links neatly with St. Paul’s Voyage to Melita, another vivid text from which Technicolor musical images are conjured.

Schumann’s love of the cello, which developed when he learned the instrument as a young man, is expressed most fully in his ‘Cello Concerto in A minor.’ It is a work marked by freshness of spirit and singing lyricism and stands as a rich example of mid-19th-century Romanticism. The series of characterful small pieces that include ‘Funf Stucke im Volkston’ reveals Schumann’s joy in the cello’s unique lyrical capabilities. The ‘Drei Romanzen’ and the ‘Intermezzo’ from the ‘F-A-E Sonata’ are presented here in new arrangements for cello and piano by Gabriel Schwabe. Gabriel Schwabe has established himself among the leading cellists of his generation. He is a laureate of numerous national and international competitions, including the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann and the Concours Rostropovich in Paris. As a soloist he has worked with orchestras such as the Philharmonia Orchestra, the NDR Radiophilharmonie, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Malmo and Norrkoping Symphony Orchestras and the Royal Northern Sinfonia. He plays a rare Italian instrument made in Brescia (c. 1600).

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REVIEW:

With just the necessary amount of vibrato, Gabriel Schwabe's cello, dating from around 1600, sings eloquently for him. The score of the concerto’s central section contains much sadness; without any undue haste, he generates an appropriate sense of triumphant brilliance as the work ends.

Schwabe and pianist Nicholas Rimmer give a particularly fast and vibrant account of the Allegro, in the Adagio and Allegro. It is a similarly outgoing performance of the Fantasiestucke that acts as a foil to the moments of beauty in the Three Romances; the five Volkston vividly characterised and contrasted, while the arrangement of the Intermezzo has simply taken the solo part down by an octave.

The catalogue is certainly not short of recordings of the Concerto, but this coupling is unusual and most enjoyable.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Alexander Moyzes’ symphonic cycle is the best-known by a Slovak composer. His synthesis of Slovak influences and contemporary trends in European music informs every strand of his compositions. The Symphony No. 7, Op. 50 is his largest and most powerful orchestral statement, which he dedicated to the memory of his young daughter. Peasant scenes, folk dances and exceptional lyric beauty form the bedrock of a passionate and dramatic work. Written as a response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Symphony No. 8 ’21.08.1968,’ Op. 64 is a brooding lament that shares affinities with Shostakovich’s symphonic writing. This album is volume 3 in a series of reissues from the Marco Polo label. These releases remain as the only easily accessible reference, and with recordings and performances that still sound fresh and invigorating, we felt it was time for a revival. Of the original release, International Record Review wrote: “the Seventh Symphony… opens, in a beautiful albeggiante pastorale- quite the loveliest thing I’ve heard from Moyzes- which leads into a jolly, even rumbustious, folk dance. Ladislav Slovak, who died in 1999, does Moyzes as proud in these two releases as in the previous recordings in the cycle: reliable playing, good sound.”

Robert Schumann is in many ways typical of the age in which he lived, combining in his music a number of the principal characteristics of Romanticism, as he did in his life. Schumann’s literary sensibility was exceptionally receptive to the ideas of fantasy and fairy tale. His poetic Hausmusik-music for domestic consumption- represents a motion from the outer to the inner world. This recording explores these affiliations in a unique way as most of the performances are the first to have been recorded on period instruments. The clarinet is a replica of the early 19th century type Schumann knew, all three string instruments use gut strings while the piano is an original 1843 Pleyel, and the music’s intimacy and volatility are significantly intensified through their use.

This programme of four colourful, contrasting but complementary works for small orchestra celebrates the lighter side of four twentieth-century Italian composers, centring on Alfredo Casella’s Divertimento for Fulvia, composed for his young daughter. Casella’s friend Gian Francesco Malipiero wrote Oriente immaginario (Imaginary Orient) for a Futurist play by Achille Ricciardi (1884-1923). Franco Donatoni once called his simply-titled Musica (Music) ‘kind of Schoenberg gone a bit neoclassical’ – but also with a great sense of humour – while Giorgio Federico Ghedini’s Concerto grosso is a twentieth-century tribute to both Bach and Beethoven.

Schubert composed his three sublimely alluring Sonatas for Violin and Piano in the spring of 1816, though they had to wait until 1836 for posthumous publication by Diabelli, who re-named them ‘sonatinas’. With their sometimes subordinate role for the violin and deceptively uncomplicated style, these pieces sidestep the influence of Beethoven and return more to the world of Mozart’s later violin sonatas, particularly with the Sonata D 384. The minor-key works develop Schubert’s gift for drama and vocal melody further, including hints of his famous song Erlkönig from the previous year.

When his pupil, the Infanta Maria Barbara married the heir to the Spanish throne, Domenico Scarlatti travelled with her from Lisbon to Madrid, a move that led to the completion of hundreds of single-movement sonatas or exercises. Designed for her to play, and containing some of his greatest music, the sonatas offer a plethora of features that have ensured their lasting popularity and influence. In this volume one can encounter effortless use of repetition, imitation and arpeggio figuration, dynamic left hand octave writing and hand crossing, some, as in the Sonata in C minor, of spectacular velocity. Born in Israel, Eylam Keshet began his musical studies at the age of nine. He has participated in prestigious festivals and events all over the world, and has been awarded scholarships for excellence from several foundations.

In the autumn of 1912 Jean Sibelius was commissioned to compose music for Poul Knudsen's surreal pantomime, Scaramouche, an experience that Sibelius soon regretted taking due to reservations about the production. Rarely performed today, Scaramouche is a curiosity within the Sibelius' discography. With the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Lief Segerstam featuring soloists Bendik Goldstein (viola) and Roi Ruottinen (cello).

The legacy of the First World War left its mark on the music of near contemporaries Edward Elgar and Frederick Delius. The powerful outer movements of Elgar's String Quartet in E minor frame a wistful and sombre Andante piacevole. Delius was dissatisfied with the first, three-movement version of his Quartet and revised the score. On this recording the final 1917 version is followed by the original versions of the opening movement and of the Late Swallows slow movement, offering a rare glimpse into Delius's compositional workshop.

Nikolay Tcherepnin, a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov in St Petersburg, achieved fame as a conductor, directing the premiere of his ballet Le Pavillon d’Armide as the opening to Diaghilev’s first Ballets Russes season in 1911 which also marked the Paris debut of Nijinsky. A work of great importance in the history of modern ballet, with choreography by Fokin, this enchanting score brings to life a Gobelin tapestry in a mysterious and haunted pavilion in the grounds of a French chateau. Cocteau described its effect as ‘better than a poem by Heine, than a story of Poe, than any dream, this is nostalgia for things partly seen, insubstantial and insistent.’ This recording was first released in 1995 on our Marco Polo label, and being the only complete recording of this stunning work currently available. This recording was acclaimed on its initial release, with Classic CD concluding that ‘excellent performances from the Moscow Symphony Orchestra under Henry Shek and sympathetic engineering make this worth seeking out’, and Fanfare stating that ‘the performance is thoroughly convincing and ably recorded... an enjoyable discovery.’

When the 21 year old Rimsky-Korsakov’s Symphony No.1 in E minor was premièred in December 1865 it was hailed in some quarters as the first truly Russian symphony. The leader of ‘The Five’, Balakirev, favoured the use of eastern themes in the search for a personal symphonic path for national music and Rimsky seemed to signal an alternative to the German-influenced music of Anton Rubinstein. He completed Symphony No.3 in C major in 1874. Again it was cast in a thoroughly Russian manner, full of vivacious romanticism and revealing significant technical advances on the earlier work.

While the invention of the symphonic poem is credited to Franz Liszt, French composer Camille Saint-Saens truly took the genre to a new level. The symphonic poem became popular in France in the early 1870s, supported by the newly founded Societe Nationale and its promotion of young French composers. Camille Saint-Saens composed his Le rouet d’Omphale in 1872, with three more soon following. The most famous was his Danse macabre. In all of these works he experiments with orchestration and thematic transformation. In this new release, the Orchestre National de Lille does a service to their fellow countryman, with Jun Markl as their faithful leader at the helm.

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The works on this recording were written by four roughly contemporary Polish composers who settled and pursued their careers in different parts of the world. Grayna Bacewicz's first Violin Concerto displays her own glittering virtuosity as a performer, while Alexandre Tansman wrote his Baroque-infused Five Pieces for the great Josef Szigeti. Michal Spisak considered his neo-classical Andante and Allegro to be "a little story for violin and orchestra", while Andrzej Panufnik's wide-ranging Violin Concerto became a "pilgrimage into my past" and is richly suffused with Polish atmosphere.

Review:

There are four rewarding works to be discovered on this disc, although only two of them are technically concertos. Andrzej Panufnik's Violin Concerto, written in 1971 and recorded in concert in 2014 by ?ód?-born violinist Piotr P?awner, the Kammersymphonie Berlin and conductor Jürgen Bruns. The second movement, with its seemingly endless lines of melody, reminds us that the concerto was written for Yehudi Menuhin and his famous nonstop vibrato. P?awner does those long lines justice here, before wrapping up the piece in a spiky, frenetic Polish dance.

– Guardian

Throughout the 20th century Venezuelan composers created a repertoire of guitar works that, with their vivid rhythms, folkloric elements and brilliant colors, captured the country’s musical soul- a process that continues to this day. These elements can be found in the rich lyricism of the folk songs arranged by guitarist Nirse Gonzalez, in the charm of Inocente Carreno’s suites, or in the sophisticated synthesis of Latin American styles evoked by Federico Ruiz. Ceremonial ritual and use of the jaropo dance are expressive features of Pedro Mauricio Gonzalez’s Tetralogia.

The Intimacy of Creativity is a first of its kind, an annual partnership devoted to promoting an intimate dialogue between composers and performers. Distinguished composers, together with selected composer fellows from Hong Kong and around the world, present and revise their compositions after in-depth discussions with world-renowned performers during public open discussions. The revised compositions are presented at preview concerts on the campus of HKUST and world premiere concerts in downtown Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is recognized as Asia's foremost classical orchestra. Jaap van Zweden, one of today's most sought-after conductors, has been the orchestra's Music Director since the 2012/2013 concert season.

Composed in 1940, Pizzetti's Symphony in A was one of the works, which included Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem, commissioned to celebrate the 2600th anniversary of the accession of the legendary first Emperor of Japan. This powerful and unsettling work, Pizzetti's only Symphony, is notable for its ominous mood, its compositional progress between February and June 1940 mirroring the unfolding European conflict and Italy's own declaration of war. Written twenty years later for Italy's leading harpist Clelia Gatti Aldrovandi, the sunny Harp Concerto is, by contrast, both lyrical and vivacious.

A pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov and director of the Moscow Conservatory, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov is most famous for his evocative Caucasian Sketches [8.553405]. He was always interested in the music of the ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union and in later life he pursued an interest in the music of the Turkish peoples, composing the Turkish Fragments, Op. 62 in 1930. This richly melodic suite is notable for its characteristically oriental turns of phrase. Many years earlier, in 1908, he wrote his Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 46 which, with its solemn evocations of liturgical music, confirmed him in the lineage of eminent Russian symphonists.

REVIEW:

The Singapore Symphony under Choo Hoey's direction plays everything capably; the homophonic chords in the symphony's first movement are powerful. I can imagine any of the London orchestras supplying greater tonal finish, but not necessarily mustering a comparable empathy and enthusiasm. The reproduction is excellent.

– MusicWeb International