The organ compositions of Olivier Messiaen firmly established the composer as a figure of 20th century music. This release features his well-known works L’Ascension and Le banquet celeste, along with two pieces which were discovered posthumously in 1997, Offrande au Saint-Sacrement, and Prelude. Organist Tom Winpenny does an outstanding job in these performances, which were recorded at the organ at St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Beethoven’s letters show an extensive and prolonged correspondence with Scottish publisher and keen amateur musician George Thomson, who made it his task to collect and publish folk song settings, commissioning the likes of Pleyel, Koželuch and Haydn. The Opp. 105 and 107 collections, written for piano with optional flute or violin parts, are filled with delightfully decorative but virtuoso writing. This recording offers versions with improvisation and ornamentation by flutist, conductor and former Rampal student Patrick Gallois, based on the performance practices of the early 18th c.

The Brasil Guitar Duo offers vivacious, sensitive, clear, carefully balanced, and splendidly engineered performances that are technically impeccable and stylistically right on the money. A most enjoyable and stimulating release, and not just for guitar fans. -- ClassicsToday.com

The widely ranging, innovative works of prolific Cuban composer and former concert guitarist Leo Brouwer, among the most often performed internationally, have conferred upon him world acclaim, recognition and renown. In this recording his progressive, imaginative contribution to extending the guitar duo’s horizon is on full display. Subtle allusions to dance styles, virtuosity and rhythms referencing Cuban folk music highlight these exciting pieces that include the special sonorities of Per suonare a due to the international voyage in four movements Sonata de Los Viajeros.

For anyone new to opera, the first question is often: where to start? The 'Best Loved' series offers an easy answer to that question with a perfect introduction to the wonderful, varied world of operatic music. Highlighting some of the best-loved arias ever written, the series provides a convenient introduction to opera's extensive variety of sounds and styles. Opera can be defined as drama told through music and, at the height of it's popularity, conventions arose in which certain voice types came to share features of the characters they represented. This series presents the main vocal categories (soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto, tenor, baritone and bass) by dividing them across four albums. The 'Best Loved' Arias series aims to demonstrate why opera as an art form remains as relevant and entertaining today as it was at it's inception 400 years ago.

For anyone new to opera, the first question is often: where to start? The 'Best Loved' series offers an easy answer to that question with a perfect introduction to the wonderful, varied world of operatic music. Highlighting some of the best-loved arias ever written, the series provides a convenient introduction to opera's extensive variety of sounds and styles. Opera can be defined as drama told through music and, at the height of it's popularity, conventions arose in which certain voice types came to share features of the characters they represented. This series presents the main vocal categories (soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto, tenor, baritone and bass) by dividing them across four albums. The 'Best Loved' Arias series aims to demonstrate why opera as an art form remains as relevant and entertaining today as it was at it's inception 400 years ago.

Toshio Hosokawa is one of Japan’s most eminent living composers. The first volume in this series devoted to his orchestral works [8.573239] explores the idea of the blossoming lotus – “music as plant-like development and growth” – and continues here with Blossoming II for chamber orchestra. Woven Dreams traces the journey from womb to birth by employing techniques drawn from Gagaku, the ancient Japanese court music. Of Circulating Ocean the composer writes: “I am attempting to express in sound the flow and change of water... The ocean is for me the birthplace of life, a being possessed of infinite depth and expanse.”

Adolphe Adam is best known today for the ballets Giselle and Le Corsaire, but his prolific output included 39 operas and several other ballet scores, including the vivacious tale of La Filleule des fées (‘The Fairies’ God-daughter’). The story takes place in an idealized countryside, revolving around the god-daughter Ysaure’s complex amorous affairs and the magical interventions of good and wicked fairies. With its brilliantly colorful orchestration, memorable themes and rhythmic momentum, this work is very much the equal of Giselle.

In an era when Italian composers tended to gravitate toward opera, the works of Giuseppe Martucci (1856-1909) are thoroughly marked by German Romanticism. The passionate dynamic surges and skillfully-honed contrapuntal writing characterizing the Second Trio’s opening movement are brilliantly cut from Brahmsian cloth, although the second movement’s obsessive rhythms and exciting harmonic clashes reveal a more playfully searching side of Martucci’s personality. I’m especially taken with the finale’s motoric accompaniment upon which seemingly innocent melodies take quirky twists and turns.

The First Trio’s Allegro adapts Brahms’ patented “three-against-two” phrase groupings, yet also contains a development section characterized by recitative-like solos. The Scherzo’s carefree interplay between musicians and rapid-fire pizzicato writing is nothing less than masterful.

Since the Mezzena-Bonucci’s 1996 recordings of both trios on the Dynamic label are not easily sourced, Trio Vega’s superb performances have no real competition. Their full-bodied yet carefully balanced interpretations take the specificity of the composer’s dynamic and expressive markings on faith, while leaving plenty of room for personal nuance, such as in cellist Orfilia Saiz Vega’s rich-toned solo work in both trios’ slow movements. One also should mention violinist Marc Paquin’s discreetly varied vibrato and Domenico Codispoti’s adroit handling of Martucci’s often demanding piano parts.

Naxos’ ample and detailed sonics may seem a bit dry and close-up for some tastes, but that’s not even a complaint. Fine annotations from Katy Hamilton provide welcome contextual information about the works and Martucci’s sadly brief yet productive musical life. Needless to say, Trio Vega’s splendid advocacy of these obscure yet unquestionably first-rate works warrants an enthusiastic recommendation.

– Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's reputation rests largely on his operas, but the instrumental music he composed at the beginning and end of his career deserves a wider currency. The influence of Brahms can be detected in the First and Second Violin Sonatas, though Wolf-Ferrari's distinctive long-breathed melodies and chromatic flow are clearly present; the dramatic and expressive Second also includes references to Wagner's Tristan. With it's neo-Bachian figuration, passages of intense melancholy and uplifting operatic fantasy, the final Third Sonata is an enigmatic work, and unlike any other in the repertoire.

In 2014 Ekachai Jearakul became the first Asian guitarist to win the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America International Concert Artist Competition (GFA). Winner of numerous awards and an international artist, he has selected a recital that takes the listener on a journey from the baroque beauties of Weiss through nineteenth-century classics by Mertz and Legnani, concluding with three modern compositions influenced by jazz.

Classical Music

Spanish colonies in Central and South America emerged as wellsprings of cultural activity throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The meeting of indigenous populations with Latin American cathedrals and courtly life resulted in styles bearing the imprint of folk music, even in sacred compositions. The sophisticated musical culture of Guatemala City Cathedral is represented in an archive of hundreds of works, several of which are recorded here. The guitars, harp, voices and percussion of acclaimed ensemble El Mundo bring to life the vibrant and at times hypnotic dance rhythms of Spain, Africa and the New World, creating a sound unique to this region, and one that still flourishes to this day.

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An enchanting album of Baroque music from the Spanish colonies

These humble musicians created songs and dances unique to their region of the Americas. Some of the music is naïve and earnest, some surprisingly sophisticated, all of it is pure delight. © 2021 Rafael's Music

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Perfect balance of sacred and profane

This thoughtful collection of compositions from the Cathedral of Guatemala City archives reimagines a wealth of music made in colonial Latin America

The sequence is thoughtfully conceived and presented with a lightness of touch that makes it constantly engaging. Dance rhythms lift even the most serious sacred settings, and El Mundo’s quartet of singers, accompanied by three strings, percussion and a mostly strummed continuo group, balance the sacred and the profane perfectly. © 2021 The Guardian

Tolstoy described Alexander Scriabin’s music as “a sincere expression of genius” while Scriabin described himself as “all impulse, all desire...” His virtuosity rivalling that of Rachmaninov, the young and colorful musician and composer found inspiration in his idol, Chopin, while still touching his compositions with Russian darkness and sensuous passion. This album of his less-popular compositions also includes the child prodigy’s Canon in D Minor, composed when Scriabin was only 11 years old.

A relatively small but significant part of his output, John Ireland's choral music has been neglected in comparison to his songs and instrumental msuic. This is Volume 1 of 3 the complete choral music.

Musical transcription has a long and auspicious history, and Michele Mangani’s arrangements follow a tradition of recreating popular operatic tunes for small groups of oboes, clarinets, flutes and horns, supplemented on this recording by double bass. These works span some 77 years of Italian opera, from Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri to Puccini’s Tosca, taking in the verismo of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and the bel canto tragedy of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor on the way.

Fragmentary, kaleidoscopic, hallucinatory … creates a wonderfully atmospheric sense of colliding realities.

REVIEWS:

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CORIGLIANO Violin Concerto, “The Red Violin 1.” Phantasmagoria: Suite from The Ghosts of Versailles • JoAnn Falletta, cond; Buffalo Phil O; 1 Michael Ludwig (vn) • NAXOS 8559671 (61:02)

John Corigliano composed the score to The Red Violin, which turned out to be a masterpiece in its own right. Then, in 1997, with work on the score already completed while shooting on the film continued, Corigliano composed a new, 17-minute piece he called The Red Violin: Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra based on the chaconne progression he’d written for the film. But Corigliano wasn’t done with his Chaconne. Not wishing it to remain a stand-alone piece like Chausson’s Poème , Ravel’s Tzigane , or Beethoven’s Romances, he decided to write three new movements, using the Chaconne as the first movement of a substantive, nearly 40-minute-long violin concerto. And that is what we have here on this disc.

The violin the soloist here, Michael Ludwig, plays, is an 18th-century Lorenzo Storioni, from which the violinist draws a tone that is both liquid and penetrating. One could argue that Corigliano’s concerto is owned by Joshua Bell, for he has been more closely associated with it and more directly involved with the composer than Ludwig, or, for that matter, anyone else. Still, much as I appreciate Bell’s playing in general, I feel there are moments in this piece where he applies the schmaltz a little too thickly. Ludwig resists that temptation, and I think the concerto emerges the better for it.

From the opening of Corigliano’s Phantasmagoria , a suite extracted from the composer’s largely successful opera The Ghosts of Versailles , you’d never guess that this creepy, slithery music sets the stage for what is essentially a “comedy.” As a work detached from its literary references and stage setting, Phantasmagoria becomes a virtuoso showpiece for orchestra. The piece seems to divide into two approximately equal halves. Much of the first half is busy, bustling, noisy, and nutty; the second half, from 13:03 to the end, is calmer, more lyrical, and takes on the feeling of fate accepted, which it is in the opera as Marie is beheaded a second time and reunited with Beaumarchais in Paradise.

Strongly recommended.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

The Buffalo Philharmonic plays throughout with confident assurance under JoAnn Falletta’s baton. Assuming these are live performances ensemble and accuracy in these highly complex scores is excellent. In the spirit of even-handed fairness I should say I have read reviews of this disc elsewhere which make a point of praising the engineering reckoning it to be of award-winning standard. I cannot share that view but as with so many aspects of music; it is all a matter of taste. The Concerto is a very impressive work and one written with a great deal of care and love by John Corigliano – a wonderful tribute to his father. This Corigliano Concerto is right up there and hopefully its appearance on the Naxos with the benefits of distribution and affordability that brings will ensure many more music-lovers will get to hear this powerful and compelling work.

-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

The iconic guitarist Julian Bream commissioned music from a number of British composers with international reputations, thus creating a whole new repertoire of guitar music. He also played an important role in the revival of interest in the Elizabethan lute, his recitals bringing Early Music to a new audience. John Dowland’s beautiful Pavanis followed by Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland, written for Bream and one of the most significant guitar works of the 20th century. Cyril Scott’s Sonatina, overlooked for decades, is heard here in the premiere recording of Bream’s revised edition. Volume 1 can be heard on 8.557040.

The outstanding English composer working in the mid-20th century, Benjamin Britten won a significant international reputation, whilst remaining thoroughly English in inspiration.

Beethoven's String Trios are masterly in form and content and, with Mozart's only string trio, the Divertimento K. 563, are among the most significant works in the entire genre. Beethoven's first, Op.

Faure' two cello sonatas are compact, beautifully written works whose musical language, with it's many subtle changes of tonality and gift for melody, has been described as conveying 'the power of tranquil thought'.

Handel composed Hercules for his 1744-45 oratorio season as the secular foil to one of his most ambitious sacred dramas, Belshazzar, hoping to repeat the success of the previous season' Samson/Semele pairing.

Gabriel Fauré’s chamber works, long overshadowed by his popular Requiem (Naxos 8.550765), are regaining their rightful place. This new release from the Kungsbacka Piano Trio follows their recording of Fauré’s First Piano Quartet and other chamber works (8.573042), described by Gramophone as ‘a delectable way into Fauré’s chamber music’. The program features the less frequently heard original version, with clarinet, of the Piano Trio, the Second Piano Quartet, which includes an evocation of the bells of Cadirac near the composer’s home, the Romances sans paroles, described by Marcel Proust as ‘intoxicating’ and one of Fauré’s most famous works, the Berceuse from the Dolly Suite.

Mayr's Masses were in demand across Europe, and their composition is rooted in the Italian tradition of the messa concertata which demands division into separate vocal numbers. The Mass in E minor has long been recognized as an outstanding example of Mayr's late style, with it's polyphonic mastery and dialogues between singers and concertante solo instruments being exceptionally convincing. The Mass in F minor evokes both joy and deep melancholy, though accompanied, as always, by Mayr's notable gift for melodic beauty. Conductor Franz Hauk has been responsible for re-establishing the music of Johann Simon Mayr, one of the most significant operatic and vocal composers residing in Italy before the rise of Rossini. This latest album is another in the series of ground-breaking world premiere recordings of Mayr's music by the same forces under Hauk.

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

L’épreuve villageoise – which, in its original form, was first performed before Marie Antoinette at Versailles - was one of André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry’s most popular works. For a century after its 1784 premiere it enjoyed huge acclaim across Europe and even travelled to the New World, where it captivated audiences in New York. Grétry was a master of eighteenth-century opéra comique and his crisp and lively farce centres on a clever farmer’s daughter and her two competing suitors. Employing divergent stylistic registers – finesse and naiveté, music reminiscent of popular song, and extended ensembles – Grétry fashioned a score of sophisticated wit and huge charm.

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REVIEW:

Every so often it’s nice to take a break from operas with deep meanings and just feel like a bit of French royalty at Versailles in 1784, where this sweet, fluffy operetta was first performed. L’épreuve villageoise (The Village Trial) has simple country folk in a sitcom situation: soprano Denise is engaged to tenor André, but his jealousy, recently ignited by the attentions being shown Denise by the more sophisticated Monsieur de la France, is really getting on her nerves.

Soprano Madame Hubert, Denise’s mother, until recently was being wooed by de la France, so mother and daughter plot to get back at both men. Denise pretends to care for de la France and André claims to have found another girlfriend, which makes Denise sad and reflective (in a lovely aria). She then overhears de la France tell the town’s finer ladies that he has found a “rural” girl, and this angers her and her mother. Denise publicly denounces de la France and he leaves, making way for André and Denise to live a jolly life. Dancing ensues.

Sophie Junker’s bright voice is ideal for Denise; Talise Trevigne’s more darkly colored tone gives Mme Hubert a certain wisdom. Thomas Dolié sings with “attitude” and a fine baritone, while André is sung by a rather timid Francisco Fernandez-Rueda.

Nothing here will change your life, and you’ll be happy to learn that all we get on this 54-minute CD is the opera’s music, shorn of its spoken dialogue. There are two fine ensembles and a duet or two. Nothing outstays its welcome. A bon-bon, nothing deep, that’s good for you. Ryan Brown leads his Opera Lafayette–24 strong, with lovely flutes–and small chorus spiritedly.

– ClassicsToday (Robert Levine)

The German violinist Friedrich Seitz was born in Günthersleben near Gotha in 1848 and died in Dessau in 1918. He served as a conductor in Sondershausen, where he had studied, as concert-master in Magdeburg and from 1884 as Court Concert-Master in Dessau. He was particularly active as a teacher, and is remembered for his Schülerkonzerte, teaching concertos, which introduce pupils to something of nineteenth-century concerto technique and remain a part of teaching repertoire. On this new release, violinist Hyejin Chung and pianist Warren Lee explore his five Concertos for Violin and Piano- by far his most successful works. Hyejin Chung studied with Takako Nishizaki at the Academy for Performing Arts in Hong Kong and graduated with an Advanced Certificate in violin performance. Subsequently she went to Russia and studied with S.I. Kravchenko, a student and assistant of Leonid Kogan, at the Moscow State Conservatory. After settling in Hong Kong, she focused on playing chamber music and teaching advanced students at the Takako Nishizaki Violin Studio. This is her second recording for Naxos.

In addition to some 47 keyboard sonatas, Haydn wrote a variety of other pieces including arrangements of earlier orchestral or chamber works, and dances intended for occasional use. The 10 kleine Klavierstucke (10 Little Piano Pieces) contain five symphonic movements- including the second movement from one of his most popular, No. 53 in D major, known as L’Imperiale- a single movement from a string quartet and three extracts from his witty Eszterhaza opera La vera constanza. The dance movements were popular in Vienna’s many ballrooms. This is the penultimate release in Jeno Jando’s project of recording the complete solo piano music by Joseph Haydn. Of the complete piano sonatas release, Audiophile Audition commented: “Jando is every inch the professional, his years of experience and his muscular playing full these [works] with vivacious life.”

Four British composers give the tuba a good workout, beginning with Ralph Vaughan Williams. His concerto from 1954 displays all the hallmarks of the composer: tunefulness of the English pastoral variety, expert scoring, and a thorough knowledge of the instrument’s capabilities, notably its mellifluous upper register. The first movement gallumphs along in 6/8 time, the thematic material recalling the finale of the Fourth Symphony, then a typically mellow slow movement follows. The Sixth Symphony is recalled in the dramatic finale. The venerable master broke no new ground in this piece (as he did in some of his later works); still it is swift, enjoyable, and well crafted.


That description applies to the other concertos as well, all of which were composed in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Edward Gregson has written a lot of music for brass—the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble recorded his brass quintet years ago for Argo—and he is comfortable with concerto form, as witness the fine Chandos CD of his clarinet and violin concertos. His tuba concerto is memorably melodic and heavily (but expertly) scored à la Hollywood wide-screen. The first movement’s thematic material makes attractive use of the Lydian mode. I am not acquainted with the work of Roger Steptoe (b. 1953) or John Golland (1946–1993) but their concertos are similarly from the sophisticated end of the British light-music genre. Harmonies are spiced with dissonance, but overall the appropriate adjective is jolly. I particularly liked Golland’s concerto, which boasts a moody and reflective slow movement.


The performances are just right. James Gourlay is both mellow and nimble, while Gavin Sutherland and his band are completely at home in this kind of music. Recording is fine. When I played the CD on a small portable system, the speakers buzzed merrily in sympathetic vibration: that is the nature of the tuba’s full timbre, but it’s not a problem on a regular system. An enjoyable disc, with more variety in it than you might suppose.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

Includes work(s) by Richard Wagner. Conductor: Leif Segerstam.

Mozart Camargo Guarnieri is universally recognised as the most important Brazilian composer after Villa-Lobos. The Six Piano Concertos, composed over a period of forty years, offer a complete panorama of Guarnieri’s stylistic evolution, in particular his blend of sophisticated compositional techniques and the improvisational character of Brazilian folk-music. The Piano Concertos Nos. 4 and 5 display a number of avant-garde features that are fundamentally different from the more nationalistic vocabulary that informs the earlier three piano concertos (Naxos 8.557666). Completed shortly after the composer’s eightieth birthday, the chamber-like, intimate Piano Concerto No. 6 returns to an earlier style.