The three colorful works on this world premiere recording are a representative sample of 20th century Catalan music, all of them including popular cobla band instruments such as the timble and the tenora with their bright, piercing reeds, and the flabiol flute with its high tones. Manuel oltra's music is deeply rooted in Catalan tradition, and L'Alimara is a symphonic poem with medieval echoes. Both Juli Garreta's Suite empordanesa and Joan Lluis Moraleda's epic Tirant lo Blanc are considered milestones in Catalonian symphonic music, the latter transporting us to the fights, feasts and chivalric romance of its eponymous hero.

Here is a fine mixed assortment of music by Arnold Schoenberg. All of the performances are high quality, and two of them are now my reference recordings. Even if this were a full-price disc, the expert performances, clean engineering, and wide sonic range (including particularly solid bass) would make it a top choice.


The performance of Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten is notable for lovely, accurate singing by Jennifer Lane and sensitive, fluent support by pianist Christopher Oldfather. Lane produces a more beautiful tone, with more consistency between registers, than the major rival performance by Jan DeGaetani and pianist Gilbert Kalish on Nonesuch. But DeGaetani exploits register differences to create a wider range of effect and knows when some vocal harshness is called for. Lane may excel in presenting the love music's lyricism, but DeGaetani makes the loss and anguish more keenly felt. Although my reference here remains DeGaetani/Kalish, Lane's rendition is still excellent, and I dare say that some listeners will prefer hers because of its sheer vocal beauty.


The Piano Suite Op. 25 occupies a pivotal spot in music history as Schoenberg's first completely 12-tone work. Again the top contender is a classic Nonesuch CD, this time played by Paul Jacobs, who projects more angst. Oldfather presents a clarified, even witty approach that makes this music sound less "difficult" than usual while demonstrating that Schoenberg used neo-classical form and texture to support his radical melodic/harmonic technique. Since the Nonesuch disc's sound is a little fuzzy by today's standards, it's an easy nod for the new disc.

Lied der Waldtaube is a song from Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder. Schoenberg stripped the original lush full-orchestral accompaniment down to a 15-piece ensemble to create the arrangement recorded here. Jennifer Lane returns as soloist, again displaying her creamy mezzo-soprano in particularly sensitive singing. This is definitely worth hearing--and acquiring as an alternative. In the end though, fans of this music will want the late-Romantic original orchestration for its stronger emotional punch.

Schoenberg, who was not a particular fan of Handel, felt free to mess around with the Baroque master's Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 7. Often altering Handel's harmonization, and with downright loopy "wrong" notes scattered around the score, this strange piece is Schoenberg's funniest composition. Robert Craft, a friend of Schoenberg's in his later days and a pioneer in conducting the composer's music in America, leads the Fred Sherry String Quartet (formed for the occasion of this recording) and the Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble in a recording of this piece that's unprecedented in clarity and wit, with full-bodied sound to match. The disc concludes with a rather charming 1949 interview of Schoenberg by American composer Halsey Stevens.
--Joseph Stevenson, ClassicsToday.com

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Now here’s a novelty that fans of Ravel and Rimsky-Korsakov will want to hear. In 1910, the story of Antar reached the stage in Paris as a play, with incidental music by Ravel arranged out of Rimsky’s eponymous symphony/tone poem (with a bit of Mlada thrown in for good measure). There is very little original music by Ravel–just a couple of minutes in all–but the arrangements involve some telling reorchestration and the creation of numerous short interludes. The cinematic conclusion (sound clip) sums things up nicely. All told, you get almost the complete original work: the first three movements, plus a good bit of the finale, albeit in a different order.

Unfortunately, for this premiere recording a long, pretentious, self-consciously “poetic” narration has been added, with words by Amin Maalouf. His main musical distinction lies in the fact that he has furnished several opera librettos for Kaija Saariaho, as if that’s a recommendation. My annoyance grew with every word. I mean, the only reason anyone wants to hear this piece is to find out what Ravel did with Rimsky’s original. Why put narrator André Dussolier in what sounds like an empty aircraft hangar and superimpose his histrionic reading of the text on top of the music? You’ll get through it, but it was a bad decision.

That said, Slatkin’s conducting is excellent, as it almost always is when he’s interpreting Russian music, and the sonics are very good when the narrator isn’t narrating. The coupling is a fine performance of Shéhérazade. Isabelle Druet’s voice is, arguably, a bit too small for the work, but she only sounds strained at the climax of Asie. Otherwise, she sings with intelligence, excellent diction, and characterful attention to the text. A sometimes frustrating release, then, but a collector’s item all the same.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

Includes work(s) by Franz Krommer. Soloists: Nancy Ambrose-King, Solomia Soroka, Natalia Khoma, Eva Stern, Joseph Kam.

Dmitry Shostakovich’s succinctly composed and highly distinctive 24 Preludes have proved their popularity in numerous arrangements, but when the composer heard these transcriptions by Smitry Tsyganov he declared that ‘I forgot they were originally written for piano, so naturally did they sound.’ The set was completed in 2000 by the Russian-born composer and pianist Lera Auerbach. These often whimsical and ironic Preludes contrast greatly with the chilling and profound Violin Sonata, a late work that concludes with Shostakovich’s last ever use of passacaglia form.

The fourth installment in Naxos’ Soler keyboard sonata cycle introduces 25-year-old pianist Mateusz Borowiak, who has begun to make a name for himself on the competition and European festival circuit. While his playing is sensitive and stylish with regard to ornaments and phrasing, Borowiak is not afraid to exploit the modern concert grand’s dynamic range and potential for tone color. Listen, for example, to the effective crescendos and sudden contrasts in the C minor No. 48’s introductory measures, to the cross-rhythmic accents that punctuate the G major No. 45’s broken octaves, or to the shaded precision of the C major No. 50’s two-handed unison passages. Sample the A major No. 53’s differentiated detached and sustained articulation, not to mention those impressively calibrated trills. The intimate yet full bodied sonics are remarkably lifelike, as if Borowiak is working his magic just a few feet away from you. In short, this disc, along with numerous live performances posted on YouTube, clearly positions Borowiak as a piano talent to keep on your radar.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' Strathclyde Concertos, all premiered by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, are among his most significant contributions to the concerto genre. Concerto No. 3 for Horn and Trumpet marks a turning point in the cycle of ten concertos by employing multiple soloists, and stands in the lineage of works by Haydn, Mozart and Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. Concerto No. 4 explores the clarinet's lyrical Mozartian heritage, alongside subtle percussive effects and agile virtuosity.

The daughter of the composer Elizabeth Maconchy and Professor of Music at York University, Nicola LeFanu has composed some sixty works, orchestral, chamber, solo and operatic, which have been played and broadcast all over the world.

Peter Maxwell Davies's Strathclyde Concertos, jointly commissioned by Strathclyde Regional Council and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in 1987, have given rise to a whole family of concertos for different and unusual instruments. The Ninth Concerto provides an opportunity for woodwind instruments to shine as soloists, the music inspired by the infinite shades of winter light reflected from the seas of Orkney. The final Tenth Concerto is "a concerto for orchestra that's as bracing as a gale on the rugged Orkney cliffs" (BBC Music Magazine), and the delightful Carolísima is filled with dances and singable tunes.

Volume 5 of Naxos’s acclaimed series of Debussy’s orchestral music presents a potpourri of works that were either left incomplete by the composer or were orchestrated by others who greatly admired his music. His rarely-heard children’s ballet The Toy Box, dedicated to Debussy’s daughter Emma-Claude but not premièred until after the composer’s death, recalls the innocent world of his popular Children’s Corner suite. Based on Pierre Louÿs’ Chansons de Bilitis, Debussy’s Six épigraphes antiques evoke poetic scenes from the ancient world, as does the sole surviving portion of The Triumph of Bacchus.

Includes work(s) by Geirr Tveitt, various composers. Ensemble: Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Bjarte Engeset.

I’m not sure you could do better than this.

Naxos has collated its Haydn Masses series into a single box [8.508009] so if you fancy having the full works in a single handy collection these performances, conducted by J. Owen Burdick and Jane Glover, may fit your bill, and price bracket. Single discs are still available, and this one is no exception; a 2003 recording of the once-neglected 1767 Stabat Mater.

The forces are familiar ones, given their prominence in the Naxos series. The direction and execution are able, the singing generally good, phrasing attractive. An affirmative spirit courses through the performance and it mitigates the sometimes funereal performances that we used to hear. The orchestral forces, the Rebel Baroque Orchestra, employ period instruments and practice, which gives a not unwelcome astringency to some - but by no means all - of the playing. The balance between solo voices, orchestral solos and the choir is a just one.

There is, in fact, little with which to cross swords in a performance as attractive as this. Comparing older, conventional performances with one such as this is not comparing like-with-like, but if one were to do so, one should point out that the famous old Laszlo Heltay recording, with a stellar vocal line up of Augér, Hodgson, Rolfe-Johnson and Howell, is invariably a minute slower in all the more extensive movements, which adds considerably to the total timing, and also the sense of incipient gravity and contemplation generated by such tempos.

Here we find articulation is bright and tight. Stephen Sands has a quite light tenor, but it’s mobile and relatively flexible. He starts the work, soloistically, with the Stabat mater dolorosa and when he follows bass Richard Lippold in the Virgo virginum praeclara - and before the other two voices enter - he blends well with his colleagues. Luthien Brackett has an attractive, well focused alto, and Ann Hoyt sports a bright, youthful soprano. She makes a fine showing in Quis non posset contristari where spruce winds and a well balanced organ are strongly to the fore. Understandably perhaps she snatches at breaths a touch in the Sancta Mater, istud agas. Lippold is a pleasantly sonorous bass, doing well by Pro peccatis suae gentis. The chorus, which is the Trinity Choir, come into its own in the concluding Paradisi Gloria where the bases don’t over-part the tenors - and indeed all sections sing well.

The acoustic works in favour of the performance, though there is some ambient noise floating about, audible at higher levels. I didn’t find it especially distracting. So if you fancy an original instrument performance with good soloists, band and choir and a brisk, attractive tempo, and all at a bargain price bracket, I’m not sure you could do better than this.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Muzio Clementi was revered as 'the father of the pianoforte'. He was a virtuoso composer and teacher whose publishing and piano manufacturing made him hugely wealthy. Gradus ad Parnassum in three volumes and completed by 1826 consists of 100 incredibly demanding exercises designed to lead to musical and technical perfection. It remains one of the great compendiums in musical history. Prize-winning pianist Alessandro Marangoni continues his critically acclaimed survey in this third of four volumes.

Chopin’s youthful Piano Concerto No. 1 is dominated by the brilliant piano part that the teenage performer-composer wrote to showcase his extraordinary virtuosity. Its ravishing Romanza (‘reviving in one’s soul beautiful memories’, as the composer described it) is framed by an opening movement rich in dramatic lyricism and a vivacious Rondo. The Fantasia on Polish Airs, Op. 13 and Krakowiak are similarly vehicles for Romantic reverie and bravura which pay tribute to the music of Chopin’s homeland. Eldar Nebolsin’s recording of Liszt’s piano concertos was ranked ‘among the finest’ by Gramophone.

The orchestra used by Peter Maxwell Davies for his Fourth Symphony is of Classical period proportions, but this relatively compact framework belies a richness of ideas and sonorities. With it's starting point in the tone poem Chat Moss, the single-movement Fifth Symphony utilizes a more varied orchestral palette than it's predecessor, with a large percussion section often in evidence. Both works are performed here by the orchestras for which they were written. The First Symphony can be heard on 8.572348, the Second Symphony on 8.572349, and the Third Symphony on 8.572350. Universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has made a significant contribution to musical history through his wide-ranging and prolific output. He lives in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland, where he writes most of his music.

Classical Music

There are times when a disk drops through my letterbox and, after tearing the wrapping off the parcel, I look at the CD and despair, wondering do we really need yet another, in this case, recording of Debussy’s popular orchestral works? Then I play the disk and am pleasantly surprised. So it is with this disk. Märkl’s up against very stiff competition – Ansermet, Barbirolli, Boulez and Martinon to name but a few – but he’s his own man and gives us his own view of the music.

The Prélude is very well done. The solo flute is suitably sensuous, and is ably complemented by the solo oboe. Also, I have never heard the two solo violins, at the end, sound quite as winsome as they do here. The big tune in the middle is allowed to expand as it should and the delicate final pages, with slightly too reticent antique cymbals, is well controlled.

La Mer is almost as fine a performance. Starting very mysteriously, Märkl builds up the tension until the music bursts forth with animation. It’s a fine achievement. However, when the second part of the first movement begins, with cellos in eight parts, it’s too reticent and lacks the momentum required to push the music forwards. When Satie first heard this movement, From Dawn to Midday on the Sea, he quipped that he especially enjoyed the bit at a quarter to eleven. Strange as this may seem I think I know the moment he means – at four bars after rehearsal number 13 there is a static section where cor anglais and two solo cellos play a long breathed theme over sustained chords, it’s a magical moment which prepares us for the build up to the climactic final bars. Märkl makes these few bars quite magical and the calm is quite stunning. The coda is well built but the final three chords – which should beat us about the head with their power – fail to completely satisfy. The scherzo, Play of the Waves, is too heavy handed and the important colouristic glockenspiel part all but inaudible. The tension and suspense of the final movement, Dialogue between the Wind and the Sea, is very well done. The climaxes are well developed and the changes of mood and tempo very well handled. There is one strange moment – at rehearsal number 53 the horns play a triplet, followed, in the next bar, by two minim chords. In this recording we are treated to an extra triplet chord! I’ve played this moment several times, thinking my ears were deceiving me, but no, it’s there, an extra triplet beat. As it’s an exact repeat of what they played six bars earlier I’m mystified by what happens. Why is this extra chord there and what is the purpose? I doubt it’s an editing error so the conductor must have heard it as the horns played the passage. Curiouser and curiouser. Better news is that four bars after rehearsal number 59, under the big chords for winds and strings, Märkl plays the brass fanfares which, more often than not, are ignored by conductors as not being in a real Debussy style. Perhaps they are somewhat unsubtle for Debussy, and for this moment, but without them the music suddenly stops dead, it seems empty, something has to be played there and if these fanfares are all we have then we have to have them. It’s a good performance but it lacks that final insight, that ultimate injection of energy which makes the Hallé/Barbirolli recording so memorable and compelling.

Jeux is one of Debussy’s most elusive scores (it was his last orchestral work). It’s a ballet which concerns a lost tennis ball and a boy and two girls who look for it, as they play hide and seek, try to catch one another, quarrel and sulk without cause. Their games are interrupted when another tennis ball is mischievously thrown in by an unknown hand which surprises and alarms them and they disappear into the nocturnal depths of the garden. The story isn’t important. Debussy’s music is. It receives an excellent performance here – Märkl fully understands what is going on in the music and leads his players through the myriad tempo changes, keeps the ever changing orchestral colouring alive and generally makes clear music which so often sounds confused and muddled. You’d be hard pressed to find a finer performance on disk.

André Caplet was a close friend of Debussy and worked on the orchestration of the latter’s incidental music for Gabriele D’Annunzio’s play Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien and the ballet La Boîte à joujou. He also made two, superb, reductions for two pianos, four hands and six hands, of La Mer, and made orchestral transcriptions of several piano works. Children’s Corner is a delightful six movement suite for solo piano; it’s light hearted, full of fun and several of the movements have become popular independently of the suite – The Little Shepherd and Golliwog’s Cake-walk in particular. Caplet’s orchestration has always struck me as being rather heavy handed – odd for so skilful an orchestrator – but here he has met his match with perfect piano music which does not lend itself to orchestration. Märkl does his best but, ultimately, it’s still too heavy and much of the humour is lost.

Apart from Jeux, which is superb, I would not put these performances of La Mer and the Prélude ahead of other recordings which are currently available - those conductors listed above - but they are very serviceable and if you’re on a tight budget, or just wanting to dip your toes in the Debussian water for the first time, then at the bargain price you’ll get much from these atmospheric readings.

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

PENDERECKI: Sextet / Clarinet Quartet / Cello Divertimento

Grieg: Orchestral Music, Vol. 1: Piano Concerto - Symphonic

One of the most important composers of opera and sacred music between Mozart and Rossini, and Donizetti' teacher, Johann Simon Mayr also composed several major oratorios, including David and the Marriage of Tobias. Like Haydn' more famous Il Rito.

Anne-Catherine Bucher studied harpsichord and basso continuo with Michele Deverite, Robert Kohnen, Francoise Lengelle, and Huguette Dreyfus, and organ with Norbert Petry. She has taken master classes with Jesper Christensen and Gustav Leonhardt and has performed concerts throughout Europe and Latin America with the finest ensembles specializing in Early Music. Passionate about research, she creates original programs and develops new forms of concerts and encounters with audiences of all kinds. She is professor for harpsichord at the Metz Metropole Conservatory. She has taught master classes in France, Belgium, Finland, Poland, Germany, Mexico, and Cuba, and has recorded several radio and television programs. This release contains Bach's Goldberg Variations played on harpsichord by Anne-Catherine Bucher and comes with a detailed form analysis in the liner notes.

In Hungary at the beginning of the 20th century, Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály were collecting and making analytical studies of Hungarian folk music, creating a new interest in the native music of their homeland. This album, featuring rarely heard works from the succeeding generation of Hungarian composers, presents a distinctive portrait of the Hungarian music scene from the interwar years to the 1950s, by composers who faced discrimination or paid the ultimate price for their Jewish heritage. The Offenburg String Trio was created in 1981 in Offenburg, Germany, the home town of its three musicians. The current ensemble consisting of the Schilli brothers Frank (violin) and Rolf (viola) and Martin Merker (cello) has played concerts since 1987. The Trio has received awards in several international chamber music competitions in Germany, France, Italy, and The Netherlands. The ensemble has been invited many times to perform on radio and television, including productions by SWR, Swiss Radio DRS 2, RAI Roma, Radio Catalunya, and the Irish, Brazilian, Russian, and Vietnamese television networks. The members of the Offenburg String Trio have served as the artistic directors of the Offenburg Cloister Concerts since 1995 and in recent years have directed the Trio Chamber Music Weeks for amateur ensembles in Germany and Switzerland.

REVIEW:

This issue is not just music for its own sake, but an inspiring testament that, despite adversity, injustice and cruelty, man’s indomitable spirit of courage always triumphs in the end. Sensitive and engrossingly passionate performances, coupled with some excellent sonics, complete a disc that is certainly not for the squeamish, but deeply rewarding for those who are inclined to search for the meaning behind the notes.

– Classical Music Daily

By all accounts Wilhelm Friedemann Bach was the greatest organist of his time in Germany. The music critic Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart stated: "Undoubtedly the greatest organist of the world! He is a son of the world-famous Sebastian Bach and has reached - if not surpassed - his father's virtuosity." He then goes on to describe his features: "a fiery genius, a creative imagination, originality and inventiveness, a stormy quickness, and the magical power to enchant every heart with his play on the organ". Bach's oeuvre for the organ bears witness to that description, and it is a great shame that so little of his art has come down to us.

The CPO disc promises us "the complete organ works" by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. This has to be taken with a grain of salt. To begin with, it is not easy to make a clear distinction between pieces for any keyboard and compositions specifically intended for the organ. Obviously pieces for two manuals and pedal can only be played at the organ. Those include the seven chorale preludes and the two Fugues in F and g minor respectively which Friedhelm Flamme included in his recording. Inexplicably he did not include the Fugue in F (F 36 / A 91) which Julia Brown has recorded. On the other hand Flamme plays several pieces which don't require a pedal; these include the Fantasias in d minor and c minor which open and respectively close, his programme. Also no pedal is required in the Eight Fugues (F 31 / A 81-88), but here Friedemann has specifically indicated that they can be played either at the "Clavier" (any keyboard without pedals) or the organ.

Although these two discs contain duplications, they also complement each other in that both offer pieces which don't appear on the other disc. The two Fantasias I have just mentioned are absent from Julia Brown's disc - she played them at the harpsichord on Naxos 8.570530 - whereas she included various fugues which are not in the two catalogues of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach's oeuvre. The reason is that they are not considered authentic. It is rather odd that this is not mentioned in the liner-notes. Authentic or not, it is nice to have them available, even though they have been recorded before - for instance by Leo van Doeselaar on Etcetera KTC 2503, 1984.

One can understand that they are considered doubtful, as some are very baroque in style and not very different from Johann Sebastian's fugues. The Fugue in B flat (track 16) is a good example. But that in itself doesn't tell against their authenticity. Listening to the chorale preludes one will notice their rooting in a past even before J.S. The cantus firmus is virtually unornamented, and Friedemann makes use of so-called Vorimitation in which the chorale melody is anticipated in the other voices. It was not only used by Sebastian but is also a feature of the chorale preludes by Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706). Other fugues begin in a rather old-fashioned manner but then turn towards the fashion of the time towards the end. This is typical of Wilhelm Friedemann who in his oeuvre moves to and fro between the various styles of his time.

The number of fugues he composed is remarkable and this is considered one of the reasons he fell from grace towards the end of his career. The form of the fugue had become largely obsolete, and when Friedemann attempted to get the Eight Fugues printed, publishers refused. These are very likely characteristic of his style of playing, and that could well have been the reason that in the last stage of his life he wasn't in much demand as an organist any more. It is assumed that he mostly improvised during his public concerts; that is probably the reason so little organ music by him has been preserved.

The duplications allow us to compare the interpretations of these two organists which are quite different. A look at the track-lists reveals that Julia Brown is consistently slower than Friedhelm Flamme. It is mostly not possible to decide which tempo is right. The Fugue in F (F 33 / A 90), for instance, works in both performances quite well. The slower reading by Julia Brown lends it a kind of gravity and seriousness which suits its character as it is reminiscent of the fugues in Sebastian's Well-tempered Clavier. Elsewhere the slow tempo works against the music, for instance in the Fugue in c minor (track 6) where the trills are unnatural. One could probably characterise Ms Brown's performances as analytical: every detail is exposed, thanks not only to the relatively slow tempi but also the registration which is mostly modest and allows for every single voice to be followed.

The differences between these two discs are also due to the organs. Julia Brown plays an instrument built by Paul Fritts and Company in 1999, which was clearly inspired by the German baroque organ. Friedhelm Flamme also plays a modern organ by Martin Hillebrand dating from 2008. Here new stops have been built in the style of the 18th century, particularly based on the disposition of the organ by Christian Vater which was built in this church in the 1730s. Some pipework from the organ Carl Giesecke had built in the same church in the 1860s has been incorporated into this organ. Because of that the sound is quite different, mellower and less penetrating than the sound of the organ Julia Brown plays. I don't want to choose between them. The Eight Fugues come off beautifully at the Hillebrand. So do the chorale preludes, but in these somewhat old-fashioned pieces the Fritts organ is probably closer to what Bach had at his disposal in his earlier years.

Both booklets leave something to be desired. I have already identified that the doubtful authenticity of several pieces in Julia Brown's recording is not mentioned. Otherwise the liner-notes are not very specific about the various pieces. The CPO booklet contains some general information about Wilhelm Friedemann as an organist, but little analysis of the music. The track-lists should have given the numbers in Peter Wollny's catalogue as well, in particular as Falck's catalogue is out of date. I have added them on the basis of the work-list in New Grove.

Both recordings have their merits and those who have an interest in Wilhelm Friedemann's music shouldn't miss either of them.

-- Johan van Veen, MusicWeb International

William Alwyn composed some fifty works for the orchestra, including five symphonies, a sinfonietta, concertos for flute, oboe, violin, piano, harp, three concerti grossi, and many other descriptive shorter pieces.

Edward MacDowell (1860-1908), an exact contemporary of Gustav Mahler, was widely considered the most important American composer of his day-a time when American music was based primarily on European models. Antonin Dvorák called on American composers to turn to indigenous sources, such as Negro spirituals and Indian tribal music, for inspiration. MacDowell flatly rejected this, commenting, What Negro melodies have to do with Americanism remains a mystery to me." Thus, in the Piano Concerto No. 1 we hear the comfortable old echoes of the Grieg A minor and, in the finale, Dvorák's own concerto. MacDowell's second concerto displays a noticeably higher degree of originality, though here too the European influence is clear, in this case Saint-Saëns. The dark and portentous opening creates a mood of anticipation before the piano enters to launch the drama of the first movement. The finale is brisk and exciting, with some wonderfully bravura piano writing, with which soloist Stephen Prutsman unreservedly flaunts his brilliant technique. He's just as fine in the brief Witches' Dance, which is rather tame and far less spooky than we have come to expect after the likes of Berlioz. The soothing sounds of MacDowell's gentle Romance for Cello and Orchestra close this interesting program. As on many other Naxos recordings, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (led here by Arthur Fagen) delivers performances of international caliber. Fine sound, too." - ClassicsToday.com (Victor Carr, Jr.), January 15, 2001

Gifted as both a writer and a musician, Arrigo Boito wrote the libretto to his own opera Mefistofele. Based on Goethe' Faust and the eternal struggle between Good and Evil, Mefistofele is the pinnacle of Boito' compositional achievement.

Written over the course of a quarter-century, these four flute works reflect the individual approaches to the flute sonata taken by their composers. Hindemith’s aim was to offer new music of buoyancy and brio, tempered by elegiac moments. Prokofiev’s famous sonata has Classical formal elegance, while the sonatas of Denisov and Nagovitsyn are single movement works that explore the flute’s extreme registers, as well as its dynamic contrasts and virtuosic capacities. Denis Lupachev won First Prize at the International Festival ‘Virtuosi2000’ (Russia) in 1993, and in 1997 received the jury’s Special Prize at the Kobe International Flute Competition (Japan). In 1999, he was awarded First Prize at the ‘Leonardo de Lorenzo’ International Flute Competition(Italy). Lupachev gives many recitals and chamber music concerts in Russia as well as throughout Europe. Since 2016, he has organized the International Festival ‘Virtuosi of the Flute’ in the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg. Peter Laul was awarded First Prize in both the Bremen International Piano Competition (1997) and the Scriabin International Piano Competition in Moscow (2000). Laul has given recitals at prestigious international venues such as the halls of the St Petersburg Philharmonic and the Moscow Conservatory, the Auditorium du Louvre, Lincoln Center in New York, the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, and Suntory Hall and Opera City Concert Hall in Tokyo. He is a consummate chamber musician, who regularly partners with Maxim Vengerov, Ilya Gringolts, Valery Sokolov, Alexander Ghindin and the Borodin Quartet.

Contemporary American music for wind band continues to offer a rich combination of color and variety. David Maslanka was one of the most prolific and admired of all wind band composers, and in Liberation he utilizes plainchant in a moving exploration of death, the afterlife and the continuance of hope. Inspired by Walt Whitman, Aaron Perrine’s In the Open Air, In the Silent Lines creates a rich sense of space, while Kevin Walczyk’s moving Symphony No. 5: Freedom from Fear – Images from the Shoreline is unified by its themes of adoption, segregation and immigration. The University of Kansas Wind Ensemble enjoys a long history of excellence and musical leadership in the state of Kansas, across the nation and around the world. The ensemble is at the forefront of the Naxos Wind Band Classics series, having recorded five previous albums on the label. The ensemble is committed to contemporary music and regularly commissions, premieres and records new works.

A 2021 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Orchestral Performance!

Pulitzer and Erasmus Prize-winning composer John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of American music. His works stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. Adams describes My Father Knew Charles Ives as “an homage and encomium to a composer whose influence on me has been huge.” Harmonielehre was a deliberate move by Adams to expand his musical language beyond Minimalism, keeping its energetic pulse but embracing the rich tonal resources of the past to create a work that has accrued an aura of timelessness. Six-time GRAMMY Award-winning conductor Giancarlo Guerrerois music director of the Nashville Symphony and the NFM Wroc?aw Philharmonic in Poland, as well as principal guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, Portugal. He has championed contemporary American music through numerous commissions, recordings and performances with the Nashville Symphony, presenting eleven world premieres of works by Michael Daugherty, Terry Riley, and others. As part of this commitment, he helped guide the creation of Nashville Symphony’s Composer Lab & Workshop initiative.

 

REVIEWS:

 

In point of fact, John Adams’ father did not know Charles Ives, but imagined that they had a good deal in common, and that was a springboard to a work that is unlike any other among Adams’ output. It’s not at all clear why My Father Knew Charles Ives has been so neglected. The work gets a detailed, sympathetic treatment here from Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Guerrero and the Nashvillians have done a major service by reviving My Father Knew Charles Ives.

 

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

 

Given the difference in ambiance and style between the two works, these brilliantly played and recorded performances might just make an ideal point of entry for those new to the composer.

 

 

– MusicWeb International

Composed by the young Gioachino Rossini in eleven days to comply with a contractual commitment, L’occasione fa il ladro (Opportunity Makes A Thief) is a comedy of multiple confusions. Count Alberto, travelling to be wed to a fiancée he has yet to meet, leaves an inn with the wrong suitcase. Don Parmenione audaciously adopts the Count’s identity, determined to take the bride for himself. This single-act burletta is a swift and deftly plotted moral drama, Rossini’s exuberant inspiration poured into interactions both tender and hilariously bewildering.