Tim Fain has constructed an adventurous and exciting recital of American violin music. It takes in the concert version of Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach-Fain "played the hell out of the piece".

Includes song(s) without words by Felix Mendelssohn. Soloists: Axel Strauss, Cord Garben.

Why so much of Ernest Bloch's music hovers on the fringes of the repertoire remains a mystery. So much of it is excellent: the string quartets rival Bartók's in their intensity and imaginative use of color; his single opera, Macbeth, is magnificent; the orchestral works naturally vary somewhat in quality, but most are marvelous. The less-well-known masterpieces include the Violin Concerto, the Viola Suite, the Concerto symphonique for piano and orchestra, and among the smaller pieces, the Four Episodes for Chamber Orchestra. This brief, unpromisingly named work contains a whole world of expression packed into a very small space.

Bloch is of course best known for his "Jewish" works, but there are many different threads running through his music, including a fascination with things Chinese. You can hear this in the finale of the Viola Suite, and perhaps most potently as the finale of the Four Episodes. Scored for piano, wind quintet, and strings, the performance here is wonderfully colorful and alive. Hiver-Printemps is one of Bloch's earliest pieces, a pair of short tone poems that does exactly what the titles say: offer musical portraits of winter, and then spring. The style is impressionist, the scoring pellucidly lovely.

Both the Concertino for flute and viola and the Suite Modale for flute and strings belong to the very end of Bloch's life. While his compositional orbit encompassed everything up to and including atonality, it is probably here in these sweetly modal creations that his personal voice sounds most distinctively. After all, both the Jewish and Chinese currents join in their various modal inflections, and so it would be correct to regard these late pieces as the distilled essence of Bloch's style. As always with his music, even when the works are brief or modest in scale, they remain big of heart.

Dalia Atlas, who is slowly working her way through Bloch's orchestral music for Naxos, leads beautifully idiomatic performances of all four works. Noam Buchman is the excellent flute soloist in both the Concertino and the Suite, and Atlas has the various large and small ensembles at her disposal playing in fine form. The sonics, given the various recording dates and venues, are surprisingly consistent and always very good. This is one of those discs that, by virtue of its unfamiliar repertoire, might easily be overlooked, but don't make that mistake. You'd be missing excellent performances of very high-quality, enjoyable music.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Morton Gould was a very capable composer whose light music has overshadowed his more serious compositions. Despite the potential for humor latent in the title, the Jekyll and Hyde Variations are sober indeed, but they also live up to their billing in that they consist of an alternating, increasingly schizoid series of transformations of the quirky opening theme. Although hardly as melodically ingratiating as Fall River Legend, the piece is consistently absorbing and wonderfully well-scored, and really beautifully played by the Nashville Symphony under the late Kenneth Schermerhorn. Fall River Legend, here presented in its complete version (including the opening accusation against Lizzie Borden read by James F. Neal), is one of Gould's most popular pieces, and the full-length work is well worth hearing. The more familiar numbers from the suite, such as Cotillion and Church Social, have as much infectious lilt in this performance as in any other version, and Gould sustains the high quality of the musical invention throughout the ballet's 50-plus minutes. Warm, rich recorded sound completes an extremely appealing release that American music fans will not want to miss.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Nikolai Kapustin’s music is renowned in contemporary circles for its witty and seamless fusion of jazz idioms and formal classical structures. In recent years, the composer has forged a formidable association with American flautist Immanuel Davis, who here interprets his highly sophisticated ‘Flute Sonata, Op 125’ with great virtuosity. ‘Divertissement’ explores the different jazz harmonies available from the four instruments, contrasting with the textural transparency of ‘A Little Duo.’ Flutist Immanuel Davis is a higly versatile performer who enjoys playing the entire span of the flute repertoire. He has performed as a recitalist and masterclass teacher worldwide. He has appeared as a recitalist and chamber musician at Carnegie Hall, MoMa’s Summer Garden Series, and more. Educated at the Juilliard School, Davis received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees as a student of Julius Baker. He has been flute professor at the University of Minnesota since 2001.

The seductive sound and renewed interest in the Tango has brought the music of the Argentinian composer, Astor Piazzolla, into the world of the popular classics. His large catalogue of works is unique in using the Tango as the basis for all of his compositions, though he developed the art to the point where it is difficult to detect the dance in his complex and strictly classical music. Of his many works for chamber groups, the Histoire de Tango, composed in 1986, is one of his most popular and frequently performed works. Scored for flute and guitar, it is typical of the composer's interest in the guitar, the Five Pieces now being established in the concert programmes.

This new installment in the Naxos Lifestyle Series is titled Music for Book Lovers: Classical Music for Reading. This is an ideal special edition for book lovers. Nestle into your favorite reading spot and experience how this music speaks volumes as the perfect accompaniment to your page-turning. Works include pieces from composers like Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Boulanger, Ravel, Godowsky, and more. (Naxos)

There are plenty of studies that show the benefits of classical music. Listening while studying can improve focus, help beat stress and anxiety, improve mood, and even aid in memorization. Let the calming music of J.S. Bach set the tone for a productive work day. They may say that work and play don't mix, but tracking a genius such as Bach proves that they do, both as a prelude to your labors and for a sustaining accompaniment throughout the day.

For me, the real "Best of Satie" would include at least excerpts from the opera Socrate and the ballet Parade. But this is a nice overview of the eccentric composer's keyboard gems, culled from Klára Körmendi's excellent Satie cycle for Naxos. Many pianists take Satie's wistful melodic sensibility as license to let the music wallow and droop. Körmendi will have none of that. Her sensitive, expertly colored playing brings uncommon, refreshing urgency to the first three Nocturnes, the well-worn Gymnopédies, and all six Gnossiennes. Moreover, she has a way of making the composer's idiosyncratic expressive indications audible without hitting listeners over the head. The disc concludes with the Gymnopédies in their familiar orchestrations by Debussy (Nos. 1 & 3) and Roland-Manuel (No. 2). The French orchestra plays rather patchily in the first but redeems itself with some very nice playing in the other two. No. 3 features a lovely oboe soloist surrounded by silvery, reed-organ-like high strings. If you're looking for a Satie piano music start-up kit, this is the one. --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Irish by birth, John Field gained an international reputation as one of the finest pianists of his time, with delicacy and nuance in his playing that is expressed in his innovative and poetically lyrical ‘Nocturnes.’ Field’s earlier ‘Sonatas’ are more classical in feel, but their sense of flow and dramatic narrative exhibit qualities that are developed and given added virtuoso panache in his fine ‘Piano Concertos,’ works admired by Liszt, Chopin, and Schumann. “Benjamin Frith has done a stellar job in bringing these concertos into the sunlight, brilliantly supported by the Northern Sinfonia under David Haslam.” (Pianist Magazine) “Played with effortless fluency…” (Gramophone) “Benjamin Frith plays with the freshness of discovery and wit.” (Audiophile Audition)

Excerpts of reviews from select, previously released volumes included in this set:

Field: Piano Music Vol 1 - Nocturnes and Sonatas

These "night" pieces are primarily characterized by a dominant, gracefully flowing melody, with most of the harmonic activity in the pianist's left hand. Although other pianists have recorded at least some of Field's Nocturnes--most notably John O'Conor (Telarc) and Miceál O'Rourke (Chandos)--Benjamin Frith's own uniquely inflected, poetic readings have a satisfying aura of intimacy cast in the warm colors of his well-tempered, expertly recorded piano.

– ClassicsToday.com

Field: Piano Concertos No 1 & 3

Both works are played with the effortless fluency we know from his Mendelssohn series - plus all the immediacy and freshness of new discovery.

– Gramophone

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was most famous during his lifetime as a keyboard virtuoso, principally as an organist but also as a harpsichord player, and he composed a significant body of keyboard music. Many of these works (including transcriptions of his organ music) occupy a central place in the repertoire of pianists both amateur and professional, delighting players and listeners alike to this day. The keyboard music that Bach published falls into four anthologies, each titled Clavier Übung (Keyboard Practice), a rather dry title for what turns out to be an amazing wealth of music! Other works, such as The Well-Tempered Clavier Books I and II, while not published by Bach, circulated widely in manuscript form and have been influential on composers and performers: Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Reger, Schumann, Busoni and many others have fallen under Bach's spell, using his music to develop their own and their students' techniques, and inspired by Bach's extraordinary achievement when composing their own works. Books I and II of The Well-Tempered Clavier each contain preludes and fugues in all the 24 major and minor keys, from C major to B minor, and are collectively known as 'the 48'. Sometimes referred to as the 'Old Testament' of keyboard music (Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas being the 'New'), the preludes explore an astonishing variety of musical forms (including the famous toccata-like Prelude No 1 in C Major from Book I, various dance styles and concerto- or fantasia-like movements) while the fugues range equally broadly from rather formal examples in 'old fashioned' academic style to others based on more up-to-date musical forms. The term 'well-tempered' refers to the system of tuning, new in Bach's day, which allowed music to be played in any key and has become the standard in Western music. Bach's 15 two-part Inventions and 15 three-part Sinfonias BWV 772-801 were originally written as educational pieces for the notebook Bach prepared for his second wife, Anna Magdalena, herself an accomplished musician. During the Baroque period collections of 'overtures' or 'dance suites' were particularly popular. Bach composed three sets of six suites: the so-called 'English' Suites BWV 806-811, the 'French' Suites BWV 812-817 and the keyboard Partitas BWV 825-830. Each suite comprises a basic set of dances based on different national models, Allemande (German), Courante (Italian or French), Sarabande (Spanish/Latin American) and Gigue (French, based on the British Jig) with additional dances included. The Goldberg Variations BWV 988 presents an aria (that is, a song-like movement) with thirty variations based on the aria's bass line rather than it's tune (Beethoven would work similar wonders with his 'Diabelli' Variations Op. 120). The Italian Concerto BWV 971 was inspired by the exciting new music that was finding it's way north during Bach's lifetime. Bach also transcribed for keyboard several orchestral concertos by Vivaldi and other Italian composers. In addition, several shorter pieces, including the famous hymn Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring and dances from the Wilhelm Friedemann Bach Notebook are included.

This fourth volume in Marin Alsop’s acclaimed Prokofiev symphonic cycle features two of his most viscerally exciting works. Using material salvaged from his opera The Fiery Angel, the Third Symphony was hailed by Serge Koussevitzky at its 1929 première as ‘the best symphony since Tchaikovsky’s Sixth’. Originally commissioned as a ballet by Sergey Dyagilev but rejected as un-danceable, the Scythian Suite has become a popular orchestral showpiece, while Prokofiev retained a lifelong fondness for his dark-hued early symphonic sketch Autumn.

Review:

Even die-hard fans will admit that Prokofiev's seven symphonies aren't always magnificent and Marin Alsop's elegant lucidity provides only a partial solution to the problem. She gets unfailingly good string playing, often more sensitively nuanced than that of her rivals, but her Sao Paulo team does tend to 'normalize' the invention, smoothing away rough edges in a manner that not everyone will find idiomatic. Still, Alsop's reading works on its own terms, and if she makes the music sound as much like Roussel as Stravinsky one can perhaps discern why Serge Diaghilev chose to reject the Scythian Suite as insufficiently Russian.

– Gramophone

John Beard was a young tenor who came to George Frideric Handel’s attention when still a teenager. He inspired the great composer to give new focus to the tenor voice within his English oratorios. Beard was Handel’s ideal in his demands for ‘articulate utterance of the words and a just expression of the melody’- a collaboration that climaxed in Handel’s creation of the first truly great tenor part as the hero in Samson. Grammy Award-winning tenor Aaron Sheehan steps into John Beard’s shoes equipped with a voice of ‘shining quality and deep sensitivity’ (The New York Times).

BAROQUE VIOLIN FAVOURITES

Classical Music

Shostakovich’s First Symphony propelled the teenage composer to international prominence, its emotional range and innovative orchestration marking him as a daring and precocious talent on the scene. The Third Symphony, ‘The First of May’, originally intended as part of a symphonic cycle inspired by dates on the revolutionary calendar, has been described as ‘a reckless and at times chaotic accommodation between modernist intent and revolutionary fervour’. ‘Thrilling, perfect, essential…the modern reference recording’. (Classicstoday.com on Naxos 8.572461 / Symphony No. 10)

Musicologist Adrian Thomas considered Grazyna Bacewicz’s string quartets “unrivalled in 20th-century Polish music and… one of the century’s most significant contributions to the genre”. Her folk-music infused First Quartet dates from student days at the Paris Conservatoire, while exceptional polyphonic skill, intense emotion and playful, high spirits characterize the Third Quartet. Both the Sixth and Seventh Quartets unite tradition with a strikingly effective and highly personal exploration of progressive contemporary techniques. As Lutoslawski observed, in the “rapidly changing artistic currents” of the times, “it was [Bacewicz’s] music which helped create that atmosphere.”

Beethoven was involved in theater in one way or another from boyhood, and the commission to compose incidental music for Goethe's play Egmont at the Royal Imperial Court Theatre in Vienna was the first of many such collaborations. Beethoven's score conveys the essence of this tragedy and reveals his clear affinity with it's theme of heroic sacrifice by a man condemned to death for taking a valiant stand against oppression. Leif Segerstam is recognized internationally as a conductor, composer, violinist and pianist. He is currently chief conductor of the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also conducted many of the world's most prestigious orchestras, and was one of the most important ambassadors for Sibelius' 2015 anniversary year. His many recordings have been critically acclaimed, and feature works by contemporary composers as well as the complete symphonies of Mahler, Sibelius and Nielsen among many others.

Colorful, original, whimsical, and adventuresome, this collection of musical short stories from one of America’s most diverse composers has something to please every ear.



SCHICKELE A Year in the Catskills. Gardens 1. What Did You Do Today at Jeffrey’s House 2. Dream Dances 3. Diversions • Blair Wind Qnt members; 1,2 Melissa Rose (pn); 3 Felix Wang (vc) • NAXOS 8.559687 (52:03)


The Blair Wind Quintet is a faculty ensemble of the Blair School of Music of Vanderbilt University. Though a woodwind player myself, I am not familiar with their work, so this release, the second on which this ensemble appears, is a pleasant introduction to these fine musicians. Their performances here are mostly solo and in smaller groupings, with only the title work, A Year in the Catskills, played by the whole quintet. This last is one of a trio of works for resident ensembles funded by the Blair Commissioning Project. Peter Schickele’s quintet was joined by a piano trio from Susan Botti and a string quartet by György Kurtág; one can but imagine what a wildly incongruent faculty recital that could have made.


Schickele is, of course, best known in his persona of the researcher and exhumer of works by “the youngest and oddest of J. S. Bach’s 20-odd children.” Since 1965, the year of his first public concert, he has created a body of entertaining musical parodies of familiar musical forms for his fictional P. D. Q. Bach. There is another aspect of the composer, though, as many will know. Under his own name, he composes concert works for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, and vocalists, as well as scores for film, theater, and television. This disc presents a nice sampling of pieces for wind instruments, written over a 46-year period. They cross boundaries of genre and style with consummate skill, and are uniformly clever, lightweight, and charming. Even when fleetingly serious, they are never more than melancholy. They are more often humorous. In fact, minus the more obvious burlesquing that goes on in a P. D. Q. Bach pastiche, his serious works sound remarkably akin to his comedic bread and butter. The unexpected instrumental colors are a bit more subdued, the odd cadence more integrated, and the stylistic incongruities less outrageous. What is played for laughs when acting The Professor is quirky and playful in the realm of the serious composer, but the singular identity can never be in question.


Consider the four seasonal portraits of A Year in the Catskills (2009), presented in Baroque canons and a fantasy, and rounded out with a fifth movement called “Fast Driving,” which bebops the listener back to more modern urban surroundings. Or What Did You Do Today at Jeffrey’s House? (1988) for horn and piano, which remembers childhood games (one is relieved to learn, given his compositional credits for O! Calcutta! ) with a piano-stride parade and a boogie-woogie carnival with dancing bears framing a very brief compulsory nap. Finally, there is Dream Dances (1988), a suite for flute, oboe, and cello, which juxtaposes a not very Baroque minuet and sarabande with a jitterbug, a demented French gallop, and a waltz that only needs John Ferrante and some silly lyrics to become one of the Diverse Ayres on Sundrie Notions.


The two remaining earlier works give some idea of where Schickele might have headed if the fictional “minimeister of Wein-am-Rhein” had not been such a huge success. In these we hear a composer still working in academia, creating works that reflect seriously (well, all right, more seriously) on relatively contemporary styles. Gardens (1968) for oboe and piano is an atmospheric triptych with overtones of Messiaen, though this is more obvious in New York Philharmonic oboist Joseph Robinson’s recording on Cala. Diversions (1963) for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon channels neoclassical Stravinsky in portraits of the bath, a game of billiards, and a New York bar. It is all very engaging, and wonderfully presented by musicians and engineers. Naxos has a winner here, and I hope we hear more from the Blair Wind Quintet. Meanwhile, woodwind fanciers are hereby alerted to a must-buy release.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames


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It is a good and joyful thing to see a nice collection of Peter Schickele’s concert music. Not that he is unduly famous for his P.D.Q. Bach character, but as a composer of serious music he shines as one of the most original voices of his generation. Schickele has not invented a new wheel, rather he has managed to take traditional musical gestures and season them with his own invention with the skill of a master chef. This collection of chamber music, deftly rendered by members of the faculty of Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, is a showcase of the composer’s unique wit and creativity.

Commissioned by the Blair Quintet, A Year in the Catskills was brand new at the time of this recording. It is a picturesque work; full of the kind of interesting twists of melody that make Schickele’s music so fascinating. He is prone to shifting one or two notes in a tune by a semitone here or a semitone there to make what could sound quite ordinary into something that is unique and quirky.

The brief triptych Gardens, for oboe and piano is a study in colors. One of Schickele’s outstanding features is his ability to say so much in a very short time. I wouldn’t call him a miniaturist, but he can get his point across with little fuss. Such are these elegant little pieces that depict a garden at the three parts of the day. Jared Hauser plays with a sweet unforced tone, and is sensitively accompanied by pianist Melissa Rose.

What Did You Do Today at Jeffrey’s House? is a bit of nostalgia based on memories of the composer’s playtime with a childhood friend. These are whimsical pieces, pulling from a number of styles including a rollicking boogie-woogie ending. Scored for horn and piano, Leslie Norton and Melissa Rose find all the charm of these brief episodes. I can’t say that I was completely in love with the pieces themselves, as they came across to these ears as a bit contrived.

The outstanding work in this recital is the lovely set of Dream Dances. Scored for flute, oboe and cello, Schickele combines the old and the new by creating a suite that is reminiscent of a Baroque partita, but just for fun he throws in the semi-modern by replacing the Courrant with a Jitterbug and the Allemande with a Waltz. It is pretty much genius really, and Jane Kirschner, Jared Hauser and Felix Wang deliver an elegant performance full of wit.

Diversions, scored for oboe, clarinet and bassoon are again whimsical, and depict three specific scenes, a hot bath, a billiard game, and a New York bar. Although I felt that the composer captured his scenes well, I can’t say that I was particularly moved by these little snapshots, in spite of their being very well played.

Peter Schickele is reported to be one of the most performed composers in America, and it is easy to see why. The term accessible gets too much airplay, but his music is almost always captivating, mainly due to his double ability to color within the lines while choosing shades that don’t come from just any box of crayons. A good listen.

Colorful, original, whimsical, and adventuresome, this collection of musical short stories from one of America’s most diverse composers has something to please every ear.


-- Kevin Sutton, MusicWeb International

A fine guide with performances as subtle as they are perceptive.

It’s very unusual to find all Honegger’s Violin Sonatas — which includes the solo sonata of 1940 — grouped together in one disc. In fact I’m not aware of another such coupling in the current catalogue, which gives this budget price entrant cachet. Even better, the performances are persuasive and finely played and recorded.
 
This would amount to a recommendation even were the music not so attractive, which is not to say it’s transparent, as there are moments of occlusion and introspection along the way. The First Sonata is actually the unnumbered D minor of 1912. I agree wholly with Anyssa Neumann’s booklet notes that the opening embeds genuine ‘pathos’—it’s the pathos of popular song, in my view, to which Laurence Kayaleh responds with pervasive and elegant portamenti and effusive lyric intensity. There’s a degree of agitato in this work and Brahmsian striving, and it’s understandable that it was not published during Honegger’s lifetime in a sense, given the influences. But it’s still a big, confident utterance from the young composer. The slow movement is engagingly done, with its odd Delian moments, and the March section is well characterised. The confident and puckish finale is interrupted by a moment of baroque reportage, before a nobly conceived maestoso sweeps us to the finish. As she does throughout, Kayaleh plays with a refined tonal palette. She doesn’t make a big sound, but it is finely coloured.
 
The first numbered sonata was written during the last two years of the First World War. It’s a more focused work, less effusive, and sites the fast movement centrally between two essentially slow ones. The central panel of the Presto is played with the mute, and the whole thing is freely ruminative, though I detect Franck still in his musical handwriting. Stark intoning begins the finale, and here Kayaleh powerfully intensifies her vibrato width. It’s hard not to read into this movement something of the same spirit, but not the same means, that informs John Ireland’s contemporaneous Second Violin Sonata.
 
By contrast the 1919 Second Sonata has rather dreamlike qualities. It takes in a fugal moment, whilst remaining strongly chromatic, indeed compact in its reach — it’s 12 minutes in length in this performance. The finale’s ebullience removes the rather heavy atmosphere brilliantly, fully conveyed by Kayaleh and Paul Stewart. The solo sonata is becoming ever more popular and this performance will not harm that status in any way. What I like especially is the generosity of her grazioso phrasing in the Allegretto; delightfully done.
 
So if you lack these sonatas, or are curious about Honegger’s approach to them, this disc will stand as a fine guide with performances as subtle as they are perceptive.
 
-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International  

British music for the clarinet was hugely indebted to the elite interpreters who inspired this important repertoire. they included Frederick Thurston, who first performed three of the works on this recording. Sir Arnold Bax's sonata, much admired and imbued with Celtic folklore, is heard in a version that restores the manuscript's original phrasing. the pieces by roger Fiske and Iain Hamilton are heard in Premie. re-recordings, while Richard Rodney Bennett's duo Concertante was commissioned by the eminent soloist in this recital, Nicholas Cox.

"...intelligently scored and very well played, from the solo flute Partita in A minor BWV 1013 to the keyboard Preludes in E and C and the solo violin sonata in G minor BWV 1001 (here transposed to A minor). Equally ambitious is guitarist Enno Voorhorst's transcription of the harpsichord concerto BWV 974, which originally was an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello... Voorhorst is unquestionably a fine musician whose mastery of the guitar in this repertoire is beyond doubt; perhaps he will offer some performances of original guitar works on his next recording. The sound is fully supportive of the solo instrumental setting and affords a natural, intimate acoustic." - David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

"The playing is technically sound, stylishly embellished, and in general a model of refinement, taste, and restraint. Voorhorst's tone is consistently round and full." - American Record Guide

Although John Ireland is best remembered for his orchestral works, his 91 songs convey a peculiarly English quality of emotion expressed through reserve.

Includes work(s) by Erik Satie.

Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods) is the epic fourth and final opera of Wagner’s great Ring cycle, with a plot that depicts the fall of heroes, gods, and the entire world. As ever with the Ring, the joys of love are all too fragile and fleeting, and the drama of Gotterdammerung revolves around dark and unsettling reversals of fortune and illusions of hope that synthesize thrilling and powerful grand opera traditions with Wagner’s revolutionary techniques. Containing all of the Ring’s essential elements, Gotterdammerung’s profoundly satisfying sense of inevitability makes it both a towering climax and a unified summation of the Ring’s abundant variety.

Antonin Dvorak's success in Europe during the 1880s led to invitations to visit England and the commissioning of his oratorio Saint Ludmila for the Leeds Festival. It tells the moving and turbulent story of Ludmila's conversion to Christianity, an important event in Bohemian history that led to her becoming Bohemia's patron saint. Written for large forces and with a predominant part for the chorus in the tradition of Handel, Saint Ludmila is full of Dvorak's typical warmth and melodic beauty, and stands alongside his Stabat Mater and Requiem as one of his greatest works. Here, the piece is interpreted by the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, led by Leos Svarovsky. Leos Svarovsky studied flute and conducting at the Academy of Music in Prague as the last student of the renowned professor Vaclav Neumann. He started his career at the National Theatre in Prague as assistant to Zdenek Kosler and subsequently went on to hold principal positions with the Prague Chamber Opera, the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra Ostrava, the Brno Philharmonic, the Zilina State Chamber Orchestra, the Czech Chamber Orchestra, and others.

ENGLISH STRING MINIATURES, Vol. 2

The considerable variety of Johann Sebastian Bach’s output for the lute stands witness to different periods of his life and career. This collection comprises Bach’s complete lute works, amply demonstrating his interest in its expressive qualities. These works include the technically demanding Partita BWV 1006a, Bach’s own transcription of his Cello Suite No. 5, three pieces from the St. John Passion and the St. Matthew Passion where the lute appears in an ensemble setting, and the Prelude, Fugue and Allegro, BWV 998, described by the renowned harpsichordist Wanda Landowska as “of incomparable beauty… unique amongst Bach’s works.” Yasunori Imamura is recognized as one of the most prominent exponents of lute both as a soloist as well as a continuo player, his more than 140 solo recordings receiving excellent reviews in various audio magazines, with the Diapason d’or and Joker de Crescendo awards for his recordings of Weiss’ Lute Sonatas.

Most of the pieces on this album have been designated ‘WoO’ (Works without Opus Number) or bear the numbering from the Hess catalogue of unpublished or unfinished pieces. These include the piano transcription of the topically programmatic Battle Symphony (Wellington’s Victory or The Battle of Vitoria) and the genial variations on Rule Britannia and God Save the King. The Marches, Menuets and Ecossaises derive from a variety of sources, while there is a strangely tragic aspect to the Waltz in C minor.

Matthew Quayle writes: “I am delighted to share the Avalon Quartet’s powerful rendition of my three string quartets on Naxos. These remarkable musicians display their uncommon insight and interpretive range throughout the album- from the introspective yet ardent journey of the expansive First Quartet, to the spiky mischief of the Second, to the enigmatic meandering through the thirteen fleeting movements of the Third. They have fully captured the stylistic diversity and dramatic intensity of these deeply personal pieces.” Matthew Quayle’s music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles including Albany Symphony Orchestra, Arditti String Quartet, Avalon String Quartet and Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. He is active as a pianist and has performed widely as a solo pianist and chamber musician. The Avalon String Quartet, who have recorded the works, were involved in the early performances of all three quartets and they have earned the composer’s strong admiration and imprimatur. The Chicago Tribune described the quartet as “an ensemble that invites you- ears, mind, and spirit- into its music.”