The story of Elias Parish Alvars is a journey from obscurity, ascending to something of an international celebrity. He was dubbed 'the Franz Liszt of the harp' by another celebrated composer Hector Berlioz, who was repeatedly spellbound by concerts Alvars gave in Germany. This sorcerer of the harp (and equally phenomenal pianist) received patronage from the aristocracy and royalty of Europe throughout his short-lived career. His list of acquaintances and collaborators is impressive, including Carl Czerny, Hector Berlioz and John Field. Felix Mendelssohn may have briefly taught Alvars composition, also organizing concerts in which Alvars participated. Alvars performed in royal courts throughout his career, including those of Friedrich August II of Saxony and Queen Victoria. His principal patron, Countess Jeanette Esterhazy, was the dedicatee of many of Alvars' works, including the Grand Duo on Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix, which he composed in collaboration with Czerny (NMP1143). In 1848 Alvars' health suddenly declined and he succumbed to pneumonia a month before his 41st birthday. He left behind a wife, Melanie Lewy, and two small children. Many of his works are lost, including a symphony, and his opera, The Legend of Teignmouth. The arrangement for piano four hands of the popular Overture to The Legend of Teignmouth (NMP1142) was made by Carl Lewy, a composer of songs, and presumably related to the family.

The story of Elias Parish Alvars is a journey from obscurity, ascending to something of an international celebrity. He was dubbed 'the Franz Liszt of the harp' by another celebrated composer Hector Berlioz, who was repeatedly spellbound by concerts Alvars gave in Germany. This sorcerer of the harp (and equally phenomenal pianist) received patronage from the aristocracy and royalty of Europe throughout his short-lived career. His list of acquaintances and collaborators is impressive, including Carl Czerny, Hector Berlioz and John Field. Felix Mendelssohn may have briefly taught Alvars composition, also organizing concerts in which Alvars participated. Alvars performed in royal courts throughout his career, including those of Friedrich August II of Saxony and Queen Victoria. His principal patron, Countess Jeanette Esterhazy, was the dedicatee of many of Alvars' works, including the Grand Duo on Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix, which he composed in collaboration with Czerny (NMP1143). In 1848 Alvars' health suddenly declined and he succumbed to pneumonia a month before his 41st birthday. He left behind a wife, Melanie Lewy, and two small children. Many of his works are lost, including a symphony, and his opera, The Legend of Teignmouth. The arrangement for piano four hands of the popular Overture to The Legend of Teignmouth (NMP1142) was made by Carl Lewy, a composer of songs, and presumably related to the family.

Richard Blackford writes: "When David Hill proposed a Bach Choir commission based on Peter Johnstone's ICU diaries I was immediately drawn to his idea of composing a work to be written during the Covid -19 pandemic about one man's direct and intense experience of it, and the care he received from the nursing staff. Peter was very patient and generous in allowing me to select entries that I felt could provide a satisfying musical structure, entries which could encompass the different stages of his experience, from delirium, crisis, lyrical reflection, to recovery and gratitude to his nurses. The work is framed by gently overlapping choral entries in which the nurses introduce themselves, set against a pulsating, almost mechanical string accompaniment col legno battuto that evokes the sounds of hospital ward machines. The first choral outburst, "You are positive with the Covid-19 virus" is thematically linked to the later chorus, "He died from the Covid-19 virus" after the dream garden sequence. A male nurse describes how he sung along to a recording of Handel's Messiah which was played to the delirious Peter. This quote, with it's harmonically blurred cadence, leads to the first garden dream music. A lyrical solo viola weaves through the baritone's vocal line. Later, in the real visit to the garden, the viola's material is taken up and transformed by a solo violin. These musical mirrors help to unify the work and help prepare for the choral climax that starts, "I hope you feel better soon." In the final section, in which the baritone articulates the overwhelming feeling of love Peter felt for his nurses, their soft overlapping voices return, as if introducing themselves once more to the next patient in the ICU."

For composers beyond counting, the sound of bells has been a source of magnetic fascination since time immemorial (figures as disparate as Rachmaninoff and Jonathan Harvey immediately come to mind), but few have hardwired it in their creative psyche as deeply as Augusta Read Thomas. Previous releases in this series have already included a number of such works (Carillon Sky, Resounding Earth, Bells Ring Summer, Ripple Effects), but the present volume is the first one to concentrate upon this long-standing preoccupation. Each of the three major works gathered here is prefaced by a short miniature. On the process of composition, Thomas has said that "it's like living inside of a poem... I think of myself, and have been described as, a poet-composer. I sculpt my music akin to how poets create, refine, and Polish their poems."

Elan Sicroff is one of the leading interpreters of the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music, which was the result of a unique collaboration in the 1920s in which the sacred and folk music of the East was arranged for piano. From 1973-75 he attended the International Academy for Continuous Education at Sherborne in Gloucestershire, England, as a student and later as Director of Music. The Academy was run by J. G. Bennett, a leading exponent of the teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. In 1974 Mr. Bennett contacted Mme. Olga de Hartmann, widow of the composer, who introduced Elan to the music that Thomas de Hartmann composed in the classical idiom. Between 1975 and 1979 Elan studied with her and performed many of de Hartmann’s works. In 1982 he made a tour of the U.S., which included performances in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Boston. Since then he has given numerous recitals in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Classical Music

Turina’s principal works are conceived for large forces and on a broad canvas, but he turned to the piano for the creation of suites of evocative miniatures throughout his life. Martin Jones has been one of Britain’s most highly regarded solo pianists since first coming to international attention in 1968 when he received the Dame Myra Hess Award. The same year he made his London debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and his New York debut at Carnegie Hall, and ever since has been in demand for recitals and concerto performances on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a prolific recording artist and his many major projects include the complete solo piano works of Mendelssohn, Brahms, Debussy, Grainger, Stravinsky, Korngold, Szymanowski, Granados, Guastavino, Mompou, Ernesto Halffter, Joaquin Nin, Has Gál, Jean Françaix, Jean Roger-Ducasse, and Alan Richardson. “Martin Jones as a recording artist has been part of my listening experience for almost as long as I’ve been collecting albums. Seeing his distinguished and still active career celebrated by Nimbus Records in this way is a true delight.” (Dominy Clements, musicweb-international.com)

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REVIEW:

Martin Jones, one of Britain’s most highly-regarded pianists since first coming to international attention in 1968 when he received the Dame Myra Hess Award, offers a beautiful rendering of Spanish composer Joaquin Turina’s piano works, compiling an earlier recording from 1999 with some newer ones. These are miniatures that evoke dance rhythms of Spain. Cinco Danzas is especially well done, but there could be some small disagreements with interpretation. IV has a wonderful rhythmic feel, with evenness of playing. 'Fiesta’ has a sense of dynamic growth, with a constant ostinato-like rhythm. 'Danza Ritmica’ could have a quieter opening (it is marked pianissimo and lighter). To nitpick a little, the work could be a hair faster. Jones could aim for longer phrasing, especially in the running 16th notes that occur often. His range of sound is impressive. 'Seguriya’, marked allegro vivo, could be approached with a quicker pace. His use of the left hand articulation, slightly non legato, brings out the melodic line perfectly, and the work comes to a wonderful finish. The start of El Castillo de Almodovar is extremely beautiful, but I do wish for a more ominous and softer turn, as that movement is marked ppp. Still, besides these quibbles, this recording is a delight.

– American Record Guide (Sang Woo Kang)

David Juritz writes: “The dilemma faced by any arranger of Bach is to stay true to the character of his music while knowing he would have been far bolder and more imaginative. For this version, I have attempted to remain within a sound-world that he would have found familiar. I did, however, have two factors on my side: Bach’s sublime and rigorous counterpoint and, in Craig Ogden, a virtuoso guitarist whose technical accomplishment is matched only by his Aussie ability to remain unruffled in the face of any challenge.”

Classical Music

Kenneth Woods writes: “Given that this programme was to be an exploration of childhood, the obvious place to start is with birth. Richard Wagner wrote his Siegfried Idyll as a birthday present for his wife, Cosima, just after the birth of their son, Siegfried. Nowhere else in music is there so tender an evocation of those fragile, precious and fraught first days and weeks of life. Engelbert Humperdinck’s great children’s opera, Hänsel und Gretel, a quasi-Wagnerian setting of the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale, tells the story of two children in peril… “Die Forelle” (“The Trout”) is one of Schubert’s simplest and most popular songs, composed in 1817,when Schubert was just 20, to words by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart… Gustav Mahler’s 100-minute Third symphony and his Fourth grew out of the musical material in the short, beautiful song which forms the final movement of the Fourth Symphony, “Das himmlische Leben” (“The Heavenly Life,”), and which concludes these Visions of Childhood. First, however, we hear his song “The Earthly Life” (“Das irdische Leben”) which forms a sort of bleak mirror image to that song. As with the Humperdinck, I have essentially stuck as closely as possible to Mahler’s own orchestration, which is a model of clarity and economy, but also full of extreme, even grotesque, colors. Finally, we come to another combination of song and variations by Schubert, both known as “Der Todund das Mädchen” (“Death and the Maiden”). The song is based on a poem by Matthias Claudius and was written in 1817, the same year as “The Trout.” It has only two verses – one in which the Maiden pleads with Death to pass her by, and one in which Death assures her that he is a friend.

Volume 8 in this series documenting Augusta Read Thomas' music, three major scores dominate, with 4 shorter works filling out this 80-minute sonic portrait of an inexhaustibly inventive and individual composer. The brass quintet Avian Capriccio is typically free-wheeling in its evocation of 3 contrasting types of birds, hummingbirds, swans and canaries. Scored for wordless soprano and string quartet, Plea for Peace acts as a single, seamless block beginning in near-immobility, with the voice animating the instruments as the music embarks on its slow, implacable progress. Even in a catalogue as multifarious as Thomas', the carillon piece Ripple Effects stands out as a one-off. Commissioned by Rockefeller Chapel, Chicago and devised in a number of versions, sculpted for carillons of three sizes, requiring varying numbers of players. The ballet score The Auditions was written for the Martha Graham Dance Company, and with it, Thomas joins a distinguished company of composers who wrote scores for this seminal figure in modern dance. It is structured in 7 sections, with the auditions of the title being the even-numbered, action-packed sections, and the odd-numbered ones acting as slower, more otherworldly frames. That Two Thoughts About The Piano's title should be identical to a work by Elliott Carter is no accident, as Thomas' work is a response to the older composer's piece without actually quoting or even emulating Carter's music. We've already encountered Selene in a previous volume of this ongoing survey of Thomas' music, but it appears here in a wholly new dress. The original was for string and percussion quartets, but here the strings are replaced by a woodwind nonet in an arrangement by Cliff Colnot, thus preserving the original's harmonic richness. Bringing this collection to a close, Your Kiss sets a love poem by e.e. cummings for soprano and piano.

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REVIEW:

The Nimbus label has done well by Augusta Read Thomas in recent years, and this is the eighth title in their catalogue dedicated entirely to her work. This well-filled collection is orientated around three major scores with a further four shorter works adding value and variety, if that were needed.

Avian Capriccio is a brass quintet in three movements, each of which evokes the character of three species of birds. The first describes the acrobatics of hummingbirds with notes tumbling over each other with lively energy, and sustained notes perhaps describing their ability to maintain stillness in the air. Swans form the slow central movement, their languid motion on the water reflected in stillness in music that builds gradually, changing direction like a shift in viewpoint that seems to become airborne, though of this we can’t be entirely sure. The final movement takes us into the more funky and syncopated world of some playful canaries.

Plea for Peace is written for soprano and string quartet, the vocal soloist’s part being a wordless vocalise. This is more a micro-opera, a dramatic shape than anything with a tune that you will find yourself humming. There is a stillness in the opening that builds into something impassioned and emotionally complex, the pace of the music remaining spacious while its intensity does its work, the final moments receding once again into stillness. Ripple Effects for carillon, two-players is “a labyrinth of musical interrelationships and connections that increases in complexity as more and more players are added to this ever-expanding spiderweb of peals.” I think Thomas means ‘bells’ rather than ‘players’ but we get the idea. There is more going on here than merely a wedge shape of increasing density, but these fascinating, dramatic and slightly mournful campanological sonorities are well captured here.

The Auditions, a ballet for chamber orchestra, was composed for the distinguished and innovative Martha Graham Dance Company. The score is divided into seven sections, with odd-numbered movements titled ‘The Landscape’ with generally slower, more dream-like atmospheres. Even-numbered movements titled ‘The Room’ are more rhythmic and energetic. Without the visual elements of movement and lighting this music still delivers a powerful sense of something elusively representative. The narrative, such as it is, is outlined in the subtitles of the movements, which move from scene setting and “introducing characters of auditioning dancers”, to the final audition and closing mystical landscape. To my ears this has a ritualistic feel which gives its progression a quality of inevitability, by which I don’t mean predictability. Thomas’ precision in instrumentation and skilfully subtle use of a variety of percussion delivers a plethora of colour and transparency, and the whole thing is strikingly stimulating. It has a Stravinsky-like edge, but rarely sounds like Stravinsky.

Two Thoughts About The Piano shares the same name with a work by Elliott Carter and is a response to it. The piece shares a restless nerviness with Carter’s style, but there the comparison ends. Thomas’ idiom always has an orientation towards some kind of tonality, and the music’s virtuosity retains a kind of cadential direction throughout its single-movement duration.

Subtitled Moon Chariot Rituals in its original outing on NI6323, Selene was originally written for string and percussion quartets, but the version heard here has been arranged for woodwind nonet by Cliff Colnot. In his booklet notes, Paul Pellay writes that, “whereas the original’s strings-and-percussion configuration travelled through its 17 minutes with warm, chameleon-like hues, the present version emphasises stark, glittering colours, imparting [on] the journey a different, more boldly drawn sense of events rapidly unfolding, the lines sharper and more brightly lit”. The winds certainly offer a stronger counterpoint to the percussion, and I’m pushed to identify which version I prefer, so it’s probably better just to think of them as two related but different pieces. This is efficient and effectively scored music, but didn’t make as much an impression on me as the other pieces here. The programme concludes with Your Kiss for soprano and piano. This is a setting of a poem by e.e. Cummings, the text of which is printed in the booklet, and it is fascinating to read along with the recording to see what the composer does to illustrate and emphasise the words. It’s rarely any good longing for a nice tune when it comes to settings of this particular poet’s work.

Very well recorded and superbly performed, this is a very fine programme indeed of one of today’s leading composers. Augusta Read Thomas’ work rewards easily as much as it challenges, and is very much deserving of the attention it receives.

– MusicWeb International

The selections Whiteman included in the 1924 Aeolian Hall Concert, which had that curious title An Experiment in Modern Music, were divided into various sections, such as The True Form of Jazz and Recent Compositions with Modern Score. The intention was that together they would be audible proof that jazz-inspired music had come of age. These performances of Gershwin classics and hard-to-find rarities capture the 1920's and 30's jazz age style and offers a gamut of lesser known keyboard works, as well as Gershwin's only known works for violin and piano and for string quartet. The three orchestral works include Mr. Peress' theater orchestration of Gershwin's Strike Up the Band Overture, and the I've Got Rhythm Variations recorded in its original orchestration for the first time.

Ken Woods writes of this new release: “Have you ever been on a long journey with your family and, after hours in the car or on the plane, you were so bored you thought you just might go mad? Well, that’s what this record is for. Just when you’re about to say “are we there yet” for the 400th time, instead try saying “Mum, can we listen to Lubin again?” I promise, the car will feel like it’s going twice as fast once the music starts. Now, it may come as a surprise to you, but your parents get just as bored and fed up as you do, so we’ve made sure they’ll enjoy these stories just as much as their kids. Just in a different way – there are aspects to all five stories that we are pretty sure older listeners will connect with. My friend David, who wrote Lubin, from Chelm, got interested in creating new musical storytelling works because he was reading bedtime stories to his two little girls. Several years later, I started writing The Ugly Duckling for my kids when they were little for the same reason. It’s been great over the years to see thousands of young people at our concerts laugh at the exploits of Lubin, the hapless robbers in the Bremen Town Musicians or the grandiose Condessa Duck. But, if we’re able to put a smile on your face on a rainy afternoon at home, or help the trip to your summer holidays go a bit quicker, then we’ll all be very happy. Enjoy!”

The Wihan Quartet has been described by International Record Review as: “one of the best quartets in the world today.” In 2015 the Quartet celebrated 30 years since its formation, and over the years it has developed an outstanding reputation for the interpretation of its native Czech heritage, and of the many classical, romantic and modern masterpieces of the string quartet repertoire. The Wihan Quartet has won many International Competitions including The Prague Spring Festival and the Osaka ‘Chamber Festa’. In 1991, they won both the First Prize and the Audience Prize in the London International String Quartet Competition. The Quartet are the ‘Richard Carne Quartet in Residence’ at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London. They are also great supporters of the work of the CAVATINA Chamber Music Trust, which gives inspirational concerts and master classes to young people in many parts of the UK. Jirí Zigmund, retired from the Wihan Quartet in 2014. The Quartet was very fortunate to find an excellent viola player in Jakub Cepický, son of Leoš, and his first recording with the Quartet of Suk, Dvorak and Janacek was released on Nimbus Alliance in 2016. In 2017, after 32 years as a member of the Wihan Quartet, cellist Ales Kasprik retired from the Quartet. The Quartet have been very fortunate to find a wonderful cellist to perform with them: the excellent Michal Kanka, cellist with one of the best Czech string quartets, the Prazak Quartet.

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REVIEW:

The most striking attribute of the Wihan's account of the Janacek is its weighty, bass-oriented sonority, which is beneficial in lyrical, romantic passages and adds strength to forceful, explosive ones. The playing is also brilliant and virtuosic, with emphatic stresses, colorful and detailed texture, and clear articulation. Tempos may be faster or more deliberate than average but are consistently well chosen.

With excellent performances of captivating works by the three greatest Czech composers, recorded in vivid, realistic sound, this release deserves a strong recommendation.

– Fanfare

The present recording of piano music by Julius Röntgen (1855-1932), the fourth of an ongoing series, comprises works that span a significant portion of Röntgen’s compositional lifetime. Fifty-five years separates the first Ballad, Op.6 written in 1873, when the composer was just 17 years old, from the Sonata in C-sharp minor of 1928. This far- ranging chronology gives the listener an informed overview of Röntgen’s output. This is especially interesting given the fact that he lived through such musically revolutionary times. Röntgen’s writing style for the piano shows a gift for creating unique sonorities alongside ingenious harmonic invention. In particular, I am intrigued by his ability to create, on the one hand, exquisite and sublime musical moments – such as those found in the major variations of the Variations and Fugue Op.38 - and, on the other, masses of chordal harmony punctuated with rhapsodic episodes. The Ballad No. 3 best represents the latter compositional style with its highly varied textural and emotional contrasts. When Röntgen died in 1932, Donald Francis Tovey wrote, “He was an inspiration for the future but with a link to the past. His compositions cover the whole range of music in every art form; they all show consummate mastery in every aspect of technique; even in the most facile there is beauty and wit, each series of works culminate in something that has the uniqueness of a living masterpiece.”