Grammy Award-winner Alex Klein, former principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, performs sonatas that signify the oboe’s 20th-century reemergence as a brilliant solo instrument. One of the world’s most famous oboe players, Klein says he waited to acquire a professional lifetime’s worth of experience before putting his stamp on the six sonatas heard here. With pianist Phillip Bush, Klein plays works that he says “define the modern oboe”: Camille Saint-Saëns’ jovial, late-Romantic Sonata for Oboe and Piano, Op. 166; York Bowen’s lushly beautiful Sonata for Oboe and Pianoforte, Op. 85; Henri Dutilleux’s emotionally wide-ranging Sonata for Oboe and Piano; Petr Eben’s youthful, inventive Oboe Sonata, Op.1; Francis Poulenc’s late, philosophical Sonata for Oboe and Piano, FP 185; and Eugène Bozza’s Sonata for Oboe and Piano, an ethereal, rarely heard tour de force. Klein possesses a “tone so unique and beautiful that musicians from around the globe would flock to [Chicago’s] Symphony Center to hear him play” (Chicago Magazine). He won a Grammy Award in 2002 for Best Instrumental Solo Performance (with Orchestra) for his recording of Richard Strauss’s oboe concerto with conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

REVIEW:

Oboe playing simply does not get any better than this. The collaborative support of pianist Phillip Bush could also not be bettered, nor could the recorded sound offered by Cedille. This recital, then, is nothing less than an essential acquisition for any fan of the oboe or superlative wind playing in general.

– Fanfare

What paths did the composition of sacred music take at the beginning of this millennium? What is its relationship with liturgy? What prospects does it have? On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Domenico Bartolucci (1917-2013), historic conductor of the choir of the Sistine Chapel and prolific composer, the Second National Conference of Composers of Sacred Music, promoted by the Associazione Italiana Santa Cecilia, was held in Rome from 1 to 3 September 2017. The conclusive Mass that was celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica, in the Cappella del Coro, offered the chance to observe how today’s composers deal with the holy texts, ideally proceeding along the paths that since the first centuries of the Christian era, with time, branched out from the papal seat to the ends of the earth. Contrary to what happens at present in a widespread practice, the texts that are set to music in this celebration are not juxtaposed to the rite but spring from it, and the lexicon used by the composers – albeit with differences between the individual composers – aims to express the deep meaning of the celebration without misleading the listeners or shocking them with avant-garde languages and shifting their attention to matters that are foreign to the liturgical prayer.

This album marks the second release of the Carducci’s Shostakovich 15 project, which includes performances of the complete cycles of the Shostakovich Quartets in cities including Washington DC, London, Oxford, Cardiff, Bogota and concerts throughout the UK to mark the 40th anniversary of the composer’s death. Described by The Strad as presenting “a masterclass in unanimity of musical purpose, in which severity could melt seamlessly into charm, and drama into geniality”, the Carducci Quartet is recognized as one of today’s most successful string quartets. This release contrasts Shostakovich’s first two string quartets with the seventh – composed in memory of his late wife Nina. In composing his quartets prior to No. 7, Shostakovich had scrupulously followed a predetermined sequence of keys: according to this, the work should have been in E flat major. However Shostakovich, significantly, chose to break this pattern by writing his new quartet in F sharp minor, the key associated with such anguished music as Peter’s remorse in Bach’s St John Passion, and – particularly close to Shostakovich’s heart – Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony.

At Puccini's time, transcriptions were very important and widespread, you just need to take a look at the some of the scores published by Casa Ricordi to get an idea: in fact, on the back cover you would be able to read an astonishing list of transcriptions, of fantasias and potpourris, either rewritten for piano solo (or four-hands) or for the most various ensembles, for piano and mandolin, violin, flute, guitar, or for other instruments, either in a solo or in combination with many others. It was the result of a publishing policy that was in full swing at that time and that was addressed to a large public of amateurs, a public keen to learn the repertoires meant to be played by many instruments, like opera scores. These pieces were played at home, in front of a very small and selected audience, the amateurs often wanted to perform operas that they had attended to. But that is not all, these performances were also able to popularize compositions that would have be left unknown otherwise. In the XIX century, the transcriptions for piano, especially for piano four hands, were an important vehicle for the diffusion of musical knowledge. Purposely thought for this formation, in this album the piano duo by the spouses Fabrizio Datteri and Nadia Lencioni is performing compositions inspired by the famous works and the immortal melodies of Giacomo Puccini.

It’s no surprise that The King’s Singers have recorded a huge number of love songs on all kinds of albums over the last fifty years. Some of these were albums devoted to love songs like Chanson d’amour and Romance du soir. Other albums couldn’t help but include music about love, although their theme was actually different. This album, Love Songs, is a chance to revisit some of the ensemble’s favorite tracks that they’ve recorded over the last two decades, compiled from across their back catalogue with Signum Records. The tracks they’ve chosen have come from five different albums, released between 2008 and 2017. Rather than trying to take in any of the enormous number of classical love songs from the back catalogue, the group wanted to focus on some of the best folk songs, jazz standards, and pop songs that have featured in King’s Singers concerts throughout their history. This selection has been curated especially to celebrate the group’s favorite recent albums, and to show how rich and varied the tapestry of love songs we have today is.

REVIEWS:

[A] spirited, handsomely sung program of entries representing a number of genres. I enjoy the bass fiddle licks sung with such jazzy appeal in ‘I’ve Got the World On a String’ (Harold Arlen) and Jerome Kern’s ‘I Won’t Dance’. The softrock arpeggios in Paul Simon’s ‘April Come She Will’ and ‘Helplessly Hoping’ (Stephen Stills) are great fun, and I will happily make time for Simon Carrington’s radiant arrangement of ‘My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose’. For a union of the British choral tradition and the Doo-Wop style, look no further than this rendition of ‘At Last’.

A cappella groups singing in this style have proliferated like gangbusters on high school and college campuses. If a young musician you know is singing in one, why not get ahold of this and show them what the gold standard sounds like.

-- American Record Guide

Dmitri Shostakovich’s long-lost Impromptu for Viola and Piano, Op. 33, recently unearthed in the Moscow State Archives, receives here its world-premiere recording on Matthew Lipman’s Ascent, the acclaimed young American violist’s solo debut album, featuring, in the artist’s words, “music enraptured by flights of fantasy.”

Recipient of a 215 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Lipman has created an album of uplifting and spiritually transcendent works for viola and piano, dedicated to his late mother. Hailed by The New York Times for his “rich tone and elegant phrasing,” Lipman is heard in the world-premiere recording of Clarice Assad’s fantasy piece, Metamorfose, which the violist commissioned. It’s a poignant commentary on grief and acceptance. Robert Schumann’s Fairy Tale Pictures is dreamlike and fanciful. York Bowen’s richly expressive Phantasy draws on the Russian Romantic tradition. Garth Knox’s free-flying Fuga libre transfigures Bach-like fugal fragments through modern, coloristic performance techniques. The album’s finale is the first-ever recording on viola of Hollywood composer Franz Waxman’s popular violin showpiece, Carmen Fantasie. England’s The Telegraph praised Lipman as “gifted with poise and a warmth of timbre” for his recording of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with violinist Rachel Barton Pine, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and Sir Neville Marriner (Avie), which topped the Billboard classical chart. Lipman’s collaborator on Ascent is pianist Henry Kramer, winner of the Second Prize at the 216 Queen Elisabeth competition and top prizes at the 215 Honens International Piano Competition and 211 Montreal International Music Competition. His first commercial recording, dedicated to Liszt oratorio transcriptions, was recently released on Naxos.

Will Todd has established himself as one of the UK's most popular choral composers. His anthem, The Call of Wisdom, was performed at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations with a TV audience of 45 million people. His breakthrough work, Mass in Blue (originally titled Jazz Mass), has been performed hundreds of times all over the world. Passion Music was commissioned for the choirs of St Martin-in-the-Fields and continues the fusion of jazz and choral music so successfully blended in Mass in Blue. The structure highlights different points in the Passion story, beginning with a new setting of 'Greater love has no man' and including an evocative Stabat Mater, a movement focusing on the seven last words of Christ, and a setting of 'Were you there when they crucified my Lord?'. The Jazz Missa Brevis gives new life to the sung Latin Mass texts in an accessible, short setting which embraces a variety of jazz styles, from the swinging jazz waltz Kyrie to the up-beat Latin-groove Gloria. The smooth jazz ballad Sanctus, 7/8 Benedictus and soulful Agnus Dei complete this inspiring Mass setting.

Composer, musician and broadcaster John Brunning is perhaps best known for his choral work Pie Jesu. The piece was initially recorded by the vocal group 'All Angels', and there has since been around a dozen recordings including an acapella arrangement by The King's Singers. In his introduction to the album, John Brunning writes: There are probably more euphemisms employed when speaking of death than any other subject. Take a walk around a graveyard and you will see any number of headstones bearing inscriptions such as 'passed away', 'fell asleep', 'called to rest', and so on. Yet death is the one inescapable certainty that each of us must ultimately confront. I have sought to address this issue in as positive a way as possible with my cycle, 'Swansongs'. Elin Manahan Thomas is one of the most versatile sopranos of her generation. Since releasing her début album Eternal Light in 2007 with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, she has performed at many of the world's most prestigious venues, festivals and events, including the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May 2018. On this recording she is accompanied by pianist Daniel Grimwood, a performer of international renown who combines an exceptional talent with rare versatility and refinement.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and yet cannot remain silent, wrote Victor Hugo in 1864. Half a century later, his words had never felt more pertinent. Every composer writing during World War I found a unique way, through their music, to describe and protest against the horrors that were tearing civilization apart. Created in the depth of morbidity, Debussy's parting musical gift is a subtle, dignified, and heroic celebration of youth and joie de vivre. A sense of patriotism in the war years links Debussy with the foremost Moravian composer of the day, Leos Janacek. Ottorino Respighi was only in his thirties when the war broke out. His 1917 Sonata for violin and piano is a work of Romance written in the time of hate, a reminder that the past and the future remain beacons of hope in desperate times. Commissioned for this recital programme to reflect on the centenary of The Great War from our own times, Kenneth Hesketh's Inscrizione, derivate, subtitled 'A lie to the Dying,' is a quasi-meditation on the dying man, his anxious thoughts and the spasms of his failing heart being weaved conspicuously into a narrative of disquieting melancholy. Foyle-Stsura Duo has been praised for "playing of compelling conviction," (The Daily Telegraph) and "astonishing mutual feeling, understanding and responsiveness." (Seen and Heard International)

James Rhodes has no formal academic musical education or dedicated mentoring. The title of the debut album “Razor Blades Little Pills and Big Pianos”, hints at the suffering that dogged Rhodes’s childhood and early adult life. Classical music became his solace and key to his survival. It was Bach, Beethoven and Chopin, not Faith Hope and Charity, that offered comfort. In 1993, mental health issues stopped him taking up a scholarship to the Guildhall. Suffering further setbacks due to health issues it was not until 2008, when Rhodes met his present manager, Denis Blais, that he was encouraged to record his first album. This enabled him to bare his soul and put many of the ghosts of the past to rest. With Blais, Rhodes also created a distinctive and unique approach to how the classical piano repertoire should be presented. Uncomfortable with the austere and traditional ‘white tie and tails’ recital they decided it was time for the performer to communicate directly with the audience. Rhodes was going to introduce his own programme notes and share what it takes to perform these works of art using fascinating anecdotes about the composers and his own life experience. Delivered in his unique trademark stand-up style he creates an immersive experience that has won him and classical music a dedicated new following. His new album, presented here, shows the same no-holds-barred approach to these time-honored classics.

This double album dedicated to Psalms and Dialogues (released after the 4-album release titled Oratori, Mottetti e Lamentazioni) is completing the opera omnia of sacred works hitherto known by the Augustinian friar Ippolito Ghezzi. Within these recordings, the Cappella Musicale di San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna led by Roberto Cascio is revealing to us a prolific and talented composer, endowed with technique, inventiveness, and happy melodic vein. The Cappella Musicale San Giacomo Maggiore was founded in 2006 with the aim of reviving the unpublished scores of the many composers who belonged to the order of the Augustinian fathers between the 16th and 18th centuries. Among the ensemble’s performers are renowned theorists such as Lodovico Zacconi and composers like Ippolito Ghezzi, Guglielmo Lipparini and Tiburzio Massaini. The Cappella Musica, with its research and restoration work, intends to contribute to the rediscovery of the Italian historical and musical heritage.

Songs old and new, standards and rarities, all make up this delightful new album for the Christmas season. A quartet of New York cabaret favorites led by the legendary Steve Ross sing their way through some of the oldest carols as well as some of the newest. It's Almost Christmas Eve is a nostalgic, cozy, smart, sophisticated and sometime even wistful journey through the Great American Songbook. Here you'll find great songs from Broadway and popular song favorites including Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Stephen Sondheim, Jule Styne, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Charles Strouse, Cy Coleman, Sammy Fain, E.Y. Harburg, Carolyn Leigh and also Richard Maltby and David Shire. Plus a bevy of newer composers taking a crack at Christmas cheer and goodwill toward men.

Christopher Glynn continues his series of late Schubert song cycles in English, joined by celebrated soloists Sir John Tomlinson, Sophie Bevan, Julian Bliss and Alec Frank-Gemmill. Titled by the works first published following Schubert’s death, ‘Swansong’ D 957 sets the words of poets Ludwig Rellstab, Heinrich Heine and Johann Gabriel Seidl in songs that cover a variety of different emotional states. The lighthearted ‘Love Message’ with its rippling accompaniment, addresses a murmuring brook with the hope of true love. The bone- chilling ‘Doppelganger’ with its stark, slowly tolling chords, finds the protagonist crazed with a nocturnal vision of himself agonizing at the empty doorstep of his lost love. Renowned for his clear diction and powerful voice, Sir John Tomlinson brings his insight and nuance to these profound works. Reminiscent of the scoring for The Shepherd on the Rock and composed in the same year, ‘On the River’ combines soprano, clarinet and horn in a setting of a poem by Ludwig Rellstab. Originally given to Beethoven who did not live long enough to set it, Schubert took up the words in a work that is a subtle homage to the composer. The 1828 work The Shepherd on the Rock sets words by Wilhelm Muller and German playwright Helmina von Chezy, and was composed in gratitude to the soprano Anna Milder-Hauptmann. Here performed by Sophie Bevan and Julian Bliss, it tells the story of a shepherd lamenting the distance between him and his beloved before a reflection on loneliness and grief. The final section celebrates the arrival of spring in a hopeful conclusion.

Hymns are a living link with the past, yet they still find freshness and relevance in the twenty- first century. Saint Thomas Aquinas comments that 'hymns are the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice' and this explains neatly the vital place that hymnody has enjoyed throughout the ages, and continues to do so today. Praise my soul celebrates this glorious tradition of hymnody and showcases some of the hymns heard in Jesus College Chapel in their own regular pattern of choral services. Some of these, including Drop, drop, slow tears and Glory to thee, my God, this night have been sung regularly for hundreds of years. Others such as All my hope on God is founded or Christ Triumphant have become classics over the last half-century. The Choir of Jesus College Cambridge return to disc on Signum with their seventh release, and their first under choral director Richard Pinel.

Continuing with Harbinger Records’ acclaimed series of albums devoted to jazz pianist, composer, Broadway songwriter, and black music pioneer Eubie Blake, we proudly present the original demo to the proposed Broadway musical ‘Shuffle Along of 1950.’ Harbinger’s recording of Sissle and Blake singing the score to the original production of ‘Shuffle Along’ won the Grammy Award for its brilliant liner notes by Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom, authors of an upcoming biography of Eubie Blake to be published by Oxford University Press. They are repeating their assignment for this recording. Also included is a bonus track featuring remastering of the only surviving acetate of a historical “Salute to Ruth King.” Ruth King was a famous Cleveland DJ who celebrated black musicians. And such notables as Sissle and Blake and the legendary WC Handy, composer of St. Louis Blues, play for Ms. King. Several songs from the original ‘Shuffle Along’ are included as are new songs written especially for this production. Later, other musicians augmented the score, and these songs are also included in this rare recording.

Founded in 1973 by Trevor Pinnock, the English Concert has been a leading light in the performance of Baroque and Classical music for for over 40 years. Under their present Artistic Director Harry Bicket and with distinguished guest artists they continue to perform with the passion, sophistication and technical mastery established at their creation. Such is the commitment and passion that their players bring to every performance. Drawn not only from home-grown talent, The English Concert can boast a truly international cast of musicians. Soloists in their own right, and backed-up by scholarly knowledge of style and genre, the close-knit relationship between their musicians makes for a truly special blend of sound. This new recording features the talents of these soloists in performances of Concertii by Telemann, Marcello, Dall’Abaco, Tartini and Porpora.

Thomas Hampson, America’s leading baritone and a champion of the art of classic song — poetry set to music — makes his Cedille Records debut with a program of songs by five composers of the early 20th century associated with the city of Chicago: Ernst Bacon, Florence Price, John Alden Carpenter, Margaret Bonds, and Louis Campbell-Tipton. All of them, Hampson says, “have distinguished themselves in history as great voices of the artistic American narrative.” Hailed as “an outstanding recitalist” by Grove Music Online, the much-honored international opera star, recording artist, and “ambassador of song” performs compositions based on poems by Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet who became the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Hampson, whose discography includes more than 170 albums, including Grammy and Grand Prix de Disque award winners, is accompanied on Songs from Chicago by collaborative pianist extraordinaire Kuang-Hao Huang, accompanist of choice for Chicago’s top singers and instrumentalists. The New York Philharmonic’s first Artist-in-Residence, Hampson also has been honored with a Concertgebouw Prize, Library of Congress Living Legends Award, and the Hugo-Wolf-Medal for outstanding achievements in the art of song interpretation, among many other awards.

REVIEW:

It goes without saying that Hampson's singing is gorgeous, and he is ably backed by Chicago pianist Kuang-Hao Huang. An excellent slice of little-known American art song.

– All Music Guide

Pianist Min-Jung Kym makes her recording debut on Signum Records, leading the Philharmonia Orchestra under conductor Clemens Schuldt in performances of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4, and joined by Zsolt-Tihamer Visontay for Mendelssohn's Double Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Orchestra in D Minor. Steinway Artist Min-Jung Kym has acquired an internationally recognized reputation performing with some of the world's leading orchestras and musicians, and has enjoyed collaborations including with (amongst others) Barry Wordsworth, Alison Balsom, the Haffner Ensemble, Pierre Amoyal, Leon Bosch, Joy Farrall, Andrew Haveron, Sergey Levitin, Adrian Brendel, Thomas Carroll, Mats Lidstrom and the soprano Susan Bickley. Min-Jung was the 'pianist of choice' for the masterclasses of the legendary violinist Ruggiero Ricci. "Min-Jung is an exceptionally talented pianist, with a wonderfully controlled and even technique, combined with a highly sensitive approach to the music." (Ruggiero Ricci)

Soprano Patrice Michaels, “a formidable interpretative talent” (The New Yorker), and collaborative pianist extraordinaire Kuang-Hao Huang offer Notorious RBG in Song, an album of world-premiere recordings saluting the life and work of legal pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg in celebration of her completion of 25 years on the United States Supreme Court. Ginsburg, a longtime crusader for equal rights, has become a pop culture icon known as “Notorious RBG.”

Michaels, a vocalist of “spectacular and diverse gifts” (Journal of Singing) is also a gifted composer. Her nine-song cycle, ‘The Long View’, illuminates key aspects of Justice Ginsburg’s personal and professional life through letters, remembrances, conversations, and even Court opinions. The album concludes with songs by American composer Stacy Garrop, winner of many prestigious awards and commissions; JUNO Award-winning Canadian composer Vivian Fung; prolific art-song composer Lori Laitman; and an aria from Derrick Wang’s new comic opera, Scalia/Ginsburg.

American composer Stacy Garrop, recipient of many prestigious awards and commissions, based her deeply moving “My Dearest Ruth” on the farewell love letter the Justice’s husband, Georgetown University law professor Martin Ginsburg, wrote shortly before his death in 2010. The aria “You are Searching in Vain for a Bright-Line Solution,” from Derrick Wang’s opera Scalia/Ginsburg, which captured widespread media attention, crystallizes Justice Ginsburg’s views on interpreting the U.S. Constitution. JUNO Award-winning Canadian composer Vivian Fung’s humorous “Pot Roast à la RBG” provides directions for preparing the beef dish, using Justice Ginsburg’s own words as related in the text by daughter Jane Ginsburg. Prolific art-song composer Lori Laitman’s setting of the Emily Dickinson poem “Wider than the Sky” wasn’t written with Ginsburg in mind, but it was performed at her 80th birthday celebration because it perfectly embodied her intellectual breadth.

REVIEW:

This is a difficult production to review, not just because Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become such a significant figure in modern American life, but because the range of her achievements—whether as a jurist or as a wife, mother, opera maven, attorney, professional colleague and feminist icon—resists purely musical treatment. That’s not a reason to hesitate in offering her this lovingly produced tribute. Like RBG herself, who responded to the notion that women had no place in the legal profession by going ahead and doing it anyway, Cedille General Manager Jim Ginsburg (her son) and singer Patrice Michaels (her daughter-in-law) have taken the plunge with evident gusto.

The main item here is The Longview, an imposing portrait of RBG in nine songs composed by Michaels for voice and piano in an attractive, post-modern tonal idiom. There are vivid and beautiful numbers here, especially the central Anita’s Story, a wonderful tale of the power of Ginsburg’s words to change a life; but for many listeners the main interest will lie in the eighth song’s quotations of Ginsburg’s own legal opinions. Imagine setting this to music to get an idea of what Michaels is up to: “I have said before and reiterate here that only an ostrich could regard the supposedly neutral alternatives as race unconscious.” What results from this effort is not so much a conventional song cycle as a theater piece—I could readily imagine it staged, particularly as Michaels, whose voice is hardly conventionally beautiful but whose intelligent artistry is beyond question, performs it here.

The remainder of the program consists of four songs by four different composers, all inspired by RBG’s life and legend. Vivian Fung’s “Pot Roast à la RBG” is the most amusing; Stacy Garrop’s “My Dearest Ruth”, a love letter written by husband Martin Ginsburg from his death bed, is the most touching. I suspect that more than a few tears were shed both here and elsewhere during this project. Through it all, Michaels receives ideally sensitive support from pianist Kuang-Hao Huang, while Cedille’s engineering, as usual, is first class. The final impression that emerges is a portrait of a family as much as of an individual—a very remarkable family indeed. I suspect that RBG may regard this as her greatest achievement of all.

– ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

The German composer Johann Adolf Hasse was born in Bergedorf on 25 March 1699 and died in Venice on 23 December 1783. He chose Italy as his adopted country: there he was nicknamed “the dear Saxon”. He was a pupil of Nicola Porpor and Alessandro Scarlatti, from whom he learned the typical composition style of the Neapolitan School. In 1727 he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Conservatorio degli Incurabili of Venice, the city in which he met his bride, Faustina Bordoni. He was engaged as a composer by the Polish court, for which he composed a great number of operas that were staged in Dresden and in other European countries, particularly Italy. The arias presented here by Elena De Simone belong to the genre of the opera seria and have been chosen among the most representative ones in Hasse’s unpublished production, which is based on texts – most of them by Metastasio and Apostolo Zeno – that were a great source of inspiration for the major European musicians of that time.

This album is a retrospective that is a must-have for all lovers of musical theater. Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt first won fame as the creators of The Fantasticks- the longest-running musical in the history of the world, with more than 21,000 performances given in New York over a period of 58 years. But the Jones & Schmidt musicals also include Broadway classics such as "I Do! I Do!," "110 in the Shade," and "Celebration." Selections from these and 12 other shows are included in this deluxe release, which features many previously unreleased "demos" by the songwriters themselves. Jones & Schmidt worked closely with Producer Bill Rudman for over two years to ensure that this album would best represent their legacy. "The purpose of theater is always to reveal us to ourselves. To help us perceive the 'poetry' beneath the prose and the minutiae of our lives. To make us exalt. To make us feel. And not least of all, to make us laugh." (Tom Jones)

Literally meaning ‘rooster song’ or ‘cock crow’, Gallicantus takes its name from monastic antiquity; the name of the office held just before dawn, it was a ceremony which evoked the renewal of life offered by the coming day. Dedicated to renaissance music and directed by Gabriel Crouch, the membership of this early music group boasts a wealth of experience in consort singing. Renowned for their critically-acclaimed and researched programmes, Gallicantus presents Sibylla. At the heart of the programme is Orlandus Lassus’s 16th Century Prophetiae Sibyllarum, which sets to music the texts of ancient Sibylline prophecies telling of the coming of Christ. One of the composer’s most renowned and celebrated works, it is performed alongside settings by the ‘Sibyl of the Rhine’ Hildegard von Bingen, as well contemporary responses to Lassus’s work. Dmitri Tymoczko’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum sets poems by Jeff Dolven which recast the sibyls’ role: this time to the teller of grim truths of present life in post-industrial America. As an epilogue the album finishes with Elliot Cole’s ‘I saw you under the fig tree’ (part of his suite Visions) – a simple 4-part setting beneath an extraordinary countertenor glissando, setting Jesus Christ’s response to Nathaniel.

Alessio Bax returns to recording with the Southbank Sinfonia under Simon Over, in a new album of works by Beethoven centered around the majestic “Emperor” Piano Concerto No. 5. Combining exceptional lyricism and insight with consummate technique, Alessio Bax is without a doubt “among the most remarkable young pianists now before the public” (Gramophone). He catapulted to prominence with First Prize wins at both the Leeds and Hamamatsu International Piano Competitions, and is now a familiar face on four continents, not only as a recitalist and chamber musician, but as a concerto soloist. He has appeared with more than 100 orchestras, including the London and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, Dallas and Cincinnati Symphonies, NHK Symphony in Japan, St. Petersburg Philharmonic with Yuri Temirkanov, and the City of Birmingham Symphony with Sir Simon Rattle. Alessio has appeared frequently with the Southbank Sinfonia in concerts and recordings – their 2013 disc of Mozart’s Concertos Nos. 24 & 27 was described by Musicweb International’s critic as their “Recording of the Month … and quite possibly my recording of the year”. A live concert of the “Emperor” concerto in 2016 with the orchestra in Tuscany’s Incontri in Terra di Siena festival was met with praise by reviewers: “[Bax’s] capacity for softness and for evenness of touch came beautifully to the fore for the concerto’s many top-keyboard pianissimo flutterings, as his strong relationship with the orchestra also reaped dividends, producing satisfyingly sympathetic chamber pockets amidst the surrounding symphonic excitement.” Bachtrack (Live Concert Review)

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REVIEW:

His playing is consummately lyrical. His expressive molding and the very forward recording quality make for an overall result that is more immediate. All in all, this is an impressive disc, which repays repeated listening and can stand comparison with many of the biggest names.

– Gramophone

The Armenian and Georgian composer Sarkis Vasil'evich Barkhudarian is famed for his piano miniatures. Some are among the first piano works to use Armenian folk themes as the basis for a series of original compositions. His colorful and unusual harmonies, created by the sinuous, interweaving modes of Armenian music, are immediately attractive and his miniatures, whether full of grace or pungent dance rhythms, bear out Glazunov's admiration of his 'sincerity, elegance and harmony of form.' Mikael Ayrapetyan was born in 1984 in Yerevan, Armenia, where he had his early schooling. His repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the contemporary and includes rarely performed works of Armenian composers. He is actively engaged in the popularization of Armenian classical music, organizing concerts in the major concert halls of the world, and acting as producer, artistic director and pianist for these performances.

American pianist Timothy Ehlen continues his prolific recording career with this offering of the music of Johannes Brahms. Mr. Ehlen, Professor of Piano at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, has performed extensively in the United States and Europe as a soloist and chamber player. He first gained international attention after winning the World Piano Competition in 1987; after his subsequent debut in Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall in 1988, the New York Times raved that his "playing was filled with elegant personality... recalled bygone artists like Robert Casadesus and, especially Walter Gieseking in their mastery of both 18th century and impressionist music... immaculate technique." The Pro Piano Recital Series sponsored his 1997 recital in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, which the New York Concert Review hailed as "... an absolutely remarkable tour-de-force." Recitals in France, Germany and Korea have received a similarly enthusiastic response. Mr. Ehlen has recorded the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas for the Azica label. After the release of volume III, Fanfare Magazine wrote: "... I have the feeling that the cycle with the richest rewards will turn out to be the Ehlen."