This disc forms part of Chandos’ ongoing Richard Hickox legacy series. The re-release features Rossini's Stabat Mater, performed by Richard Hickox and the City of London Sinfonia. They are joined by the London Symphony Orchestra Chorus and four excellent soloists: Helen Field, Della Jones, Arthur Davies and Roderick Earle.

This is a double-anniversary release, offering a rare collection of lively works to celebrate the ninetieth anniversary of the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra as well as the eightieth birthday of its principal conductor, Neeme Järvi. Cheerful marches and dances here trace the career of Johann Strauss II as it manifested itself in his much acclaimed seasons in St Petersburg, at the ‘Russian summer’ concerts in the Vauxhall pavilion in Pavlovsk, where he appeared for eleven seasons (1856 – 65 and 1869), ten of them consecutively. It is an unmissable start to a year-long celebration for Neeme Jarvi that will include concerts, promotions, and subsequent album releases.

Renaissance music from Spain has come to mean the works of composers such as Tomás Luís de Victoria or Francisco Guerrero rather than their predecessors. But composers such as Francisco de Peñalosa – who died in 1528, the same year that Guerrero was born – were musicians of genuine imagination and skill, whose work often shows a formidable individuality. The most recent edition of Peñalosa’s oeuvre lists 22 works as genuine: masses, lamentations, hymns and motets. From these, New York Polyphony have selected two highly expressive Lamentations, intended for services held during Holy Week and setting biblical texts bemoaning the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC.

Besides two brief motets, Peñalosa is also represented by sections from his Missa L’homme armé, one of the many examples from the 15th to the 17th century of cyclic masses based on secular melodies. These pieces by Peñalosa are brought into relief by shorter works by his near-contemporary Pedro de Escobar – a deeply haunting setting of the beginning of the hymn Stabat Mater – and the aforementioned Francisco Guerrero. Guerrero is represented by Quae est ista, a setting of words from the Song of Songs which have inspired the composer to ecstatic cascades of notes. In contrast his Antes que comáis a Dios, with a text in Spanish, is simple but effective, in a propulsive triple time.

REVIEWS:

Francisco de Peñalosa is the link between the great Flemish composer Josquin des Prez (his senior by 15 or 20 years) and the full flowering of Spanish Renaissance music, represented by Alonso Lobo, Tomás Luís de Victoria and Francisco Guerrero. This new disc from New York Polyphony presents two Lamentationes by Peñalosa, along with a number of his Mass segments.

The superb singing, impressive acoustic space (of the Princeton Abbey in the former site of the Saint Joseph's Seminary in Plainsboro NJ), and perfectly captured audio all come together to provide an experience that is both timeless and completely in the moment. Another impressive project from New York Polyphony!

-- Music for Several Instruments

It’s wonderful to hear more music from Francisco de Peñalosa (1470-1528), and particularly pleasing that it comes on this stylish release from New York Polyphony complete with superb booklet notes by Ivan Moody.

-- Gramophone

Between 1791 and 1804, Joseph Haydn arranged some 400 traditional songs for publishers in Scotland and England. Almost all of the songs were Scottish and the most common setting was for voice and piano trio. There have been numerous recordings and performances of the arrangements by these forces, but on this disc The Poker Club Band offer their listeners something quite different. Taking its name from one of the Edinburgh clubs at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment, the ensemble consists of four early music specialists and a traditional singer. They have retained Haydn’s violin and cello, but the keyboard part has been adapted for harp and guitar following indications that the harp was commonly used for contemporary performances of Scottish traditional repertoire. The Gaelic singer James Graham, with his idiomatic Scottish timbre, and the period instruments – of which Masako Art’s single-action pedal harp from 1809 is known to have been in Scotland around the time – brings us that much closer to what a performance in an Edinburgh salon might have sounded like around 1800. The songs themselves range from the cautionary tale of a girl who married for love and now is doomed to a life of hard and dirty work on her husband’s farm (The Mucking of Geordie’s Byer) to love songs such as Oran Gaoil, with a text by Robert Burns. Providing variety, some instrumental 18th century arrangements of Haydn originals are included while the album ends with the well-known atmospheric Lament by the Scottish fiddler Niel Gow.

Internationally acclaimed for his music for orchestra (17 symphonies and 31 concertos to date), Kalevi Aho has also composed chamber and solo works. The present disc combines six such pieces, ranging across the composer’s career. The earliest work on the disc is the Bach-inspired Sonata for solo violin from 1973, reminding us that during his years at the Sibelius Aacademy (1968 – 71), Aho studied the violin as well as composition. Another early piece, Prelude, Toccata and Postlude, also started out as a solo work – this time for the cello – before developing into a duo. From the other end, chronologically speaking, is the ample Piano Sonata No. 2 from 2016, with a duration of some 25 minutes. This time it is Beethoven who has provided inspiration, and the composer describes the work as ‘a commentary on the Hammerklavier Sonata, in which Beethoven’s motifs are frequently “misquoted” and developed in a different direction.’ The sonata closes the programme but not before giving us an opportunity to hear three further works involving the violin – a second solo piece, In memoriam Pehr Henrik Nordgren, written in memory of Aho’s fellow composer and friend, Lamento for two violins and Halla (‘frost’) for violin and piano. Performing these works are four highly respected Finnish musicians, the violinists (and brothers) Jaakko and Pekka Kuusisto, Samuli Peltonen (cello) and Sonja Fräki, pianist and Aho specialist.

REVIEW:

The two pieces written to mourn fellow musicians are, in fact, the best. Lamento was created for the funeral of the violinist Sakari Laukola, who died young in 2001. Jaakko Kuusisto’s sincerity obvious and his tone particularly strong and beautiful high up.

– Gramophone

Vast, deep and emotional are apt descriptions of the single-movement, 53-minute-long Symphony No. 2 by Christopher Tyler Nickel. The award-winning Canadian composer elaborates, “One can think of this music as consisting of mirrors between ideas that equally disturb yet entice. Each side of the reflection is in itself conceivably valid, but when facing each other friction and dissonance are created. The exquisitely alluring and the grotesque exist simultaneously. Perhaps another way to understand the symphony is as a meditation on the state of cognitive dissonance.” The entrepreneurial Clyde Mitchell conducts the Seattle-based Northwest Sinfonia on this world-premiere recording.

Along with Vivaldi’s ‘Seasons’ or Beethoven’s ‘Fifth’, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos belong to those works that are so well-known that we risk taking them for granted. In order to (re-)discover the special qualities that can inspire us today, in 2001 Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra decided to contact six contemporary composer, asking each of them to compose a companion piece to one of the concertos. Seventeen years later, in 2018, it was time to present the result, with a performance at the BBC Proms of all the works – new and old. Recorded over a period of 18 months leading up to this event, the present boxed set provides a unique opportunity to experience six very different musical minds and idioms entering into conversation with Bach: Mark-Anthony Turnage, Steven Mackey, Anders Hillborg, Olga Neuwirth, Uri Caine and Brett Dean. Bach’s concertos are remarkable in that they are all scored for different instrumental combinations, and part of the brief to the group of composers was to reflect this. In her Aello, Olga Neuwirth has for instance used several ‘instruments’ to stand in for Bach’s harpsichord, including a synthesizer, a milk frother and a typewriter. Brett Dean, on the other hand, has stayed very close to Bach’s instrumentation, but has chosen to write his work as a preparation for Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 – an Approach to Bach’s extremely tight canonic writing. In performing the twelve works the orchestra and Dausgaard are joined by leading soloists including Clare Chase, Mahan Esfahani, Håkan Hardenberger, Pekka Kuusisto and Tabea Zimmermann.

From the moment Karen Gomyo first heard Astor Piazzolla on album, at the age of fourteen, she was spellbound: ‘I had never heard such a combination of sensuality, fierceness, playfulness, sadness and nostalgia.’ As a violinist she found the role of the violin in Piazzolla’s music especially inspiring, and soon started playing it herself – first in various group combinations, and eventually together with Piazzolla’s longtime pianist Pablo Ziegler and his Tango Quartet. For the present disc she has chosen to record strings-only versions of three works originally for tango quintet (Seasons), guitar and flute (Histoire), and solo flute (Études). Piazzolla’s Cuatro Estaciones were initially conceived neither as a suite nor as a tribute to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Verano porteño (Summer) was composed first, as part of the incidental music for a play, with the other three following several years later. If the Seasons provide a soundtrack to the year as it unfolds in Buenos Aires, Histoire du Tango describes the development of the tango itself in four chapters – from the brothels around year 1900 to the concert halls where Piazzolla himself performed his tango nuevo. These two works frame three of Piazzolla’s Tango Études, which Karen Gomyo performs solo, while otherwise being partnered by the strings of the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire (Seasons) and the guitarist Stephanie Jones (Histoire).

"Bavouzet’s Haydn is unmatched in its zest and its wit. But it is also substantial, informed and deeply rewarding."

--The New York Times on Bavouzet's Haydn Sonatas cycle, 2022

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s survey of Haydn’s piano sonatas reaches its conclusion with this 11th and final volume. As with the previous releases, the acclaimed pianist has included repertoire from different periods of Haydn’s career to create a recital of interest in its own right, as well as the completion of the series.

Jean-Efflam notes: ‘It has been eleven years since the launch of this project to present Haydn’s sonatas, not in their chronological order, but as collections juxtaposing works from different periods. The program for this final album was actually the first one to be devised: I wanted to place side by side the very first and the very last sonata. Then the idea of fleshing out the sonata cycle with other major pieces began at volume four, with the addition of the famous Variations in F minor, and finally this last volume is made up of as many sonatas as other types of works. The complete series is thus able to offer music lovers all the sonatas identified to date, together with the other major keyboard works.’

REVIEWS:

On Synergy, flautist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends demonstrate that one plus one can be much greater than two. Featuring works that celebrate the coming together of like-minded musicians, this project is a reminder, after more than two years of a pandemic that has affected all of us, that true musical synergy can only be achieved 'face-to-face’, rather than ‘remotely’. With his Concerto for flute and recorder, Telemann not only creates a fusion of different musical styles of his time – namely Italian, German and French – but also shows a gift for borrowing elements from popular music. Saint-Saëns brings swirling colors and energy with a Tarentelle for flute, clarinet and orchestra, that at times displays obsessive, even threatening undertones. From the same period, Doppler’s Concerto for two flutes is not far from the world of opera, providing the two soloists with ample opportunity to shine like two singers in front of an orchestra. In addition to celebrating the synergy created between musicians, the last two works featured on this disc, Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 and Suite from the Orchestral Works, are telling examples of synergy between composers: it is as if Villa-Lobos and Mahler were shaking hands with Johann Sebastian Bach across distances of thousands of miles and hundreds of years.

REVIEW:

The principal attraction of this SACD, as good as the performances are, is the uniqueness of the program. Sharon Bezaly, one of the outstanding flutists of our time, has brought together composers not particularly associated with each other, and from different eras. While each performance is enjoyable, the real success of the disc is how the imaginative program flows in such a lovely way.

On Telemann’s Concerto in E Minor for Recorder, Flute, and Strings with harpsichord continuo. Bezaly is joined by one of the world’s premier recordists, Michala Petri, and their interplay is delightful. The final Presto is particularly inventive and sparkling in the way the two soloists play off each other.

Michael Collins and Bezaly play Saint-Saëns’s Tarantelle with total communication, lingering lightly over lyrical passages while clearly enjoying their virtuoso moments as well.

The big surprise for me was the Concerto in D Minor for Two Flutes by the flute virtuoso and composer Franz Doppler (1821–1883). The music is almost vocal in its melodic shape, but the remarkable aspect of the score, surprisingly, are the passages where the two flutes must play in unison. Bezaly and Walter Auer come close to making us believe that they are a single flute.

Next comes the one work without orchestra, Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas brasileiras No. 6, scored for flute and bassoon. Bram van Sambeek is a brilliant technician, but more importantly he produces a rich sound from his bassoon and provides harmonic support for Bezaly’s flute.

Her combination of rich tone and rhythmic precision is just right for The Mahler-orchestrated selections from the Second and Third Orchestral Suites. While no one would mistake this for an historically informed performance, it is an extremely stylish one. Michael Collins and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra bring elegance to the Air and energy to the Gavotte from the Third Suite. As an encore Bezaly give us a repeat of the Badinerie from the Second Suite.

BIS’s usual high standards of engineering and informative program notes round out a truly lovely disc.

-- Fanfare (Henry Fogel)

John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic continue their survey of Shostakovich’s late symphonies with this recoding of the 14th, with Elizabeth Atherton and Peter Rose as soloists. Completed in the spring of 1969, and premiered later that year, the symphony is written for soprano, bass and small string orchestra with percussion, setting eleven linked setting of poems by four authors. Most of the poems deal with the theme of death, particularly that of unjust or early death, and indeed all four of the poets had died prematurely and / or in unnatural circumstances – Wilhelm Küchelbecker in Siberian exile for his part in the 1825 Decembrist uprising, Federico García Lorca assassinated during the Spanish Civil War, in 1936, Rainer Maria Rilke of blood poisoning following an accident in 1926 and Guillaume Apollinaire in 1918 during the Spanish influenza pandemic. The Six Verses of Marina Tsvetayeva were composed in 1973, originally for contralto and piano, and subsequently arranged for chamber orchestra (the version we hear here, with Jess Dandy as soloist). The recording was made at Media City in Salford, Manchester, in Surround Sound, and is available as a hybrid SACD and in Spatial Audio.

For their fourth release with BIS, the United Strings of Europe with their director Julian Azkoul present another innovative programme, dedicated this time to the night, a source of wonder and fascination, rich with metaphorical associations. The ensemble’s varied, tailor-made programme features counterpoint, aching dissonance and chromaticism from across a range of styles spanning nearly 500 years, from the Renaissance to the present day.

The album is built around two post-romantic masterpieces: Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen (here in an arrangement by Éric Mouret), a work composed during the final months of the Second World War that evokes destruction, mourning, nostalgia, but also hope for progress and transformation, and Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, which, in a nocturnal dialogue between a man and a woman, shows the power of love that can overcome the greatest challenges. These two major works are joined by arrangements for strings of vocal pieces by Maddelena Casulana, Carlo Gesualdo and Henry Purcell, as well as a new work by Daniel Kidane, Be Still, featuring percussionist Beibei Wang, a reflection on recent years marked by lockdowns during which everyday markers, such as meeting with friends and family, travelling or attending concerts vanished.

The music of Michael Jarrell has been said to ‘examine states of dream and unreality, searching for a moment of truth’ – a truth which is often found in the lowest sonorities and slowest tempi, a place where time stands still. His works are often interrelated, not only by a certain sensitivity or a distinctive tone, but also by the recurrence of particular features that he reworks in different contexts. The present disc combines three orchestral works composed over a period of almost a quarter of a century. In Paysages avec figures absentes, played here by solo violinist Ilya Gringolts, the composer wished to find a new approach to writing for violin within an ensemble.

Premièred a few months before this recording by the Orchestre des Pays de la Loire and Pascal Rophé, the Sechs Augeblicke for orchestra suggest a concentration or implosion of sound matter within musical fragments, as a sort of reference to Schubert. Finally, the guiding idea of Un long fracas somptueux de rapide céleste with solo percussionist Florent Jodelet is a short, powerful ‘initial explosion’ that recurs, like a punctuation mark, throughout the piece, more or less regularly, in different forms.

Including some of the most beautiful baroque Christmas music on offer, this programme makes for the perfect Christmas collection. 'This is period-instrument performance at its best', wrote American Record Guide on the CD's original release. It is re-issued here for the first time. Three popular favourites, Corelli's gorgeous concerto for Christmas Eve, an idyllic Christmas concerto by Vivaldi, and Manfredini's Concerto grosso are complemented by two little-known cantatas by Telemann and Scarlatti. Each of the Italian composers has his own voice, contrasting tremendously with the more rugged German style of Telemann. Susan Gritton is the soloist in Scarlatti's cantata, described by Classic CD as 'ravishing and ravishingly sung... worth anyone's CD token'. This is a disc of intimate Christmas music, which will make an ideal stocking filler. As Classic CD wrote at the time of the original release, 'This is a delightful addition to the Christmas market, and the careful selection of its items and superb recording ensure that, like the traditional puppy, it's not just for Christmas'.

REVIEW:

These Baroque concertos and cantatas are all associated with Christmas, although some only marginally. The Scarlatti and Telemann cantatas were written for Christmas. The Manfredini and Corelli concertos probably received their associations with Christmas because each contains a pastorale movement, shepherds’ music in 12/8 time that Italian folk tradition associated with Christmas (the “Pifa” from Handel’s Messiah is another example). The Vivaldi concerto, one of his typical string concertos, seems to have received its seasonal connection from Vivaldi’s practice of programming it at Christmas time.

All of this music is delightful to hear. Many of Fanfare’s readers will probably have one or more of these works already, especially the concertos. The two cantatas are less often encountered, especially the Telemann, from the first movement of which we get the English carol Good Christian Men Rejoice. The playing and singing are excellent in all respects. Susan Gritton makes a major contribution in the solos of the Scarlatti cantata. Members of Collegium 90’s choir are equally good as soloists in the Telemann. Presiding over all, Simon Standage directs lively performances that respect the score and never stray into extremes of tempo.

This collection was issued 10 years ago under the title “Per la notte di natale.” In this reissue, Chandos provides full notes along with texts and translations, for which I commend them. Anyone looking for an enjoyable collection of Baroque music associated with Christmas need look no further.

-- Fanfare

Another re-release from Hickox’s classic recordings finds us knee-deep in lesser-known and widely varied works of Gustav Holst. The Suite de Ballet is one of Holst’s lighter orchestral pieces, worked colorfully with a slightly French flair. Song of the Night for solo violin shows the composer in a confident and imaginative Romantic frame of mind. Finally, the comic chamber opera The Wandering Scholar was one of Holst’s latest works, stripped down to only the barest necessities. Hickox’s lively performance was hailed as inspiring “full-blooded music-making” throughout.

The Brook Street Band has easily earned its reputation as “the smartest new baroque band around” (The Times, London). Among today’s most notable Handel specialists, the group’s founder, cellist Tatty Theo, and harpsichordist, Carolyn Gibley, turn their attention for only the second time to the music of J.S. Bach as well as his son Carl Philip Emmanuel. Like father, like son, each wrote three Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord. These works have long been a valued part of the cello repertoire, but this recording is the first to make use of a regular four-string baroque cello.

This is the penultimate release in the Chandos series of Brahms works for solo piano, performed by Barry Douglas. | Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist and an innovator with his music being rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of Baroque and Classical eras. | These recordings are being performed in the finest international venues including the Wigmore Hall and Concertgebouw. | This fifth volume is the most virtuosic of the series, including the Scherzo in E flat minor, technically demanding variations, several intermezzi, and three Hungarian Dances. | Barry Douglas is gainging a reputation of one the few world-class piano virtuosi of the romantic repertoire. | Barry Douglas won the 1986 Tchaikovksy Competition in Russia.

During the 2015/2016 season, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra celebrates their 125th birthday. This two disc set includes the very best compiled recordings over a three decade span, including works by Wagner, Nielsen, Webern, Holst, and more. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra was originally founded in 1891 under the name the Scottish Orchestra. They have worked with the very best conductors, composers, and soloists, Aaron Copland, Luciano Pavarotti, and Richard Strauss to name a few.

Experience the transcendent glory of Messiah in Sir Andrew Davis’s majestic, must-hear edition of Handel’s beloved classic. Recorded live on SACD, this unique version makes use of all the colours available from the modern symphony orchestra to underline the mood and meaning of the individual movements. Without detracting from the innate power of the original, the conductor’s score calls for moments of drama, pathos, and even, sometimes, whimsicality. It is supported by substantial brass and woodwind forces, and several percussion instruments (including marimba!).

REVIEW:

The performance is lightly cut, mainly toward the ends of Parts II and III, and both da capo arias (‘He was despised’ and ‘The trumpet shall sound’) have only the A section. Most of the ornamentation, including simple appoggiaturas, is omitted, as well as most occasions for what I call justified rhythms, where, say, upbeat eighth notes are taken as sixteenths to match other parts. Where choices are available, the common ones prevail, as in the 4/4 ‘Rejoice’ and the duet version of ‘He shall feed his flock’.

Tempos are crisp and modern, and the performers are all very good. The four soloists (with mezzo, not countertenor) are first rate; and the choir, which must number around 150, sings with the agility of much smaller groups. This is a “big” Messiah with none of the problems we normally associate with such endeavors. I guess we could call it “historically informed” because tempos are brisk and the spirit is not at all romantic. It also struck me as a gentle repudiation of Musicological Correctness—and that is no doubt a good thing. I dare say that if you had a contest lining up all the approaches to Messiah and had a review panel consisting of people with no musicological prejudices, this would be the winner.

-- American Record Guide

After a highly successful recordings of works by Brahms, the Schumanns, and Chopin, Imogen Cooper plunges into the world of another great romantic, Franz Liszt, and places him alongside that other giant, Richard Wagner. This is an evocative programme of original compositions and intimate transcriptions, ranging from poetic movements from the Années de Pèlerinage: Italie to dark and deeply elegiac pieces, including Liszt's La lugubre gondola I and Wagner's Elegie. It also features a transcription by Zoltán Kocsis of the intensely passionate prelude to Tristan und Isolde. The famous pianist and conductor died prematurely in November, 2016. It was his work that inspired this recording to begin with, and Imogen Cooper dedicates the album to his memory. Breathtaking music in unique interpretations: romanticism without melodrama, virtuosity without fuss.