Vladimir Jurowski is one of today's most sought after conductors. His London Philharmonic Orchestra performances from Stravinsky's catalogue span his 20 year association with the Orchestra, culminating in him including Stravinsky's Jeu de cartes in the program of his final concert as Principal Conductor in August 2021. This recording, the first of a three volume Stravinsky series, features two cornerstone works. The Firebird featured in Jurowski's first scheduled concert conducting the LPO back in March 2002 and this recording comes from a 2018 Royal Festival Hall performance, described as "a masterpiece" by the Evening Standard. The Rite of Spring comes from an earlier Royal Festival Hall concert in 2008. Stravinsky's music in the hands of Jurowski delivers a focus and clarity that is beautifully preserved and realised on these recordings.

Master guitarist Cristiano Porqueddu embarks on a praiseworthy and ambitious recording project: Easy Studies for Guitar, works written by famous or less well known composers with the special aim to educate, challenge, develop and entertain the aspiring guitar student. The works focus on certain technical issues disguised as it were in the musical content and its emotions. The first album contains works by Eduardo Garrido, Nikita Koshkin, Alexandre Transman and Reginald Smith-Brindle. Christiano Porqueddu, who has already recorded more than forty albums which have been received with great critical acclaim, takes his task seriously, always finding the right atmosphere and character of these delightful musical gems, aided by his immaculate technique.

With the famous Symphony No. 6, this album contains a lesser-known part of Tchaikovsky's repertoire - the Sérenade mélancolique, with the extraordinary Leonid Kogan playing the solo violin - the Variations Rococo, with Danil Shafran playing the cello and especially the Suite No. 3 for Orchestra, a composition wrongly forgotten by the common discography of the Russian composer. This release is a tribute to one of the biggest Russian conductors of the 20th century, gathered at the top of his career.

A 4 CD extravaganza of John Williams’ soundtrack and film score music joins the 12th batch of box sets released as a part of the Sony Classical Masters Series and provides a colossal reminder of Williams’ prodigious breadth and ubiquity of his works in some of the most culture defining films of the recent Hollywood era. With a disc devoted to his Star War scores, and another to his orchestral works and Olympics inspired works; the collection also features popular orchestras and soloists including Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic and more.

“I adore well-executed choral music for the holidays, and Gloriae Dei Cantores certainly fills the bill. Sing Noel is an outstanding. . . moving release of intensely lovely seasonal music.”
—Christmasreviews.com

“One of the finest crafted, best blended, and innately musical ensembles with which I have had the pleasure to work.”
— Keith Lockhart, Conductor, Boston Pops

Carlo Maria Giulini's very high level of achievement was the result of profound study, human and artistic sensitiveness and a great deal of experience. This double CD box collects four of his most beloved symphonies recorded between 1957 and 1968 with “ his” Philharmonia Orchestra, a period considered the best of his career. The performances, all extraordinary, have been long unavailable on CD.

Classical Music

This release of the Britten Cello Suites follows Quirine Viersen’s successful album of the Bach Suites. The album is a tribute to the artist’s good friend and producer Paul Janse, who passed away two years ago. Dutch cellist Quirine Viersen is one of the leading musical personalities of her generation. Her intense and virtuosic playing has convinced the public, the press, and her colleagues of her special musicality. She has shown broad insight in classical music literature with her concerto and recital performances as well as her festival participation. Viersen has been awarded numerous prizes at international competitions, the most important being the Young Artist Award in 2000 which was presented to her by the Credit Suisse Groupe. Viersen plays a 1715 Joseph Guarnerius Filius Andreae, provided by the Dutch National Instrument Fund.

Classical Music

A momentous release, as Morlot and the Seattle Symphony follow their acclaimed recording of Ives’ Symphony No. 2 with the next installment that includes four of the composer’s greatest works. The rarely recorded Symphony No. 4 is a haunting summation of American musical styles, and one of the masterpieces of American music. It receives here a live performance of staggering authority and eloquence that brings Ives’ multi-layered sonic canvas to new life. Recorded alongside Symphony No. 3 and Ives’ two most beloved short orchestral works, this release is engineered to audiophile standards and set to be an authoritative voice among recordings of Ives’ discography.

REVIEW:

These live performances are outstanding, and the coupling gives you what is basically “the essential Ives” orchestral music. The Fourth Symphony is a tricky piece, particularly in its second and fourth movements, whose chaotic climaxes need to ride that border between riotous, tuneful abundance and mere noise. Morlot gets it, and the orchestra provides a lean, clear sonority that convinces you that something meaningful is happening down there underneath the welter of sound. Only the “simple” third movement might raise an eyebrow, with it’s extremely quick tempo, but the phrasing helps to make the approach more convincing than you might at first believe.

The two short pieces, The Unanswered Question and Central Park in the Dark, belong together, but seldom get presented that way. It’s great to have the opportunity to hear them in their proper sequence. Finally, Morlot offers a very attractive, flowing account of the Third Symphony, with textures keenly observed in order to provide this gentle music with the maximum amount of color. It’s all very well recorded before a quiet and attentive audience. The sonics do lack the richness of, say, Litton on Hyperion, my versions of reference, but this is by any standard awfully good.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu presents Mahler’s Symphony Nr. 1 with the original 2nd movement Blumine restored which Mahler excised after a few performances of the symphony. To this day, there is much discussion of Mahler’s decision to drop this lovely movement with many theories attached to the discussion. Nonetheless this recording performs a valuable cultural service with its inclusion, especially in the hands of the very capable FRSO.

Antonín Dvorák’s Cello Concerto is one of the absolute masterpieces of the genre, and every world-class cellist naturally takes it into his repertoire. This is also the case for Daniel Müller-Schott, who will be performing it in the great concert halls of Europe in 2014 and in the Lincoln Center in New York: thus in the very same city where Dvorák worked as conservatory director and where he wrote the concerto. Dvorák began his work in passionate, stormy mood, but completed it in lyrical, elegiac vein under the shadow of the illness and death of his sister-in-law Josefina, who had been his own first love. Müller-Schott’s new recording also includes several chamber music works and arrangements that offer insight as to how Dvorák gradually accustomed himself to the cello, up to the point when he composed his concerto in 1894-5. There is the catchy 'Rondo' that Dvorák wrote in 1892 for a chamber music tour, and 'Silent Woods', an arrangement made for the same tour, heard here in Dvorák’s own orchestral versions. Together with the pianist Robert Kulek, Müller-Schott has also recorded arrangements of the four Romantic Pieces op. 75 and of 'Songs my mother taught me' from the Gypsy Songs cycle. The latter is perfectly suited to the cello’s cantabile character and Daniel Müller-Schott’s interpretation.

Burkhard: Das gesicht jesajas, Das jahr

Classical Music

In April, the United Kingdom celebrated the birthday of the longest serving monarch in British history. This release is the perfect soundtrack to the celebrations. Some of Britain’s most popular artists and ensembles have gathered together for this two-disc set, which includes patriotic anthems and popular tunes. Musicians include Russell Watson, Jonathan and Charlotte, The Band of H.M. Royal Marines, The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, and The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Under the name Wanderer - the iconic figure of Romanticism - the guitar duo formed by Giacomo Copiello and Michele Tedesco makes its debut with a recording containing an exceptionally romantic repertoire. The performers' careful choice of instruments offers the listener a varied range of historic guitars sounds: early 20th century instruments for the transcribed repertoire of Brahms, Schubert and Franck while the works of Mertz are played on the traditional 19th century romantic instruments they were originally intended for.

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Waverly Consort. Conductor: Michael Jaffee.

This album was nominated for the 2001 Latin Grammy award for Best Pop Instrumental Albmum.
THE LATIN ALBUM finds the venerable Boston Pops Orchestra entering the 21st century with high spirits and a bit of a retro feel, as they revisit material that was popular in their heyday with Arthur Fiedler, going back to the 1940s for a dreamy arrangement of 'Perfidia' and the infectious 'Mambo Jambo' of mambo king Perez Prado, while adding some more contemporary twists, such as the bittersweet 'Oblivion' of Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla. A few light classics such as Alberto Ginastera's 'Malambo' and Aaron Copland's 'El Salon Mexico' are given rousing performances under the baton of Keith Lockhart, along with traditional favorites from Brazil, Chile, Peru and Mexico, several of them given additional spice with contributions from the Mariachi Cobre and Inca Son ensembles.

Classical Music

Verliebt I Züri

The Munich Philharmonic have arguably given more performances of Anton Bruckner's music than any other orchestra. A great number of Bruckner recordings led by the many legendary conductors that have worked with the Munich Philharmonic are stored in the historical archive of the MPHIL Label including magnificent pieces with Sergiu Celibidache, Christian Thielemann, Rudolf Kempe, G�nter Wand and Oswald Kabasta. Having started in September 2017 at the Monastery of St. Florian, a setting with unique historical significance in this context, the Munich Philharmonic and Valery Gergiev have presented a most spectacular cycle of Anton Bruckner's symphonies.

To celebrate the Verdi bicentennial, La Fura dels Baus opened the "Centanario Festival 2013" of the Arena di Verona with a new production of “Aida”. The most popular opera of Verona Festival, Aida is the only one performed every year, in front of 17,000 spectators. Using their experience in leading large-scale shows, La Fura dels Baus created an Aida for the XXIst century. The young, talented conductor Omer Meir Wellber led the Orchestra, Coro, Corpo di Ballo e Tecnici dell’Arena di Verona.

This recording of Anton Bruckner’s eighth symphony is performed in its original version completed in 1887.; Because of the piece’s boldness, Bruckner’s contemporaries criticized the work, and convinced him to revise the piece.; Here, Fabio Luisi leads the Philharmonia Zurich in this “huge cathedral” of a work, bringing out the perfections in the original, unrevised version.

Bhajan is a free-wheeling yet meditative four-section work for electric violin and live electronics, which one critic described as “a pas de deux between violin and electronics,” was written for and features noted new-music violinist Robin Lorentz. Nicholas Chase has headlined festivals in Europe and the US as a composer, performer, and improviser, His interactive, site-specific composition NOVA: Transmission was exhibited as part of the Whitney Biennial in New York and his Ngoma Lungundu opened the New Music+ Festival at the Jana ek Academy, Czech Republic. He was an inaugural Composer Fellow at the 2011 international Other Minds Festival in San Francisco and in 2015 was honored by the International Center for Japanese Culture, Tokyo, Japan.