At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, Europe experienced numerous political and social changes. The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 not only entailed changes in yet stable state structures in a short time, but also influenced the normative canons in art, which resulted in a new epoch - the Romanticism. Nowadays, we find it's ideas in poetry, painting, and music. Those arts drew from each other; therefore, they were intertwined and they complemented themselves by expressing interior spiritual and emotional states of their authors. It is very interesting to see in this background the person and works of Franz Xaver Mozart - a pianist and composer, the youngest son of great Wolfgang Amadeus.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 5 is the work Bruckner scholar and composer Robert Simpson considered to be the greatest of all Bruckner symphonies. Here is a recent live concert performance led by Bruckner expert Bernard Haitink. There are people who collect Bruckner 5ths; a lyrical, fascinating masterpiece and one of the few pieces by Bruckner that employs contrapuntal development as well as fascinating harmonic sophistication. The piece is also graced with arrestingly beautiful melodies.

The London Sinfonietta combine two works from Thomas Adès, one of the most distinctive and popular voices in modern composition. Both works feature accompanying films (by Tal Rosner and Sophie Clements) that are included in this CD/DVD set. This is the second CD for the London Sinfonietta with Signum. It follows their October release of music by Louis Andriessen, featuring the UK premiere of Anaïs Nin, alongside his famed work De Staat. In Seven Days is a musical interpretation for piano and orchestra of the biblical 'creation' by Thomas Adès, composed in collaboration with a film-piece by the artist and filmmaker Tal Rosner. Both music and film evoke the processes of the creation rather than the objects described in the movement titles, using simple elements in repeated and evolving contexts in a perpetual state of flux, change and growth. The Piano Studies Nos 6 & 7 are arrangements of player-piano works by the American composer Conlon Nancarrow. An influential figure to generations of composers, Nancarrow's studies for the player-piano (or pianola) allowed him to generate music of extreme rhythmic complexity in a multitude of inventive ways. These arrangements for two pianos by Thomas Adès capture the strange magic of the originals, where fragmented musical ideas are played off against each other in a wild, almost jazz-like way. The works are accompanied by film-visualisations by Tal Rosner and Sophie Clements.

STRAVINSKY; POULENC; LIADOV BBC NATIONAL ORCHESTRA OF WALES; FISCHER (COND.) MUSIC FROM DIAGHILEV'S BALLET RUSSES- STRAVINSKY: THE FIREBIRD, THE RITE OF SPRING, PETRUSHKA, SCHERZO FANTASTIQUE; LIADOV: BABA-YAGA, THE ENCHANTED LAKE. KIKIMORA; POULENC: LES BICHES

Classical Music

This new release features world premiere recordings of Pawl Lukaszewski’s Symphony of Providence Symphony of Providence was written between 1997 and 2008. It opens with a soprano, mixed choir and orchestra. The symphony has a clearly Christocentric and Christological message. As Lukaszewski writes on his website “The work communicates faith in the protection of Divine Providence and in the new Heave and new Earth...”

DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH St. Petersburg Philharmonic ORchestra/Yuri Temirkanov. DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60 "Leningrad".

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

“Decades ago the Sugarcubes proved to the rest of the world that Icelandic rock was its own original creation - now Nordic Affect promises to do the same for the country’s new-music community.” - The Chicago Reader. "Taking risks, buoyed by collaborative support, contributes to a developing, changing self. Through collaboration we can transcend the constraints of biology, of time, of habit, and achieve a fuller self, beyond the limitations and the talents of the isolated individual." - John-Steiner, 2000. Raindamage is the fruit of artistic collaboration, a kind of a micro lab exploring the creative possibilities and processes involved in the making of an album. It is an attempt to unpack the ‘tacit processes of musical collaboration’ and immediately raises the question: how do you crack them open in order to gain a further insight, which in return can lead to new ways of doing? At the heart of Raindamage are the most valuable systems of all: the collective and the collaborative. The Raindamage narratives are of course as many as the participants. In my instance, the continual tossing of the creative ball between my generous friend and colleague Valgeir Sigurðsson and myself, led to the creation of VARP, an installation room which invites you into the nesting site of Raindamage: a space for ecological navigation. VARP had its premiere already in November 2016 in Sweden, before the album release. This only goes to show the fast changing work paradigm here at the cusp of the 21st century. An unreleased album had already become a new work. Icelandic ensemble Nordic Affect has been hailed for its “affectionate explorations” (BBC Music Magazine) and “commitment to their repertoire” (Classical Music). Founded in 2005, Nordic Affect was formed by a group of period instrument musicians who were united in their passion for viewing familiar musical forms from a different perspective and for daring to venture into new musical terrain. In 2013, the ensemble was nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize and was named Performer of the Year at the Iceland Music Awards in 2014. Believing that music knows no boundaries, Nordic Affect has brought its music-making to contemporary and rock audiences alike and performed to critical acclaim at festivals such as TRANSIT festival, Dark Music Days, November Music, BRQ Vantaa Festival, Estonian Music Days and Iceland Airwaves. Its members have individually performed and recorded with artists and groups such as The English Concert, Concerto Copenhagen, Anima Eterna Brugge and Björk.

MUSIC FOR STRINGS

Recorded in: Danish Radio Concert Hall, Copenhagen 10 April 2001 (Echoes of Ossian), 17 & 18 August 2001 (Symphony No. 3, incl. discarded first movement), 14 & 19 Novemer 2001 (Symphony No. 6) Producer(s) Preben Iwan (Symphony No. 3, incl. discarded first movement) Chris Hazell (other works) Sound Engineer(s) Jørn Jacobsen

Ravel: Bolero - Rapsodie espagnole - La valse - Ma mère l'oy

Classical Music

A performance of the Ninth was always 'a sacred occasion for Furtwängler since his earliest days', according to his assistant Berta Geissmar. This was the case from the beginning of the First World War through the Pension Fund Concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic decades later, 'while the impetus for the historic performance of the Ninth given in Bayreuth on 29 July 1951,' she writes, 'was the reopening of the festival and the reconsecration of its Festspielhaus. Nowhere in the recordings extant by Furtwängler is there a more cogent reaffirmation of Kierkegaard's dictum 'truth is subjectivity' than in the existing performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Like the recordings of the Fifth, these span the three great periods of Furtwängler's musical life: the prewar heights of technical assurance (the re-creation of sound through the combined resources of mind and heart), the war years during which a powerful sense of time and history and rage tempered technique, and the postwar years in which all that had gone before was recast through a hard-won serenity and sense of perspective.' Nine of Furtwängler's performances of the Ninth have been made public, all from live performances, plus the rehearsal of the third and fourth movements from the 1954 Bayreuth Festival. The Ninth was a work he never attempted in the studio, perhaps because of the importance he attached to it as a communal experience. We are fortunate to have here, released on CD for the first time, and in good sound, Furtwängler's last Bayreuth Festival opening performance of the Ninth.

Passion and Lament: Choral Masterworks of the 17th Century is a Dorian Sono Luminus release by the Bach Sinfonia, a period instrument group led by Daniel Abraham and based out of Silver Spring, MD; the concurrent vocal group is identified by the rubric Sinfonia Voci. Leader Abraham seems to have an uncanny knack for landing the premiere recording options on newly discovered works by famous composers; the previous Dorian Sono Luminus effort devoted to Handel's Alexander's Feast also contained the J.S. Bach aria Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn, discovered in 2005. Here the featured first recording is of a work by Heinrich von Biber, his setting of the Stabat mater that emerged in 2007. It is a short, somber, and restrained setting from late in Biber's career, not the most ravishing vocal work that he has to offer but still recognizable as his. Along for the ride is a selection of six Psalm settings from Salomone Rossi's The Songs of Solomon and the early oratorio Jephte by Giacomo Carissimi. The good news is that the Rossi settings, recorded without continuo, probably have never received a better performance on disc than here. Jephte, of course, is a canonical classical work and the Bach Sinfonia has a good deal more competition in it among recordings. The performance here is well done, and the crucial concluding chorus Plorate filii Israel is very well handled and particularly effective, though one wonders if a slightly larger continuo might not have been a bad idea for Jephte; the Bach Sinfonia here consists of only five instruments and normally they are a 22-piece band. The singing is all quite good; soprano Jennifer Ellis Kampani turns in her usual, stellar performance and one must compliment baritone Sumner Thompson for being a low male voice who "gets" concitato singing. Dorian Sono Luminus' recording is a very digital-sounding recording that has a slightly weird, metallic timbre; at one point it pulls a soprano note into a range of distortion. Nevertheless, Biber's devotees will want to know the new work, even though the true virtues of this disc are encountered best in the Rossi and in parts of the Carissimi.

-- "Uncle" Dave Lewis, All Music Guide

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is Lyrita’s second CD of Grace Williams reissues. My review of the first (6/95) revealed that I had forgotten that the Second Symphony had been recorded back in 1979. Now it is reissued here, an absorbing work whose mix of styles and models serves as a reminder that pluralism in music is not just a phenomenon of the years since 1980. The symphony begins by evoking Shostakovich and Vaughan Williams but, by the finale, it is a late-romanticism recalling both Wagner and Mahler that provides the source for Williams’s most powerful utterances, before the final ‘return to earth’ – and to echoes of Vaughan Williams.

Something of the symphony’s stylistic blend, with its inherent and persistent tensions, can also be heard in Ballads. This is music with a strong narrative drive, full of incident and sturdily constructed, but Ballads and the symphony are quite heavily scored, and these performances, though excellent in many ways, now sound rather congested. A wider sonic canvas is needed, to let more light and air into the textures.

These orchestral compositions reveal a distinctive personality, but Williams is still more impressive in the neo-Straussian opulence of Fairest of Stars, a setting of Milton whose vocal line seems to reflect the wonder and ecstasy of Ariadne auf Naxos. At the same time, the composer’s familiarity with Britten’s music is also recalled in certain turns of phrase. Fairest of Stars has a symphonic expansiveness, yet the rich instrumental commentary never impedes the vocal part, here projected with admirable sensitivity by Janet Price.

Arnold Whittall, Gramophone [12/1996]

These works by composer Wilfred Josephs are available here for the first time on CD on this 2-disc set. The pieces included on this recording are Symphony No. 5 "Pastoral", Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, and Requiem, Op. 39. Regarded as one of the composer’s most influential works, Requiem, Op. 39 was composed in memory of the Jews who died during the Holocaust. It won the first International Composition Competition of La Scala and the City of Milan. This recording was made in the presence of the composer.

A delightful medley, musically as well as musicologically, the 18 different instruments being combined with great imagination.

The subtitle of this album says more about its content than does the main one. There is much titular reference to Spain and to gypsies, but only in ‘The Spanish Jeepsies’ do the two come together. It seems that in Shakespeare’s time Spanish popular tunes were perceived as being of gypsy origin. More to the point, the programme is skilfully devoted to showing the influence of Celtic and Spanish idioms on English popular music – a difficult, labyrinthine process that it’s not particularly helpful to try to summarise here, but it is well covered in Lawrence-King’s annotation.

Charles I’s Consorte opened the way for courtly instruments to ‘fraternise’ with humbler ones, creating a variety of new sounds, and the Harp Consort take full advantage of this ‘social’ freedom. The eight players form a kaleidoscope of broken consorts drawn from the 18 instruments (plucked, bowed, blown and percussed) at their disposal, producing a remarkable spectrum of sound from the ethereal (‘Lady Louthians Lilt’) to the downright boisterous (‘The Wherligig’). Only five of the 23 items last for more than four minutes but one never has the impression of a trayful of canapes deputising for a good meal.

When it comes to putting together a coherent and well-researched programme of assorted small-scale items, only Peter Holman springs to mind as Andrew Lawrence-King’s peer. Excellent recording is the icing on this delectable cake, one that takes 71 minutes to enjoy.

-- John Duarte, Gramophone [11/2000]

Classical Music

[Ton Koopman's recordings of Buxtehude for Novalis] stands out, alongside the maverick recording by Lena Jacobson for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, as among the most dissident performances of the repertoire ever committed to disc. Koopman indeed commented in a 1991 article for the Musical Times that, in order to perform Buxtehude, one had to "take the risk to be dissident"...

-- Chris Bragg, MusicWeb International

Sometimes known as 'The Tragic' - a title suggested but then withdrawn by the composer - Mahler's Sixth Symphony embodies much of the inner turmoil and superstition of its composer. Conceived at perhaps one of the happiest periods of Mahler's life, it seems to foreshadow the personal tragedies that would later befall him - with his wife Alma writing that "The music and what it foretold touched us deeply." Esa-Pekka Salonen's work with the Philharmonia for the City of Dreams: Vienna 1900-1935 concert series has produced a number of powerful, live concert recordings for the Philharmonia series, including Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique and Mahler's Symphony No.9 - all of which have been praised by criticsfollowing their release on Signum. ' ... the orchestral playing was of a very high order ... his command of the intensely difficult finale was wholly admirable, moving towards that astounding, deeply moving, coda with fine artistry.' Robert Matthew-Walker, Classical Source.com (Review of the concert of this recording)