The viability of the horn trio was definitively established by Brahms in 1865. He had learned the natural horn as a child and infused his Trio with a range of moods, including a deeply felt slow movement in honor of his mother who had died earlier in the year and a carefree finale which explores the horn’s hunting legacy. Inspired by this precedent, Lennox Berkeley’s Trio is lively and characterful with a sequence of ingenious and playful variations. GRAMMY-nominated Jonathan Leshnoff is one of America’s leading contemporary composers and his 2016 Trio moves from darkness to light, and is full of pointed syncopations, before arriving at a joyous conclusion.

This new studio recording contains three works for piano and orchestra that virtuoso pianist Orion Weiss and conductor Leon Botstein first performed in concert at the Bard Music Festival. Together, the three works span almost a century of musical Romanticism and are as different from one another as the generations they represent. In each piece, the virtuoso genre becomes a means by which the composer responds to a specific source of inspiration—in the first case (Korngold), a performer and family friend who had suffered a horrendous tragedy, in the second (Rimsky Korsakov), a venerated old master, and in the third (Chopin) a melody from a beloved opera.

REVIEWS:

All the performances on this album, featuring the brilliant pianist Orion Weiss, are excellent.

– New York Times

Thoroughly entertaining.

– BBC Music Magazine

Originally from London but based in Los Angeles and New York, Danielle Eva Schwob is a “notable cross-genre composer” (The New Yorker) who writes concert works, experimental electro-rock and film scores. Danielle’s debut album as a composer in the classical realm, Out of the Tunnel, is an artful collection mixed by Grammy nominee Ryan Streber and Grammy-winners Silas Brown and Marc Urselli. Out of the Tunnel presents the first recordings of nine compositions, each as contemporary as it is alluring. The chamber music Danielle has composed is often inspired by nature and other art, such as painting. On Out of the Tunnel, there is a striking triptych for solo violin, solo cello and solo piano (commissioned by the American Composers Forum): “Reflections on Francis Bacon,” “Reflections on Lucian Freud” and “Reflections on David Hockney,” the title subjects being British painters who often socialized together and motivated each other. Similarly, many of the album’s performers are close colleagues of the composer, the relationships cultivated over years working alongside each other on stage and in the studio. The album’s titular string quartet, the thrilling “Out of the Tunnel,” was commissioned from Danielle jointly by New Music USA and the Grammy-nominated performing ensemble on the album: PUBLIQuartet, whose members the composer knows well. Harpist Ashley Johnson, who performs several pieces on the album, has a long collaborative history with Danielle, and violinist Jennifer Choi has also played with Danielle in various contexts, including on DELANILA’S Overloaded album.

This album strives to understand the varying ways composers comprehend grief, loss and death. How did they cope, their hearts broken, their peace gone? And how can we cope? In this combination of works Weiss has tried to follow the paths these great composers walked in their own grief. Their tracks lead us from death back towards life, from horror to hope. Of his Arc album series, Orion Weiss explains: ‘The arc of this recital trilogy is inverted, like a rainbow’s reflection in water. Arc I’s first steps here head downhill, beginning from hope and proceeding down to despair. The bottom of the journey, Arc II, is Earth’s center, grief, loss, the lowest we can reach. The return trip, Arc III, is one of excitement and renewal, filled with the joy of rebirth and the anticipation of a better future.’