Dividing his time between the United States and the United Kingdom, the composer Geoffrey Gordon writes music that has been described as ‘darkly seductive’ (New York Times), ‘richly satisfying’ (BBC Music Magazine) and ‘iridescent and fierce’ (The Chicago Tribune). The present album brings together three of his recent works, all composed between 2013 and 2018 for the soloist recording them here, the Danish cellist Toke Møldrup. In several of his works, Gordon takes his inspiration from other art forms – sculptures by Giacometti, a self portrait by Warhol, a children’s picture book by Maurice Sendak. The works gathered here are inspired by or reactions to three literary masterworks. The ‘creative blueprint’ for the opening work, the Cello Concerto, is the novel Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann. Organized into a Prologue and Seven Episodes, the work traces the progress of Mann’s protagonist Adrian Leverkühn from innocence to madness, with the cello both embodying and (occasionally) commenting on the proceedings. For this recording, Møldrup receives the support of the Copenhagen Phil and conductor Lan Shui. In the score of Fathoms, Gordon’s sonata for cello and piano, each of the five movements is headed with a quotation from Shakespeare’s The Tempest which sets the scene for the musical impression that follows. Here Møldrup is joined by the American pianist Steven Beck. The amply-filled album closes with Ode to a Nightingale, with the words of John Keat’s immortal poem heard from the Mogens Dahl Chamber Choir, and given emphasis by Toke Møldrup’s obbligato cello.

The piano works of the largely self-taught Australian composer Raymond Hanson are unparalleled in 20th-century Australian music. Ranging over four decades they exemplify an iconoclastic spirit whose spontaneous writing is accompanied by a visionary wit and dynamism. This premier complete collection of Hanson’s piano oeuvre includes the Piano Sonata, Op. 12 – one of his greatest works, full of restless motoric rhythms and reflective contrasts – and many world première recordings, all performed by the award-winning pianist Tonya Lemoh. Australian/Sierra Leonean pianist Tonya Lemoh is known for her focus on unusual and exotic repertoire. She made her name on the international scene with her ground-breaking recording for Chandos of solo piano works by Austrian composer Joseph Marx. Praised by Gramophone magazine and All Music Guide, her concert appearances and recordings have since consistently garnered critical acclaim. Lemoh has won several international awards, including First Prizes in the ‘21st century Art Competition’ (International Association of Art and Education in the 21st Century, Helsingor 2003), and the Royal Academy of Music (Aarhus) Concerto Competition, and a Diplôme d’honneur in the International Edvard Grieg Piano Competition.

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

A 60th Annual Grammy Award Nominee

Acclaimed as one of America’s leading contemporary composers, Richard Danielpour wrote Songs of Solitude as a response to the events of 9/11. Drawing on the poems of W.B. Yeats, the work enshrines a sense of economy and sparseness, formed of a set of six powerful orchestral songs. The motivating force for War Songs was a series of photographs of the young men and women killed in the Iraq War. The song cycle, with its texts by Walt Whitman, was written for the Nashville Symphony to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. Toward the Splendid City is a portrait of New York City driven by Danielpour’s love-hate relationship with his hometown. This is vivid music, subtle tonal-modern tour de force expressions, the main works heartfelt reactions to two of the most difficult historical periods in the USA.

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REVIEWS:

Performances are exceptionally well-wrought, detailed and strong. The sound is excellent. The music unforgettable. Very much recommended.

– Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

Thomas Hampson…performs the music with just the right blend of evenness and emotional intensity, and the effect of the final and longest song, Come Up from the Fields Father, which lasts half the length of the whole cycle, is especially affecting here. The accompaniment by the Nashville Symphony under Giancarlo Guerrero is nuanced and subtle throughout, fitting the music very well indeed. Hampson and Guerrero are also well-teamed for Songs of Solitude.

– Infodad.com (October 2016)

John Dowland is without doubt one of the most famous English composers, the foremost exponent of the Golden Age of the Elizabethan Era of the 16th and 17th Century. Dowland’s songs fully reflect the spirit and tastes of the Elizabethan age, with their tendency towards deep melancholy and their pronounced focus on darkness, moonlight and night time. Despite the predominance of grief, sadness, tears and death there are also songs in which a sense of optimism, lightness and joy prevail. This new recording uses the classical guitar as accompanying instrument, played by Adriano Sebastiani. The young soprano Siphiwe McKenzie was twice nominated by the prestigious magazine Opernwelt as “Young Singer of the Year.” She sang in important theatres such as the Wiener Volksoper, Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), Teatro Regio di Parma, Leipzig State Opera and many more.

This is the third volume in the series of orchestral music by Milanese-born Elisabetta Brusa (b. 1954). Sharing its neo-tonal language with her Nittemero Symphony, which can be heard here, the imposing, vividly immediate and approachable Symphony No. 1 is her first work for large orchestra. The symphonic poem Merlin evokes the great magician of legend through rich orchestral colors and powerful rhythms. Volume 2, described by Gramophone magazine as ‘a collection not to be missed’, can be heard here.

Orphaned at a young age, Fortunato Chelleri (1690–1757) was raised by his uncle Francesco Bazzani, the kapellmeister at Piacenza Cathedral, who taught him organ, harpsichord and composition. He rose to prominence first in Italy as a composer of opera seria but also wrote oratorios, cantatas, orchestral music, chamber music and keyboard music during his time as kapellmeister at Würzburg, a post he took in 1724. Unfortunately the majority of his work has been lost. The “6 Sonate di Galanteria” performed on this album were written in the early 1720s, a time when a new compositional style known as the galant was taking hold. (This was a departure from the baroque, with much less emphasis on polyphony and a preference for accompanied melody, making it a forerunner of the Classical period to come.) The 6 Sonate reflect this style with their typical alternation of slow and fast movements and monothematic, binary structure. Some of the movements are based on dance rhythms, including many minuets and some French-style allemandes. In the latter, Chelleri meticulously notates the “swing” or dotted rhythms that would have been implied, unwritten, according to the French notes inégales practice of the time, which suggests that Chelleri wanted to write in a way that players outside the French harpsichord tradition could understand. He therefore represents a synthesis of French, German and (the less well-known) Italian harpsichord music of his era in one composer who channelled all the compositional features he absorbed, embellished and reworked during his training in Europe in the early 18th century into the emerging galant style. This album was recorded on a Franco-Flemish two-manual harpsichord built by Michael Johnson in 2006, a copy of a 1637 Ruckers instrument, tuned at a pitch of a=415 in the Kirnberger III temperament, a common choice for mid-18th-century keyboard music.

Clownaround is a funny kind of musical for the entire family that is based on the subject of fools, jesters and clowns. The delightful show is performed by a singing, dancing company of over seventy clowns and columbines.

Two years ago, Alvin Cooperman brought the concept for the show to his riend, composer Moose Charlap, whose musical talents were responsible for Peter Pan. He was fascinated by the material, and together they completed the music and lyrics for this new kind of arena musical.

Clownaround entertains everyone, young and old alike with its freshness, its zaniness and its total enjoyability. It is a musical adventure which takes you into the world of clowns – that magical, musical laugh-filled and slightly distorted mirror of the real world that moves on its bent axis around the first corner of the universe. Its light is a reflection of the sun bouncing off small handmirrors used by pretty ladies. Its moon is the light atop the Empire State Building. Its culture is made of our dreams, our faults and our wild oats, all of which we see so clearly in clowns but rarely ever see in ourselves. As you journey through this musical adventure into the world of clowns, you will feel and see and laugh and sing and, occasionally, taste the salt of a tear while watching them perform in our motlied reflection.

When the show was completely written, Cooperman and Charlap played it for the one man whose personality, experience and talent would take concept and music and lyrics and weave them into a tapestry of family entertainment to be enjoyed by one and all – and that man was Gene Kelly. He took the material and Sean Kenny’s clown machine and added his particular brand of genius to give us Clownaround.

– From the original liner notes for LSP-4741


CONCEIVED AND WRITTEN BY Alvin Cooperman
LYRICS BY Alvin Cooperman
MUSIC BY Moose Charlap
ORCHESTRATIONS BY Jack Elliott and Allyn Ferguson
MUSICAL SUPERVISION BY Harper MacKay

Tracks:
1 Clowns 4:28
2 You’re a Clown 2:52
3 Here Are Your Children 2:28
4 Silhouette (Paper Heart) 3:46
5 Animal Band 4:47
6 Balloon 4:08
7 Thingamajig 3:28
8 Laugh Song 3:20
9 Sunny Day 4:25
10 I Need a Ship 3:58
11 Clown Alley 1:43
12 Clowns Say Goodnight (But Not Goodbye) 2:19

Ronald Center (1913–73) is sometimes described as ‘the Scottish Bartók’, and his music does indeed capture some of the stark, wild energy of the Scottish landscape in a style of Bartókian asperity. These three string quartets show him, in his northeast corner of Scotland, to have been fully conversant with the quartets being written around the same time by Barber, Britten and Shostakovich, but their direct manner, terse expression, wiry humor and roots in Scottish folk-music ensure that Center is his own man.

Classical Music

On the 3rd January 2019, only a few weeks after winning the 10th Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, Can Çakmur returned to the ACT CITY Concert Hall in Hamamatsu in order to record his début release. Can’s chosen programme reflects his wide-ranging musical interests – from Haydn’s late F-minor set of variations and Schubert’s early Sonata in E flat to Sacrifice from 2017, composed by Fuyuhiko Sasaki for the competition. Also included on the album are Liszt’s transcription of the Beethoven song Adelaide, and Black Earth by Can’s compatriot, the Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say. Born in 1997, Can Çakmur (pronounced Djahn Tchakmur) studied in his native Ankara as well as in Paris, and is currently a student at the University of Music Franz Liszt in Weimar. He has performed widely in Turkey and has a particular interest in spreading classical music to a wider audience. But recent successes, which include a first prize at the 2017 Scottish International Piano Competition, are leading to an increasingly international career with appearances at prestigious venues such as the Salle Cortot in Paris and Usher Hall in Edinburgh, as well as an extensive tour of Japan in the spring of 2019. For the present release, Can Çakmur has chosen to perform on the same instrument that he chose to play throughout the Hamamatsu competition, a Shigeru Kawai SK-EX full concert grand.

This world première recording of the second volume of José Antonio Bottiroli’s complete piano music, is performed once again by his award-winning protégé Fabio Banegas. The nocturnal themes heard in this album were inspired by the clear skies over the composer’s holiday home in Los Cocos, Cordoba Province, Argentina – these spellbinding works transcend earthly romantic concerns and venture into the stillness of the universe. Dedicated to Banegas, the Album Pages represent Bottiroli’s distinctive impressionist style, while the unique Five Piano Replies connects music with poetry written by the composer, and read on this recording by the renowned actor George Takei.

REVIEW:

Of Italian parents, José Antonio Bottiroli was equally to enjoy a busy life of a solo pianist, his portfolio of competitions numbering some seventy-three pieces by the time of his death in 1990. Their presence has only been revealed by his pupil, Fabio Banegas, whose initiative has lead to this Grand Piano series. They were never to engage with the use of atonality, but were tuneful and usually quite short, mostly gathered together to form scores of some length, the present release containing five works numbering 20 tracks. They covered the period between 1974 to 1984, the quiet nature of the Six Album Pages (Seis Hojas de Album) being particularly attractive, while much of the disc is taken up with Five Piano Replies (Cinco Replicas para piano). That work takes its name from the words of Bottiroli’s poems which then drew his own piano reply. Here the words are spoken by George Takei in English translations by Banegas, his diction is impeccable, though the words also come in the enclosed booklet. Much of the music on the disc only requires a modest technical ability and offer uncomplicated charm, Bottiroli being particularly drawn to the nature of the ‘Nocturne’, of which four are included here.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Luigi Boccherini occupies a special place in cellists' hearts: he must have been a phenomenal player, and, happily, he was also a composer. His exceptional knowledge of the technical possibilities of the cello helped him create a completely knew sound-palette This is particularly evident in his chamber music, with its splendid vocalic lines, often revealing an undertone of melancholy, combined with impressive virtuosity, and with a wink or a smile appearing now and then from under the surface. The settings are very varied: not only calling for two celli, but also for two violas, and for a wide variety of solo instruments with string quartet: violin, oboe and guitar.

When the Catalan cellist Pablo Casals revived the solo suites of Bach in the first decades of the last century, he reminded both audiences and composers of the huge potential of his instrument to hold the stage in its own right, no less than a violin or a piano. Inspired by his charisma, and that of his successors such as Tortelier and Rostropovich, many modern composers have followed Bach’s example. The Italian cellist presents music by ten of them on this exciting debut album for Brilliant Classics. Tortelier and Rostropovich are represented by their own, little-known but highly imaginative works – a Circus Suite and an innocently titled but fearsomely challenging study respectively. Carter Brey, the principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic, has also written for the instrument with inside knowledge, in a tango of big, seductive gestures preceded on Tarantino’s album by Latin-themed showpieces from Albeniz, Piazzolla and Rogerio y Taguell. Each half of the album is brought to a reflective close with a soliloquy by the modern Italian composer Giovanni Sollima. The cello’s melancholy moods are further explored by Ilse de Ziah and Sebastian Diezig, but Tarantino has chosen and ordered his repertoire to display the cello’s expressive range to its fullest. Mixing familiar and little-known composers, it’s a perfect introduction to the ever-expanding universe of solo cello music beyond Bach. Born in 1977, Luciano Tarantino is a performer and teacher with his origins in Puglia, in the far south of Italy. He has played with many of today’s greatest conductors and founded a music festival in the region of his birth. On this recording he plays a fine 1736 cello by Antonio Testore.

The horn was one of the instruments that Johannes Brahms learned in his youth, from his father who played it professionally. His fondness and familiarity with the instrument is clear from the glorious solos that he provided it with in his symphonies, and he gave it pride of place in the Horn Trio that he wrote in memory of his mother Christiane. Even so, he never composed any other chamber work involving the horn – an oversight that horn players have regretted ever since. Following up on two highly acclaimed BIS albums, Alec Frank-Gemmill decided to rectify this, and enlisted the help of pianist Daniel Grimwood and violinist Benjamin Marquise Gilmore. It goes without saying that the resulting disc includes the Horn Trio – which Frank-Gemmill has chosen to perform on the instrument played by Aubrey Brain on his legendary 1933 recording of the work. But leading up to this are two works originally written for violin and cello respectively. The sometimes controversial subject of transcriptions is discussed by Frank-Gemmill in his liner notes where he also explains his selection of works. In the Scherzo that Brahms wrote as his contribution to the F-A-E Sonata (which also included movements by Schumann and Albert Dietrich), he finds that the very fabric of the piece is made up of horn calls, while the galloping 6/8 theme reminds him of the final movement of the horn trio. Wanting to also include a sonata, Frank-Gemmill settled on the E minor Cello Sonata, Op. 38 as the one best suited for the horn, and together with arranger Daniel Grimwood the decision was made to transpose the work a third up, into G minor. Through their efforts, we are able to present a Brahms recital that hornists – and the rest of us – could only dream of.

Anthony Burgess, the world famous author of A Clockwork Orange, had been steeped in music since childhood, and during army service in the Second World War worked as a pianist and dance-band arranger. He wrote prolifically in many genres. His 24 Preludes and Fugues, called The Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard, were written to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach. This ingenious and inventive piece, with its brief romantic and music hall elements, not only pays homage to Bach but also references the modernity of Shostakovich, whose own set of Preludes and Fugues had been written in 1950. This is the world premiere recording of these works. These pieces are performed by renowned contemporary music interpreter Stephane Ginsburgh.