When Franz Liszt took over the court orchestra in Weimar in 1848, people there lived on the memory of Goethe, who had previously directed the court theatre. Liszt is the direct heir to this renowned stage - but as a musician. With his Faust Symphony, which was premiered on the same day as the dedication of the Goethe and Schiller monument in front of the theatre, psychology makes its way into music; Liszt's ambition was the renewal of music through its more intimate connection with poetry"". The Faust Symphony demonstrates the power of sound, of tone painting, to evoke a fantastic, epic and psychological world. Each movement corresponds to a character whose character and psychology it depicts. This is programme music, but it does not tell a story and is certainly not descriptive music. Liszt describes the profound nature of the characters musically, offering a subtle and analytical interpretation of the story of Faust as told by Goethe. The three character pictures are sonorous psychological tableaux in which Liszt does not simply tell the story of the characters or describe their feelings: He evokes their psyches. Kirill Karabits leads the Staatskapelle Weimar in this repertoire that so defines them."

Much Ado, the solo debut album by Korean American violinist Danbi Um is as striking for the young musician’s choice of “old world” repertoire as her virtuoso interpretations and the sumptuous sound she draws from her 1683 “ex-Petschek” Nicolo Amati violin. Danbi conjures memories of a musical Golden Age, a sensibility instilled in her by a roster of internationally renowned tutors.

The title track, from Eric Korngold’s Shakespeare-inspired suite, sits alongside arrangements of works by fellow Austro-Germanic composers Fritz Kreisler and Richard Wagner. Hungarian Romani music infuses compositions by Johannes Brahms, Jeno Hubay and Erno Dohnányi, juxtaposed with music by Jewish composers Ernst Bloch, Joseph Achron and Leo Zeitlin.

A multiple award winner – Danbi has taken top prizes at the Yehudi Menuhin and Naumberg International Violin Competitions, and Astral Artists’ Auditions – she has been praised by The Strad as an “utterly dazzling” artist with a “marvelous show of superb technique.” A resident of New York City, Danbi performs regularly with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and further afield with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Washington D.C.'s Phillips Collection, and the Rockport, Moab, Saratoga Performing Arts and Santa Fe Music Festivals.

REVIEWS:

“Technically assured, passionate, involved playing…there’s always a good feeling for the shape and direction of the melodic lines.”

-- BBC Music Magazine

John W. Duarte was born in Sheffield, England on 2 October 1919. He started playing the ukulele, but soon moved to the guitar at the age of 15. The advent of guitar phenomenon John Williams, whom Duarte taught for 18 months before the young musician’s entry into the Royal College of Music, London, gave the composer an opportunity to expand his chamber music oeuvre.

The Concertante Quartet Op.22, a substantial work in four movements. In 2021 the composer’s son, Christopher Duarte, discovered some folk songs arranged for guitar and small orchestra among his father’s manuscripts. There is no mention of these arrangements in his list of works and no correspondence relating to their creation, but from the composer’s handwriting these probably date from the mid-late 1950s and may have been written for John Williams to play with fellow RCM students.

Next Market Day, scored for piccolo, snare drum and strings, is an energetic rendering of an Irish love song which Duarte revisited several times. The Coolin of Rùm (or, The Rùm Cuillin), scored for flute, oboe and strings, is a tune from the Isle of Rùm, one of the small islands near the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides. Cuillin is the name for a range of mountains in this area and Duarte may have been alluding to the name of a previous owner of Rùm, Maclean of Duart.

Duarte began work on what became A Tudor Fancy in early 1967. Following A Tudor Fancy, a concerto in all but name. The Concierto alegre Op.101 (1986) is deliberately light in woodwind (2 flutes, one each of the rest), a trumpet, strings, but with a battery of percussion, including two vibraphones. As with A Tudor Fancy, the music proceeds in a variety of ‘conversations’, with the orchestration kept deliberately light when the guitars are playing.

2023 marks 25 years since the death of British composer Paul Reade. He is remembered for his delightful Victorian Kitchen Garden music (Ivor Novello Award) and television themes such as Antiques Road-show. However, he also wrote a huge range of equally wonderful but less well-known pieces, full of melodic invention, wit and fabulous energy. They are previously unpublished and unrecorded works that deserve to be heard.

These are premiere recordings (except for the Chants du Roussillon) and show Paul’s music at its best: tender, poignant, humorous and uplifting, full of wonderful melodic and dramatic invention. Philippa Davies has been hailed as a ‘first-rate virtuoso’, with ’winning charm’, ’exceptional eloquence’ and an ‘almost electrical response to technique’. Since her celebrated performance of Mozart’s Concerto in D major at the BBC Proms in 1988, she has gained an international reputation as one of the finest flautists currently performing.

It was Diaghilev who persuaded Falla of the opportunity involved in making a great ballet from the material of "El Corregidor y la Molinera", not being satisfied with that farce which, moreover, delighted the public of his time. However, it should be emphasised, that the pantomime involved a formula particularly favoured by Falla as it was based on a silent performance, both in terms of dialogue and incident. Today we can return to “El corregidor y la molinera” not as a mere attempt at “El sombrero de tres picos”, but, from our own perspective, as a more faithful testimony to Falla’s proverbial wish, still outside the spectacular dimension of Massine and Diaghilev. Falla, on his side later separated “Le Tricorne” from its scenic nature by transforming the score into two orchestral “suites”, which gave birth to “El sombrero de tres picos” as a symphonic creature, without transitions and with a much less relevant vocal contribution. These “suites” are in fact the most widely disseminated and best-known version of the work.

‘The fantastic thing about art and music is that one can pose questions and conjure up visions at the same time.’ The words are those of the Swedish composer Jesper Nordin, who does exactly that in Emerging from Currents and Waves. A large-scale work for orchestra, clarinet soloist, conductor and live electronics, Emerging… is a collaboration between Nordin, Martin Fröst and Esa-Pekka Salonen. All three are interested in how new technology can – and will – influence art and artistic expression, and in exploring the intersection of mankind, music and technology. Emerging from Currents and Waves is in three parts, with the clarinet concerto "Emerging" at its center. In the work the electronic and the acoustic world meet on an equal footing. The sound of the live orchestra is recorded in real time, sampled, treated and played back, in processes that are controlled by both soloist and conductor with the help of motion sensors. The technology used for this is Gestrument (from ‘gesture’ and ‘instrument’), originally invented by Nordin as a tool for composition, but which here is used rather as an instrument.

The present recording was made at the first performance of the work, in Stockholm’s Berwaldhallen during the 2018 Baltic Sea Festival. In concert a visual element was added as images generated by the electronic music-making were projected onto several layers of transparent fabrics forming a specially designed sculpture that hovered above the orchestra.

Virko Baley was born in Ukraine in 1938 and came to the USA as a refugee in 1949, eventually making his home in Las Vegas. He has long been fascinated by the poetry of Emily Dickinson, as can be heard in the two moving works recorded here – one an orchestral song-cycle setting her texts, the other a suite for violin and piano inspired by those settings. They display an acute ear for orchestral colour, a fondness for dramatic gesture and a strong sense of lyricism, occasionally inflected by distant echoes of Baley’s eastern European origins, the richness of the song-cycle placing him downstream from Mahler and Berg and the restraint of the Songs without Words occasionally evoking Arvo Pärt.

The reputation of the Anglo-Scottish composer William Wordsworth (1908–88), great-great-grandnephew of the poet, has recently been restored by a series of Toccata Classics albums of his orchestral music. His piano music, too, was poorly known before now, none of it recorded since a handful of pieces appeared on LP 60 years ago – though his epic Piano Sonata is a work of major importance. This first ever complete recording reveals an honest, unfussy approach to the keyboard akin to that of two other major symphonists, Sibelius and Rubbra: like them, Wordsworth’s primary concern seems to have been the expression of deep feeling – which makes the gentle story-telling of his miniatures for children all the more surprising.

Austrian composer Ferdinand Rebay (1880–1953) gave the guitar a fresh identity in the world of chamber music, transforming it from a mere accompanying instrument to a soloist in its own right. His vast oeuvre for guitar, which was overlooked by leading performers like Andres Segovia and Julian Bream, has enjoyed an enthusiastic and well-deserved revival in recent years. Rebay’s refined and dignified voice has made itself heard, thanks to the music’s
solid craftsmanship but above all its sincerity. Its rediscovery dispels many clichés and reassures us that humble yet beautiful music is not necessarily destined to be unjustly forgotten.

Ella Fitzgerald's iconic vocals are given new life by marrying newly recorded string arrangements from the London Symphony Orchestra. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, and conducted by James Morgan and Jorge Callandrelli, this new approach to Ella's timeless music reinvigorates her catalog and is sure to excite and please long time Ella fanatics and classical music connoisseurs at the same time. Guest vocalist Gregory Porter also lends his incredible talent to "People Will Say We're in Love".

Three years after suffering a devastating hand injury, Milos returns with a new album, Sound of Silence. The album features meditative solo guitar works alongside a selection of pop and jazz hits curated by Milos himself. Songs by artists ranging from Simon & Garfunkel and Leonard Cohen to Nora Jones have been reimagined in stunning new settings for guitar and other instruments. Guest artists include saxophonist Jess Gillam as well as Hang player Manu Delago (regular collaborator of Björk).

PART: LAMENTATE THESE WORDS

Composed against a cataclysmic backdrop of Stalinist oppression and the Second World War, Shostakovich's Symphony No.8 is a deeply affecting poem of suffering. The composer described it as, ''an attempt to reflect the terrible tragedy of war,'' and it contains some of the most terrifying music he ever wrote. Here, Gianandrea Noseda conducts the London Symphony Orchestra with intensity and understanding, allowing the music to tell its own story as it travels from darkness into light, yearning more for peace than for victory.

Sony Music Masterworks releases VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE (ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK) with music by award-winning composer MARCO BELTRAMI (Scream, Resident Evil, A Quiet Place). The album features score music written by Beltrami for the highly anticipated sequel to the 2018 worldwide box office hit film Venom. Sony Pictures film, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, is in movie theaters on Friday, October 1. Of the soundtrack, composer MARCO BELTRAMI says, "Because of COVID restrictions, we had to change the way we worked on processing acoustical sounds. Where we'd normally work with live musicians to create source material, here we had musicians record at home and then re-amp them at Sony. In addition, we worked with feedback looping to create some of the aggressive tones for Carnage. The film presented a lot of fun musical challenges, from a unique enhanced brass theme for Venom, to the altered woodwind theme for Carnage and Shriek, to a slightly bluesy feel for Eddie. Overall, in spite of those COVID restrictions, I feel very lucky we were able to still record many of the orchestral sessions at Sony and have it come out sounding so good!"

The prizewinning French composer Laurent Petitgirard has earned acclaim for his unusually powerful theatrical imagination. His strikingly creative ballet score for Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) was first performed at the Avignon Opera in May 2010. Petitgirard centres his score around a chorus, alternating instrumental sonorities to remarkable effect, and evoking the essence of Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry's text in it's movement from dream to reality, and from mystery to innocence.