Listen to the Naxos Podcast episode on this release to learn more!

Randall Thompson’s choral works retain the affection of American choral singers and conductors alike. The Requiem is his masterpiece, written in response to the loss of close friends and colleagues. Using a wide-ranging selection of Biblical verses, it takes the form of a dramatic dialogue between two choirs, a "chorus of mourners" and a "chorus of the faithful", concerning eternal life. Recorded here for the first time in its complete form, this Requiem is an emotional and dramatically intense journey of conflict and resolution, and entirely unique within American music history and the requiem tradition as a whole.

REVIEW:

The performance is very well done by The Philadelphia Singers, a professional choir that after 43 years disbanded in 2015, the year after this recording was made. Although it’s an often strange and imperfect work, we’re fortunate to have the recording, as it fills an important gap in Thompson’s recorded catalog and gives a first-class opportunity to experience aspects of his compositional style that we don’t hear anywhere else in his output.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Vernier)

The Philadelphia Singers, under the tireless, polished leadership of David Hayes, sustain an impressively high level of musicianship over the course of this long and demanding unaccompanied piece. Thompson’s Requiem is revealed here as a major work, unique and masterful, by an important American voice of the last century. I highly recommend it.

-- Opera News

The present release showcases five outstanding ballets from the legendary Teatro alla Scala. First is Romeo and Juliet. The stars of this masterly performance are Roberto Bolle and Misty Copeland, together for the first time in this ballet. Next is The Sleeping Beauty which received fantastic reviews: “Timofej Andrijashenko had a great debut with the Désiré of Nureyev. Polina Semionova was an amazing Aurora” (Strata Gemmi) “A great production, a success thanks to a superlative and thrilling ballet company.” (LUUK) Don Quixote follows, and classical ballet stars Natalia Osipova (Bolshoi Ballet) and Leonid Sarafanov (Mariinsky Ballet) make this a breathtaking distinctive performance. Next is Le Corsaire, of which critics wrote: “The star is the ballet company, in dazzling form” (Il Giorno), “Impeccable” (Informadanza). And finally, The Lover’s Garden: “The creative genius of the choreographer Volpini leaves a strong mark on this new production, confirming the talent.“ (giornaledelladanza.com)

Read our blog post about Brillon de Jouy and the classical-era piano!

The thirteen sonatas on this première recording represent the complete music for solo piano by the Parisian keyboardist and composer Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy, a musician much celebrated in her day and greatly admired by Boccherini. Introducing technical innovations more usually associated with Czerny and Liszt, these sonatas reflect a gloriously rich musical environment, incorporating and transforming elements from music of the time with great imagination and wit, and showing us that Madame Brillon’s glittering salon, though private, was by no means isolated. Nicolas Horvath is an unusual artist with an unconventional résumé. He began his music studies at the Académie de Musique Prince Rainier III de Monaco, and at the age of 16, caught the attention of the American conductor Lawrence Foster who helped him to secure a three-year scholarship from the Princess Grace Foundation in order to further his studies. He is the holder of a number of awards, including First Prize of the Scriabin and the Luigi Nono International Competitions.

REVIEW:

Brillon de Jouy's thirteen sonatas, recorded for the first time on this CD, represent all of her music for solo piano and are as technically noteworthy as they are imaginative. Nicolas Horvath’s performance is light, fluid and impresses with unaffected simplicity, which is especially beneficial to the slow movements. The recording crew has provided a direct and relatively dry piano sound, which is appropriate for this repertoire.

– Pizzicato

Florent Schmitt was a strikingly original composer whose influences were as varied as his own restless and imaginative music. A number of his solo piano works are little known and offer an important insight into his compositional development. Neuf Pièces, Op. 27, which includes a Spanish-infused Gitanella movement, was composed during his first period of travel. The expressive and vivid elements of Crépuscules, Op. 56 are infused with harmonic richness and quiet melancholy, while Ritournelle, Op. 2 No. IIbis displays an airiness and wit characteristic of French music of the Roaring Twenties. Internationally renowned pianist, Biljana Urban, presents a selection of neglected gems of French piano literature including many world première recordings.

Sony Classical announces a further batch of complete recordings from the CBS/Sony and RCA Victor catalogues. The newest installment of this popular series features some unusual repertoire as well as documents of the New York Metropolitan Opera in its postwar heyday. Rossini is represented in this collection by his two best-loved comic operas. The 1980 Cologne recording of La Cenerentola, conducted by Gabriele Ferro “with a mixture of ease and ebullience”, features Enzo Dara “as an amusing Magnifico, the young Francisco Araiza ardent and fresh-voiced as the Prince, and Lucia Valentini Terrani – the leading Cenerentola of her time – giving a reading that is ripe, meaningful and suitably virtuosic in its lustrous, dark-grained way” (Gramophone).

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REVIEW:

With an almost contralto quality to her mezzo, Lucia Valentini Terrani brings dignity as well as accomplishment to Rossini’s’ Cinderella, supported by a choice cast and conductor plus period instrument forces.

– BBC Music Magazine

The Kalevala is a compilation of mostly original folk poetry, arranged into fifty extensive runos (‘poems’) by the Finnish physician and folklorist Elias Lönnrot. Beginning with the creation of the world, it develops into a series of separate episodes which nevertheless form a rich whole, introducing epic characters such as Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen and Kullervo. The collection first appeared in 1835, with a final, extended version being published in 1849, and was soon hailed as Finland’s ‘national epos’ – a sensitive matter given that the country had been subjected to Russian rule since 1809. It came to play a major part in Finland’s national awakening and had a massive influence on Finnish art in the late 19th century, but its role in the national consciousness remains important even today. The present album, from the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Dima Slobodeniouk, brings together Kalevala-related works spanning the period between 1897 and 1943. No such collection could overlook Sibelius, who composed several works inspired by the epos. Included here is a rarity – the first recording of the 1897 version of Lemminkäinen in Tuonela, from the Lemminkäinen Suite. Finnish composers from later generations all had to find a way out from under Sibelius’s shadow – especially so when composing works based on the Kalevala. The portraits of Kullervo which bookend the disc, by Leevi Madetoja and Tauno Pylkkänen, are both compact works in contrast to Sibelius’s large-scale ‘choral symphony’ on the same theme, and when Uuno Klami used bold and primitive colors in his five-movement Kalevala Suite, he was looking towards Stravinsky rather than his countryman.

Michael Praetorius saw his most important mission as a composer in the promoting and spreading of the German-language chorale. His collection Musae Sioniae consists of altogether nine volumes and is virtually a complete edition of the Lutheran chorales in every setting imaginable. The Christmas hymns in Musae Sioniae, today just as popular as in that time, were of particular importance for Praetorius. He took greatest care in handling them and presented them often in many different settings. Most of the Christmas hymns selected for this album are also to be heard in different settings, from ornate bicinia and tricinia (in which only two or three of the same voices are used) to magnificent polychorals with two or three choirs, the choral texture so masterful that even the most complicated counterpoint is clearly audible.

Expanded Edition: This album contains new tracks that were not available on the original, limited release version, released on-demand in 2015

The essence of The King’s Singers has always been live performance. On Christmas Presence, the beloved acapella group gives the listener the experience of being at a live King’s Singers concert in one of the world’s most beautiful buildings, from the comfort of their own home. The program for this special holiday concert takes the listener through various ages and styles of music, from the Renaissance to the present day. A sublime accompaniment to the holiday season, the King's Singers open with sacred music, move through modern carols, and end with festive musical favorites.

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REVIEWS:

This live performance catches The King’s Singers in particularly fresh, spontaneous fettle, as their 50th anniversary approaches.

– BBC Music Magazine

Recorded live at King’s College, Cambridge in 2015, the King’s Singers are as alluring as ever. All is given with that familiar, deliciously fragile refinement.

– The Sunday Times (UK)

Presenting four masterworks for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, Jory Vinikour performs on a harpsichord modeled after German harpsichords of Bach’s time, notably Silbermann. Speaking with richness and clarity, this harpsichord was built by Tom and Barbara Wolf. The Italian Concerto and the French Overture, both published by Bach in the 2nd volume of his Clavier Übung, are paired with two other great works - the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, as well as the concerto-like Prelude and Fugue in a minor.

Two-time GRAMMY Award nominated harpsichordist Jory Vinikour is recognized as one of the outstanding musicians of his generation. A highly diversified career brings him to the world’s most important festivals and concert halls as recital and concerto soloist, and partner to several of today’s finest artists. Born in Chicago, Jory Vinikour studied in Paris with Huguette Dreyfus and Kenneth Gilbert on a Fulbright scholarship. First Prizes in the International Harpsichord Competitions of Warsaw (1993) and the Prague Spring Festival (1994) brought him to the public’s attention, and he has since appeared in festivals and concert series throughout much of the world. In 2019, Jory made his debut at the Ravinia Festival, playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. At the Aspen Festival, he conducted Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos.

REVIEW:

There is no doubting the brightness and breeziness of the Italian Concerto's opening Allegro, but what is most impressive is Vinikour’s ability to create a convincing Adagio. The left-hand here can so easily sound awkward, but Vinikour constructs instead a rhythmic bedrock against which the right hand can sing. And sing it does: This is “harpsichord vocalisation” of the type I have rarely encountered, and with a finale that not only glows with life but has a raft of insights. This is wonderful, sometimes even great, Bach playing. 

– Fanfare

During the first decades of the last century, Paris took over from Vienna as the center of the art-music’s universe. Ideas and styles exploded like fireworks from the French capital, and among the first figures sending them into the wider world was Claude Debussy. His Première Rhapsodie began life as a competition piece for clarinet, first performed in 1911, and while the later orchestral version is now more commonly heard, it is instructive to revisit the composer’s original, more subtly allusive first thoughts. Seven years later, by now dying of cancer, Debussy completed the last of three works in which he returned to the traditional form of sonata which he had avoided through much of his career in favor of tone-pictures such as the Préludes and suites for piano. The Violin Sonata counts among his most concise and refined works in an output touched throughout by those qualities, demanding the greatest subtlety and passion from its interpreters. In the same year as the Première Rhapsodie, Stravinsky had scored his career-defining succès de scandale with the premiere of Le sacre du printemps, and by 1918 he was established as a darling of the Parisian avant-garde when he composed L’histoire du soldat for a septet of instruments and narrator. The following year he arranged five self-contained numbers from the score into a suite, further reduced for a spiky instrumental trio and featuring the marvelously sly tango as well as the Rite-like final Danse du soldat. Milhaud’s Suite and Bartók’s Contrasts date from two decades later, but they are still infused with the absinthe and lemon of 20s Parisian culture. Heard together, the five works paint a portrait of a world of dazzling colours and restless momentum, sometimes bewildered by its own precosity, taking what it wanted from old cultures and always breaking new paths.

Attilio Malachia Ariosti (1666-1730) was born in Bologna, Italy and became a well-regarded violinist, organist, composer and librettist. He took vows at the order of the Serviti as Frate Ottavio in 1688 and was appointed organist in the church of S. Maria dei Servi in Bologna in 1693. He travelled to Mantua and Venice, the most enlightened musical and artistic centers of northern Italy and then moved to Berlin and lately to Vienna in 1703. Expelled from the Papal State for moral reasons, in 1716 he lived in London where, together with Bononcini and Handel, he became a permanent composer of the Royal Academy. At the King's Theater he played viola d'amore in the intervals between the acts, "...a new symphony composed by the famous Mr. Attilio Ariosti in which he will play a new instrument called viola d'amore".

The Six Lessons for Viola d'Amore, published in London in 1724 and dedicated to King George, are harmonically and melodically appealing and were composed expressly to teach violinists to play viola d'amore. The viola d’amore has six or seven strings and the same number of resonating "sympathetic" strings placed under the bridge, which produce its warm, ringing timbre. On the final track, soprano Elena Bertuzzi joins violist Mauro Righini and continuo players for the chamber cantata Pur alfin gentil viola.

A Gramophone Editor's Pick, Shortlisted for the 2022 Gramophone Awards

Recommended by MusicWeb International

A Boston Globe Best Classical Album of 2022

Hans Abrahamsen's Schnee (Snow, 2008) is a gorgeous marvel which encapsulates winter. The instrumental cycle, already a classic of the twenty-first century, comprises a set of ten canons making up an hour of ghostly, feathery music. There is no hurrying, but great depth. As Abrahamsen himself says: ‘In Schnee, a single moment is stretched as far as possible. At some point, the music disappears. There is just a breath of air left’. Founded in 1972, Lapland Chamber Orchestra is the most northerly professional chamber orchestra in Finland and indeed in the entire EU. The orchestra has 18 full-time members and its Artistic Director is conductor John Storgårds. The first ever Principal Guest Conductor, for 2019-2021, is Tomas Djupsjöbacka. Based in Rovaniemi, the orchestra is a regional orchestra that regularly tours the Province of Lapland, but also performs elsewhere in Finland and abroad. The orchestra has performed in festivals such as Savonlinna Opera Festival, Helsinki Festival, the Korsholma Music Festival and the LuostoClassic event. The latest tours abroad have taken the orchestra to Canada, Hungary, Austria, Algeria and the BBC Proms in London.

"The sounds Abrahamsen craves...translucent across a large range of actual expression, hugely complex on the page but delectably simple to the ear, are exceptionally realized and recorded here." -Gramophone

Review

...for a number of years after 1990 [the Danish composer Hans] Abrahamsen composed hardly anything, finding himself in a compositional impasse. The present work Schnee (snow), is one of those with he found his way out of this impasse, and it has been widely admired. However, Abrahamsen’s biggest success so far has been with his 2013 song cycle Let me tell you, using the words of Ophelia from Hamlet. This won the Grawemeyer Award and was voted the greatest classical composition of the twentyfirst century by a poll of critics in 2019.

During his compositional silence, Abrahamsen busied himself with arrangements of the music of other composers, including Bach. He was particularly intrigued by Bach’s set of Canons BWV 1072-8, which he arranged with the aim of repeating them again and again. This gave him the idea of writing his own music using canonic techniques. When he received a commission to write a work for a festival in 2006 he wrote what became the opening two movements of Schnee. The whole work is organised as a set of paired canons, each having an a and a b version. There are also three Intermezzi. Abrahamsen thought of each pair of canons as together forming a third, three-dimensional piece. He also thought of stereoscopic pictures, which two nearly identical pictures give the impression of depth to the viewer.

Each pair of canons is shorter than its predecessor. Furthermore, the ensemble is divided into two groups: sitting on either side of the percussionist on the left we have the strings: violin, viola, cello and one piano. On the right are the woodwind: flute (doubling piccolo and alto flute), oboe (doubling cor anglais), clarinet (doubling E flat and bass clarinet) and a second piano. These are used in contrasting ways. There are also strong contrasts in pace. In the three intermezzi, the wind and stringed instruments are tuned down slightly, creating interference patterns with the pianos, which have normal tuning.

So much for the technicalities of the work, though one could go on a good deal longer about them. What does it sound like? Well, it begins very quietly, so quietly in fact that at first I thought there was something wrong with my equipment. There are very high violin notes and then a melody picked out on the piano. The second set of canons moves rapidly, like walking through swirling snow. The fourth set uses the same sleigh-bells which Mozart used in his Sleigh Ride (Die Schlittenfahrt) from his Three German Dances K. 605. The fifth set uses the device Bach exploited in Contrapunctus 13 from The Art of Fugue of two pieces, one of which is the inversion of the other. At the end, the music just disappears. The work is completely absorbing and gripping and creates a unique atmosphere.

It is beautifully recorded; I was listening in ordinary two-channel stereo, but this is a SACD and should sound even better in that medium. There are helpful sleevenotes, in English and Danish, from which I have borrowed, and altogether this is a memorable disc.

--MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)

For the first time, the successful series of BR-KLASSIK audio biographies is devoting itself to a 20th-century composer: Dmitri Shostakovich. His symphonies are still highlights in the concert hall, and his fate has inspired great novels. But what do we really know about his life? He liked to play his cards close to his chest – and had good reason to do so... Dmitri Shostakovich himself claimed that his life was “rather grey and colorless". In reality, it was the most exciting composer's life of the 20th century. Revolution and civil war, Stalin's murderous terror, then the Second World War, the "thaw" under Khrushchev and finally Brezhnev's brutalist socialism: the whole tragic history of the Soviet Union runs like a thread through his work. As a functionary who seemed to be loyal to the party line, he played along - but his music spoke against the regime and in favor of its victims and of the freedom of art. "This is a game that can end badly," Stalin threatened, probably in person. Shostakovich was thus obliged to fight his own fears as well. He was playing a double game - and knew it was dangerous. This audio biography draws on many sources, some of them still little-known in Germany. The result is a comprehensive, colorful and detailed picture of the composer’s life, and contains several surprises – also with regard to his private life, which should not pale behind the historical panorama. Like every great composer, Shostakovich had his crises and affairs, his great sufferings and small joys.

Nine Trumpets and One Piano is an album of works dedicated to leading trumpeter Fábio Brum and written for the classically conceived combination of trumpet or other high brass instruments and piano. The composers are drawn from across the globe, though the majority live in South America, and represent a wide variety of stylistic backgrounds. The music is exciting and vibrant – not least in its dancing, driving rhythms – and exploits neo-Classical traditions as well as minimalism, jazz and folklore, all heard here in world premiere recordings.

Brazilian trumpet soloist Fábio Brum has performed in more than 30 countries. He has won prizes at the Cittá di Porcia International Competition, Prague Spring International Music Competition, Juan García Marín International Trumpet Competition, Ellsworth Smith International Trumpet Competition and International Trumpet Guild Solo Competition, and others, and received scholarships and awards from organizations including DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), Baden-Württemberg Stipendium, Lake Placid Institute and Leon Rapier Scholarship Fund. Brum is the dedicatee of compositions by more than 20 composers, and his debut recording, Egregore+, features the musician performing new works and arrangements on eight different trumpet family instruments with orchestra. He is a Stomvi artist.

German composer Hans Werner Henze’s (1926–2012) admiration for the great masters of the Baroque and musical Classicism manifested in compositions born from a desire to transcribe, rework and transform 17th- and 18th-century masterpieces into new orchestral textures. The project Travestimenti (Disguises), managed by conductor Marco Angius and the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, from which this CD was created, makes reference to Henze’s ‘reinventions’ of masterpieces by Mozart, C.P.E. Bach and Vitali, clothed in new, modern fashion.

For the Drei Mozart’sche Orgelsonaten, Henze takes up three of Mozart’s one-movement Kirchensonaten (church sonatas or trio sonatas). Sonatas 17 and 15 are in an Allegro tempo, whereas the Sonata K.67 is marked Andantino, so Henze, in his transcription, places the latter between the two livelier tempos, thus reconstructing the tripartite structure of a classical three-movement sonata. Scored for an ensemble of 14 players that includes the less common, softer variants oboe d’amore and viola d’amore, it aims to underline the darker instrumental timbres, favouring the sombre sonorities of the alto flute in G, the bass flute in C, the bass clarinet and the bassoon. During the last year of his life, in 1787, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach composed a Fantasia libera per tastiera sola (Free Fantasia for keyboard alone) which he expanded into the Clavier-Fantasie mit Begleitung einer Violine (Fantasy for harpsichord with violin accompaniment), one of his most personal and expressive works.

Henze transcribed it for solo flute, harp and strings, aiming to project the extremely interesting and expressive harmonic material of the composition into a larger instrumental apparatus, thus making its future-oriented harmonic structures more manifest and moulded. He proposed two options for division of the: string quartet + string quintet or string quartet + tutti (the latter version is recorded here).

Although it was probably composed in the early 18th century, Vitali’s Ciaccona ‘Il Vitalino’ – whose musical form is inspired by dance and consists of variations on a ground bass – was only rediscovered in 1867, published by the German virtuoso violinist Ferdinand David. Henze’s Il Vitalino raddoppiato – called “raddoppiato” (“doubled”) because of his extension of the composition by means of interpolated variations of each original section in the style of 18th-century doubles – retains Vitali’s bass almost throughout the entire composition. It alternates Vitali’s variations on his chaconne theme with Henze’s variations of Vitali’s variations, in an ever-changing dialogue between the 18th-century past and Henze’s present.