Previous BIS releases of works by John Pickard have mainly featured instrumental compositions. This recording presents another facet of the British composer’s work, with compositions for choir under the expert direction of Martyn Brabbins as well as two instrumental pieces.

The five short Latin motets as well as Ozymandias, Pickard’s opus 1, can be described as ‘occasional pieces’ composed during the composer’s student years or for the choir he conducts at the University of Bristol. They display solid tonal grounding and mainly homophonic writing and provide a stepping-stone to some of the more dissonant style found in the latter works. Written for the BBC Singers, whose reputation is well established, the Mass in Troubled Times is an ambitious work bearing witness to a context of global uncertainty. The Mass is a collaboration with the writer Gavin D’Costa, who conceived a complex text based on multiple sources in five languages, combining Western and Middle Eastern religious texts with poetry evoking the plight of refugees. Orion for trumpet and organ, which is partly programmatic, evoking the most splendid constellation and allowing trumpeter Chloë Abbott to shine, and Tesserae for solo organ, with its dazzling virtuosity, played here by the work’s first performer, David Goode, complete this disc.

I Fagiolini explore the dazzling multi-choir soundworld of Orazio Benevoli - a crucial figure in 17th-century Italian music. As maestro of the papal choir and providing four-choir masses for special occasions, Benevoli invigorated the multi-choir style with vocal lines full of cross-rhythms, and voluptuous tutti sections with unexpected dissonances. Despite its beauty and historical importance, there have been few attempts to record Benevoli’s music. His Missa Tu es Petrus - recorded here for the first time - was based on Palestrina's famous motet and perhaps written for the newly finished basilica of St Peter in Rome. It appears here alongside four delightful solo-voice motets by his contemporary Bonifazio Graziani, each of them premiere recordings.

Volume 8 of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s survey of Mozart’s piano concertos with Gábor Takács-Nagy and Manchester Camerata features two late concertos – Nos 26 and 27 – along with the overtures to Così fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), and La clemenza di Tito. Concerto No. 26, the ‘Coronation’, was completed in 1788, premièred in Dresden, and then played at the coronation of Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor, in Frankfurt, on 15 October 1790. As Mozart did not prepare the score for publication, large sections of the left hand were left blank in the manuscript score. It’s not known who created the part for the first printed edition, although this has been widely accepted ever since. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has created his own version for this recording. Mozart premièred his final piano concerto, No. 27, in Vienna on 4 March 1791, in his last public performance. The album was recorded in Manchester’s Stoller Hall, Bavouzet playing a Yamaha CFX nine-foot Concert Grand Piano.

In 1610, the lutenist Robert Dowland, who had just turned 19, published two anthologies in quick succession that are today considered vital for our understanding of both the lute and Elizabethan vocal music. The first, A Varietie of Lute Lessons, which as the title suggests features lessons but also a long essay on European lute production, contains important information on lute performance, in part originating from his esteemed father, John Dowland. It is not far-fetched to imagine that Robert’s father also had a part to play in the second book, A Musicall Banquet – John had returned from the Danish court some time previously and is represented by several pieces in the anthology. Adhering to the culinary metaphor of the collection’s title, this Banquet comprises ‘recipes’ from different countries with different levels of technical difficulty, and is made up of ‘dishes’ already taste-tested so as not to poison ‘diners’, in other words, established pieces that were nonetheless as yet unknown to the English public. Robert opens his anthology with a large selection of English songs, taken from what was by that point a well-established repertoire: at the time Banquet was published, an impressive 24 books of songs had already been printed, beginning with John Dowland’s First Booke of Songes or Ayres, published in 1797. The next group of pieces in the collection belong to a genre that could be considered the most similar to the English song, the French air de cour, in the sense that the latter, at least in its most ancient form, influenced the development of the former. The air de cour for voice and lute was enjoying enormous success thanks to the scores Robert Ballard began publishing in 1608. The selection of Italian pieces is the most significant part of the collection.

Vintage Christmas Trio is David Ian’s long-awaited full-length follow up to his debut success Vintage Christmas. His purest release to date, this album features instrumental-only jazz trio interpretations of Christmas favorites using the most minimal elements--highlighting Ian’s craft as pianist and arranger. David Ian’s delightful performances transport you to an era that birthed the most sentimental songs of this season. The opener, “Deck the Halls” welcomes in the Christmas spirit with a swinging trio. David Ian’s signature sound shines throughout the album as he transforms the often stately “Joy to the World” into a jazz/blues injected festivity and then carries the listener into a dreamier state with the ever-loved classic “White Christmas.” The lyrical bass solos of Jon Estes tastefully splash their way on numerous tracks supported by the clever drumwork of Josh Hunt, who together comprise a perfectly ornamental rhythm section. “We Three Kings” takes on a new form with a reflective mood; an unexpected arrangement of a Christmas classic, more forgotten in recent years. In “Silver Bells,” Ian masterfully and fluidly switches back and forth from swing to straight time. The close of the album is a solemn “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” stripped down to just piano and percussion. If you listen closely, your ears might catch the chirps of a winter bird complementing this moving musical performance.

In April of 1996, Ofra Harnoy entered the venerable Abbey Road Studios in London with the London Philharmonic Orchestra to record Edward Elgar’s great cello concerto. Unfortunately, shortly after this event, the end result did not end up where it was supposed to be and was not released to the public. In fact, the whereabouts of the recording went unknown for quite some time, afterward.

In early 2022, through some diligent searching, the lost recording was located and will now be released paired with Harnoy’s remastered recording of the Édouard Lalo Cello Concerto, on the Sony Classical label. With the help of session notes from and conversations with recording producer Andrew Keener, the 1996 Abbey Road sessions were edited (Mike Herriott) and mastered (Ron Searles). The result is what will likely be lauded as one of the definitive interpretations of Elgar’s great warhorse for the cello.

Described by the New York Times as “born to the instrument”, Ofra Harnoy brings her unmatched passion and virtuoso to Elgar’s masterpiece and final notable composition. Very much influenced by Jacqueline Du Pré’s 1965 recording, and the rare opportunity afforded her to study the work with Ms. Du Pré, in masterclass, Harnoy’s own voice comes to the fore to capture Elgar’s own anguish and heartbreak.

Between 1851 and 1857, Peter Heise wrote six string quartets for the intimate musical soirées of Copenhagen’s refined middle class. Heise was a celebrated and cherished composer in his native Denmark, but his quartets sadly fell into obscurity and were stored away. The Nordic String Quartet is reviving these works with this first volume of their complete collection, featuring Quartets Nos. 1–3.

Known for its championship of neglected repertoire; the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective presents a program of works by composers within and around the Second Viennese School, centered on Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. Probably Schoenberg’s best-known piece – in either of its two orchestral versions or the original string sextet version heard here, Verklärte Nacht is certainly not neglected! The Collective has chosen to surround it, however, with works that are much less well known, producing a fascinating and rewarding program. Schoenberg composed the work in 1899; whilst on holiday with his friend and fellow composer Alexander Zemlinsky and Zemlinsky’s sister, Mathilde, whom Schoenberg would marry two years later.

Zemlinsky’s Maiblumen blühten überall for soprano and string sextet was never completed, intended originally to be a much larger work. Webern studied composition with both Zemlinsky and Schoenberg. His Piano Quintet may, like Zemlinsky’s composition, have been conceived a part of a larger work; but only this one movement was ever composed. Alma Schindler was another pupil of Zemlinsky; one with whom he developed a deep romantic infatuation. Their relationship ended when she herself fell in love with Gustav Mahler who, when they married, famously forbade her from pursuing her career as a composer. The four songs included here (arranged for soprano and string sextet by Tom Poster) are embedded in the soundworld of Zemlinsky and Schoenberg, and offer an intriguing glimpse of what she might have composed in other circumstances...

REVIEWS:

Francesca Chiejina’s lustrous soprano brings serious class to Zemlinsky's and Alma Mahler’s songs.

-- BBC Music Magazine

The youthful exuberance of the Kaleidoscope Collective evoke the appropriate exhilaration of Schoenberg’s response to Richard Dehmel’s poem via his Verklärte Nacht.

-- Gramophone

Three legendary performances from the Stuttgart Ballet in the choreography of John Cranko: Onegin, Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew. Including bonus conversations on each ballet and three documentaries on the Stuttgart Ballet and its outstanding dancers Marcia Haydée and Friedemann Vogel. The 3 documentaries are for the first time available on DVD and Blu-ray! (Unitel)

This series marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner, which falls in 2024. It’s dedicated to Bruckner’s symphonies, all recorded in new transcriptions for organ by Hansjörg Albrecht. The third recording was made on the impressive organ of London’s Westminster Cathedral. A bonus track on each volume will be a brand new composition for organ that references Bruckner the composer. Two or three volumes will be released each year, with the project reaching its conclusion in 2024. Hansjörg Albrecht is – besides Ton Koopman, Masaaki Suzuki, Martin Haselböck and Wayne Marshall – one of the few artists who are regularly present internationally both as conductor and concert organist. He is considered a musical innovator and lateral thinker without fear of contact. As a conductor, he consistently follows his own paths – between archive and new creation and with an extensive repertoire from Bach to Messiaen – and with his organ transcriptions he has established himself as a specialist among the virtuosos of his instrument. Hansjörg Albrecht is Artistic Director of the Munich Bach Choir & Bach Orchestra (founded in 1954 by the legendary Karl Richter). He also has a longstanding collaboration with the San Carlo Opera House in Naples, the Chamber Orchestra Moscow, the Staatskapelle Weimar and the CPE Bach Choir Hamburg. As conductor and organist he performs worldwide in the major music centers such as London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Rome, Moscow, Tokyo and New York and regularly collaborates with internationally renowned artists and orchestras. He also conducts opera productions in Naples and Dubai, among others, as well as ballet projects with the dance companies of Marguerite Donlon and Boris Eifman.

This series honors the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner, which falls in 2024. It's dedicated to Bruckner’s symphonies, all recorded in new transcriptions for organ by Hansjörg Albrecht. The 4th recording was made on the impressive organ of St. Peter, Munich. A bonus track on each volume will be a brand new composition for organ that references Bruckner the composer. Two or three volumes will be released each year, with the project reaching its conclusion in 2024. The third volume features Bruckner’s Symphonic Prelude in C minor, his Symphony No. 3 in D minor, and living composer Johanna Doderer’s PINUS Bruckner-Fenster IV for Organ.

Between 1934 and 1949, Allan Pettersson, one of Sweden’s foremost composers of symphonies, wrote chamber works that differ greatly from his later production. With his Two Elegies, composed at the tender age of 17, Pettersson drew the enthusiasm of his teacher, who saw in him the makings of a composer. The Four Improvisations for string trio recall Bartók’s music with their rhythmic vitality. The Andante espressivo is more personal with its experimental melodic and harmonic leanings. After his forced return from Paris in 1939, where he had gone to study, Pettersson composed a tender and lyrical Romanza and, three years later, his only piece for solo piano, the elegiac and meditative Lamento.

The most important work on this recording is the Concerto for Violin and String Quartet, a harsh, dense work that places great demands on the musicians. Initially rejected by the critics, the work now appears almost unique in terms of its radical tonal language and experimental use of extended techniques. For this recording, Ulf Wallin has brought together colleagues and friends to perform these lesser-known works, which nevertheless constitute an essential milestone in the career of the great Swedish composer.

REVIEW:

The Concerto for Violin and String Quartet of 1949, which opens the program and makes up over half of the album’s run time, is a lush work with numerous challenges for performers, both technically and harmonically, that from the outside would seem likely to limit the scope of listeners who would enjoy it. However, credit to the present performers, for these demands are met, and the results are thoroughly interesting and thought-provoking. The Concerto is the latest included work, chronologically, and it is a clear step toward the composer’s symphonic writing. The earliest works here are the Two Elegies for Violin and Piano, from 1934. These lovely, short tunes reflect the schooling the composer had undertaken; one could perhaps mistake these as having been written in the previous century.

Pianist Thomas Hoppe, Wallin is another draw. Aside from ideal backing on the violin and piano works, Hoppe delivers a beautiful reading of Pettersson’s Lamento for Solo Piano. There is a lot to take in here, and listeners will be rewarded with subsequent hearings.

-- AllMusic.com (Keith Finke)

Hasse’s Olimpiade was the last opera seria to be premiered in Dresden before the start of the fateful Seven Years’ War – and it was performed to great acclaim, as usual and deservedly so. At the same time it is the last festival opera in the last Court carnival in the splendid Polish-Saxon tradition. It can claim to be one of the most successful of the many notable works of its two creators. Abbé Pietro Metastasio (the pen-name of Pietro Trapassi) lived from 1698 to 1782; born a year before Hasse, he died a year earlier than the composer. His growing reputation as a composer, his marital bond with Faustina and his new religious allegiance drew him to the attention of the (Catholic) court of Saxony and Poland in Dresden, where a successor was sought for the court Kapellmeister Johann David Heinichen, who had died at the age of 46 in 1729 after a long illness.

Hasse and his wife were invited to Dresden in 1731. The performance of his opera Cleofide with Faustina in the title role led to his engagement, which could not be taken up by the married couple till 1734. The subsequent three decades of Hasse’s time in Dresden have come to stand for the heyday of Italian operatic and church music and for the standard-setting development of a court music establishment (the Hofkapelle) into an orchestra in the modern sense of the word. Hasse gave his concertmaster Pisendel, a first-rate virtuoso, a pretty free hand to perfect the art of instrumental accompaniment. An ensemble of internationally renowned singers excelled in the presence of this orchestra, which was inspired in ist turn by their vocal skill. Pöppelmann’s great opera house in the Zwinger offered festive splendour on stage and in the auditorium.

REVIEW:

What is it that ensconces some composers in the public memory and allows others, just as remarkable, to remain stuck in some music-history books (at best)?

We are starting to find out that Hasse was an immensely skillful composer. I liked his Attilio Regolo (March/April 2018) and have long known and loved the William Christie recording of Cleofide (Nov/Dec 2011). The present release was recorded in 1992, five years before the Attilio Regolo, and I’m pleased to note that this time all of the singers have voices that fully encompass the range of the part and that they rarely add long super-high notes or scant the low ones. There are also more substantial interventions from the chorus, either on its own or interacting with a vocal soloist. The orchestration is immensely varied and imaginative, with all kinds of fresh and unpredictable string figurations, sudden chordal stabs (in a movement for chorus), and the refreshing appearance of, say, a pair of recorders. As for the arias and duets, they range across a wide range of emotions, including violent anger and deep sadness. The duets rearrange the characters in various groupings, so we hear (in this performance) a soprano and a mezzo, two countertenors (soprano and alto), one countertenor and one woman, and so on.

The libretto, by Metastasio, was set dozens of times, starting in 1733 (by Caldara, for Vienna). The plot is rather tangled, but the situations that are set up are deeply human ones, involving much deceit (and the hiding of information) on the part of people who don’t really mean ill, plus an attempted suicide (by Megacle) and a plan (by Licida) to kill the king.

The action takes place at the ancient Greek Olympic games and involves a loving couple, Megacle and Aristea, who keep getting pulled away from each other, in large part because Megacle has made the mistake of entering the Olympics under the name of Licida, who was his boyhood friend and is Aristea’s brother. The best of the soloists are Dorothea Roeschmann and Catherine Robbin (whose voices are nicely contrasting), male soprano Randall Wong (best known perhaps for his singing with Chanticleer), countertenor Steven Rickards, and the masterly tenor Christoph Prégardien (known for his Bach and Mozart and his many lieder recordings).

The booklet contains the libretto in Italian and German, plus very fine essays and informative illustrations in German and sometimes stiff English. The print is often small and pale, and the shaded background on some pages makes reading even harder. For the libretto in a 1767 English translation, a tiny note refers the user to a Google Books site—it works!

-- American Record Guide (Ralph Locke)

I Fagiolini’s re-discovery and recording of Striggio’s long-lost Mass in 40/60 Parts was ground-breaking when it was released in 2011. The premiere recording won awards around the world including the Gramophone Early Music Award and a Diapason d’Or de l’Année in France and remains a trailblazing account of this Renaissance epic. It is complemented by Tallis’ Spem in alium which it is said to have inspired. The Gramophone citation particularly mentioned the new lustre brought to the piece by instrumental involvement and the clarity brought to the detail by the use of viols, cornetts, sackbuts, dulcians and more. Eight further works by Striggio are also included, each of them premiere recordings in 2011.

George Frederic Handel's music has thrilled a wide audience for over 300 years. Today it is more popular than ever and you can find it almost everywhere: on opera stages, in churches and concerts, even on the TV broadcasts of the Football Champions League. Handel was celebrated throughout Europe during his lifetime, in Hamburg as well as in Italy - they called him "dear Saxony" (il caro Sassone) - and of course in England, his main place of work. For the Pfeiffer Trumpet Consort, which has dealt with Handel's work since it's foundation, it was only natural to design his fifth album on Cantate in the year of his 250th death exclusively with works by Baroque's most important composer besides Bach. In numerous works, the trumpets set the triumphal highlights, reason enough for the ensemble to make their own arrangements in the greatest possible variety. In addition to the main work - the "Fireworks Music" - a small insight into Handel's extensive oeuvre should be granted, for example with excerpts from the oratorio "Saul", the world-famous aria "Lascia ch'�o pianga" to the "Collection of Original Marches", a probably unique compilation of small cabinet pieces from Handel's operas, oratorios and instrumental music. - The Pfeiffer Trumpet Consort was founded by the brothers Joachim, Harald and Martin Pfeiffer together with the organist Peter Schumann at the Heiliggeistkirche in Heidelberg, initially with four trumpets. Mathias M�ller, the timpanist, soon joined. When it comes to it's own arrangements, the Pfeiffer Trumpet Consort is particularly keen to combine the possibilities of today's instruments and baroque playing practice. The ensemble continues to appeal to a wide audience of audiences with great enthusiasm.