Features music of Irving Berlin, Leroy Anderson, Frank Loesser, and more, arranged for wind ensemble.

Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words simply defy ordinary description. Refined and nuanced, they constitute some of the composer’s finest and best-known works. For nearly two hundred years, they were regarded as charming relics, select romantic gems performed in small concert halls and salons. While their subtle, ornamental qualities certainly shine brightest in more intimate settings, closer inspection reveals an unexpected depth and complexity to these miniature masterpieces. Their interpretive and technical demands are considerable, requiring sensitivity to voicing, pedaling and dynamic control. Meant to enchant rather than dazzle, they evoke myriad dreams revealing some of the composer’s innermost reflections. Like private entries in a musical diary, they offer a rare glimpse into this reserved but passionate artist’s thoughts.

REVIEW:

The Mendelssohn gems of course I was familiar with and very fond of, while Price Walden’s music was a most rewarding discovery of compositions that reflect keen sensitivity, a delicate overall feel, and expansive melodies underpinned by equally clear and open harmonies that never muscle into the crystalline quality of the melodies. These are intensely American works and a joy to listen to.

Bruce Levingston’s insights into Mendelssohn provide many moments of delight – his ever-sensitive approach bringing out everything that is joyful about that chapter of Mendelssohn’s oeuvre.

As is always the case the engineering of the album is peerless and the album itself well annotated.

A winner through and through.

-- All About The Arts (Rafael de Acha)

The Sacred Veil - a project led by Eric Whitacre and Charles Anthony Silvestri - was created following the passing of Charles’ wife, Julia in 2005. It represents a journey towards the answer for many questions, including whether departed loved ones are truly gone, and how can we mourn those we have lost whilst still moving forward? In Charles’ own words, the project became “a significant part of my journey toward healing and wholeness after great loss.”

Poet, author, composer, and speaker Charles Anthony Silvestri has worked with other artists from all over the world to create texts tailor-made for their commissions and specific artistic needs. He enjoys the challenge of solving these creative problems and has provided custom choral texts, opera libretti, program notes and other writing for composers including Eric Whitacre, Ola Gjeilo, Kim Arnesen, and Dan Forrest, and for ensembles ranging from high schools to the Houston Grand Opera, from the King’s Singers to the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, from Westminster Choir College to Westminster Abbey.

Grammy® Award-winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre is one of the world’s most performed living composers. His works have been programmed worldwide by millions of amateur and professional performers, while his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united singers from over 120 different countries. Eric, a graduate of the prestigious Juilliard School of Music, is presently Artist in Residence with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, following five years as Composer in Residence at the University of Cambridge, UK.As conductor of the Eric Whitacre Singers, he has released such chart-topping albums including Light and Gold and Water Night. In high demand as guest conductor, he has drawn capacity audiences to concerts with the Netherlands Radio Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Flemish Radio Choir, and Minnesota Orchestra.

REVIEWS

The Sacred Veil is notable simply as one of the most deeply personal pieces of concert music heard in quite some time. Yet there is more to its profound effect than this. Whitacre responds to the texts with a sober language akin to but quite distinct from his usual style, something like the dark language cultivated by Renaissance composers for the requiem mass and other serious texts. The performances by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, under Whitacre's direction, are superb, and the sound, from California's Musco Center for the Arts, is exemplary.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Composer Eric Whitacre and poet Charles Anthony Silvestri, longtime collaborators and close friends, come together for their most personal and expansive work to date. Whitacre has created a powerful score for Silvestri’s heartfelt poetry in the 12-movement work The Sacred Veil. Silvestri’s wife, Julie, died of ovarian cancer at age 36 in 2005, leaving two young children. His texts, written collaboratively with Whitacre, and the intimate, compelling score tell a story of courtship, love, loss, and the search for solace. Whitacre leads the Los Angeles Master Chorale in the world-premiere recording.

– WFMT-FM (Lisa Flynn)

Stanislaw Skrowaczewski is successful both as a composer and as a conductor. In 1946 he became the Director of the Breslau Philharmonic. After that, he occupied the posts of Principal Conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestras in Katowice, Krakow and Warsaw. When he won the International Conducting Competition in Rome in 1956, his international career was assured: George Szell invited him to conduct the Cleveland Orchestra for several weeks in 1958. In 1960 Skrowaczewski became Principal Conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, remaining there for 19 years.

In late 1994 Skrowaczewski was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Saarbrucken Radio Symphony Orchestra, with which he has enjoyed a close collaboration for many years, both in the concert hall and in the recording studio. In Japan, Skrowaczewski is honored almost like a saint. Oehms Classics is proud of the extent of the recordings and is delighted to be able to continue the Brahms Cycle with the Second and Third Symphonies. - Oehms

BACH Cantata No. 147. Sinfonia in D, BWV 1045. Magnificat in D • Hansjörg Albrecht, cond; Andrea Lauren Brown, Lydia Teuscher (sop); Olivia Vermeulen (alt); Julian Prégardien (ten); Sebastian Noack (bar); Rebekka Hartmann (vn); Munich Bach Ch & O • OEHMS 1801 (58:57)


This disc celebrates the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Munich Bach Choir and the Munich Bach Orchestra by the legendary Karl Richter. “Legendary” is a term perhaps too readily bandied about, but in Richter’s case, I think, it’s apt. Richter was the bridge between the monumental pre-World-War-II Bach interpretations and the fleet, light HIP (“historically informed practiced”) style in favor today. Before coming to Munich in 1951 Richter sang in Dresden’s Kreuzchor and served as organist at Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church. In Munich he led the Heinrich Schütz Circle, renaming it the Munich Bach Choir in 1954 and launching a new era, both for Munich and for Bach. His many performances and recordings with the MBC and its companion orchestra made him one of the most influential Bach interpreters of 1950s, 60s, and 70s. His chorus was large by today’s standards, though a far cry from the 200-plus voices sometimes previously assembled for major Bach festivals. His tempos, too, were much more leisurely that those we have come to favor, but he purged the music of the bloat that had been all too common, and he imbued his interpretations with a new intensity. He was never tempted to replace his excellent orchestra with period-instrument specialists. It would be hard to over-estimate the influence of Richter’s Archiv recordings on the evolving scene. But he was swept away by the tsunami of the historically informed tide. He died of a heart attack in 1981, reportedly embittered by his marginalization.


Despite some collective self-doubt, the MBC survived its founder and found new life under the direction of Hanns-Martin Schneidt. Hansjörg Albrecht assumed leadership of the choir in 2005, and like Schneidt has sought to expand the choir’s repertory without diluting its main focus on the music of J. S. Bach.


The new recording finds the choir still in excellent shape—and still large. The roster lists 28 sopranos, 22 altos (all apparently female), just nine tenors, and 17 basses. Whether all sing in these performances is a matter for speculation. The orchestra is much more modest, with a 3-3-2-2-1 string cohort and the necessary winds and continuo. The performances are brisk—every movement in both works is shorter than its counterpart in Richter’s versions. Some skirt the edge of plausibility, but the choir always holds. The soloists are very good or better. It’s a fitting tribute to the founder.


The orchestral sinfonia (still played on modern instruments) that separates the two popular choral works was apparently intended for a cantata now otherwise lost. It’s good to have.


FANFARE: George Chien

This compilation brings together popular orchestral works and ballet music by Tchaikovsky. Dmitrij Kitajenko and the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, of which he has been Honorary Conductor since 2009, have recorded the complete symphonies by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. These recordings have been awarded with numerous international prizes and are considered important reference recordings. Their recording of Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta in 2015 (with Olesya Golovneva, Alexander Vinogradov and Andrei Bondarenko in the lead roles) caused a sensation, and it received the Opera of the Year Award of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA).

Classical Music

With the present CD, OehmsClassics releases the “Linz Version” of Anton Bruckner’s First Symphony. It is part of the complete symphony cycle being recorded by the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra under Ivor Bolton, its Chief Conductor since 2004. This live recording from the Large Festival Hall in Salzburg was realized in October 2013. The 91-regular member Mozarteum Orchestra is one of Austria’s leading symphonic organizations, presenting two concert series of its own throughout the year as well as playing the Sunday Matinees concerts at the annual Salzburg Festival.

Besides an acclaimed series of recordings with Ronald Brautigam of the complete piano concertos by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Beethoven, Kölner Akademie and Michael Alexander Willens are undertaking a survey of Mozart’s serenades and other incidental works. Their first album in this series included the Posthorn Serenade and demonstrated, according to the reviewer on MusicWeb-International, that the ensemble is ‘amongst the best groups in the world of period performance.’ Since then the team has recorded works associated with the Freemasons, and here takes on one of the most famous of the serenades, the ‘Haffner’, named after Sigmund Haffner, who commissioned it for the festivities surrounding his sister’s wedding in 1776. A notable feature of Mozart’s serenades – and the large-scale Haffner is no exception – is the incorporation of virtuosic solo parts, here performed by the violinist Alexander Janiczek. On the amply-filled disc (almost 86 minutes!), the at times quite imposing Haffner is followed by Mozart’s ‘Musical Joke’ – Ein musikalischer Spaß, K. 522. A work in four movements, this is a delightful and very skillfully crafted parody of musical incompetence. It is written for strings and a pair of horns, and its frequent caricatures of the second-rate – whether in composition or performance – are brilliantly observed, by Mozart as well as the present performers.

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REVIEW:

The Haffner performance provides great rewards, with Willens and his players amply demonstrating their immersion in Mozart’s idiom.

– Gramophone

A slipcase containing four 1CDs and a 2CD with archive recordings of the SWR which go as far back as 1952. The recordings belong to some of the greatest singers of all times, the repertoire consists of art songs (lied), arias and baroque arias.

Two-time Grammy Award-winning singer Sylvia McNair and celebrated pianist Kevin Cole in a collection that is a must for lovers of theater music: 15 songs — 13 of them in first recordings — by the great Harold Arlen (composer of “Over the Rainbow,” “Stormy Weather,” “The Man That Got Away") and lyricist Martin Charnin (the hit musical “Annie”). Plus demos made by the songwriters in 1966 when Arlen was 61 and Charnin 30, and a 24-page booklet that includes an interview with McNair and Cole on this “labor of love” project.

Concertante works featuring the recorder, tenor saxophone and accordion are few and far between. Stimulated by daring soloists, the prolific Finnish composer Kalevi Aho has composed such works, contributing in his own way to the development of an original and attractive repertoire. The Concerto for Recorder requires the soloist to play four types of recorder, from bass to sopranino. The work explores extended techniques and also does not shy away from flashbacks to the golden age of the instrument. Aho received the initial impetus for his Concerto for tenor saxophone after a concert by Esa Pietilä. Aho wrote a concerto with contrasting sections that gradually exploits the full potential of the tenor saxophone and also makes use of an oriental goblet drum (darabuka) that sometimes also takes centre stage. The origins of the Sonate Concertante for accordion and strings goes back to Aho’s first Sonata for accordion of 1984. Noting its orchestral character, soloist Janne Valkeajoki suggested making a concertante version with strings. Here, Aho sought to extend the technical possibilities of the instrument to the maximum and to write for it a work of astounding virtuosity, like Franz Liszt’s most demanding piano compositions.

Jheronimus Vinders (fl.1525/6) is best known for the oft-recorded lament on the death of Josquin Desprez (d.1521), O mors inevitabilis, which has led many to presume that he was a disciple or even a pupil of the great master. Now that his surviving works have recently been published in a modern edition, we are better able to place him among his contemporaries. He belongs to a rather small group of Flemish musicians who form the link between the Josquin generation and that of the mid-sixteenth century, featuring composers such as Clemens non Papa and Crecquillon. He boasts a wonderfully imaginative ear with a preference for dark sonorities, and his music often surprises and delights. This is the first recording devoted to a selection of Vinders’s works along with the polyphonic models that inspired them.

Pieranunzi writes: "This CD has a very special meaning for me. Remembering Chet takes me back to 1979 when I first met him. That meeting would soon prove to be a turning point in my musical life. Playing together, sharing concerts or recording sessions with him allowed me to be in close contact with an artist of rare Jazz experience who caused an enormous change in my playing. Many of the tunes on this CD come from those important years of collaboration."

French iconic pianist and composer Baptiste Trotignon makes his return to the jazz trio sound, with an album dedicated to British pop. From the Beatles to Radiohead, Queen to the Rolling Stones, Baptiste Trotignon demonstrates his talents for arrangements by transforming the greatest melodies from a legendary repertoire; supported by Matt Penman on double bass and Greg Hutchinson on drums.

“BREXIT MUSIC is not a political album. But it holds in its title—which came to me long after the idea of the repertoire, an ultimately quite British taste for derision: in the end, art shall survive all social fads. I wanted a fresh, playful sound, groove, and a bit of humor. Both playful and well executed. The intense presence of Matt and Greg is a big part of it. Covering a popular song is common practice for jazz musicians, and like many others before me, I have often done it. Still, the idea of an entire album revolving exclusively around British pop music was not self-evident: it was a challenge to remain lively and "fun" without the lyrics. So I was left with the often simplistic material of these songs, even if most of them have been an exciting and joyful part of my teenage years.

And then, little by little, by digging mainly into the incredibly creative era of the 70s, I started to have fun, sometimes arranging the melodies with the language I am most familiar with and sometimes playing them as they are. The simple sound of the piano/double bass/drums acoustic jazz trio created the surprise. Jazz and pop musicians are often considered rivals. And yet, in both worlds, you can hear the same sublime violence and thirst for freedom. Jazz was a popular and revolutionary music long before the arrival of rock's exuberance. Its animality (which I love!) contrasted with jazz and its complex harmonies and rhythms. Why not try to combine the two? While keeping in mind that this form of loving and poetic resistance is common to ALL genres.” (Baptiste Trotignon, May 2023)