Vincent Persichetti's organ music holds an important place in 20th-century repertoire. Steeped in tradition and yet open to the currents of modernity, he developed a thoroughly distinctive musical language. The selections from his Hymns and Responses for the Church Year, Op. 68explore traditional form with a refreshing harmonic palette, while the Dryden Liturgical Suite contrasts meditative elements with virtuoso bravura. Persichetti's most extensive organ piece, the Auden Variations, is supremely contrapuntal and accomplished, whereas the Sonata for Organ, though convention-ally structured, daringly explores free tonality.

With Two Marimbas in Berlin, award-winning duo DoubleBeats presents world premiere recordings of four pinnacles of the keyboard repertoire and two modern classics in their own remarkable arrangements for marimbas and percussion. Soft, resonant tones and high drama emerge through the duo’s exceptional dexterity and control in works by Chopin and Rachmaninov, as well as in Bach’s iconic Goldberg Variations. Haydn’s lighthearted Variations contrast with the thrills of Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango, and the album finishes with Minoru Miki’s poignant Marimba Spiritual.

Haydn worked during a period that witnessed a great deal of stylistic change, including the evolution of keyboard instruments from the harpsichord to the pianoforte with its hammer action and greater dynamic flexibility. These rarely heard but influential early Piano Trios include music originally conceived for piano solo or baryton trio. The Trio in F minor is unusual for its elaborate ornamentation and darker key,and is highly at-tractive in its youthful freshness. The acclaimed Aquinas Piano Trio brings these un-justly neglected works vividly to life.

Iberia is probably the greatest masterpiece by Isaac Albniz. There are surprisingly few recordings of the complete Iberia. Paul Verona has devoted years of study to Iberia, and his performances show his abiding commitment for the work.

Following the success of Jonathan Phillips’ debut release, Bach: Tranquillity, Divine Art brings you his carefully curated selection of Chopin’s finest ballades and nocturnes. This selection naturally follows Phillips’ debut as Chopin himself was known to be strongly influenced by Bach. Recorded to replicate a “live” performance, Jonathan recorded two takes, deliberately avoiding all the usual editing, in an effort to communicate his love of these pieces as intimately as possible. A graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music, Jonathan’s Concerto experience is considerable, with over 100 performances including concertos by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Schumann. Jonathan worked with Tamás Vásáry who recommended him to take part in the 1990 Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow. Since then, Jonathan has broadcast for the BBC, Russian and Italian and Swedish TV and radio, and given recitals all over the UK, Europe and former Soviet Union. Jonathan was interviewed by John Humphries and played live on Radio Four’s Today programme following a full-page feature article in the Guardian Arts Section about the preparation and performance of the Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto he gave in London in 2003. Bach: Tranquillity, Jonathan’s debut album from Divine Art was released in May 2023 receiving much praise and described by Classic FM’s Katie Breathwick as “a little drop of heaven”.

Pianist Oleg Maisenberg, by now 78 years old, looks back on an impressive worldwide career. On the present album he is accompanied by Adam Fisher – not any less successful – and the former SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg. Maisenberg performs Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, one of the few compositions in which the Norwegian composer approaches large-size works. Though the concerto includes intentional references to Norwegian folk music, the close connection to German Romanticism manifests itself in it as well and the undeniable parallels to Robert Schumann’s piano concerto are quite visible. The demands of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, the second monumental work on this album, regarding playing skills and technique are enormous so that this work has always been one of the showpieces of the repertoire for solo piano. “Just let the devil play that stuff”, Schubert himself allegedly once said. The virtuoso quality of the piece was certainly the reason why Franz Liszt was so enthusiastic about it.

With Meditatio I released in 2016, the Schola Cantorum Reykjavicensis and Hörður Áskelsson presented music commemorating the departed. Recorded some six years later, Meditatio II similarly contains compositions that interpret man’s thoughts and feelings about death, and celebrate the immobility and beauty found in age-old church texts such as Ave verum corpus, In paradisum, Lux æterna and Agnus Dei.

With one exception, the fifteen works for mixed a cappella choir – none longer than 6 minutes – were written in the 21st century, and they originate in America and Europe. Seven Icelandic composers are represented, five of them from current or former members of the Schola Cantorum. Peaceful rather than desolate, these refined miniatures unfold over slow rhythms, coated with nuances that rarely go beyond the mezzo forte. This disc also includes an impressive arrangement of ‘Sofðu unga ástin min’, a traditional and bittersweet Icelandic lullaby, here sung without words. Founded in 1996 by Hörður Áskelsson, who has remained its artistic director to this day, the Schola Cantorum Reykjavicensis is comprised of 21 singers and has appeared on a number of BIS recordings.

Barry Douglas’s Schubert series has reached Volume 3 with this unique programme, featuring two of the composer’s masterpieces as well as two ingenious transcriptions of his Lieder by his friend and admirer Liszt. Occasionally echoing Beethoven’s Variations in the same key (WoO 80), the Sonata in C minor melts into one of Schubert’s most daring, lyrical, and unpredictable developments, alternating unexpected harmonic variations, pulsating rhythms, and purely dramatic passages. With no sort of organic unity or cyclic intent across the set, the late Six Moments musicaux display many of Schubert’s compositional elements: from the elegant and the folkloristic to the pathetic and the anxious. The album ends in homage, with two arrangements by Liszt, paying tribute to the melodic and harmonic detail of Schubert’s music, and creating new, busy, and varied textures from Schubert’s ingredients, finally unleashing the resources of the virtuoso to convey the poet’s (and composer’s) metaphysical exaltation.

A selection of delightful miniatures for violin and piano in original versions and arrangements by some of Armenia's most admired composers. This album marks the Naxos debut of acclaimed violinist Nikolay Madoyan. A selection of Armenian piano music can be heard on Naxos 8.573467. Works by Arutiunian, Bagdasarian, Barkhudarian, and Komitas can also be heard via albums on the Grand Piano label.

Ayako Ito: “Nowadays, in concert halls, we generally see a single type of piano that normally has 88 keys and is normally black. Things were quite different in the Vienna of the 19th century: the piano had fewer keys, was decorated with wooden inlay and had no steel subframe. All this made them sound quite different. Conrad Graf was one of the finest builders of pianofortes in Vienna in the period from 1820-40. And Franz Schubert was living in the same city.We can revive a rich, warm, singing, powerful and even orchestral sound on Graf's pianofortes. His pianos feature the Viennese action or “Prellzungenmechanik”, with their hammers built up from many layers of leather. These hammers allow the performer to impart subtle nuances and dynamic contrasts. Of course, the pianos are straight-strung. The player can alter the tonal color using four pedals, with one of the pedals specific to the pianoforte being the moderator. When the moderator pedal is depressed, a strip of cashmere slips between the hammers and the strings. Christopher Clarke (1947) built the instrument used for this recording in 2000, as a facsimile of Conrad Graf's pianoforte no. 995. Clarke's pianoforte always inspires me. I find it a miraculous instrument. The utter precision of the mechanism lets us explore the finest gradations and introduce the most subtle nuances – singing, speaking or whispering. It is a mechanism that demands a high technical mastery from the player.”

Review

Ayako Ito approaches the masterpiece D960 with romantic fervour, trusting the less powerful, more refined, tone of the fortepiano will provide authentic period sound compensation. Her opening theme isn’t as soft as pp, but smoother and more swinging than the Molto moderato marking suggests. The deep bass disturbance at the end of its first full statement (tr. 1, 0:24) is more threatening than the pp marking. The clarity of Ito’s running quavers in the ‘tenor’ part enhances the tense atmosphere, yet the third part of the first theme (0:58), more pleading, moves through quiet insistence. The second theme (2:06), is in the tenor part against the ‘soprano’ descant, with Ito’s sensitive balance the latter’s creaminess like a loving companion. The dancing three-quaver groups in triplets which eventually result skip buoyantly. The phrase of resolution terminating these (4:04) deserves more breadth, but the extraordinary exposition ‘first time’ codetta (4:55), like hobgoblins arriving, Ito makes boldly gawky.

In the development (10:19) Ito prefers cool examination rather than shock, its ff climax of the dancing triplets underplayed (11:27). But she builds the tension and dynamic well to the fruition of the third theme (12:18), the most tender and memorable. Ito makes the second theme recap (16:08) more delicate and sensitive. Her coda (19:22) is tranquil yet flowing.

The opening of the slow movement juxtaposes a left-hand four note rising figure and melancholic right-hand melody. Ito makes the first and final notes of the left-hand figure very clear as bell peals three octaves apart. In this C sharp minor funeral Ito is sorrowful yet smoothly dignified, her equipoise between the hands arguably overmuch easing the pain of bereavement. The central section in A major (tr. 2, 2:59) remembers the loved one and clarifies a relationship, its theme beginning in rich ‘baritone’ register, the soprano repeat (3:26) adding varied semiquaver runs. From Ito it feels like both parties confirm shared sadness. At the return to the opening (5:36) the left-hand has an additional four-note motif, three semiquavers and a quaver, for me like funeral carriage wheels biting into the road. Ito makes it a clear, inescapable presence. The decrescendo after the melody’s climax finds the left-hand unheeding the pathos of the melody briefly in C major (6:30); yet after the next melodic climax comes a blessing, the coda (7:55) easing calmly into C sharp major.

Ito’s finale’s rondo theme begins a bit stiff in marking out the rhythm; her second strain (tr. 4, 0:21) is catchier and first episode (1:24) blends calm tone with confident movement, the relationship between melody and accompaniment grippingly maintained, until a sudden silence and ff shock (2:36) of catastrophe, especially when the melodic outburst goes into descant register.

Best of D946, Three piano pieces, is for me the first. It’s in E flat minor with urgent first strain to its right-hand cyclical theme. The second (tr. 5, 0:15) adds more rhythm, then a melody picked out from the first notes of the three-quaver groupings (0:19). The return of the first strain is in E flat major (0:50), the touch more rhythm a vehicle for Ito screaming a scrunched appoggiatura at the fz climax. The central section second theme (2:54) is in B major, festooned with turns and phrase-ending arpeggios, Ito revealing it as leisurely and affectionate. Its second strain (4:13) adds glissando-like up-and-down [32nd notes], the return of the first more luxurious in chording and close more rhetorical. To this vibrant, varied piece Ito brings considerable gusto.

--MusicWeb International (Michael Greenhalgh)

Acis et Galatée is acknowledged as one of Lully’s finest masterpieces. This recording from the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino is conducted by the early music specialist Federico Maria Sardelli, and features tenor Jean-François Lombard and soprano Elena Harsányi in the principal roles. Also available on Dynamic Blu-ray (57971) and DVD (37971).

The American composer John Stamp (b. 1954) – universally known as ‘Jack’ – is a familiar figure in the worlds of the symphonic wind-band movement that flourishes in US universities and of the brass band on both sides of the Atlantic. This first Toccata Classics album of his music presents a cross-section of his recent works for woodwinds, brass and strings, varied in mood, from upbeat to reflective, and in style, from a solemn hymn-setting to buoyant, outdoors Americana à la Copland, now and then coloured by a hint of Jazz.

For years, Margarita Höhenrieder was searching for the authentic sound of Frédéric Chopin's piano works. Which instrument of its time most convincingly reflected Chopin's music? Chopin himself had given the answer in 1831: "Pleyel's instruments are the non plus ultra"!The choice for the recording therefore fell on a Pleyel fortepiano, built 1848 in Paris and expertly restored using historical materials and methods. It is absolutely identical in construction to the instrument that Chopin owned, and thus represents an authentic sound testimony. For acoustic reasons of the sound of the original instruments, the Oberstrass Church in Zurich (1st Piano Concerto) and the Vienna Musikverein in Vienna (2nd Piano Concerto) were chosen as recording venues.

The orchestras "La Scintilla" conducted by Riccardo Minasi and the "Wiener Akademie" conducted by Martin Haselböck also played on historical instruments. We hear in each case the historical versions by Jan Ekier. Margarita Höhenrieder's careful recreation of the authentic Chopin sound gives the listener highly interesting insights into music history.

Joseph Suder´s great festival mass complements the series of great sacred works from Bach to Bruckner in which tonal expressive means exhibit what are in polyphonic and in part homophonic traits. Suder´s work offers, in keeping with his stylistic will, a synthesis of strict contrapuntal thought with what would have to be termed a Romantic tone coloration, a combination of clear construction with eminent expressive power in the form of an intelligible musical language. Joseph Suder (1892 – 1980), active in Munich from 1911 on, did not bequeath a very extensive symphonic oeuvre to posterity. He composed his first major work of this type, the Chamber Symphony in A major, in 1925, and it was this work that brougth him his first international successes. In it he also formulated an important as well as interesting principle of design that would play a decisive role in almost all his later major works: the synthesis.

Friedrich Schiller no doubt reckoned his Lied von der Glocke (The Song of the Bell) among his best poetic creations. He is supposed to have been inspired to write it by a 1788 visit to a bell foundry in Rudolstadt, Thuringia, and carried the idea for his bell founder´s song around with him for years. When Schill failed to finish it on time for the Musenalmanach in 1797, Goethe, the alamac´s editor, gave him the good advice and encouragement that „The bell will now have to sound all the better since the ore has been kept longer in the flux and has been rid of all slag“ (Goethe´s letter of 14 October 1797). The poem was published three years later in the Musenalmanach of 1800. Andreas Romberg set the whole long poem of 424 verses at one go - it was published by Simrock in 1809.

The composer Andreas Romberg, who certainly did not know Schiller´s wishes, made this idea a reality and set the whole long poem of 424 verses at one go. A bass part is assigned to the honest bell-founder master. His ten strophes all have the same design and the same simple melody, with the latter being varied or modulated now and again in what is a well-crafted composition. As the master directs the casting of the bell, so too the bass moves from station to station of the poem. The master´s big hour comes at the conclusion, when the bell is inaugurated. His solemn word of inauguration (Und dies sei fortan ihr Beruf) has him sing tones reminiscent of Sarastro.