Guido Alberto Fano (1875-1961) lived and worked in Germany and Austria, where he developed as a composer and as a pianist. After his time there, he held important posts at the conservatories of Milan and Naples, and had the respect and admiration of several popular composers, namely Richard Strauss. The Piano Sonata in E is a highly technical work, composed in the late romantic style. It remains one of the most influential Italian piano sonatas. Pietro de Maria performs these works, and is one of Italy’s most notable pianists. He has also recorded the complete piano works of Chopin.

One of the most influential composers of the early Spanish Baroque, Juan Bautista Comes (1582-1643) was one of the first composers to fuse together elements of Renaissance style with the emerging styles of the Baroque. Juan Bautista Comes held the post of chapel master of the Valencia Cathedral, the cathedral that since 1437 held the Holy Chalice, the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper, which is the reason Comes composed extensively for the Eucharist. This new recording not only includes sacred Motets, but also a selection of choral works composed in the vernacular language and based on popular music to make the liturgy more accessible to common people.

As Anna Paradiso writes in her liner notes to this disc ‘the history of music is full of fine composers who, for one reason or another, have been largely forgotten.’ In the case of Pietro Domenico Paradisi, it is only thanks to his Sonate di gravicembalo that he has escaped complete obscurity. Even his name is less than certain – is it Paradies or Paradisi? We know that he sometimes added the epithet ‘Napolitano’ to his signature, and it’s presumed that he was born in or around Naples c. 1706. He may have studied with Nicola Porpora, but otherwise little is known about him before his arrival in England in 1746. There he composed an opera, but was primarily recognized as a harpsichord teacher and performer. The collection of twelve sonatas was first published in London in 1754, and ten of them have been selected for this amply filled disc (almost 88 minutes of music!). The sonatas appeared at a time when the clavichord remained in use, the harpsichord enjoyed its glory days and the fortepiano was beginning to come into its own. Anna Paradiso has therefore chosen to play on all three instruments – with the clavichord and the fortepiano being historic examples from 1792 and 1802 respectively. Highly acclaimed for her recordings of solo works and chamber music by the Swedish composer Johan Helmich Roman, Anna Paradiso now lets us enjoy the playfulness and expressivity of Paradisi’s approach to keyboard playing.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Philadelphia-based baroque orchestra Tempesta di Mare here reveals an unparalleled musical legacy, presenting long forgotten works by the German baroque composer Johann Gottlieb Janitsch, confined for centuries to unexamined archives. The works formed part of an enormous music collection which belonged to Sara Levy, the great-aunt of Felix Mendelssohn. She was a distinguished harpsichordist, collector, and influential figure in the musical life of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Berlin. Removed from the Berlin Sing-Akademie towards the end of World War II, her musical library was for many decades considered lost or destroyed. It was unearthed in Kiev only in 1999 and returned to Germany in 2001, where it is now again accessible to the public. While there can be no doubt that the instrumental oeuvre of Janitsch matched the diversity of that of some of his more prominent Berlin colleagues, the emphasis of his compositional output lay on chamber music, especially Quadros, four of which are featured here. The typical, prevailing dialogic structure of the Ouverture grosso highlights the influence which thematic play had on the rest of his work.

Classical Music

Exclusive Chandos artist Tasmin Little and pianist Martin Roscoe immerse themselves in music of three of the best late 19th c. French composers: Gabriel Fauré, Guillaume Lekeu and Maurice Ravel. + Despite its daunting reception, Faure’s ́ Sonata in A major (1875) has often been regarded as his first masterpiece. + As the last arrival in the ‘Bande à Franck’, Lekeu’s Violin Sonata, of 1892–93 is by far the best known of his fifty or so pieces of ‘tremulous emotion’. + The opening movement of Ravel’s early, unfinished violin sonata convincingly unites several different romantic French styles.

Classical Music

Classical Music

This re-release of the Spring Symphony, complemented by two smaller but equally life-confirming works by Britten, marks the composer’s centenary year. It also forms part of Chandos’ Richard Hickox Legacy series. Hickox conducts the London Symphony Orchestra with the soloists Elizabeth Gale, Alfreda Hodgson, and Martyn Hill and a number of UK choirs.

Classical Music

Encapsulating the voluptuous sound of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s strings, Tasmin Little is both the soloist and conductor in this unique coupling: Vivaldi’s ever-popular ‘Four Seasons’ meets Roxanna Panufnik’s ‘Four World Seasons,’ the premiere recording of a set of highly inspirational pieces. As a complete cycle, ‘The Four Seasons’ offers a set of vivid tableaux, imaginative, enticing, and wonderfully contrasted, with ample chance for the violin soloist to display technique, sensitivity, and color. These are qualities that the British composer Roxanna Panufnik also sought for her own Seasons tribute, Four World Seasons, written for the violinist. Three of the pieces are dedicated to her, while the fourth, ‘Autum in Albania,’ is dedicated to the memory of Panufnik’s father, Polish composer Sir Andrzej Panufnik, who, his daughter says, was born, loved, and died in autumn.

Composer Juris Karlsons (b. 1948) is one of the leading names in Latvian music today. This new album by the Latvian Radio Choir under their music director Sigvards Klava features Karlsons’ choral works. These works are marked by deeply religious feeling and profound message. Oremus is choral piece written by the composer in 2018 for the Latvian Radio Choir. It was premiered as part of the Lincoln Center White Light Festivals. When writing this work, no doubt Karlsons had specifically the sound and vocal abilities of the choir in mind.

The largest work of the album is Adoratio (2010), a symphonic, single-movement work for choir and orchestra with a duration of over 30 minutes. Yet, this powerful work filled with drama can, like a symphony, be clearly divided into musical sections.

Le lagrime dell’anima (2013) for piano and choir is based on a short poem written by the composer: “Here are just seven simple notes that are born on a beautiful summer evening when watching the sunset. The stars slowly light up, one, then another. You wait for the next one. The seven sounds of stars are gradually born under the pianist’s fingers, somewhere in the silence they appear in the chorus’s intonations, and finally intertwined in a melodic line,” the composer describes.

The final piece of the album, Ora pro nobis (2019), is a tribute to Virgin Mary based on an earlier work and written for Sigvards Klava. The Latvian Radio Choir (LRC) ranks among the top professional chamber choirs in Europe and its refined taste for musical material, fineness of expression and vocal of unbelievably immense compass have charted it as a noted brand on the world map. The repertoire of LRC ranges from the Renaissance music to the most sophisticated scores by modern composers; and it could be described as a sound laboratory – the singers explore their skills by turning to the mysteries of traditional singing, as well as to the art of quartertone and overtone singing and other sound production techniques.