This recording presents the complete surviving chamber music and chansons of Philip van Wilder. The program sets him in a historical context: downstream from Josquin and Gombert, collaborating with Tallis and a formative influence on Byrd. Cantores is an early-music choir formed from graduates of Exeter University by Dr David Allison which meets several times a year for specific projects, specializing in the music of the Renaissance.

The four works on this first CD of Komarnitsky’s music are all that remains of his copious output of chamber music. Featuring the London Piano Trio, they “audibly believe in every note, and their dedicated performances are set within a bold sound frame […]” (Gramophone Classical Music Guide).

REVIEW:

I was bowled over by the music on this record and sincerely hope that there is more to be discovered of this composer’s works, perhaps lying in some archives somewhere which is often where such things end up. It is tantalising to have heard this music and not to be sure of being able to explore further examples of it. I wait with bated breath and great hopes that more from him will emerge.

The members of the London Piano Trio play all of this music with passion, commitment and great skill making me want to seek out music where they play as a trio. Robert Atchison’s notes are a useful commentary on the background to the pieces.

-- MusicWeb International

This is the first internationally released CD dedicated to Jaime León (b. 1921), now the Grand Old Man of Colombian music and a vital figure in its development. His Misa breve, here receiving its first recording, has an innocent sincerity reminiscent of Poulenc’s religious music. The word-setting in his songs is subtle and imaginative, but with melodic immediacy and uncomplicated appeal. This release is a truly international one, with American and Spanish soloists, an American pianist and Columbian conductor, soloists, orchestra and choirs on a London-based, Scotsman run label!

REVIEW:

Frequently when we get a recording of music new to us, we have to accept performances that are at best adequate, and sometimes less. That is not the case here. The two vocal soloists are superb; they possess attractive voices, and sing with real insight and commitment. Nothing is a dutiful reading here. Choruses, orchestra, and pianist all contribute mightily to the positive impression of the music, and Toccata’s recording is extremely well balanced and natural in its perspective. This is a wonderful introduction to a composer whose music I shall be looking for in the future.

-- Fanfare

Italian composer Riccardo Malipiero (1914–2003) was the nephew of Gian Francesco Malipiero. He was a pioneer of twelve-tone technique in Italy. His 6 published piano works encapsulate half-a-century of development, from the post-Respighian 14 variazioni (1938), to the classicism of Diario second (1985). This is the first-ever recording of this music.

REVIEW:

The present six works, tracing this Milanese composer’s piano music from 1938 to 1989, are made up of short, separately-tracked musical episodes—the perfect answer to a challenged attention span. There are 49 tracks so Toccata’s attention to detail is nothing short of lavish. In addition the pianist’s essay on the composer and his solo piano music encompasses nine closely packed but perfectly eye-friendly pages. The booklet is in English only. The works recorded here make up Malipiero’s published corpus for piano solo. They here receive their recording premieres.

The 14 Variazioni di un tema musicale are already fully formed in dodecaphonic terms and angular style. Costellazioni finds this composer at close to the peak of the avant-garde’s popularity. We hear awkward figures rumble, ripple and skitter, deep bass chords resound. The hypnotic writing evokes thoughts of distant galaxies. The work ends in a stutter that gutters and then finally peters out. He is the master of Stravinskian scurrying figuration; cool, cold with flourishing rhythmic thunder and grunt.

This is tough music presented with factual and technical diligence as well as artistic qualities. Credit to the pianist for carrying through this distinctive project from concept to execution. There’s no want of valour in choosing this music to champion.

-- MusicWeb International

One of JS Bach’s most famous and loved masterpieces with the Portland Baroque Orchestra conducted by Monica Huggett. The double-CD package includes full texts and translations. (Avie)

While love is breaking into the lives of two young people, an artificial being will challenge what they believed they knew about it…

Revisiting this classic of the Romantic repertoire, Jean-Christophe Maillot gives us, with an original musical score, a reflection on the search for the ideal partner in a technologically advanced society. Is it still the flesh and blood being with which we are familiar or a different being, making us question our allegiance to the human race?

Only one year and a half after their first meeting in Budapest in early 1905, Bartók and Kodály were eager to jointly publish their first settings of Hungarian folk songs. In their foreword to the volume Magyar népdalok (Hungarian Folk Songs), they declare their goal thus: “ … to get the general public to know and appreciate folk songs.” The Ten Hungarian Folk Songs from 1906 (BB 43), Bartók’s earliest and still quite rudimentary but imaginative and very sensitive folk-song arrangements, were collected by the 25-year-old himself mostly in three regions of the Hungarian countryside: near Budapest, Békéscsaba, and the lake Balaton. This set, from which we can listen to four arrangements on this CD, had never been offered by Bartók to be published. Having collected peasant music from regions of the Hungarian Kingdom where significant Romanian and Slovak minorities lived, Bartók immediately became intrigued by the peculiarities – and from his point of view, musical freshness – of both nations’ songs and instrumental dances.

His reverence for the folklore of the Slovaks can be felt in the five arrangements of the Falún (Village Scenes) series (BB 87a), composed in 1924 and based on folk songs from the Zólyom (in Slovakian: Zvolenská) region of what was then Upper Hungary (now Slovakia) he collected in 1917 from village women. These arrangements of bursting energy, enchantingly deep emotionality and transcendence also bear testimony to Bartók’s discovery of Stravinsky’s music which he was galvanized by in the early 1920s. The texts are sung by Katalin Károlyi in Hungarian here, not in their original Slovak-language version.

Before leaving Hungary for Austria and West Germany after the fall of the 1956 revolution, György Ligeti (1923–2006) not only collected folk music in his native Transylvania but also worked for the Institute for Folklore in Bucharest and Kolozsvár in the late 1940s. Thus, in his twenties and thirties, he followed the footsteps of his idols, Bartók and Kodály. In the last months of 1952, Ligeti set to music five poems by János Arany, a leading figure of 19th-century Hungarian poetry. Both text and music are deeply rooted in Hungarian folk songs; indeed, most of Ligeti’s melodies, or parts thereof, could be actual folk songs, just like Arany’s texts from almost a century earlier could be folk-song texts. The last piece is an exception, being a daring musical setting of Arany’s 1868 Hungarian translation of Robert Burns’ humorous song The Deil’s Awa Wi’ Th’ Exciseman (1792).

By being present and available in every corner of the planet the stone stands as a witness to the human and natural history. It appears to be as a sort of “geo cultural Esperanto”, a constant that binds distant, in space and time, worlds and cultural traditions by cutting across with a horizontal, diagonal, and vertical movement. This work of the Sonar Trio is inspired by such universal and supratemporal nature of the stone. Marco Delisi (flute), Roberto D’Urbano (clarinet) and Vanessa Sotgiu (piano) are professionals of undoubted skills who are measuring themselves with pages of contemporary music that traces back to a link betweenWest and East, between ascending musical languages of accultured European tradition, and sound vestiges of ancient, possibly primordial and archetypal, character. With the exception of the first two, all tracks of the Lithos album are dedicated to the Sonar Trio. The suggested path unfolds therefore between very human vibrations and pure sound solicitations, between hidden suggestions originating from a prehuman world, refined punctuations of a contemporary dialogue, in which the material element is always somewhat present. The trio brilliantly manages to achieve the double goal of reconciling the human with the primordial and history with nature. It does also recompose the sensory threads that hold together sounds and colours, visions and listening.

The three main works on the CD are favourite pieces of mine that I often listened to as a student. One is the Suite No. 1 in E minor, BWV 996, by Johann Sebastian Bach. Another piece that I have always liked immensely, and which I thought that I will one day learn is the "Valses Poeticos" by Enrique Granados, and in the same way, I had started the "Sonatine pour harpe" op. 30 by Marcel Tournier, but never finished it. I then developed a plan to make a CD in order to create an additional project for myself using these three pieces as a basis.

I combined the three great works by Bach, Granados and Tournier so that they became ‘pathfinders’, so to speak, with the Renaissance pieces by Mayone connecting these three longer pieces with one another. This has the effect of creating a larger whole that can be experienced as a single concept. -- Markus Folker Thalheimer

Music is and has always been a powerful means of expression and communication that goes beyond national borders. It is no different in the case of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann. Both composers drew inspiration not only from their native, German style but - like many of their contemporaries - also from other musical centres of 18th-century Europe, such as Italy and France. Their works were an important part of the music scene of that time and are still considered the quintessence of European Baroque music to this day. The pieces we have chosen have accompanied us since the beginning of our musical path and are a summary of our activities so far. They combine the orderly German structure of Bach's trio sonatas with the French elegance and splendor of Telemann's Paris Quartets. We hope you will enjoy the timeless beauty of these compositions and let us take you on an unforgettable musical journey. Très Animé is an early music ensemble founded in 2016 by four friends from Poznan. As soloists and chamber musicians they gained their skills at renowned european Academies of Music (including Germany, Switzerland, Estonia, Austria, Great Britain) and took part in many masterclasses under the guidance of eminent specialists in the performance of early music. From the beginning of their activity they obtained high marks at international competitions: Biagio Marini Competition Neuburg an der Donau (Germany, 2016), Göttingen Händel Competition (Germany, 2017) and International Van Wassenaer Competition in Utrecht (the Netherlands, 2018), where they received a finalist award. Très Animé enjoys collaborating with other instrumentalists, vocalists and dancers. They were brought together by Poznan - the city where they started their adventure with early music.

Celebrated Montréal flutist Joanna Marsden explores the work of eighteenth century French composer Michel Pignolet de Montéclair on MONTÉCLAIR CONCERTS FOR BAROQUE FLUTE from Navona Records. The performances feature The Opus Project, a chamber music initiative founded by Marsden and Christophe Gauthier dedicated to revisiting early musical prints and manuscript sources in order to celebrate the unsung treasures of baroque chamber music. The “concerts” of Montéclair reconcile Italian virtuosity and complexity with French expressive language, exploring a variety of national styles to which he was exposed during his time working in Milan. Orchestrated with flute, viola da gamba, harpsichord, and theorbo, The Opus Project gives new life to these centuries-old compositions for modern audiences.

Olivier Messiaen’s two-and-a-half-hour piano cycle Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jesus is one of the most extraordinary and ground-breaking works in twentieth-century piano repertoire, joining such musical Mount Everests as Bach’s Goldberg Variations and the late Sonatas of Beethoven. That such a work was created in 1944 during the German occupation of France, and yet expresses such joy, conviction, love, and hope makes it all the more remarkable.

At more than two hours in length, the work is rarely performed in full. It takes a special kind of performer who has the physical and emotional stamina and focus to undertake such a task for it places immense technical and musical demands on the pianist.
One such musicians is Kristoffer Hyldig. KRISTOFFER HYLDIG is one of Denmark‘s leading pianists, recognized for his musicality and highly personal, sensitive approach. Known for his versatility, he is in demand as a soloist, as well as chamber musician and lied accompanist, and his concerts are often broadcasted on Danish Radio. He is a founding member of Messiaen Quartet Copenhagen, where his work comprises artistic programming as well as closely working with composers, commissioning, and premiering pieces.

Recorded in Vor Frelser’s Church, Copenhagen during one of the most severe periods of the lock down by producer, recording & balance engineer extraordinaire, Preben Iwan. The album is recorded in the immersive DXD format.

Byrd’s first song collection was published in 1588. In the following year he writes that he had ‘bene encouraged thereby, to take further paines therein, and to make the pertaker thereof, because I would shew my selfe gratefull to thee for thy loue, and desirous to delight thee with varietie, whereof (in my opinion) no Science is more plentifully adorned then Musicke.’ This 1589 collection, therefore, offers songs of 3, 4, 5 and 6 parts, ‘to serue for all companies and voyces: whereof some are easie and plaine to sing, [while] other more hard and dificult.’ Byrd clearly sought to be as inclusive as possible for all musicians, amateur and professional. With the 1589 collection, Byrd’s complete early song collections are now committed to recording. Together they provide a variety themes and textures, as well as vocal and instrumental combinations, demonstrating the richness of Elizabethan courtly music.

Korean Tapestry

Line Tjørnhøj's enTmenschT was created before the pandemic hit us, and before the event that we didn't think would happen in our time: war in Europe. It captures two of art history's most extreme and expressive artistic personalities from the beginning of the 20th century, perhaps precisely where our modern fear was founded: the fear of destructive inhumanity. The human voice is the focus of Tjornhoj's music. As in several of her other works, universal and often painful aspects of our existence are explored through virtuoso investigations of the voice - its possibilities and limitations and the connectedness of voices. The work was created in collaboration with visual artist Signe Klejs and the virtuosic vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices.

With 'the scream as a leitmotif', enTmenschT explores the boundary between humanity and inhumanity. enTmenschT is a touching and shocking musical work whose themes and expression are terribly relevant.