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An American Dream?
CD$20.99$18.89Alpha
May 22, 2026ALPHA1222 -
Anshel Brusilow Conducts The Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia
CD$47.98$43.18Sony Masterworks
Nov 10, 202319658792072 -
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Singularity
CD$17.99$16.19Centaur Records
Apr 02, 2021CRC3858 -
Michael Haydn: Requiem Pro defuncto Archiepiscopo Sigismundo
CD$20.99$18.89Linn Records
Oct 03, 2025CKD771 -
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All These Lighted Things / Elim Chan, Antwerp Symphony
CD$20.99$18.89Alpha
Apr 26, 2024ALPHA1038 -
Ferdinand Ries: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7
CD$18.99$17.09Ondine
Oct 03, 2025ODE 1476-2 -
L'imperiale - Haydn 2032, Vol. 14 / Antonini, Basel Chamber Orchestra
CD$20.99$18.89Alpha
Sep 08, 2023ALPHA694
An American Dream?
Anshel Brusilow Conducts The Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia
The Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia was founded in 1965 by Anshel Brusilow, then concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Brusilow, who studied conducting and played under Pierre Monteux, George Szell and Eugene Ormandy, auditioned more than 1,000 musicians for the 36 full-time positions and conducted the ensemble from 1966 until 1968, when it was disbanded for want of adequate philanthropic support in the city for a second orchestra. But over the course of two-and-a-half 34-week seasons it had already performed more than 200 concerts and made six albums for RCA Victor.
Sony Classical is now issuing all these LP recordings by the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia on CD for the first time. The original LP releases were praised by High Fidelity, which called the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia “an orchestra of rare quality”. Reviewing its début release, Brahms’s D major Serenade, the US classical music magazine opined: “Brusilow could hardly have chosen a better work to show off the capabilities of his new orchestra – every first-chair woodwind and brass player has his chance to shine (and each does shine, brilliantly).” The Brahms was followed by a series of choice couplings: Tchaikovsky’s “Mozartiana” Suite with Arensky’s Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky (“Brusilow is thoroughly at home in this literature, and his players respond beautifully to his direction” – High Fidelity); symphonies by Haydn and Cherubini; a French programme of Ravel, Ibert and Françaix (“Perhaps a reflection of the Monteux influence … this record … carries true stylistic conviction in matters of phrasing, texture, and timbre” – High Fidelity); and Richard Strauss’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme as well as Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade.
The orchestra also premièred and recorded a new sacred choral work by Richard Yardumian, the Philadelphia-based composer championed by Eugene Ormandy. Come, Creator Spirit for mezzo-soprano, chorus (or congregation) and orchestra was the first mass setting by an established American composer in the English vernacular following the Vatican Council’s 1963 decision. The work was lauded for its integrity, spiritual fervor, and power to communicate the essence of devotion in all its nuances from praise to supplication.
Singularity
“There's a certain nakedness to a jazz duo. Everything is out there and exposed - no crashing cymbals to hide behind, or bass lines to get lost in. It often brings out a different side of your playing, a brutal honesty that is left after everything else is stripped away. Here is where we ended up...” Kevin Jones recently joined the Florida State University College of Music faculty as Assistant Professor of Jazz Trombone in 2016 after previously holding teaching appointments at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of South Carolina, Lander University, and Presbyterian College. As a performing artist, Dr. Jones toured with James Brown, Kenny Loggins, the Ringling Bros. Circus, and Princess Cruise Lines. He has numerous performing credits with jazz and commercial artists including the Temptations, Bucky Pizzarelli, Aretha Franklin, Joshua Redman, David Sanborn, Bill Holman, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Jim McNeely, Burt Bacharach, and Barry Manilow. Bill Peterson began his career in Chicago as a pianist and conductor/arranger/contractor for many celebrity artists, sharing the stage with celebrity greats including Ramsey Lewis, Diane Schuur, Patti Labelle, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, Smokey Robinson, Red Buttons, Suzanne Somers, Steve Allen, Joan Rivers, Morey Amsterdam, Kathie Lee Gifford, Mary Hart, Bob Newhart, Tony Bennett, George Burns, Danny Thomas, and Las Vegas sensation, Danny Gans.
Michael Haydn: Requiem Pro defuncto Archiepiscopo Sigismundo
All These Lighted Things / Elim Chan, Antwerp Symphony
Anyone who has seen the conductor Elim Chan on stage is familiar with the immense energy produced by her baton. With the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, of which she has been Principal Conductor since 2019, she celebrates a genre dear to her heart, ballet music, which places the emphasis on both physical movement and orchestral power. More than a century of ballet music is presented here, with excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet suites, oscillating between passionate love and fatal violence; Suite no.2 from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, the fruit of his first collaboration with Diaghilev in 1912, which he described as a ‘choreographic symphony’; and finally a work by Elizabeth Ogonek, All These Lighted Things, premiered in 2017. Although the title of these ‘three little dances for orchestra’ comes from a poem that evokes a soothing union with the earth at the dawn of a sunny day, the piece ends with a sort of folk dance that degenerates into an orchestral storm.
REVIEWS:
Conductor Elim Chan’s remarkable ear for detail is the star of All These Lighted Things, her new, dance-themed album with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra.
Its title comes from a short set of pieces by Elizabeth Ogonek, who wrote them in 2017 for Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Highly abstracted though Ogonek’s approach to dance forms here may be, All These Lighted Things’ three movements are highlighted by a constant sense of invention and blazing colors. Particularly striking are the languid textures of the murky middle one.
The Suite No. 2 from Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé channels a similar sound world. Though Chan’s approach to the “Danse générale” reads a shade restrained, there’s no denying the clarity or warmth of the Antwerp ensemble’s performance. Indeed, “Lever du jour” is sumptuous and beautifully directed while the “Pantomime’s” flute solos sound fresh and improvisatory.
But it’s in Chan’s compilation of movements from the first two suites from Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet that her virtuosity as a conductor shines the brightest. A host of subtleties emerge, from the quietly suspended woodwind tones in “The Montagues and Capulets” to the marshmallowy textures in the middle of “Friar Laurence,” the burbling accompaniments and pattering flute figures in the “Balcony Scene,” and the luminous play of light and shadow during “Romeo and Juliet Before Parting.”
Taken with their judicious tempos and strong feeling for the music’s narrative character, Chan and the Antwerp SO provide a performance of this favorite that is revelatory in all the right and needed ways. Keep an eye on this pairing: they’re worth watching.
-- The Arts Fuse
Ferdinand Ries: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7
L'imperiale - Haydn 2032, Vol. 14 / Antonini, Basel Chamber Orchestra
The fourteenth volume of the Haydn 2032 edition is entitled L'Imperiale, after the nickname given to Symphony no.53 in the nineteenth century. This was perhaps Haydn's most famous symphony during his lifetime. Premiered in the theatre at Eszterháza Palace in 1778, it was published in London around 1781, and its melodious Andante was arranged more than thirty times for various instruments between 1783 and 1820. It made a decisive contribution to Haydn’s success, opening the way for him to perform in England. Symphony no.54, whose entertaining, theatrical style is a perfectly match for the atmosphere of the legendary court festivities given at Eszterháza around 1775, completes this programme along with no.33, one of his first festive works with trumpets, composed c.1761. In his introductory text, Giovanni Antonini revels in the ‘capricious’, whimsical character of certain passages in the last movement of Symphony No. 53; he also offers an alternative finale of the work at the end of the album.
