The fresh and vibrant style of composer Matthew Martin (b. 1976) has established him as one of today's leading sacred choral composers. Here the renowned Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford perform a selection of his works, included amongst them six World Premiere Recordings, celebrating liturgical music in all it's variety; from the reticent carol Dormi, Jesu! And the imposing St John's College Service to settings of the Mass, motets and anthems, including the award-winning Festival Anthem: In the year that King Uzziah died. Mr. Martin is closely associated with Magdalen College, Oxford, as a former organ scholar. He has held positions as organist and/or choir master at New College, Oxford, Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Cathedral.

Rachel Barton Pine’s ‘Testament’ is one of the best of this set of peerless works to have been released since Isabelle Faust’s definitive volumes of 2010 and 2012.

There is in her interpretation a surprisingly striking contrast between its crystalline voicing, clear articulation, and warm tone that makes the listener feel that it is concerned with the plain and simple beauty of the music as much as with the genius of its counterpoint and relationships between movements. All this is further supported by the sensible combination of Baroque bow and metal strings on a period instrument in modern set-up – the tuning is unfailingly accurate and the strength of the bowing means there is never any interference with the musical line by a squeak or break.

These are thoughtful and generous performances amplified by great maturity and depth.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice; June 2016)

From the New York Philharmonic's in-house label come three separate and distinct albums of orchestral fare that highlights the trumpet, including eleven complete concertos, all featuring the orchestra's longstanding and recently retired principal trumpet chair, Phillip Smith, in performances stretching across the more than thirty years this most distinguished and honored musician occupied the position, 1979-2013. Album 1, available on CD and digital download, is a 21-track offering that boasts highlights from four of Gustav Mahler's nine symphonies, as well as works by Bernstein, Copland, Stravinsky, Ives, Bach, and others, in whole or on part. Album 1 also includes a 32-page booklet containing photos, notes and essays. Albums 2 & 3, available as digital downloads only, boast complete concertos by Vivaldi, Molter, Haydn and Zwilich, among several other important trumpet-centric concerted works. "For the past 36 years, Philip Smith has presided over orchestral trumpet playing, with a resonant, clarion sound and a reputation for never missing a note." (The New Yorker)

Includes work(s) by various composers.

Yes, there was another Cleopatra! She was married to Tigranes the Great, King of Armenia, and together they created an Armenia that reached from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. The resplendent and regal voice of soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian is perfectly suited to the role of Cleopatra. Bayrakdarian shines in arias from three rarely heard operas about King Tigranes and his queen. Bayrakdarian’s multi-hued voice relates the passion, drama, and fervor of the love story of Tigranes and Cleopatra. Bayrakdarian sparkles in five arias from Il Tigrane by Baroque master Johann Adolph Hasse, famous in his day as one of the foremost composers of opera. Arias by Vivaldi and Gluck add further excitement to the album. Vivaldi, known primarily for his instrumental music, stands out as an opera composer, while Gluck, in an early opera, already shows his mastery of the form. Bayrakdarian is supported by the Grammy-nominated team of Constantine Orbelian— “the singer’s dream collaborator” (Opera News) —and his marvelous Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra.

Xiaogang Ye has been widely acclaimed in recent decades as one of China’s leading contemporary composers. His music has gained worldwide exposure, having been performed by many of the world’s top orchestras, ensembles and soloists in famous venues. This is the first Delos album devoted exclusively to his works. The intriguing chamber music offered here explores a number of Chinese themes. A pair of works explores the traditional symbolism of flowering plants in China, and three others capture the deep mysticism of holy lakes in Tibet as well as Tibetan Buddhist practices. Ye often explores the timbral contrasts between Western and traditional Asian instruments, and two of these pieces are given distinct Chinese flavors by including the zheng (or Chinese zither) among the Western instruments played by the marvelous French ensemble, Les Temps Modernes.

Breathtaking pianism from Gilels: Tchaikovsky's Concerto No. 2 is titanic and tender by turns, and his opening phrase of Beethoven Four is near-miraculous. - BBC Music (ICA Classics)

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)

Stravinsky’s much-loved work Petrushka receives a beautiful performance in this live recording by the Seattle Symphony. Alongside this titan of a work is the little-known children’s ballet by Debussy, La boite a joujoux (The Toy Box). Conductor Ludovic Morlot does a fantastic job of interpreting these works by two of the twentieth century’s finest conductors.

Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony deliver exhilarating live performances of Stravinsky’s The Firebird and Vladimir Nikolaev’s The Sinewaveland: Homage to Jimi Hendrix.

Continuing Seattle Symphony Media’s acclaimed tradition of mixing the familiar with the unfamiliar, this superb disc couples a thrilling live recording of Stravinsky’s complete ballet The Firebird with Russian composer Vladimir Nikolaev’s tribute to Seattle’s own Jimi Hendrix, The Sinewaveland, described as “an image of Hendrix atop Bald Mountain, lighting his guitar on fire.

With naturalistic imaging, depth of field and dynamic range, all Seattle Symphony Media recordings have been engineered to audiophile standards and aim to capture as realistically as possible the sound of the orchestra performing on the Benaroya Hall stage. Digital content will be available on stereo, 96k 24-bit high resolution and 5.1 surround sound.

2015 GRAMMY Award Winner: Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance

American new-music sextet eighth blackbird, which won Grammy Awards for each of its last three Cedille Records albums, continues to connect with genre-spanning, cutting-edge composers on FILAMENT, a CD of world-premiere recordings of works by Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, and Son Lux, plus a Philip Glass classic.

The ensemble’s album, FILAMENT, was produced by Dessner, a Brooklyn-based composer, guitarist, and member of the Grammy-nominated, Billboard-charting indie rock band The National. The 16-page CD booklet features original artwork, photography, and design by New York-based artist and architect Karl Jensen.

Premieres include Dessner’s Murder Ballades and Muhly’s Doublespeak, both written for eighth blackbird, and Son Lux’s To Love and This is my Line, a remix created from the album’s other tracks.

Dessner, on guitar, and Muhly, on organ, join eighth blackbird for a live-in-concert recording of Glass’s mesmerizing Two Pages at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

The album’s title, FILAMENT, is a metaphor for the fiber of friendship, collaboration, and mutual influence connecting the composers and performers on the album.

REVIEWS:

Eighth blackbird has proven themselves quite the new music ensemble, selecting their works carefully, and bringing to the public music that is challenging and memorable. This release is no exception. It’s called “Filament” because it attempts to link friends and collaborators, and to a lesser extent, their influence on one another. I might also title it “A Tribute to Minimalism”, because without the influence of this much-misaligned genre, this music would not exist. This is a glorious album in glorious sound, marred only by the short playing time. Conceptions this good deserve more—maybe a sequel? – Audiophile Edition (Steven Ritter)

An invisible “filament” connects the experimental, Chicago-based sextet Eighth Blackbird with their composer friends Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, Philip Glass and Ryan Lott, known by his stage name Son Lux. Dessner’s Murder Ballades reflect the violent, pulsating energy of their title. Muhly’s Doublespeak is a retro blast of fast-slow minimalism in homage to Philip Glass. Glass’s Two Pages takes a single line to zany extremes, and Lux’s short To Love and This Is My Line pull all together with electronic remixes from the rest of the album. Neatly done, with wit.

-- The Guardian (Fiona Maddocks)

In the 1960s and in the decades following, the Budapest String Quartet’s mantle at Columbia was passed on to the Juilliard String Quartet. Over the years, with some changes in personnel, the ensemble repeatedly set down its famously lean, energetic and expressive interpretations of the Beethoven quartets in New York recording studios. These have remained catalogue staples. Less well known is the Beethoven cycle they recorded live in Washington at the Library of Congress in 1982. Gramophone singled out this complete traversal for its special depth and flexibility. Presented here on 9 albums, this is its first Sony release.

REVIEW:

The slow introduction to the C Major Quartet No. 9 is handled wonderfully, which sets up well for the rest of the movement and the work as a whole. These are followed by nice recordings of the “Harp” and “Serioso” quartets, thus bringing the middle period to an end.

The late quartets open with a really nice recording of the Nos. 12 and 13, with the first of these being particularly fine. The final disc of the nine houses the 15th and 16th quartets, which again receive fairly good recordings. Overall, the tempos selected here tend to be slower than in their earlier recording, which is usual for live recordings.

Overall sound quality is, at times, a bit of an issue here, even taking into account the live nature of these recordings, and overall isn't up to the sound quality of the quartet's highly regarded 1960s studio cycle of these works for RCA.

– MusicWeb International

COATES, E.: Calling All Workers / Springtime Suite (Coates)

This travelogue starts at the great Cathedral of Chartres, and moves to Brittany and Normandy in northern France, as well as Franche Comte and Burgundy. Included is music by Faure.

Global Wagner – From Bayreuth to the World is not a biography of Richard Wagner, nor is it a musicological analysis of his work. This is a documentary dedicated solely to the world’s fascination with the man, and an exploration of the question as to how such massive hype and world-wide cult following developed around this highly controversial artist. The film is a revealing feature-length study of life with Wagner’s legacy from one Bayreuth Festival to the next, and we travel the world to meet devoted Wagnerians and those most intimately involved in commenting on and producing his work today.