Crossing Over features the music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, John Tavener, William Schuman, Daniel Elder, and more. This release contains world premiere recordings, as well as rarely recorded pieces. Skylark is a chamber choir consisting of professional musicians from across the United States. The group also performs educational programs for students across the nation.

REVIEW:

All the music is concise, in the manner of utterances made or heard on a deathbed; the longest work clocking in at just over nine minutes. This is new music, put together in a new way, beautifully sung and recorded. In short, it's fabulous for listeners looking for a place to start with contemporary choral music, downbeat subject matter or not.

-- All Music Guide

They may look like a pop, rock, or crossover group, but don't be fooled! I FURIOSI is the hottest new baroque ensemble on the scene, reinventing the traditional classical music experience, and we are happy to announce the release of their commercial debut CD, CRAZY. CRAZY is an exciting and diverse program of musical pieces whose premise is either insanity itself, or is the product of the disturbed mind of the composer. The album matches unparalleled performances with, painstakingly crafted program notes that provide insight into both the composer's own vision, however twisted, and the broad social themes of their day. The program which includes masterworks by some of the greatest composers of the 16th-18th century is concluded in contrast by a beautifully haunting rendition of Suzanne by master song writer Leonard Cohen's Suzanne.

In developing its programming, I FURIOSI worked diligently to craft themes linked to current events, to provide contemporary audiences with an insight into historical themes that are entertaining as well as educational. The detailed liner notes provide insight behind the selection of each track. 

REVIEW:

"Conga-Line in Hell" is one of those rare discs that not only makes thematic sense but also happens to be hugely enjoyable from beginning to end. The disc's somewhat alarming title is taken from the delightful opening piece from 1994, the Uruguayan Miguel del Águila's sly conga that layers Latin American dance rhythms over a repeating piano figure (think Philip Glass, but with a sense of humor). Don't let the title (or the cover art) put you off: this is a great sampler of new and 20th-century music from the Americas, an area that has long been of interest to Joel Sachs, who is probably best known for his work in New York directing two new-music groups, Continuum and the New Juilliard Ensemble. His conducting on disc, as in live concerts, always is sharply articulated and well-thought-out. The Camerata de las Américas is a top-notch group of players who sound as if they've been playing this repertoire forever (showing incredible tightness and focused sound), but also as if they are still completely entranced by the many charms of this music.

And so they should be; it's a terrific program. The Mexican composer Arturo Márquez, whose early works were heavily influenced by Messiaen and Berio, eventually turned to the music of his youth for inspiration. 1988's Danzón No. 4 is one result, in which the melody is sinuously carried by the oboe, flute, and saxophone, fed from a spring of strings and percussion. Conlon Nancarrow, the American who left for Mexico and who perhaps is the best-known name in this group of composers, is represented by 1943's First Piece for Small Orchestra, a rhythmically piquant but tonally blues-flavored work. The Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra's 1997 piece Cuentos (Tales) spans three evocatively-titled movements: the explosive shrieks of "Lenguas desconocidas (Unknown Languages)"; "Lo que pasó en las nubas (What Happened in the Clouds)", reminiscent of Messiaen's shimmering textures; and "Batata-Coco", a wild mambo homage to the great bandleader Pérez Prado.

Another composer to make use of Caribbean dance sounds is Nadia Boulanger's Cuban student Alejandro García Caturla, whose First Cuban Suite from 1932 draws as much from the son, comparsa, and danza styles as it does from Stravinsky. (Listen to the ominous opening of the movement titled "Comparsa" and compare it to the first sounds of the Rite of Spring.) Another piece from the '30s rounds out the program: 1937's Flôr de Tremembé (Tremembé Flower) by Brazilian composer Mozart Camargo Guarnieri, which starts out in something of a fugue propelled by Brazilian percussion, then blossoms into a festive whirl of color. The sound is great: wide, but still very crisp.

--Anastasia Tsioulcas, ClassicsToday.com

The Ames Piano Quartet, the resident chamber music ensemble at Iowa State University, holds a unique position in the chamber music field as one of the few piano quartets in the world. The combination of their lush string sound, blended with the orchestral quality of the piano, produces an exquisite and rare sonority. The Washington Post aptly described it as “one of the most heavenly combinations of instruments around.”

The ensemble has toured throughout the United States, including concerts in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, San Diego, and Washington D.C. Internationally they have performed in Canada, Mexico, France, Austria, and the Far East. Most recently the Quartet spent a week concertizing and teaching in Havana, Cuba, the first American chamber music group to perform there in over forty years.

Its members, all present ISU Music Department faculty, include Mahlon Darlington, violinist; George Work, cellist: (Lawrence Bulkhalter violist - discs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8) Jonathan Sturm, violist; and William David, pianist. Since its formation in 1976, the ensemble has recorded eight compact discs, including six for the Dorian Recording label, all of which have received national and international critical acclaim.

Fanfare called its CD of the Dvorak quartets, “one of the best chamber music recordings of the century.”

The Los Angeles Times wrote of a recent Ames Piano Quartet concert, “The four generated nearly limitless excitement … arching lyricism, poetic eloquence, and great accuracy.”

The French magazine La Cote des Arts commented, “The Ames [Piano] Quartet has a full vigorous sound, which deeply touches the soul.”

Reviews of some of the original recordings that make up this set:

Strauss, Widor Quartets
The masterpieces for piano quartet can be counted on the fingers of two hands: two by Mozart, one by Schumann, three by Brahms, two by DvorAk and two by Faure. This record offers two that are certainly not masterpieces, and are probably unknown even to most chamber music players, by composers who made their mark in very different spheres and whose names are not normally associated with chamber music at all. The earlier of them is the one by Richard Strauss, composed in 1884, when, at the age of 20, he was already a precocious and highly professional musician (with almost all the chamber music he composed already behind him). Widor's quartet dates from 1891, when he was in his late forties and already an eminent organist and pedagogue and the composer of a piano trio and quintet, a sonata for cello and piano and numerous shorter pieces—not to mention the first eight of his ten symphonies for organ.

The Strauss is heavily indebted to Brahms, notably in the two expansive, opulent outer movements, but in both the unmemorable quality of the thematic material is stretched too far (nearly 12 minutes, even without the exposition repeat, in the first movement, nearly ten in the fourth) despite the assurance of the actual craftsmanship. Some relief is provided by the nimble Scherzo and the rather sugary Andante (which are listed in the wrong order in the accompanying booklet). In 1885 the quartet was awarded, by a far from unanimous vote, a prize given by the Berlin Tonkiinstler Verein, and when it was played at Meiningen in January 1886 it made such a favourable impression on the audience (which included Strauss's employer, Georg II, Duke of Sachsen-Meiningen, to whom the score was later dedicated) that Strauss was agreeably surprised, "considering," as he wrote to Hans von Billow, "that it is by no means a pleasing or ingratiating work". The Widor is, to my ears, a more original and appealing piece, with a noble, impassioned first movement and an inventive finale, framing a tender, rather elegiac Adagio and a playful Vivace.

The performances, by the Ames Piano Quartet (formed in 1976, and a 'resident' ensemble at Iowa State University), are of outstanding quality, as is the recording by the American company, Dorian; it will not be their fault if the hope expressed in the booklet, "that this release will begin the work of restoring both pieces to the standard repertoire", is not realized.

-- R.G., Gramophone

Czech Piano Quartets
Great Czech piano quartet performances come from Iowa, Ames, IA, to be precise, home of Iowa State University where the Ames Piano Quartet is the chamber music ensemble-in-residence. The group, one of the few full-time piano quartets in the world, has already released several excellent discs on Dorian: the mandatory couplings of quartets by Dvorák, Fauré, and Brahms, plus several ingenious couplings like a disc joining quartets to quartets by Strauss and Widor. This 2002 disc has one of the most fascinating programs yet, uniting three quartets by three different Czech composers: Josef Suk's A minor Quartet, Op. 1; Vitezslav Novák's C minor Quartet, Op. 7; and Bohuslav Martinu's Quartet written in 1942.

All three are three-movement works in the fast-slow-fast pattern, all three last a bit more than 20 minutes, and all three are interesting examples of specific aspects their composer's style. Suk's A minor Quartet, his 1891 graduation piece from Dvorák's composition class, is a passionate but well-crafted piece of ardent romanticism. Novák's C minor Quartet started life as a four-movement student work in 1894, which the composer completely rewrote in 1903, discarding three of the movements and replacing them with the two published outer movements. Martinu's Quartet was written while the composer was living in exile in Jamaica, Long Island, a refugee from war-torn Europe and shows his mature mastery at its height.

The Ames Piano Quartet performs every work with amazing strength and total dedication. With a tight but flexible ensemble, strong but agile technique, and big, passionate tone, the Ames has what these works need to succeed. Its Suk is fervent and sincere, its Novák bold but controlled, and its Martinu driven but lyrical. Though some listeners may find the string's tone a bit edgy, others will find this only adds intensity to the performances. Recorded in Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall in 2002, Dorian's digital sound here is big, close, and direct. It should also be noted that this appears to be the premiere recording of Novák's quartet.

-- James Leonard, All Music Guide

Russian Piano Quartets
orian's pairing of these two piano quartets is particularly apt for a number of reasons, not least of which is the relative rarity of works in this genre by Russian composers. Paul Juon was a student of Sergei Taneyev (himself a student of Tchaikovsky), and it is Juon's Rhapsody that opens the program. A troubled, yearning theme in the cello's lower register sets the course for the entire piece, whose exceptionally rich chromaticism (stopping just short of Scriabin) keeps the music awash in a late-romantic delirium. The drama of the big finale is capped by the return of the cello's theme near the end. It's passionate, Wuthering Heights-type stuff, and the Ames Piano Quartet really pours on the sauce (but not so much that it overruns the plate).


Though written in the same year as Juon's Rhapsody (1906), Taneyev's piano quartet sounds like an earlier work due to its greater reliance on traditional Russian harmonic techniques. It's only slightly less emotionally heated, and the high strings' singing of the first movement theme brings to mind Chausson's Concert for violin, piano, and string quartet. The second movement features a catchy tune that would make a great rock n' roll anthem today. Taneyev's finale is even bigger that Juon's, though it also employs a cyclic device, in this case bringing that fetching second movement theme back for another rendition. As if two big chamber works were not enough, the disc is packed with Borodin's Polovtsian Dances in a mostly satisfying arrangement (you might miss the oboe) by Geoffrey Wilcken. Again, the Ames Piano Quartet plays with power, sensitivity, and brilliance. Dorian's recording places the piano well to the rear, but the live acoustic perfectly balances it with the strings.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

Review of complete set:

While piano trios abound and string quartets are a dime a dozen, what's rare are extant, long-standing piano quartets. Compared to the former two ensembles, repertoire for the latter is less abundant but no less significant. Piano quartets are often performed by piano trios who add a viola or string quartets that sit out a member and add a pianist. The result, however, is a temporary ensemble that lacks the benefits of performing long term with the same musicians. The Ames Piano Quartet proves that not only can a piano quartet exist as its own entity, but that it can thrive. Originally formed in 1976 at the University of Iowa and now faculty artists at Iowa State University, the Ames Piano Quartet has made a name for itself as skilled interpreters of the standard popular repertoire as well as champions of new and lesser known works. The present eight-disc collection showcases the recordings the group made on the Dorian label from 1989 through 2009. Listeners will enjoy stunning, thoughtful interpretations of warhorses of the repertoire like the three Brahms quartets, two from Dvorák, and quartets from Schumann, Fauré, and Strauss, as well as enlightening performances of rarely performed quartets by Suk, Martinu, and Widor. Taken from recordings made across two decades, there is an understandable variability in recorded sound quality from disc to disc, and the Ames does not have the most spotless intonation in the world. What it does have that many others lack is a clear, singular, unified vision of the score. Every articulation, every phrase, every dynamic, and every nuance is perfectly matched across the four members. Balance within the ensemble is also pleasantly fluid, shifting to allow the melody to come to the fore without obscuring the inner voices. Adding to its polished playing and far-reaching repertoire is a very informative and well-written set of liner notes that make this collection one well worth checking out.

-- Mike D. Brownell, All Music Guide

Sono Luminus announces the release of Icelandic ensemble Nordic Affect’s debut album on the label, Clockworking, featuring the music of five Icelandic women composers – Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Hildur Gudnadóttir, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, Hafdís Bjarnadóttir, and Thurídur Jónsdóttir. The album was recorded by Georg Magnússon at The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, with mastering and post-production by Valgeir Sigurdsson.

REVIEW:

[A] brilliantly sensitive sound mixed more like up-close ambient music than chamber music, and it's one of the most evocative releases edging on either category in recent memory.

-- WQXR

CLAUDE FRANK 85th BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION • Claude Frank (pn) • SONO LUMINUS DSL-92122 (2 CDs: 138:12)


SCHUMANN Arabeske. Fantasiestücke: Warum. Kinderszenen: Traümerei. MOZART Piano Sonata in C, K 330. Rondo in a, K 511. SCHUBERT Piano Sonata in B?, D 960. BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas Nos. 30–32


The big question attached to this release is, “Why now?” Many collectors will recognize Claude Frank’s name from the complete set of Beethoven sonatas he recorded in the 1970s, and which were released on RCA Victrola LPs. (These now are available on Music & Arts.) There have been a couple of other releases since then—Beethoven’s and Schubert’s works for violin and piano, recorded with his daughter, Pamela Frank—but for the most part, Claude Frank is a major pianist who has been ignored by the recording industry. In other words, the present release is welcome, and very satisfying, and when I look at how many CDs Lang Lang has made since the start of his career, the infrequency of Frank’s recordings makes me mad.


Recorded in New York’s American Academy for Arts and Letters in 2008 and 2009, this pair of discs captures Frank a little before his 85th birthday. (He was born in 1925.) Initially, I thought that these were going to be live performances. Apparently they are not, but Frank’s playing, both intimate and communicative, suggests the presence of an audience of one—that being you, dear listener. Frank’s frequent vocalises, in the manner of Glenn Gould, will not endear these readings to everyone. Somehow, they add to the intimacy of the music-making.


In the generous booklet that accompanies this release, Frank discusses his lengthy studies with Artur Schnabel. (Frank studied with him between 1941 and 1951, but there was a break after he was drafted into the United States Army during World War II.) Frank’s repertory has much in common with Schnabel’s, and his playing resembles his teacher’s in several ways as well. Above all, effect for effect’s sake is rejected. Frank’s playing is not flashy, but it goes right to the music’s core like an arrow seeking the bull’s-eye. One way in which it differs from Schnabel’s is in Frank’s occasional use of a technique in which the left hand slightly anticipates the right. (This can be clearly heard in the middle movement, the Allegro molto, of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 31.) I know this drives some listeners crazy, and if you are one of them, consider yourself warned. Frank doesn’t do it often enough to make it a mannerism, though. In the sequence of repeated G-Major chords that ushers in that final section, Frank (I think through a combination of pedaling and touch) creates a sonority I have never heard coming from a piano. A little later, in the final fugal section, Frank realizes Beethoven’s odd rhythmic dislocations with greater clarity than I have heard from any other pianist. In the three Beethoven sonatas, Frank does not suffer in comparison to his younger self, and the engineering is better, too.


The other performances are terrific as well. In Schubert’s sonata, Frank captures a quality that I consider essential to much of the composer’s later work, that being the song of a bird who sings still more beautifully even as he perceives that a cat is about to pounce on him. A similar quality pervades the Mozart Rondo in A Minor. Mozart’s Sonata in C is unaffected—it is neither fragile Dresden china nor a jolly rugby scrum. The Schumann miniatures are warm but not overly sentimental. Frank understands that romantic music does not mean “anything goes.” Above all, in all of these works, including the Beethoven, Frank lets the music speak for itself. Like the finest pianists at work today (Perahia, Lupu, Schiff, etc.), his personality supports the music and does not compete with it.


The musicianship on these discs stands up to anything else in front of the public at this time. Piano mavens whose heads are not turned by mere virtuosity should acquire this release immediately, if they have not done so already!


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle


These 2008/09 recordings were made in anticipation of Claude Frank's 85th birthday on December 24, 2010, and testify to the veteran pianist's seasoned musicianship and remarkably intact technique. Frank always has played Schubert's final sonata supremely well, and you can forgive the occasionally uneven phrase or split note in light of the pianist's warm tone and intelligently shaped long lines, especially in the first-movement development section and throughout the slow movement. Frank's moderate tempo for the Scherzo allows the music its lilting, delicate due, while the finale boasts genuine cumulative urgency and a driving coda that ought to keep younger pianists humble.

The Mozart C major K. 330 sonata sports characterful grace, wit, and spot-on timing. Frank's bracing and direct treatment of the Mozart A minor Rondo demonstrates how to convey expressive niceties through color and nuance rather than by monkeying around with tempo. Likewise, the Schumann short pieces elicit eloquent, tellingly proportioned artistry.

By and large Frank plays the last three Beethoven sonatas with greater deliberation and lyricism than in his relatively faster RCA studio versions from nearly four decades earlier. The incisive punch and accentuation of yore has given way to more songful phrasing and room to breathe, although Frank's dynamic range ventures less toward Beethoven's extremes. This is a memorable release showcasing Claude Frank in authoritative performances of the music he loves best.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

A gift not only for music lovers, Cascade of Roses: A Piano Bouquet matches piano works (many previously unrecorded) about roses to printed poetry and images of corresponding roses. This also marks the debut recording of pianist Janice Weber with Dorian Sono Luminus.

Pianist Janice Weber plays a repertoire of “rose” pieces by composers well known, vaguely known, and unknown as well as pieces recently resurrected from anonymity. These twenty-one takes on the rose are as individual as the composer, but all prevail affection for the “sweetest flower.” Examples of this are shown by how composer Eduard Poldini (1869-1957) portrays an image of blossoms nodding in the prairie wind in Beauty of the Prairies, and how “The English Gershwin” Billy Mayerl (1902-1959) enjoyed gardening, which inspired the winsome Evening Primrose (1945).

Janice Weber is a summa cum laude graduate of the Eastman School of Music. She enjoys an international career distinguished by its wide-ranging exploration of the piano literature. She has performed at the White House, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, and throughout China. A member of the piano faculty at Boston Conservatory, she has participated in summer festivals at Tanglewood, Newport, Bard, and Husum. Her third novel, Frost the Fiddler, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and has been optioned for film. Miss Weber also produced the tones for Ivory, the bestselling virtual piano software. Her garden contains one Pierrine rose bush.

Packaged in a hardcover book, the liner notes for Cascade of Roses portray paintings by P.J. Redouté (complete with scientific classification) and poetic works by Romantic poets such as John Keats and Richard Lovelace. Cascade of Roses: A Piano Bouquet is a beautiful collection of poetic songs depicting the fragile, fragrant rose, and is sure to not only be a favorite of classical music fans but a great gift item, being an alternative to a traditional bouquet which wilts over time.

This hypnotically appealing recording of 13th century Galician-Portuguese songs and dances of love and longing for the absent beloved will enchant and soothe even the most agitated listener. The musical achievement that is CANTIGAS DE AMIGO, or "Songs for a Friend," owes far more than usual to the performers, for here, save for in six of the seven songs by Martin Codax, the performers have had to supply the music! The medieval cantigas exist as five hundred texts without music, so the performer must be trained in the history and style of performing for this time (the 1200s) and place (the Iberian Peninsula). One need only listen to the one Codax song that has come down to us without its music to assess the marvelous accomplishment of the combined forces of Ensemble Alcatraz, Kitka, and Angelorum. As an experiment, listen to all seven Codax songs (before reading the liner notes) and try to guess which song's music was newly composed for this recording-that's how good these performers are.

In addition to being one of the most well-known of jazz pianists, Dave Brubeck is also a composer who has explored many new avenues in composition and performance. Lauded around the world, he received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor in December 2009.

Brubeck's "Songs of Praise" is recorded here by the Pacific Mozart Ensemble, a group noted for passionate, expert and engaging choral performances of music from Brahms to Brubeck to the Beach Boys.

This set includes a blu-ray audio CD playable on blu-ray players only and a standard CD playable on all CD players.

Sono Luminus is proud to offer a magnificent collection of works from the hands of Dave Brubeck, brought to life in this debut recording from the Pacific Mozart Ensemble, Brubeck & American Poets, under the baton of conductor Lynne Morrow.

Dave Brubeck, revered as a jazz pianist, is a composer of a rich stream of choral music. The music is varied, with many of the songs evoking the feeling of specific places and emotions. The music can be enjoyed by all; some of it is complex, some youthful and easily accessible. A perusal of Brubecks choral catalog shows that most of his lyricists are beloved American poets, including Langston Hughes and Wendell Berry. This disc gives musical form to Brubecks love of American poets. His thoughts about the poets and the composition of these works are included in the booklet.

Lynne Morrow (2006 GRAMMY® nominee) is a Professor of Music at Sonoma State University, directing the Voice and Opera/Music Theatre programs. Her interest and research in American music of all genres has informed her discussions with Dave Brubeck about his choral music. Brubeck has endorsed Lynne Morrows interpretations of his choral works and has dedicated pieces to Lynne and the Pacific Mozart Ensemble.

The GRAMMY®-nominated Pacific Mozart Ensemble (PME) and Lynne Morrow have had a long association with Dave Brubeck. Performances of Brubecks oratorios and cantatas led to PMEs 2010 recording of his sacred choral works. The Pacific Mozart Ensemble performs in many genres, including jazz. Founded in 1980 by Artistic Director Richard Grant, the Pacific Mozart Ensemble delivers passionate, expert and engaging choral performances of music from Brahms to Brubeck to the Beach Boys. During its time, PME has grown to fill an important role in the cultural life of the San Francisco Bay Area, presenting courageous and innovative programs of many works that have never been performed in concert settings.

Stephen Schultz takes on the daunting task of playing all five parts of these Concerti for Five Flutes from Boismortier - a feat never before attempted or accomplished! The French composer Joseph Bodin de Boismortier wrote a great deal of popular music. The transverse flute was his favorite instrument and he considerably extended its repertory. Boismortier's music demonstrates great facility, and one regrets that he wrote so few works on a large scale.

REVIEWS:

This is something of a concept album. It’s also a programme that has been toured and performed in concert many times and reaches fruition as a disc. It takes Elizabethan and Jacobean lute music and marries it to the poetry and theatre of the time. Sometimes a single track is given over to verse or a short scene from a play, spoken by Robert Aubry Davis; but also we hear a speech or lyric spoken above, as it were, lute accompaniment. This sometimes makes things difficult to judge artistically vis a vis Ronn McFarlane’s lute playing, but it’s a disc to be measured against a rather wider canvass than usual, a multi-disciplinary words and music presentation.

Most of the music is by Dowland, but there is one piece by Campion, another by Byrd and others by our old pal, Anonymous. The theatrical performances derive from Shakespeare - Henry VIII, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona - as well as Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness. There are poems by Wyatt, with which we begin and end, Robert Herrick and Samuel Daniel. Thomas D’Urfey’s wickedly naughty The Wanton Trick is here too.

As an example of a theatrical presentation it works well. Whether it has longevity on disc is a moot point, because some of the extracts are very brief, and also because the lute, played behind the voice, is demonstrably there for evocative effect. Ronn McFarlane has a number of discs to his name of lute music and is indeed a fine player. There are times when he inclined to the brusque and overly metrical - one thinks of Mrs Winter’s Jump for example; the woman in question must have been quite a motoric figure if his playing is anything to go by.

Next we have the spoken element. The method in the Wyatt ‘title track’, and others, is this. Davis speaks the first stanza, and then McFarlane joins in behind him. Note though that they were separately recorded.

The texts are printed in full, and the booklet has been nicely designed and amusingly written (by Davis). Indeed the disc is cleverly programmed.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Passion, excitement, sorrow, and celebration all fill the room with this new exciting release of Biber: Mystery Sonatas by Julia Wedman. Though the Mystery Sonatas (also called the Rosary Sonatas) weren’t discovered until the late 19th century, these master works of violin virtuosity that employs extensive scordutura (multiple tunings) for the performer have become a favorite of Baroque Music lovers and violinists the world over. After 2 years of research leading up to the recording, Ms. Wedman has brought a new life and impassioned vision to these works.

R E V I E W S:

The music sparkles, and the liner notes are both visually appealing and extremely informative, with comprehensive historic description as well as Julia’s musical impressions of each of the 16 sonatas. What fun, for a lover of Baroque music!

-- Laurie Niles, Violinist.com

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Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber's Mystery Sonatas, composed in the 1670s and 1680s, have almost as many interpretations as there are violinists. They're sometimes known as the "Rosary Sonatas," for the "mysteries" involved are the so-called Mysteries of the Rosary, episodes from the life of Christ that furnish material for meditative prayers undertaken with the devotional aid of Rosary prayer beads. Engravings of these episodes appear in Biber's original presentation manuscript of these works (whose cover is missing), and Canadian violinist Julia Wedman, inspired by paintings of the Mysteries of the Rosary she saw in the Aula Academica in Salzburg, emphasizes the sonatas' programmatic detail in her readings. There's no firm evidence that Biber himself was inspired by these paintings, but the idea isn't implausible. Wedman makes two unusual choices in implementing her programmatic idea. The first she shares with Andrew Manze and a few other violinists: instead of switching off among violins as Biber's scordatura or retuning directions become progressively more bizarre, she continues to play the same violin, forcing it into contortions as it approaches Christ's crucifixion and other, well, crucial episodes. This is not the usual approach, but it is persuasive if only because violinists in Biber's time did not possess a rack full of instruments. Wedman's second procedure may be less justifiable historically: she enlists the continuo players in her attempt to make these sonatas into detailed representational works. The same logic that supports her single-violin approach puts the continuo in question: would Biber or other violinists presenting these piece have had the luxury of trading off among gamba, theorbo, archlute, organ, harpsichord, cello, and harp as Wedman's accompanists do here? It's not likely, and it takes the focus off the violin in true virtuoso works. Her realization is never unmusical, however, and it builds nicely to the Crucifixion and Resurrection movements. She has plenty of technical resources to bear on the Passacaglia "The Guardian Angel," which on this and several other recordings is deployed as a finale to the Mystery Sonata cycle. This is an unusually speculative set of Mystery Sonatas, but one that will appeal to those who have come under the work's spell (if that word is permissible here). Notes, partly by Wedman herself, are in English only.

-- James Manheim, All Music Guide

There are more languages spoken in Los Angeles than in any other city in the world. It’s a transitive city. Most residents have come here to contribute to its cultural identity and have ended up calling it “home”. Los Angeles is a city where every industry, creative or otherwise, is fueled by the pursuit of personal creative dreaming. It’s clear then how the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet (LAPQ) created a community of composers and made them all local to the group’s music making and to Los Angeles itself, regardless of each composer’s city of origin.

Is it language that makes someone at home in a given place? If so, the compositional languages of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Christopher Cerrone, Ellen Reid, Daníel Bjarnasson, and Andrew McIntosh appear as interwoven and complex as Los Angeles itself. Their music similarly courses with chiming repetition, spectral near-silence, and the wearing away of time on objects so barely touched that they appear, in moments, as fragile as paper. These composers from two drastically different continents are brought together by LAPQ, despite their differences in origin, under one banner: friendship. For years LAPQ has been known for its skill in both championing and cataloging works by West Coast composers, with a specific focus on Los Angeles. With Beyond they explore the deep knowing that comes from making work with old friends. And broadly, the project signals a move for the Los Angeles contemporary music scene, a scene burgeoning out with global significance, and overflowing with artists actively seeking to create community. Beyond is a remarkable epic in which space and time are stretched on and on, over and past the horizon.

Bjarnasson’s “Qui Tollis" spans an incredible arc, emerging from the contemplative space of the works around it, brimming with the bashes and tumbles of bass drums, and then seemingly too early, vanishes again into a lull and rhythmic groan. With “Fear-Release,” Reid takes us into a world of metallic voices, as if we’re listening to a rubbed piece of crystal from inside the gem itself. It’s rare that a piece of music seems to truly sonically shine, and Reid’s piece accomplishes this brilliance early and often. Thorvaldsdottir’s “Aura” is the wind, the sand in the wind, and the wind chime hanging from the wood on the old falling-apart porch all at once. It speaks multitudes, and miraculously all upon the quiet edge of audibility.

The expanse of McIntosh’s “I Hold the Lion’s Paw” is that of a twelve-hundred page novel, in which each page has less than a half dozen words. Its sprawl is scrolled out like a web in air, as the quartet communicates effortlessly with one another across a cavern of distance. In one moment they sit still in space, another they rattle endlessly like the earth; they arrive where we are, simply putting musical puzzle pieces together. With “Memory Palace,” Cerrone creates rooms of sound, each drenched in a subtle hue. In the rooms of this ever-expanding house we find ourselves drinking different air, buzzing with pop, hiss, and click, and lingering with a guitarist who could be inside the guitar itself.

REVIEW:

Beyond excels in every sphere: this well-chosen programme brims with fine music and impassioned musicianship, all presented in sound that will delight audiophiles, percussionistas and music lovers everywhere.

-- MusicWeb International

"The opening and closing choruses of the Ascension oratiorio contain some of Bach’s most irresistible, catchy music, and this chorus and orchestra really give it their all, from the brilliant trumpets and insistent syncopated rhythms to the invigorating choral singing...once you get into this Bethlehem Bach Choir production, it’s impossible not to like it."

-- David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com