“Kom vinur was composed in 2017 for the Skálholt Summer Concerts in Iceland when I was the composer in residency at the festival. A year later Maríuljóð was created. Both works are composed to poems by the Icelandic poet Vilborg Dagbjartsdóttir. The poems are the absolute core of the pieces; when composing them, I felt like excavating existing music from the text, unraveling hidden sounds from the words. Kom vinur has a somber undertone, a sense of loneliness and longing for sharing light and thoughts with a friend in the dark winter night. In Maríuljóð the tender view is through the eyes of a child observing subtle changes in nature and the seasons as well as asking the mother questions about the image of the Holy Mother.” (María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir) María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir (b. 1980) is a composer and a violinist. She graduated as a violinist from the Reykjavik College of Music in 2000 and with a Bachelor’s degree in composition from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2007. Maria is a member of the band amiina from 1999. amiina has released and recorded several albums and performed their music around the world as well as collaborated with various artists. With amiina, Maria was a touring member and collaborator of Sigur Rós from 2000-2008.

REVIEW:

I feel impelled at the outset to point out that this is an EP containing less than 10 minutes of music, but what beautiful music it is! Icelandic composer Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir (b. 1980) writes of the two compositions on this recording that they are “composed to poems by the Icelandic poet Vilborg Dagbjartsdóttir. The poems are the absolute core of the pieces; when composing them, I felt like excavating music from the text, unravelling hidden sounds from the words. Kom vinur has a somber undertone, a sense of loneliness and longing for sharing light and thoughts with a friend in the dark winter night. In Maríuljóô the tender view is through the eyes of a child observing subtle changes in nature and the seasons as well as asking the mother questions about the image of the Holy Mother.”

I don’t have access at the moment to the poems, but the choral music on this EP is so beautiful and moving that I feel inspired to see whether I can find the poems somewhere on the interweb. Meanwhile, I know that Sigfúsdóttir has composed other music; – This is a wonderful release, brief (but inexpensive) as it might be.

– Classical Candor (Karl Nehring)

PERSIST In celebration of the courage, patience and resilience displayed by people in times of great difficulty, Ethel, the GRAMMY�-winning, genre-defying string quartet, joins forces with Allison Loggins-Hull, composer, flutist, producer, and Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow to the Cleveland Orchestra. Together, they have elicited new commissions from four brilliant early-career composers: Migiwa "Miggy" Miyajima, Xavier Muzik, Sam Wu, and 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Leilehua Lanzilotti. Loggins-Hull herself contributed her own masterwork to the project. Passionate, committed, hopeful and inspiring, each piece contributes to an experience which surpasses the sum of it's parts.� Taking it's title from Loggins-Hull's quintet, Persist marks the fifth iteration of HomeBaked, Ethel's commissioning program for early-career composers. The initiative, begun in 2010, has commissioned and debuted 20 works by 16 early-career artists. Loggins-Hull teamed with Ethel to solicit, select, and collaborate with composers from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Supported by two NEA grants, the program was premiered in 2022 at Brooklyn Public Library, and tours in 2024/25.

There is power in the written word. The words we say often go unremembered, spilling out into our world and never reaching another's ear. When words are important enough to write, they gain the power of history. When words are important enough to sing, they gain the power of humanity. On November 22, 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, while sitting next to his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy. For years to come after this infamous day, letters were written to Jackie, expressing condolences and confusion, the spectrum of grief memorialized in the written word. This project has sought to give voice to those letters, providing community for listeners sharing in that collective grief. It is a touchstone for turning inward and experiencing grief through the lens of a national tragedy.� The music of Dear Mrs. Kennedy provides a communal journey to safely explore grief and spark conversation on the importance of human connection. Rather than President Kennedy or First Lady Jackie explicitly, the central character in this music is Grief itself: the grief of a nation-and of a world.� -Ryan Townsend Strand, tenor

Inspired by Bach as well as the avant-garde, by Brazilian folk traditions as well as the modern sounds of Rio, Villa-Lobos created an astonishing array of pieces. You'll find a tremendous variety of tonal colors, melodies, harmonic adventures and personal expressions in his string quartets alone. He composed 17 of them across 42 years (1915-57), and today they are as highly regarded as those of Bartok and Shostakovich. Here, they are performed by the premier proponent of Latin American music for string quartet, the Cuarteto Latin-American!

KALEIDOSCOPE • Amy Schwartz Moretti (vn); Robert McDuffie (vn); Elizabeth Pridgen (pn) • DORIAN 92126 (63:36)


GERSHWIN 3 Preludes. TCHAIKOVSKY Mélodie. Valse Scherzo. NOVÁ?EK Perpetuum mobile. MARTINON Solo Violin Sonatine, op. 31/1. KREISLER Caprice viennois. Praeludium and Allegro. MASSENET Thaïs: Meditation. MOSZKOWSKI Suite for 2 Violins and Piano


According to the blurb, Amy Schwartz Moretti chose the pieces for her first solo CD because they represent a kaleidoscope of works she’s known through her years of violin playing. The recital begins with Jascha Heifetz’s arrangement of George Gershwin’s Three Preludes, pieces in which Heifetz could wow an audience with stylish verve. Moretti is not so straightforwardly energetic as Heifetz, and she doesn’t wind up the first with a knockout punch. She’s slinkier, however (in a way similar to that of Maria Bachmann), especially in the second prelude. The engineers have swaddled her sound (on an 1874 Vuillaume that seems especially rich in the lowest registers) in a decent amount of reverberation, but at times she seems more recessive than does the pianist, her colleague Elizabeth Pridgen from Mercer University, although she brings the third prelude to a satisfying conclusion.


Two contrasting pieces by Piotr Illyitch Tchaikovsky follow: the Melodie, op. 42/3, which she plays with great warmth if not Nathan Milstein’s élan, and the Valse Scherzo, op. 34. At least one virtuoso I knew well ran afoul of this brilliant showpiece (both technically and stylistically), but Moretti doesn’t, and even if her portamentos don’t always seem finely judged in the waltz-like sections, she hits the double-stops squarely, plays the staccatos lightly and gracefully, and swirls the arpeggios with the silvery elegance of a baton twirler. Ottokar Nová?ek’s popular Perpetuum mobile may not be so difficult as it sounds, but Nathan Milstein could make a very dashing impression in it. Moretti takes it a bit more slowly, but perhaps makes a bit more musical sense out of it. For that reason, his 2:35 sounds somewhat longer than her 3:10.


Jean Martinon’s Sonatine No. 5, coming near the recital’s center, provides a slice of spiced meat among the sweets. She plays with prepossessing bravado at the opening of the second movement, but spikes the whole with energy. Fritz Kreisler didn’t slink and slide in his Caprice viennois the way Moretti does (compare, however, his two recordings from May 11 and 18, 1910—which themselves differ surprisingly—to his last, much more mannered one, from January 15, 1942), but her way in it makes a sense of its own kind. Its middle section is bright enough, but the outer section is softer-grained than, say, Zino Francescatti’s. Her even quarters in the first section of Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro remind me of the similar opening of David Nadien’s recording. Kreisler himself didn’t record the piece, which has been acclaimed by critics as the best of his lot, so we’ll never know what he would have done (Moretti does play the return of the quarter notes more subtly than their initial statement), although Carl Flesch relates that the composer didn’t take the Allegro too rapidly. Neither does Moretti, though it’s fast enough to throw off highlights (she approaches the cadenza slowly, but then mixes a real cocktail of sounds at the end). Jules Massenet’s popular Meditation may be the single most frequently requested violin piece in my experience, and Moretti plays it with such beauty of tone and glowing ardor that it’s easy to see why.


The program concludes with Moritz Moszkowski’s ingratiating Suite in G Minor for Two Violins and Piano, in which Robert McDuffie joins Moretti and Pridgen. McDuffie and Moretti seem well matched tonally (though he’s playing the 1735 Ladenburg Guarneri del Gésu) and stylistically through this work’s four movements. Together, Moretti and McDuffie produce an almost orchestral sonority, a tribute perhaps to Moszkowski’s skill in writing for the instruments, but also to the two violinists channeling his spirit. If it’s lightweight fare, listeners should note that the ability to make such pieces sound worthy of a hearing used to be more highly prized in earlier eras, and Moretti and the ensemble possess this ability in abundance. Although the recital will appeal most strongly to Moretti’s followers, all the well-played numbers suggest a broader recommendation to a wider audience—especially on account of Moszkowski’s suite.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Sono Luminus is proud to present this two-disc set from pianist Michael Landrum, Nocturnes, bringing together a plethora of composers’ works that enliven the nocturne genre of music.

The nocturne genre has long been a topic of interest to Mr. Landrum. He has had the opportunity to share his insights into this ever-evolving repertoire on many occasions throughout the country. - Sono Luminus

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"...A professor of music at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY, Landrum has made something of a specialty of the nocturne. Of the many approaches to the form featured here, a few are highly tumultuous. Take Tcherepnin’s Nocturne Op. 2 No. 1, whose middle section consists almost exclusively of crashing octaves and sixths or sevenths, and whose outer sections are dark and foreboding. Or consider Tchaikovsky’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor, with its challenging final section. Or Bizet’s Nocturne, which builds drama like an operatic potboiler. Others here are gems of dreamy, fleeting emotions..." - WQXR

SUESSE Concerto for 2 Pianos and Orchestra. McDONALD Concerto for 2 Pianos and Orchestra. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Concerto for 2 Pianos and Orchestra • Long Duo; Patrick Souillot, cond; Eskichir Greater Municipality SO • SONO LUMINUS DSL 92129 (68: 37)


The talented and comely (judging from the booklet cover photo) Taiwanese sisters Beatrice and Christina Long demonstrated considerable enterprise in selecting a couple of rarely performed two-piano concertos (Suesse and McDonald) for this debut recording for the new label Sono Luminus. And, given the limited repertoire for this combination, their additional choice of the roilingly rough-hewn Vaughan Williams makes a kind of sense, although we are still awaiting a first recording of the Piston effort in this genre.


Dana Suesse (1909–87) was a Kansas City prodigy who in her 20s became a prominent member of the “metropolitan” school of composers gathered about, and promoted by, showman-musician Paul Whiteman. After Whiteman’s landmark Aeolian Hall concert that launched Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue , Whiteman became a mentor to a flock of homegrown composers who had one foot firmly in popular music but aspired to concert hall status, thus instituting our first generation of Third Stream music. More or less at the same time (the early ’30s) that Suesse was publishing such hit songs as You Oughta Be in Pictures and My Silent Love (the latter adapted from an earlier piano piece, Nocturne ), she was soloist in the Whiteman premiere of her Concerto in Three Rhythms, which has just been issued on Naxos.


Suesse’s Two-Piano Concerto was labored over during most the 1930s and finally premiered in 1943 by Eugene Goossens with the celebrated two-piano team of Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robinson as soloists. This four-movement piece is a serious and well-proportioned work that, as opposed to the earlier concerto, has only a few dim echoes of Suesse’s pop background. The themes are songfully distinctive and appealing, the formal structure clear and traditional, and the harmonic language an auspicious blend of Grieg and salon music without any soupçon of pretense or banality. This is one of those once-obscure scores that was well worth reviving.


Harl McDonald (1899–1955) was a California-born composer who in later years became closely identified with the Philadelphia Orchestra (eventually serving as its manager) during both the Stokowski and Ormandy eras. A good deal of his music was once available on shellac but, except for his utterly disarming suite for harp and chamber orchestra, From Childhood, it has mostly fallen, undeservedly, into oblivion. Most of his work derived from programmatic concepts (even the four symphonies have movements with titles), but this 1936 two-piano concerto was one of his exceptional efforts in absolute form. As such, it is a very engaging work in conventional tripartite form using a type of Yankee-accented sub-Rachmaninoff idiom, with the middle movement an unexpected theme and variations and the finale employing some of McDonald’s favorite “south of the border” elements. Though the original Stokowski-led recording was reissued on Cala as one of “Stokowski Rarities,” a modern recording was overdue and this one more than meets the mark.


Originally conceived in the 1920s as a solo piano concerto, Vaughan Williams’s Two-Piano Concerto was revised by the composer two decades later, in the process doubling its quotient of energy and tumult. This is quite a challenging score for both the soloists and the orchestra and on balance the Longs hold their own against previous recordings by Whittemore and Lowe (RCA vinyl with Golschmann conducting), Markham and Broadway (Menuhin conducting on Virgin Classics), and the unusually emphatic and fast-clipped Vronsky and Babin, with Boult maintaining a furious pace, on EMI. Though as thoroughly professional as this provincial Turkish orchestra sounds, it can hardly be expected to meet the standards set by the Royal and London Philharmonics. Bearing that in mind, this is a still an acceptably faithful account of the music.


For the Suesse and McDonald works, together with a knowledgeable annotation by the unique cabaret pianist and singer Peter Mintun (who back in the 1970s brought Dana Suesse out of retirement to attend a Carnegie Hall concert of her music featuring conductor Frederick Fennell and pianist Cy Coleman!), this is an essential release not likely to be duplicated in the near or far future. Grab it!


FANFARE: Paul A. Snook

Classical Music

Classical Music

Sono Luminus proudly presents the first surround sound recording of Zelenka’s five Capriccios. The complex scores have been brought to life under the direction of conductor Daniel Abraham, who also crafted this new edition of the works. This sonic masterpiece of the Baroque is presented using all period instruments including natural horn for the virtuosic horn lines. This album is presented in a 2-disc package with 1 CD and 1 stunning Blu-ray Audio disc.

Past and present come together in this vibrant release from Sono Luminus, But Not Forgotten: Music by African-American Composers for Clarinet & Piano, as clarinetist Marcus Eley, and pianist Lucerne DeSa display the timeless class and musical stylings of composers whose music runs rich with the knowledge and desire of gifts to be returned through the notes on a page, and the instrument in one's hand.

Marcus Eley writes, "For many years, I have had the privilege of performing recitals featuring African-American composers for clarinet and piano. I have felt these composers needed a format, a champion, to make certain their compositions for my instrument were not ignored. In current classical or “art music”, there is little representation in mainstream recorded music of the African-American composer. Vocal music tends to be the exception. However, for solo wind instrument, especially the clarinet, there is nothing. I want this CD of clarinet and piano music to celebrate these African-American composers. Further, it is my desire that their unique voices are heard and not forgotten."

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REVIEW:

Marcus Eley has done a great service to African-American composers. He is a brilliantly talented advocate for his instrument who successfully exploits everything a clarinet can do while Lucerne DeSa is an extremely sympathetic partner. Together they have created a disc of unalloyed joy. I sincerely hope that there will be more in the pipeline as he suggests this is only the tip of a musical iceberg in terms of similar works by other unknown composers.

– MusicWeb International

In their latest release with Sono Luminus, the celebrated artists of Cuarteto Latinoamericano have brought together a stunning collection of selections from Brazil entitled Brasileiro: Works of Francisco Mignone. They are also joined on the Seresta No. 2 by the talented La Catrina Quartet.

Francisco Mignone (1897 - 1986) was one of the most accomplished musicians Brazil has ever had. In addition to being a masterful composer, he was also a great teacher, a successful conductor, an exceptional pianist, a great orchestrator, and in addition, a man of extensive culture. Because he settled in Rio de Janeiro in 1933, many people forget that Mignone was born in Sao Paulo, in 1897. A son of Italian immigrants, he began studying music with his father, who was an excellent flutist. In 1920 Mignone travels to Italy, where he studies with Vincenzo Ferroni (1858-1934), who had taught other Brazilian composers. It was there that he composed his first opera, “O Contratador de Diamantes” (“The Diamond Contractor”). He returned to Brazil in 1929, and in 1933 Mignone moves permanently to Rio de Janeiro and begins to occupy important chairs in the musical life of what was then the federal capital, including Music Director of the National Institute of Music’s Orchestra.

R E V I E W :



MIGNONE String Quartets: No. 1; No. 2. 3 Spanish Songs. 2 Essays. Barcarola. Minuet • Latinoamericano Qrt • SONO LUMINUS DSL 92147 (60:27)


Francisco Mignone (1897–1986), a Brazilian of Italian background, was a much-loved figure in the musical circles of Rio de Janeiro. BIS produced a disc of his orchestral music in 2005 (see Fanfare 28:6), and here we have a disc of his string-quartet music from the distinguished Latinoamericano Quartet. Mignone was a secondary composer, exhibiting all the good points of that species, such as highly refined craftsmanship, a working knowledge of instruments, and a solid sense of form. His music for string quartet is by no means groundbreaking, either technically (Bartók) or expressively (Shostakovich—or, nearer to home, Revueltas), yet while it may lack individuality, the composer’s incorporation of Latin American rhythms and bluesy harmonies into his work does give it a distinctively nationalistic voice. A breeziness to his music invokes an idealized Brazilian countryside; moreover, unlike the music of Villa-Lobos, there is never any suggestion of note-spinning or filler passages. Mignone is succinct.


The masterpiece is the Second Quartet, which opens the disc. Its first movement contains flowing melodic writing, with a cheeky use of portamento , while the concluding third movement has a bracing rhythmic zest. The slow movement, however, is the real gem; beginning with a soulful Villa-Lobos type theme from the cello, it progresses to an agitated middle section (featuring slithery chromatic harmony) to close on a beguiling jazz-flavored cadence.


The First Quartet follows the same structural pattern of fast/slow/fast. Its first movement is more fragmentary; the second movement is notable for a hint of the tango within its intricate and evocative textures. The finale is a relatively amiable, full-toned rondo. Both quartets were composed simultaneously in 1957, Mignone’s annus mirabilis for string-quartet writing.


The remainder of the program consists of small works where the composer’s creative impulse might be termed more easygoing. Most of them date from earlier in his career. My favorites are the Three Spanish Songs, transcriptions Mignone made of songs he wrote while visiting Spain in 1932. Despite their provenance, they are pervaded by a lyricism that could only be called Italianate. The first song, a subdued lullaby titled Nana , is particularly lovely. Similarly, the Andante cantabile (the first of the Two Essays ) is unashamedly romantic.


The Latinoamericano plays this program to perfection. We owe the group so much for its tireless investigation of Latin repertoire, of which this disc is yet another shining example. I would recommend it for those times when Bartók feels too aggressive or Shostakovich too melancholy. In fact, in terms of melodic flow and expressivity, the quartet composer who comes to mind as a yardstick is Borodin.


Sound quality is excellent.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music