BLUE MOSES was pianist Randy Weston's most popular recording, reaching No. 16 on the Billboard Jazz chart in 1972. Weston is stunningly backed here by Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Grover Washington, Jr.. (tenor sax) and the arrangements of Don Sebesky. The album features four of Westons own compositions, most famously the title track "Ganawa (Blue Moses)" and "Marrakesh Blues".

Sony Classical is proud to release the Summer Night Concert 2015 with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta and featuring guest soloist, world-renowned pianist, Rudolph Buchbinder. This annual open-air event has been held since 2008 on the park grounds of the Scho?nbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria, and airs nationwide on PBS on August 28. Recorded live on May 14, 2015, the program features two works by Edvard Grieg, the popular Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 and Concerto for Piano an Orchestra in A Minor, Op. 16.

This year’s Summer Night Concert was conducted by Zubin Mehta who is one of the most legendary conductors of our time. Maestro Mehta conducted the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert 2015, and he and the orchestra share a long history together. In 1961 he conducted his first concert with the Vienna Philharmonic and in 2001, after forty years of artistic collaboration as the orchestra’s longest-serving conductor, he was awarded an honorary membership in the Vienna Philharmonic. Mehta is joined by guest soloist, Rudolph Buchbinder, one of the world’s foremost pianists who is frequently invited to perform with major orchestras around the world. With the UNESCO World Heritage setting of the Baroque park of Scho?nbrunn Palace as the backdrop, the Summer Night Concert 2015 adds stunning visuals to the superb musical program.

Okay, there are no cannons in the 1812 Overture, but when the playing is this amazing you’re hardly going to care. These performances are fabulous. You also get Tchaikovsky’s Marche slave and the Marche miniature from his Suite No. 1; Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave Overture; Kabalevsky’s Colas Breugnon Overture; Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmilla Overture; Borodin’s Polovtsian March; Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1; and Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountain. In this latter work, particularly, you’re not going to believe the precision and transparency that Reiner commands, as well as a climax that will blow you away. The couplings may be something of a grab-bag, but when everything you grab out of the bag is sensational, there’s no point in complaining. Vintage Living Stereo sound too, excellently restored. Wow!

— David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Grammy Winning band Bajofondo release their latest album, PRESENTE, an epic 21-track high energy tour de force that blends of tango, milonga, folklore, rock, hip-hop, electronica, jazz, classical and a world of sounds from the Rio de la Plata.

Drawn from the worldwide catalog holdings of Sony Classical, which includes both the Columbia/CBS and RCA Victor label imprints, the SONY Classical Originals, SONY Classical Masters Singles and Box Sets, SONY Opera and Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible pressed import editions, smartly-designed and graphically-pleasing, featuring the most sought after recordings by the world's preeminent, legendary artists both past and present, with many titles newly re-mastered in 24bit High Resolution Audio.

"• Exclusive to Naxos! • All titles never before available in the U.S.! • Incredible value; budget prices! • German pressings of the immense Sony Classical Masters Catalog in smart, desirable and collectible multi-disc editions • The Sony catalog is replete with legendary artists and many of the greatest recordings of the classical repertoire • Box fronts feature large, prominently displayed photo of the featured artist • Slender, shelf-friendly boxes; CD's housed in space-saving slipsleeves"

Soundtrack to the 2011 movie based on the award winning British TV series Inbetweeners. Includes exclusive music from Mike Skinner (The Streets) plus tracks from Calvin Harris, Ke$ha, Miles Kane and Everything Everything. Sony.

SCHUBERT Symphony No. 8, “Unfinished.” Rondo A. Polonaise B?. Concertpiece in D • David Zinman, cond; Andreas Janke (vn); Zurich Tonhalle O • RCA 88697 953352 (51:50)


Released alongside his bracing disc of Schubert’s first two symphonies comes David Zinman’s account of the “Unfinished,” here correctly albeit confusingly labeled the Seventh. Competition is naturally fiercer, although versions on period instruments are surprisingly thin on the ground. (The Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra employs modern instruments but period practice.) With its turbulent, brooding development sections, the “Unfinished” feels amazingly like a late-Romantic work, at home in the big, sweeping orchestral style of Brahms, and so anyone used to the classic versions from Böhm, Karajan, and Carlos Kleiber will find the initial cleanness of Zinman’s approach quite startling, although he is not nearly as historically puritan as the likes of Roger Norrington or Christopher Hogwood.


Although Zinman does rush occasionally in the first movement, he sustains the tension and multiple climaxes well, and delivers those shocking dynamic contrasts without ruining the slowly built-up developments. The Tonhalle’s woodwinds are stunning here, biting and expressive, and making many a rival version feel rather blended and dull. The second movement is also beautifully played, although at such a nippy tempo the second subject does feel rushed. Nevertheless, the flow and sincerity are impressive in a movement that many drag out and turn maudlin. Certainly this is an “Unfinished” with which to savor all of Schubert’s conflicting musical layers, and yet, as on the previous Schubert disc, Zinman manages this textual precision without sacrificing warmth and body in the sound. I would not want to be without a big, modern-instrument version, like Kleiber’s with the Vienna Philharmonic, but Zinman’s Schubert is as refreshing as first hearing Beethoven played on period instruments.


What makes the disc more appealing still are the unusual couplings. Although we will forever lament the surprising lack of a violin or indeed any concerto from Schubert, these sweet little works for violin and orchestra are some consolation. Lightweight early works they may be, but they do genuinely have enough thematic substance to make one wish Schubert had developed the scores into a full-blown concerto. The Rondo, especially, is the equal of anything from Mozart’s violin concertos. The Polonaise is a diverting little nothing, but the weightier Konzertstück really should be played more often. With lovely solo playing from the Tonhalle’s concertmaster, Andreas Janke, this makes a fascinating contrast to the symphony’s dark complexity.


Historically informed this may be, but Zinman is not a vibrato fascist and despite the punchy dynamics and fast tempi, there is a sense of breadth and line throughout this disc, with none of that itchy, belabor-a-point fussiness that kills a lot of period playing. Although Zinman didn’t convince me in the Mahler I’ve heard him in, this Schubert series proves him to be a master of the classical form, as vibrant and winning as on his Beethoven and Schumann series. RCA’s sound is full, warm, and detailed, although predictably the dynamic range is so ridiculously wide that the pianissimo opening of the “Unfinished” Symphony only registers fully with the sound turned up. Otherwise, this is a quality release with excellent booklet notes, and it looks set to change Schubert’s reputation as a second-class symphonist.


FANFARE: Barnaby Rayfield

The Moravian Duets were the first works of Antonín Dvorák to bring him wide fame. Early in 1875, the composer chose four poems from a collection of Moravian national folk verse and set them to music in the form of duets for soprano and tenor. These were among Dvorák’s earliest attempts to infuse his music with the rising spirit of Czech nationalism, and were so successful that the following year, he composed another duet cycle of fourteen Moravian songs and, in 1877, a third set of four songs, both cycles being conceived for soprano and contralto.

Felix Mendelssohn composed more than seventy songs for solo voice, charming Lieder which often emphasized atmosphere rather than the explicit meaning of the poet’s lines. During the years 1836–1844, Mendelssohn composed his first of three groups of vocal duets with piano, Opus 63, which are recorded here for the first time. Three other duets were published posthumously as Opus 77, and his Drei Volkslieder completes the composer’s brief list of works in this genre.

Pablo Casals Six Songs for Soprano, recorded here for the first time, span a creative period of almost sixty-five years. n 1895, at the age of nineteen, Casals composed his “Cançó Catalana No. 1,” using as his text a poem by Jascinte Verdaguer, the foremost poet of Spain’s Catalan region and a close friend of the composer. “Cançó Catalana No. 2,” composed at about the same time as No. 1, has words by a contemporary of Verdaguer, the poet Apeles Mestres, also a friend of Casals. “De Cara al Mar” dates from 1935 and its text is by the twentieth-century Catalan poet Joan Llongueras. “Ballada de la Nova Solveig” is by another twentieth-century Catalan poet, Ventura Gasol. These poets also were friends of Casals.

Tomas Blanco and Rafael Montañez are Puerto Rican poets who came to know Casals after he took up residence in Puerto Rico in the late ’50’s. Casals’ set- ting of Blanco’s “Tres Estrofas de Amor” dates from 1958 and is dedicated to the composer’s wife Marta. “El Angel Travieso,” a setting of the poem by Rafael Montañez, was completed in 1959.

Founded in 1950 as a chamber-music workshop for professional musicians, the Marlboro Festival has attracted outstanding concert and chamber-music artists who have come to Vermont at their own expense to exchange musical ideas and to play chamber music. Away from the routine pressures of professional activity, they are free to explore the vast literature combining piano, strings, woodwinds, brass and voice, with concern only for the music itself. Weekend Festival concerts have been described by Time magazine as “the most exciting chamber music in the U.S.”

Verklaerte Nacht (Transfigured Night) was Arnold Schoenberg’s first major work and remains after sixty-odd years by far his most popular one. It was composed in three weeks (September 1899) but had to wait four years for its first performance. Although we now recognize the late Wagnerian idiom of the work and its harmonic superabundance, early audiences found it shatteringly new and difficult. This may have been owing to the novelty of the form: Verklaerte Nacht is a symphonic poem written not for the mammoth orchestra fashionable at the turn of the century but for six string players. When Schoenberg transcribed it for string orchestra in 1917 the musical public began to respond more enthusiastically. But the original version, with its purer intonation and greater intimacy, does better justice to the intentions of the composer and of his program.

Although Faure?’s one hundred and three songs were spread over his long career as a composer, they show a remarkable consistency of style from first to last. Aaron Copland said of one of his relatively early songs, “All of Faure? is contained in its three short pages.” La bonne chanson is the song cycle in which Faure?’s art rises to its apogee. Norman Suckling has called it “the supreme example in musical history of a work, written to an amorous programme, which loses nothing and gains a great deal by its tone of exquisite urbanity and by the sense of design, rather than passionate outpouring, that pervades it.” Faure? chose nine of the poems written by Paul Verlaine to his fiance?e during a brief period of happiness when he anticipated becoming a bridegroom. The poems themselves belong among the finest blossoms of French lyric art, but Faure?’s settings are (to quote Suckling) “even better than their texts. For Verlaine, keenly armed and delicate poet though he was, sometimes lacks the last touch of reserve ... which will enable an artist to endure the most penetrating scrutiny of a civilized mind.”That reserve was one of Faure?’s strongest attributes.

Founded in 1950 as a chamber music workshop for professional musicians, the Marlboro Festival has attracted outstanding concert and chamber music artists who have come to Vermont at their own expense to exchange musical ideas and to play chamber music. Away from the routine pressures of professional activity, they are free to explore the vast literature combining piano, strings, woodwinds, brass and voice, with concern only for the music itself. Weekend Festival concerts have been described by Time magazine as “the most exciting chamber music in the U.S.”

From the colorful theatricality of Crumb to the feedback noise of Cage's Feed, this CD displays the wide palette that was new music during the latter 20th century.

A diverse performer with multi-faceted vocal talents, Kristin Chenoweth is one of today's most highly recognizable stars of stage, television and film. On her fourth studio album, SOME LESSONS LEARNED, the Emmy and Tony Award winning singer returns to her musical roots and offers a personal look into her life experiences as a woman. SOME LESSONS LEARNED is a tribute to the music Kristin listened to growing up in Oklahoma. It was produced in Nashville by the legendary Bob Ezrin (Peter Gabriel, KISS, Pink Floyd). It features songs by elite pop and country songwriters including Diane Warren, Desmond Child, Dolly Parton, Tom Douglas, Hillary Scott, Jodi Marr, Victoria Shaw, Eric Brazilian, Gary Burr and Shane McAnnally.

Drawn from the worldwide catalog holdings of Sony Classical, which includes both the Columbia/CBS and RCA Victor label imprints, the SONY Classical Originals, SONY Classical Masters Singles and Box Sets, SONY Opera and Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible pressed import editions, smartly-designed and graphically-pleasing, featuring the most sought after recordings by the world's preeminent, legendary artists both past and present, with many titles newly re-mastered in 24bit High Resolution Audio.

On this 2010 release, four powerful American voices come together for one important cause: To support active military members and American veterans and honor their sacrifices through song. 4Troops are not only seasoned vocalists but also United States combat veterans that served on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. The CD includes a collection of patriotic and uplifting songs designed to entertain and spread their positive message to all serving troops, veterans and American citizens who are inspired by them every day. A portion of the proceeds from the sales of 4Troops products will benefit charities that support American veterans and active military members and their families.

This is not an opera program, nor is it a classical vocal recital or typical mix of traditional songs and arias, although this new recording from tenor Vittorio Grigolo has elements of all three. Rather, it is a celebration of the true Italian singer, Italian music, and whatever innate spirit and style embodied in both makes them inseparable and unique. And if you’ve any doubt that Grigolo is the real thing, “The Ital- ian tenor” as claimed on his debut recording, skip for the moment the superbly sung disc-opening opera arias (Rigoletto, Tosca, Martha, La?traviata, Così, and listen to “Non ti scordar di me” and “O paese d’ ’o sole.” Here is the passion, the joy, the truth of a master singer connecting with his listeners — and what a voice!

Grigolo has been said by some to be the heir of Pavarotti — fine. But Grigolo’s voice has purityand innate beauty along with the passion; a ringing, golden top; a centered, solidly secure placement across his range; and none of the spread, forced, hard-edged upper- register tone of his predecessor. Grigolo is young and talented, with natural gifts and a devotion to his art that bodes well for his future. He seems to understand that this is a long-term proposi- tion; that there is a difference between selling your talent and building a career; that to be a great singer, to sustain a career, to make music that is memorable and meaningful across years of performances and all manner of audiences takes time and care and patience, that a deep respect for the craft of singing is at least as important as an appreciation for one’s natural ability. Grigolo is not immune from a little over-the-top indulgence (Enrico Cannio’s “O surdata ‘nnammurato”), but you won’t mind because at the same time you will be savoring the memory of his meltingly affecting “Un’ aura amorosa” (Cosi) and powerful “Recondita armonia” (Tosca) and “È la solita storia” (L’arlesiana). The sound, recorded in Parma’s Auditorium Niccoló Paganini and London’s Wathen Hall, is ideal; the orchestral playing and direction is spot on.

—?David?Vernier, Listen: Life With Classical Music