With Gregory Brown's FALL AND DECLINE on Navona Records, the composer chronicles the heights to which humanity can soar-but also the depths to which it may come crashing down. Scored for the solo voices of virtuosic vocal sextet Variant 6 and electronics, the sounds range from typical choral textures (though peppered with microtones) to angular and aggressive electronic soundscapes. The lyrics may span two-and-a-half millennia, but their spirit and subjects are abiding: humankind's struggle against the limitations of time, conflict, inevitable decay. Persian rulers of the fifth century BCE, Baroque historians, poets of the Victorian age, contemporary wordsmiths, they are all caught in a grander, timeless labor-as is every one of us. FALL AND DECLINE is a stern reminder of Humanity's ephemerality, but even more, it's a harbinger of hope, a celebration of creative endeavors despite perpetual adversity.

Dr. Graham Griffiths writes: “Every recording of Stravinsky’s ‘complete works for solo piano’ is a considerable achievement. However, this latest 5-album cycle with Russian pianist Alexey Zuev is a cause for special celebration for it also includes all of Stravinsky’s piano transcriptions and arrangements, many of which have never before been recorded – indeed, until now, some have remained completely unknown. This project, therefore, represents a significant milestone in Stravinsky recording history. Alexey Zuev and Outhere Music are to be congratulated for bringing every corner of Stravinsky’s pianistic catalogue into the wider musical conversation, and for making the case most convincingly that all of this solo repertoire, whether original or transcribed, deserves to be performed and appreciated as part of this great composer’s innovative canon of piano works.”

A few months ago, Avishai Cohen was releasing his symphonic album “Two Roses”, a “once in a lifetime project", he said. After a successful release and more than a hundred reviews around the world – the Israeli composer, singer, and bass player returns to jazz with a dazzling new trio: Elchin Shirinov, still on the piano and, on drums, the arrival of the young and incredibly talented Roni Kaspi, who joined the band during the 2021 summer tour. This new album “Shifting Sands”, recorded in August 2021, re-engages with this very special alchemy that Cohen’s music provides: fresh and expansive melodic lines, diverse and sophisticated rhythms and a musical elegance that only he can achieve.

REVIEW:

Consistency and excellence are two of the most fundamental requisites for achieving an optimal career in music. The Israeli bassist and composer Avishai Cohen has maintained those standards for many years, and his new trio emerges with a powerful offering that should reinforce his status as a jazz-based titan. This formation enlists familiar, longtime collaborator Elchin Shirinov on piano with a relative newcomer and recent Berklee graduate, 21-year old drummer Roni Kaspi. The results of their initial collaboration are stirring from start to finish.

Cohen's confidence in his team and his material is apparent from how often he remains in the background. On the opening "Intertwined," Shirinov sets the tone and gets the first solo while Kaspi snaps across the rims and cymbal heads in lead-type notation. Cohen does not come to the fore until two songs later, on the relaxed "Dvash," the first of three solo-type interludes, then demonstrates his proficiency on the bow during "Chacha Rom." "Hitragut" is a sweet summer song that lands like a Central Park serenade. Many pieces follow a basic structure that begins with one or two sharply repeated patterns, rolls into transitional overlaps, then returns along the opening framework in a formula that fits the album's title theme perfectly.

One of the most impressive things about this this exceptional record is how much masterful mileage each member gets from a relatively small number of notes or beats. Top rank creativity, aptitude, and technique are some other things that make for musical success. There is an abundance of all that and more to be found in this new trio.

-- AllAboutJazz.com (Phillip Woolever)

Stéphane Denève, triple winner of the Diapason d’Or of the Year, produced many outstanding recordings as chief conductor of the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart from 2011 until 2016 when the orchestra merged with its sister orchestra from Baden-Baden and Freiburg to form the SWR Symphony Orchestra. They are now reissued as a five album boxed set including the ballet Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel's longest work, written for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and the operas L'Heure espagnole and L'Enfant et les sortileges. Although the two operas cannot be strictly considered orchestral works, they are essential to understanding the œuvre of a composer who had a great predilection for fantasy worlds and the exotic. As a student Ravel composed the Ouverture de Shéhérazade and, several years leter, three poems for voice and orchestra on the same topic – both works form part of this set. Throughout his entire career, from Une barque sur l'ocean to Ma mère L'Oye Ravel created magical soundscapes in a highly original manner and with great stylistic freedom. A big inspiration for him was American operetta but also jazz and fairy tales. The formal structure of his works has the clarity of crystal and the elegance of mathematics. The SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart and the cast of young singers selected by Denève give thrilling interpretations.

REVIEWS:

Denève was the final Chief Conductor of this orchestra, from 2011-2016, after which they merged with the South West German Radio Orchestra for budgetary reasons. Their timbre is mellow and warm, akin to that of the Boston Symphony, but their ensemble playing and attack are tight.

The set is a highly worthwhile investment if you want a single collection of Ravel’s orchestral music. The sound is warm, clear, and spacious. Highly recommended.

-- Limelight (Australia)

Denève is very consistent in his meticulously prepared if slightly detached style. The playing and engineering is consistently very good indeed. The price of this box set is attractive. The song cycle and the two operas engaged me the most.

-- MusicWeb International

Now on vinyl! The accordion is an instrument that is deeply rooted in Lithuanian folk music. Today, the accordion is also recognized as a versatile instrument of classical music, a change in perception that has largely been promoted by Martynas Levickis, one of the most internationally sought-after musicians in his field. With its lightness and melancholy, Astor Piazzolla’s music has fascinated the young accordionist from an early age, and so it goes without saying that he is dedicating himself to this exceptional composer in his anniversary year. Together with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra he recorded "Aconcagua" live in concert. For conductor Modestas Pitrenas, Piazzolla's concerto - named posthumously after the highest mountain in the Americas - "conveys the climb to the roof of the earth in all its facets and symbolism: freedom, longing, loneliness, pain, transfiguration, peace." Levickis has a long and close collaboration with the chamber orchestra "Mikroórkestra". Together they present their interpretation of "Las Cuatro Estaciones Portenas," Piazzolla's timeless masterpieces of many styles that capture in music the four seasons in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires.

There is no better recordings of the strio trio repertoire than those you will find here. - David Hurwitz (ClassicsToday.com)

In 2007 Frank Peter Zimmermann was able to realize his long-cherished dream to establish a string trio, together with Antoine Tamestit and Christian Poltéra. Three individually superb string players do not necessarily add up to a top-flight trio – even if they all play on instruments by Stradivarius, as here – but Trio Zimmermann immediately made a name for itself at international festivals and prestigious concert venues.

In 2010 the trio released its first album – with Mozart's seminal Divertimento – to critical acclaim. (More than 10 years later, that recording was the top recommendation in the Record Review series Building a Library on BBC Radio 3.) On following offerings, the ensemble explored the later repertoire for string trio: two discs with Beethoven's contributions to the genre, and a third with works by Hindemith and Schoenberg which have garnered distinctions such as Diapason de l’Année, the Chamber Award from BBC Music Magazine and a ‘Jahrespreis’ from the German Record Critics’ Award association. For their fifth disc to date the trio went back in time, however, as the three members together prepared a performing version of Bach's Goldberg Variations, described as ‘a triumph of combined technical ingenuity and musical insight’ in The Strad. These five discs have now been collected into a boxed-set retrospective, offering lovers of chamber music more than 5 hours of glorious music-making, in top-notch sound and including the original booklets with full documentation.

Past praise for previously released albums included in this set:

Bach: Goldberg Variations

The expertise and fluency of the Zimmermann's playing is evident. Their approach to dynamics is refreshingly flexible, and all three players bring a graceful approach to ornamentation.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Beethoven: String Trios, Op. 9, Nos. 1-3

These musicians are in command of the meticulously written extremes in expression, sforzandos not indiscriminately stabbed at but gauged according to the contexts in which they appear. Tempi are gauged to a nicety too. In sum, they do Beethoven proud throughout this exceptionally fine disc.

-- Gramophone

Hindemith & Schoenberg: String Trios

The Trio Zimmermann play them both Hindemith works with such energy, panache, and attention to the minutest detail that they are totally convincing and make a perfect foil to the rigors of the Schoenberg that follows.

-- The Guardian

Trio Zimmermann play Mozart & Schubert

The Zimmerman Trio plays with remarkably accurate intonation and a ravishing tone that’s also mindful of the Classical style. In other words, they don’t lay it on too thick, but they aren’t afraid to let the melodic lines sing. Schubert’s single-movement trio makes the perfect coupling.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

Beethoven: String Trios, Op. 3; Serenade, Op. 8

The Zimmermann Trio offers what must be the finest recording of Beethoven's Op. 3 since the classic mono Heifetz/Primrose/Piatigorsky version. They bring out all of the first movement’s requisite brio, paying heed to the syncopated rhythmic underpinnings that support the scampering triplet passages. The ensemble lightens its sonority for the Andante without sacrificing body and definition, while they articulate the Menuetto’s two-note phrase groups and subito dynamics in strict tempo yet in a way that’s oblivious to the bar lines. While the Finale is a model of controlled ferocity, the musicians are not afraid to let the lyrical sections sing out sweetly (never cloyingly).

Power and delicacy effortlessly coexist in the Serenade’s opening March, while subtle dynamic gradations distinguish the Menuetto’s loud arpeggiatted tuttis. The Adagio’s long unison lines offer cogent proof that one can employ minimum vibrato and still retain a focused and alive sonority. The March returns da capo at the end of the piece, with slightly more emphatic fortes and lighter pianos this time around. The warmth, clarity, and ambient realism of BIS’s surround-sound engineering holds equal appeal when experienced in conventional stereo playback mode. This release is not just a worthy follow-up to the Zimmermann Trio’s magnificent Mozart K. 563 and Beethoven Op. 9 Trio traversals, but a reference disc in its own right. Bravo!

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Jed Distler)

When Capriccio started out in 1982, still producing LPs and tapes, it was the first digital Beethoven Symphony cycle with the Dresden Philharmonic and Herbert Kegel that first turned heads. Several other key projects were pivotal to the label quickly establishing a reputation as a source of quality music and performances. Foremost among them, never out of the catalogue and still loved today, are the recordings with Sandor Végh. Then, in the mid-nineties those of Sir Neville Marriner’s, who, after long being synonymous with the Philips label, recorded widely for Capriccio, both with his Academy Of St Martin in the Fields and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. Contemporaries of Mozart’s that have emerged on Capriccio include Joseph Martin Kraus, François-Joseph Gossec, and Jan Ladislav Dussek. They are performed by early music and classical period Capriccio-favorites such as Concerto Köln or the CPE Bach Chamber Orchestra. This box set features the label’s most important ensembles, orchestras, and conductors, from the classical period to the 20th century, when, in 2005, Capriccio released the first complete Shostakovich Cycle with the Gürzenich Orchestra and Dmitrji Kitajenko.

With 22 symphonies, 17 string quartets, 9 concertos, and 7 operas, the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg left behind an extensive oeuvre. Musically, one can hear the composer's close friendship with Dmitri Shostakovich, although Weinberg's music is more lyrical and romantic in nature. Nevertheless, the composer was long forgotten and his music has only been rediscovered in the last ten years. Gidon Kremer has dedicated himself to the rediscovery and cultivation of Weinberg's music.

Classical Music

Christophe Moyreau (1700-1774) was born and spent most of his life in Orléans. He became organist at Orléans Collégiale Saint-Aignan in February 1719 and at Orléans Cathedral in January 1738 and occupied this position until around 1772. In French music of his era (secular and also religious), an important place was reserved for the rhythms and structures of the dance. In 1753 Moyreau published his “Pièces de clavecin”, 124 pieces grouped in 6 books. The dances Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, Rigaudon, Menuet are part of Suites, while these books also include concertos and sonatas. Some of the pieces bear titles (in the style of Couperin and Rameau) like La Flotante, Le Baccante, Le Jaloux, La Coquette, Le Preludant, L'Euridice, La Comique, L'Orphée and Le Caprice. Book 6, uniquely for French harpsichord music, consists of several three-movement keyboard simphonies written in Italian style.

Played by Fernando De Luca, one of Italy’s foremost harpsichord players, who recorded to great critical acclaim the complete keyboard works by Graupner, published by Brilliant Classics. The first-ever survey on record of the complete surviving output by a significant contemporary of Rameau: a missing piece in the jigsaw of the French Baroque.

This collection spotlights six legendary pianist-composers from the 19th and 20th centuries. Adolf von Henselt’s ferocious technical studies and Romantic salon pieces led Schumann to dub him ‘the Chopin of the North’. Polish virtuoso Ignaz Friedman’s works offer delightful melodic beauty and harmonic inventiveness set alongside works by his countryman, Józef Hofmann, renowned as a poet of the keyboard. The French master musician Alfred Cortot is represented here with a selection of stylish piano arrangements of works by great composers. As one of Finland’s most respected musicians during the early 20th century, Selim Palmgren displays a wide variety of technical and stylistic challenges with music that is both traditional and visionary; while music by the exiled Russian composer Nikolay Medtner is highly Romantic and spiritually charged. These six towering superstars represent the summit of the piano’s Romantic golden age, heard here in critically acclaimed performances by award-winning pianists.

REVIEWS:

Sergio Gallo's playing of the pleasantly melodic, cantabile salon pieces by the 19th century German-born piano virtuoso, composer, and pedagogue Adolph Henselt (1814-1889) is lively and attractive. He planned this program intelligently to present the listener with variety and contrast as well as the flavor of this composer’s lovely music.

-- American Record Guide

The legendary Swiss pianist Alfred Cortot's (1877-1962) arrangement for solo piano of César Franck’s Violin Sonata, the centerpiece of this program, is a finger-buster, but He Yue doesn’t make a big deal out of it. His reading is very effective, and even exciting. Given the unusual nature of this program, whose contents are much more than adequately presented by the pianist, I’d rate this CD as of more than average interest.

-- Fanfare

Paul Stewart, a long-time champion of Medtner’s music, plays a restored period Steinway actually performed on by the composer himself in 1929 in Montreal. Its tone is well worth hearing, especially in the fine audio on offer here, and Stewart’s even more so: he gives an authoritative, expressive and thoroughly listener-friendly reading of the Medtner works presented here.

-- MusicWeb International

The second CD is dedicated to Ignaz Friedman. Joseph Banowetz plays the original, often somewhat melancholy miniatures with great charm. He succeeds in fine changes of mood and a pleasant depth of feeling.

The third CD contains original compositions by the Pole Jozef Kasimierz Hofmann (1876-1957), whom Rachmaninoff considered the best pianist next to him. His compositions are more characteristic than Henselt’s and technically challenging. Artem Yasynskyy plays them with great commitment and technically at a high level.

Selim Palmgren (1878-1951) was a Finnish concert pianist and conductor of international standing. He was a student of Busoni and composed extensively. Jouni Somero has put together a beautiful program of small pieces that show Palmgren’s art in all its range very well. Somero plays sensitively and with beautiful clarity.

-- Pizzicato

There is hardly a better way to approach Ludwig van Beethoven than through his piano concertos. Beethoven’s own instrument was the piano, and in his improvisations – which made him the darling of the Viennese salons – he merged virtuosity and unbridled expression. The piano concertos give a clear idea of these performances. At the same time, they are prime examples of Beethoven’s ability to create large orchestral works with seemingly endless arcs of tension. One of the most revered artists of our time, Mitsuko Uchida is known as a peerless interpreter of the works of Mozart, Schubert, R. Schumann and Beethoven, as well for being a devotee of the piano music of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and György Kurtág.

Carolina Eyck is one of the most talented theremin players in the world and, at the same time, a YouTube phenomenon. At the age of 7, Carolina learned to play the only instrument in the world that is played without touching it and has built up quite a reputation in the scene. She presents interpretations of well-known classics and original compositions from classical to pop music on this very unusual instrument and composes an exciting mix of ambient, electronica and neo-classical music.

Ralph Vaughan Williams is one of Britain’s most illustrious composers, and this specially curated selection of works demonstrates the sheer breadth of his achievement. As a major 20th century symphonist he is represented by four of his nine symphonies, all in critically acclaimed recordings (‘A clear top recommendation’ wrote Gramophone of A Sea Symphony). Popular orchestral works such as the celebrated Tallis Fantasia and The Lark Ascending are also included. Vaughan Williams’ chamber works are performed by the Maggini Quartet, his greatest contemporary champions; while the sublime Mass in G minor shows the composer’s high standing in the English choral tradition.

REVIEW:

More Vaughan Williams—and very welcome, too. While admirers may favour other performances, every take here on the composer’s exquisite scores is more than competitive. This curated selection of works is a measure of RVW’s achievements. As a major 20th-century symphonist he is represented by four of his nine symphonies, all in much-praised recordings, while winning orchestral works such as the celebrated Tallis Fantasia and The Lark Ascending are also included. Vaughan Williams’ chamber works are performed by the Maggini Quartet, his greatest contemporary champions; while the sublime Mass in G minor is a solid addition.

-- Classical CD Source (Barry Forshaw)

During his thirteen years as chief conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra of SWR Sir Roger Norrington conducted and recorded an important part of Berlioz's core repertoire. The present boxed set brings together on seven CDs the Requiem, the opera Benvenuto Cellini (concert performance), the oratorio L'Enfance du Christ, the overture Les Francs-juges and of course the Symphonie fantastique.

Norrington's style has caused a stir internationally with what has come to be termed ‘The Stuttgart Sound’: a synthesis of historically-informed performance practice with the technical capabilities of a modern orchestra. Whether in Mozart, Haydn, Bruckner, or Berlioz, Norrington seeks to capture the performance experience of the time, adjusting the orchestra’s size and seating plan to create an authentic sound without vibrato.

Hector Berlioz had to surmount a variety of challenges before he was able to pursue his musical vocation. His father, a respected physician in the provincial South of France, was not readily willing to come to terms with his son's intention to quit his medical studies and turn instead to music. He therefore made all further financial support subject to Hector's climbing up the musical ladder at lightning speed. Alas, it didn't work so easily. Berlioz's road to success was tedious and marked by adversity and struggle, his personal life tumultuous. The uniqueness and originality of his musical style are no longer disputed, but this insight came at the end of a decades-long process.