According to Raphael Stevens and Pablo Servigne, collapsology is not a messianic prediction but: "the transdisciplinary exercise of studying the collapse of our thermo-industrial civilization, and what might succeed it, based on the two cognitive modes of reason and intuition, and on known scientific work". Comment tout peut s'�ffondrer ("How Everything Can Fall Apart") demonstrates the vulnerability of our societies and the systemic risk of their possible collapse. Because today, utopia has changed sides. A utopian is someone who believes that everything can continue as before. The �ditions philosophiques Fr�meaux & Associ�s welcome this seminal work from 2015, completed by an update in 2021, which formalizes the new paradigms of the challenges facing humanity. Audiobook, in French.

Leroy Anderson occupies a unique place in American music. Rigorously trained in the classical tradition, Anderson wrote tunes that topped the pop charts, making compositions such as Sleigh Ride and The Typewriter world famous. Anderson was a meticulous craftsman who could seemingly compose marvelous tunes at will, and he has been praised by composer John Williams as 'one of the great American masters of light orchestral music.' This first set of Anderson's orchestral music includes several previously unpublished pieces made available by the Anderson family, with world premiere recordings included among many familiar and not so familiar titles.

Joseph Haydn is regarded as the "father of the symphony" and the "father of the string quartet" for his more than 100 symphonies and almost 70 string quartets. Haydn also produced numerous operas, masses, concertos, piano sonatas and other compositions. His oratorios The Creation and The Seasons, both composed in the last decade of Haydn’s active compositional life, are his most widely known and admired choral compositions today, just as they were in his lifetime. Recordings from some of Haydn’s most formidable interpreters are showcased on this extensive release, including the Bach Collegium Stuttgart, Kammerchor Stuttgart, Helmuth Rilling, and more.

REVIEW:

For this set Hänssler have grouped together three major choral works of Haydn from their back catalogue of the many recordings made by the noted German choral conductor Helmuth Rilling. Rilling was the founder of The Oregon Bach Festival, and such musical ensembles as the Gächinger Kantorei and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, both of whom appear on these recordings. As filler, some works recorded by the lesser-known Frieder Bernius have also been included.

The first two discs contain Rilling’s 1993 Die Schöpfung. With Rilling this great work proceeds naturally with no hint of forcing the music to wring more drama out of it. He provides tempi that are very solicitous towards his singers. His approach presents the work with a more smiling aspect than one usually encounters. In this aspect Rilling comes closer than anyone else to Leonard Bernstein’s earlier recording of the work with the New York Philharmonic. Rilling’s soloists are a fine team topped by Christiane Schäfer’s exquisitely shapely tones. She makes a lively Gabriel, molding the lines of her recitatives with grace. She provides a heavenly account of “Nun beut die flur” and manages to avoid sounding tweety in the process. Michael Schade is a sunny-sounding Uriel, as he was in the John Eliot Gardiner recording two years later. He is especially good at enunciating his text and producing his sound to evolve from the words, a rare achievement these days. His coloratura is perfectly executed, which makes me place him among the most successful portrayals of Uriel in the catalogue. Andreas Schmidt is a fine Rapaehel. His voice sounds warm and pleasing, yet he suffuses his music with sufficient gravitas for an ideal balance. He manages the awkward intervals of “Rollend in schäumenden” with ease. The choir and orchestra play splendidly and there is a decent sense of ambience to the recording.

The fifth disc brings the oratorio version of The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross. Maestro Rilling is definitely back on best form here and he leads a really good team of soloists. The disc is rounded off by two shorter items as filler, which proved to be among the real highlights of the set. Both the Responsoria de Venerabili and the Ave Regina Coelorum are bright and fresh-sounding, led by the sure hand of the accomplished Frieder Bernius. The Württemberg ensemble is wonderfully responsive to his lead with a standout solo by Inga Nielsen in the Ave Regina. Nielsen was still in the coloratura phase of her career when this was recorded and her voice exhibits a glow that would lessen as she started heading into more dramatic roles a few years later. This is a superb example of her voice at its zenith. Hearing it makes me want to search out a copy of the Nelson Mass which accompanied these two works on its original release.

--MusicWeb International

Mariss Jansons was one of the most important conductors of our time, celebrated worldwide and held in the highest regard – all the more so since his unexpected death on December 1, 2019. "Mariss Jansons - The Edition," comprising 70 recordings and a box set in representative LP format, documents the final phase of his life and career: his work as chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus between 2003 and 2019. Predominantly live recordings from Munich, Tokyo, Vienna, New York, Waldsassen, and the Vatican enable listeners to experience for themselves musical highlights that are as moving as they are exciting. The set contains a remarkably diverse repertoire, ranging from symphonic music and great choral works to opera, and from the First Viennese School to 20th century classical music. "Mariss Jansons - The Edition" contains works by a broad range of composers, including complete cycles of the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler respectively. It is supplemented by fascinating rehearsal recordings that bear witness to Jansons's trusting artistic collaboration with the musicians in his orchestra, together with a large-format, approximately 72-page-long booklet containing background information, essays, an interview, and a detailed track listing.

SUMMARY OF MAJOR WORKS:

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1-9 (No. 9 appears twice)

Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1-4 (No. 4 appears twice)

Bruckner: Symphonies Nos. 3-4; 6-9

Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 1-9 (Symphonies Nos. 3-4, 6, & 8 are FIRST RELEASES)

Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 ("Organ")

Schoenberg: Gurre-Lieder

Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 8 (9); ("The Great")

Schumann: Symphony No. 1

Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 5-7, 9-10

Stravinsky: Petrouchka, Firebird, & Rite of Spring

Tchaikovsky: Symphonies Nos. 4-6; Pique Dame

Verdi: Requiem

Recorded in the presence of the composer, Andrew Penny’s survey of the Complete Symphonies and Dances by Sir Malcolm Arnold has long been considered to contain benchmark recordings. Born in 1921, Sir Malcolm Arnold quickly established himself as a fluent and versatile composer, a gifted tunesmith and a brilliant orchestrator. His music is typically lucid in texture, rich in melody and clear in draughtsmanship yet there are frequent signs of a complex musical personality and dramatic tensions not far beneath the surface. The Dances are light-hearted, vivid and jaunty, yet the nine symphonies explore the composer’s darker side, painting a picture of his private ‘journey through hell’ as he struggled with physical and mental health issues. They are masterworks which exert continued appeal and stimulate repeated listening.

REVIEW:

These are performances of uniformly high quality made in the presence of the composer and recorded with more realistic balances and cleaner textures than any of their rivals. While all of these readings are first class, highlights include a superb Symphony No. 5 and interpretations of Nos. 7 and 8 in which conductor Andrew Penny sets tempos that allow Arnold’s fanciful orchestrations to register with maximum color and impact.

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

“That man can do anything!” exclaimed the late, legendary recorder player and conductor Frans Brüggen when asked by Tijdschrift Oude Muziek about his young colleague Erik Bosgraaf. “He had an upcoming concert of the music of Van Eyck at the Amsterdam Amstel church and sent me an invitation. His playing was superb, so inspired and technically impeccable.” It was Brüggen’s birthday, but that didn’t stop him attending. When soon afterwards Brüggen conducted Bach’s Actus tragicus (Cantata BWV106) in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, he invited Bosgraaf to play the first recorder part.

Erik Bosgraaf’s quick rise to fame is directly attributable to his debut on Brilliant Classics: a three-disc box devoted to Jacob van Eyck’s (1589/90–1657) “Der Fluyten Lust-hof” (The Recorder’s Garden of Delight). Released in 2007 on the 350th anniversary of the Utrecht composer’s death, the recording was made at the request of the Van Eyck scholar Thiemo Wind who said he had never before come across a recorder player with so much understanding of this virtuoso solo repertoire and such a capacity for playing it: the sprezzatura, the casual ease and spontaneity this music, originating in improvisation, demands. The set was a worldwide hit, even winning over some diehard recorder haters. Erik Bosgraaf was clearly one of the instruments greatest players. This 5-album set offers a sample of Erik Bosgraaf’s achievements in the field of baroque music, beginning with Van Eyck and embracing his milestone recordings of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and Telemann.

REVIEWS:

The Dutch recorder player has now proven himself and is regarded internationally as the most important recorder player of the moment. He has already scored highly with recordings of Der Fluyten Lusthof by Jacob van Eyk, the recorder concertos by Bach and Vivaldi and the sonatas by Handel and Telemann. With Barock Edition the best of these records has now been summarized on a five-CD box. An inspiring collection that will transform even the biggest recorder hater into an enthusiast.

-- Klassieke Zaken

Until the end of the Ancien Régime, one of the main activities of composers – and one of their chief means of subsistence – was that of maître de chapelle or Kapellmeister, directing the music performed at religious services attended by the princely families who employed them. Although this mostly concerned ordinary occasions, sometimes even on a daily basis, such composers also had to provide music tailored for specific and sometimes unexpected events, such as a military victory that had to be celebrated by a Te Deum or, more sadly, the death of a sovereign. For this five-album set, Alpha Classics has assembled eight requiems, from Antoine de Févin’s Mass of the Dead for Anne of Brittany to Luigi Cherubini’s Mass for the return to France of the remains of Louis XVI.

The Ukrainian composer Thomas De Hartmann (1885-1956) had undertaken a classic musical training with Anton Arensky and then Nikolai Taneyev before the death of his mother in 1912 prompted him to begin searching for a spiritual teacher. Four years later he made the encounter that would change his life, with the Armenian philosopher and mystic George Gurdjieff (1877-1949). Gurdjieff had his own musical training, as well as a sharp ear and retentive memory for the folk melodies which he heard on his long travels through central Asia and the middle East. De Hartmann and his wife joined Gurdjieff’s circle of followers, and the two men began to write music to accompany their spiritual exercises. This body of music eventually amounted to around 300 short pieces, of which the indefatigable Jeroen van Veen has recorded the entire published corpus of 170 divided into four volumes.

During lockdown, Jeroen van Veen found himself with the time to immerse himself in this music, which ranges across Asian, Arabic and European systems of rhythm, harmony and tuning, so that he could capture its perfumed mysticism and improvisational character. There are solemn hymns of an Orthodox nobility, atmospheric tone poems such as the ‘Night Procession’, freely pianistic transcriptions of melodies from early-Christian sects such as the Essenes, modal-pentatonic melodies to accompany a ‘Sacred Reading from the Koran’ and to aid an awakening of consciousness in an elevated state of awareness, and then pieces simply titled after their date of composition. While overall meditative in mood, there is a tremendous variety to the Gurdjieff/De Hartmann collection, and Jeroen van Veen’s new recording is an ideally comprehensive way to dive into its riches.

REVIEW:

One can approach these pieces as being parallel to the Magyar folk music that Bartók and Kodály collected in the early 20th century and used as a basis for their own music, except that for the most part Gurdjieff and de Hartmann tried to keep the tunes intact as they stood and didn’t try to develop them in a standard Western classical manner.

Taken a few pieces at a time, the music isn’t bad to listen to, but prolonged exposure to the whole six CDs can bore the more imaginative listener. Despite the intriguing Eastern harmonies, the music is repetitive and tiresome. This is not van Veen’s fault; he is a splendid pianist who plays the slow pieces with great atmosphere and the quicker ones with a lively rhythm; he does his best to engage your interest, and there are certainly some very cute and interesting pieces in this collection, but the lack of any development and the unvarying rhythm of each piece eventually take their toll on the listener. If there is such a thing as high quality background music, this is it. I would also recommend this music in the main as an aid to meditation so long as you realize that every so often there are upbeat numbers in the set and this may spoil your getting deeper into yourself (CD 2 has the most uptempo music).

Of course, the real value of this set is to give a pianist, professional or amateur, who may wish to play some of these pieces the chance to hear them performed. There are other recordings out there of some of this repertoire, but having it all in one place is clearly helpful. A second pianist, Daff by Van Veen, plays with Jeroen on nine numbers if Series II of the Asian Songs and Rhythms, five pieces in Music of the Sayyids and Dervishes First Series, and a few other pieces thereafter.

-- The Art Music Lounge (Lynn René Bayley)

This 18-opera collection displays the scope of The Royal Opera's work. From the sumptuous beauty of Richard Eyre's La traviata and the picturesque realism of John Copley's La bohème to the psychological intensity of David McVicar's Salome and Kasper Holten's Król Roger, the impressive collection spans more than two hundred years of great operatic works from the classical period to the present day. Featuring some of the company's most popular guest artists, including Renée Fleming, Jonas Kaufmann, Joseph Calleja and Diana Damrau, and conductors including The Royal Opera's Music Director Antonio Pappano, The Royal Opera Collection is a dazzling tour of operatic treasures by Mozart, Verdi, Bizet, Wagner, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Richard Strauss, Szymanowski, Britten and George Benjamin. This title is a re-packaging of The Royal Opera Collection (OA1244BD) at budget price, including the same content and booklet as the original release (which will be discontinued).

This 18-opera collection displays the scope of The Royal Opera's work. From the sumptuous beauty of Richard Eyre's La traviata and the picturesque realism of John Copley's La bohème to the psychological intensity of David McVicar's Salome and Kasper Holten's Król Roger, the impressive collection spans more than two hundred years of great operatic works from the classical period to the present day. Featuring some of the company's most popular guest artists, including Renée Fleming, Jonas Kaufmann, Joseph Calleja and Diana Damrau, and conductors including The Royal Opera's Music Director Antonio Pappano, The Royal Opera Collection is a dazzling tour of operatic treasures by Mozart, Verdi, Bizet, Wagner, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Richard Strauss, Szymanowski, Britten and George Benjamin. This title is a re-packaging of The Royal Opera Collection (OA1244BD) at budget price, including the same content and booklet as the original release (which will be discontinued).

After the tremendously successful first Rendez-Vous with Martha Argerich, this second volume will certainly thrill music lovers from all around the world again. For this new edition, Martha Argerich partners with high-profile musical friends such as Sylvain Cambreling, Renaud Capu�on, Charles Dutoit, Gabriela Montero, Edgar Moreau, Akane Sakai and many others in new repertoire like Mendelssohn' Second Piano Trio, or in stalwarts of her repertoire such as Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, Beethoven's 'Kreutzer' Sonata or Schumann's Kinderszenen. In total: 6 albums that will allow you to marvel at the art of Martha Argerich and her friends in state of the art new recordings.

Robert Schumann’s songs are not only one of the high points of musical Romanticism, they also represent a unique marriage of words and music. Not since Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s pioneering recording in the 1970s has there been a singer who has explored Schumann’s entire lieder output in such detail. As one of the foremost lieder singers of our day, Christian Gerhaher has gone even further than Fischer-Dieskau and together with his brilliant pianist Gerold Huber has realized one of his dearest wishes after more than three decades of intensive engagement with Schumann’s music.

Their 11-CD edition of Robert Schumann: The Complete Songs will be released on September 3, 2021 and will be available digitally as well. A co-production between Sony Classical and BR-KLASSIK, with the support of the International Song Centre Heidelberg, initiated by the Heidelberger Frühling music festival, this set features 299 songs – almost the whole of the composer’s lieder output. The approach adopted by Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber is artistic and biographical rather than encyclopaedic. Schumann famously focused on lieder composition during two periods in his life: 1840–41 and 1849–53. By analogy with this focus, the first six CDs are devoted to the earlier period, the remaining five to the later years. Within this arrangement, Gerhaher and Huber have consciously eschewed a purely chronological or purely thematic approach, their aim being to preserve what for Schumann himself was the essential unity of his song cycles and to embed the individual songs within a chronological and thematic inner context. The songs that Schumann wrote during his youth and that were not published during his lifetime have not been included in this project. Also omitted are the melodramas and the works that deviate from classical song form or that are a part of much longer works. In the wake of these recordings, Gerhaher has also subjected his earlier Schumann releases to a critical overhaul. The bulk of the songs that appeared in his earlier albums Dichterliebe and Melancholie in 2004 and 2007 respectively have been re-recorded (among these songs are Dichterliebe op. 48 and the Sechs Gedichte und Requiem op. 90); conversely, other earlier recordings, including the Eichendorff Liederkreis op. 39, have been taken over into the present set. This unique project acquires an extra appeal as a result of new recordings of the cycles for female voice, the rarely heard duets and trios and works for several voices such as the Spanisches Liederspiel op. 74, in which Schumann raised the medium to a whole new artistic level. Among the other eminent artists featured in this edition are Sibylla Rubens, Camilla Tilling, Julia Kleiter, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Martin Mitterrutzner, Christina Landshamer and Anett Frisch.

The extensive booklet includes all the song texts together with an introduction by the German musicologist Laurenz Lütteken, while Gerhaher himself has set down his personal thoughts on the individual songs. A detailed index completes the documentation. These recordings were supported by the Robert Schumann Research Centre in Düsseldorf.

REVIEWS:

A wonderful achievement and a marvel of sustained artistry: subtle, intelligent performances, impeccably prepared and movingly executed.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, October 2021)

It’s undoubtedly a fine, constantly rewarding set, with every song delivered with the fastidious attention to detail and to the individual coloring of each phrase that has always been a feature of Gerhaher’s lieder singing.

– Guardian (UK)

Following the success of 100 Christmas Classics (Capriccio C7331) comes Christmas Meditation, featuring 100 choral and vocal works from across the centuries. The set encompasses sacred Renaissance treasures including Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Bach/Gounod’s Ave Maria, Handel’s Baroque masterpiece Messiah (‘He shall feed his flock’) and classic Christmas carols such as It Came Upon A Midnight Clear by Richard Storrs Willis and Franz Xaver Gruber’s Stille Nacht (‘Silent Night’). Featuring some of the most renowned choral institutions, Christmas Meditation offers listeners a classical Christmas to remember.

REVIEWS:

A rather sumptuous collection of seasonal choral works, instrumental pieces and carols. --BBC Music Magazine

After the success of the 5 CD box “100 Christmas classics” (Capriccio C7331), the new 5 CD box “Christmas Meditation” contains 100 choral and instrumental works from past centuries. It contains works from 43(!) composers, including excerpts from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Bach/Gounod's Ave Maria, Handel's Baroque masterpiece Messiah, and traditional and classical carols such as "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" by American composer Richard Storrs Willis, and Franz Xaver Gruber's "Silent Night”. With some of the most renowned choirs, “Christmas Meditation” offers you an unforgettable Christmas.

In addition to world-famous Christmas music, in this box you will also discover previously unknown but no less beautiful work by Bruch, Rheinberger, Carl Neuner, Wagenseil, Robert Fuchs, Johann Philipp Reichert or Johann von Herbeck. Cannot be missed!

--Stretto

As the central figure of Spanish music in the first half of the last century, de Falla (1876-1946) came to define the sound of Spain for listeners beyond its borders. Folk music, romanticism, neoclassicism, modernism: all the prevalent styles of his time were assimilated and absorbed within a personal idiom that advanced the work of notable predecessors such as Albeniz and Granados in establishing a distinctively Spanish idiom for art music, making him a worthy contemporary of other composers outside the central European mainstream from Vaughan Williams in England to Bartók in Hungary and Sibelius in Finland. Falla’s cycle of Seven Popular Spanish Songs is a perfect synthesis of artsong and folksong, performed here in Luciano Berio’s orchestration by Marta Senn and the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela under the baton of Eduardo Mata, the Mexican conductor renowned for his dynamic interpretations of Hispanic repertoire. The songs return in their instrumental guise as the Suite populaire espagnole, with the cellist Timora Rosler accompanied by Klára Würtz. Rafael Puyana is a uniquely sympathetic soloist in the Harpsichord Concerto which gave the instrument new life beyond its Baroque associations. Benita Meshulam is widely recognized as the inheritor of Alicia de Larrocha’s mantle with her superbly atmospheric recordings of Spanish piano music.

REVIEW:

Manuel de Falla Collection is an honest title, since the five CDs present only a selection of his works, including well-known ones such as Nights in Spanish Gardens, El Amor Brujo, and The Three-Cornered Hat. The recordings with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra from 1981 convey particularly well the intensity of Spanish emotional worlds that Central Europeans like to assume. The round is opened with El Amor Brujo in a striking and lively performance. The interpretation of the Seven popular Spanish Songs, as well as Homenajas let the listener dive into Spanish worlds. The three dances from The Three-Cornered Hat in the version for orchestra will be joined by others in the piano version on a later CD.

For the recordings made in Venezuela, the conductor Eduardo Mata certainly holds the orchestra together and inspires it to effective performances. One could well imagine more sensitivity here, the nocturnal sultriness of the tango instead of the midday heat, so to speak, but there is little more to offer in the way of fire and color. More delicacy without sacrificing the technical quality of the recording is offered by the oldest recording.

In Nights in Spanish Gardens, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra performs under the judicious direction of Günther Herbig. The singers go along with the emotional South American approach, not without delicately savoring the music.

The two pianists offer mature quality. Benita Mehuslam, who has also recorded the complete works for piano by De Falla on the label, is featured here with excerpts, Dances from the The-Cornered Hat and Spanish pieces. In the only chamber work, besides the piano music, Klara Würtz accompanies cellist Timora Rosler on the piano in the Suite Populaire Espagnole. The two artists, who have also won awards as a duo, give the top dance of sensitivity and European noblesse, so to speak, with their interpretation that concludes the collection. Harpsichordist Rafael Puyana from Colombia can show all the registers of his skills in the harpsichord concerto. Here and also in El Retablode Maese Pedro as well as in Psyche the Solistas de Mexico play, again conducted by Eduardo Mata. Those who want to experience this composer intensively will find in this compilation a good opportunity to be infected by the joie de vivre of the music.

-- Pizzicato

The son of a Weimar-based organist, Johann Krebs (1713-1780) entered the Thomasschule in Leipzig under the tutelage of Capellmeister Bach at the age of 12 in 1726. There he remained for the best part of a decade, and a glowing testimonial from Bach commended his talents on the clavier, violin and lute, as well as in composition. Krebs never attained the Leipzig post which his instrumental talents deserved, but he served as an organist in several churches south of Leipzig through the course of a long and distinguished professional life which reached fruition as organist at the court of Prince Friedrich of Gotha-Altenburg from 1755 onwards. The inveterate traveler and commentator Charles Burney reported that ‘M. Krebs of Altenburg, scholar of Sebastian Bach, has been much admired for his full and masterly manner of playing the organ.’ The style of Krebs’s own music reflects the transitional period in which he lived. The hand of the master lightly guides the cosmopolitan elegance of the three partitas on album 1 of this collection. Krebs compiled a Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice) of his own in 1744, from which Michele Benuzzi performs a C major suite and, six lively Italianate sonatas. A volume of six suites from 1746 shows the influence of the galant style which was coming into fashion at the time, embodied by the output of Bach’s most accomplished son, Carl Philipp Emanuel. Several more suites here are sophisticated examples of Krebs’s mastery in the ‘French and Italian taste’ as well as demonstrating the fluency of his keyboard writing and the craftsmanship of his counterpoint.

This important collection joins several other albums of little-known keyboard music from the period, recorded for Brilliant Classics by Michele Benuzzi. A student of Ottavio Dantone, he has performed the complete sonatas of Scarlatti and given recitals at major festivals in Europe and Asia.