English harpsichordist Gilbert Rowland has completed the third volume in his ongoing series of the complete Suites for Harpsichord by Johann Jakob Froberger. The album was recorded at Holy Trinity Church, Weston, Hertfordshire on 11-14 July 2022, with engineer John Taylor who produced all of Gilbert’s previous Divine Art and Athene recordings. The first two volumes of the series has attracted much praise from critics for its "glorious sound" and "energy and a good forward drive" of Rowland's playing.

Johann Jakob Froberger was a highly accomplished composer of the middle Baroque period and credited with inventing the ‘baroque suite’ used with variations by Bach, Handel and countless other composers. He was extremely prolific and several of his works, including the Harpsichord Suites, have been discovered recently.

Gilbert Rowland first studied the harpsichord with Millicent Silver. He made his debut at Fenton House in 1970 and first appeared at the Wigmore Hall in 1973. He has made numerous recordings of works by Scarlatti, Soler, Rameau and
Fischer which have received considerable acclaim from the national press. He joined Divine Art in 2010 to record the harpsichord suites by Handel, followed by those of Froberger and Mattheson and was assigned to Divine Art’s specialist
early music label, Athene.

- Under the direction of violin virtuoso Midori Seiler, this album presents a very lively musical portrait of the former Köthener Hofkapelle, now revived as Köthener BachCollektiv
- With exceptional virtuosos and composers, Bach went to the limits of what was then playable and experimented with instruments, scorings, sounds and musical forms
- New reconstructions of Bach Concertos BWV 1056R & 1064R by Midori Seiler
- Musical treasures and world premiere recordings by A. R. Stricker (Sonata D major), J. Spiess (Concerto E minor) and G. Linike (Suite D major)

Very little is known about the life of Anthoni van Noordt. Following in the tradition of Jan Piertszoon Sweelinck, he was organist at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam from 1664. After the death of Dirck Sweelinck in 1652, the van Noordt family became Amsterdam's most important musical family. The van Hagerbeer organ in the Pieterskerk in Leiden, a large 17th-century Dutch city organ with a wide variety of stops, is particularly well suited for the performance of van Noordt's music. The organ still has many of the characteristics of a traditional Renaissance organ, but the earlier preference for strongly contrasting timbres has given way to greater homogeneity, generally tending towards a somewhat darker sound.

Also new is the striving for solemnity and weight, expressed above all in the disposition of a 24' in the Hauptwerk and a Trompete 16' in the Pedal. The old variety of reed stops has disappeared, however, but there are still several higher stops such as Nasard 1½', Sifflet 1' and Tertiaan. Leon Berben offers us a colourful and lushly ornamented reading of van Noordt's 1659 Tabulatuurboeck van Psalmen en Fantasyen.

‘London, April 1604. With the freshly printed partbooks of his Lachrimae under his arm, John Dowland walks from the printing house to his home in Fetter Lane. He should have been back in Denmark long ago, but for the moment all his thoughts are on the new publication he is carrying, his latest and most ambitious work to date: a complete cycle of instrumental music, twenty-one dances, honourably dedicated to Anne of Denmark, Queen of England.’ For Dowland has just completed one of the greatest masterpieces of Renaissance music. He had left England to enter the service of the Danish court, disappointed at not being appointed court composer to Elizabeth I, but he seems to have made the best of all his setbacks to compose this magnificent collection of purely instrumental works, much of it bathed in the melancholy typical of late sixteenth-century England.

Musicall Humors – a collective of the finest gambists of their generation – performs the complete set of pavans, galliards and ‘almands’, grouped into suites, each with its own character. A character inspired by the music, but reinforced here by the changing composition of the consort and the players taking turns to perform the ‘top line’, so that each musician’s personal playing style gives each piece a specific colour.

REVIEWS:

Dunford immerses the five-person gamba ensemble led by Julien Léonard and Lucile Boulanger in a rich and often extremely fragile-seeming web of voices and moods with a composure and sovereignty that moves and inspires. Everything breathes in the most wonderfully sonorous interplay, nothing groaning excessively. And when they dance, they maintain their posture and dignity like a dream.

-- ConcertoNet

We are faced with an absolutely referential recording, of intense and unprecedented beauty. Musicall Humors offers us the complete collection, but in a sequence of pavans followed by galliards, which refreshes our ears with the contrast, compared to the usual arrangement.

-- Scherzo

When Pablo Casals rediscovered the cello suites of Bach at the beginning of the 20th century, the novel thing about it was that he played them "senza basso", i.e. without piano accompaniment. In a time of music-historical over-maturity and experimentation, renowned composers soon came up with their own attempts, among them most famously Max Reger's "Solo Suites" and Kodály's "Solo Sonata", both written in 1915. The cellist Julius Berger has made amazing discoveries especially in this early history of new cello solo music and presents them here as a performer in a most lively way. In the accompanying booklet, he enriches the production by adding exciting and witty stories worth knowing about the composers recorded here and their works. The introduction and transition to the new discoveries is made with the second of Reger's three suites, which Julius Berger comments on in an informative and very personal way.

Adolf Busch, on the one hand an eminent musician of the best German (emigrant) tradition, a world-famous violinist, and on the other hand a composer who is at the same time a highly experienced instrumentalist, wrote a Suite dedicated to his cellist brother Hermann in 1914, which is beyond neo-baroque models as regards the character of its movements, as well as a "Prelude and Fugue" from 1922, such as often composed by Bach, but not for cello. The British composer and musicologist Sir Donald Francis Tovey was a friend of the Busch brothers and admired as a genius by Casals. His expansive "Passacaglia" reminiscent of Bach's "Ciaconna" is admirably mastered with regard to its large-scale form and dates from 1910. The program is completed by a suite that makes reference to baroque movement types by Swiss composer and Munich composition teacher Walter Courvoisier from 1921, which Julius Berger premiered as recently as 1 October 2022.

As the Staatskapelle Berlin begins to look for its next music director (only the fourth since 1955!), this release finds the band’s own winds turning to Richard Strauss, who held the job some 110+ years ago. Together, they recorded their old chief conductors’ complete music for winds, including rarities like the Sonatinas “From an Invalid’s Workshop” and “The Happy Workshop” which Strauss dedicated to Mozart. Covering Strauss’ very early and very late creative output, the four pieces (plus the Eulenspiegel arrangement), give a fascinating insight into the development of Strauss, a horn player’s son.

REVIEW:

More Richard Strauss here in this comprehensive release which shows a range of different music for different combinations of wind. There are moments of lightness and drama here, the juxtaposition of which is highlighted for me in the 3rd movement of the Suite in B flat major for 13 wind instruments – light, playful flutes sit alongside the more demonstrative brass with its repeated downward motive which has a slightly sinister feel. Music that should be more widely heard.

-- Lark Reviews

Born in Venezuela to Italian parents, Antonio Lauro (1917–1986) was very young when he began taking music lessons from his father. At the age of 9, Lauro, against his family’s wishes, began lessons in piano and composition at the Academia de Música y Declamación. However, after he encountered the music of Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Lauro gave up his violin and piano studies to dedicate himself completely to the guitar, moved as he was by Mangoré’s music. Lauro went on to become an exceptional guitarist, as well as a composer. Politically engaged, Lauro was a fervent nationalist, and it was his political convictions that drove him to celebrate, and make in-depth studies of, the origins and heritage of Venezuelan music. In 1951, Lauro was imprisoned by General Marcos Pérez Jiménez on account of his democratic convictions; Lauro would later describe his prison experience as a normal part of life for a Venezuelan man of his generation. However, imprisonment did not deter him from organising a series of concerts, as well as continuing to compose wonderful pieces that would later win him the National Music Prize, Venezuela’s highest artistic award. And it was during his time in prison that he wrote two of his most important pieces: the Sonata for guitar and the famous Suite venezolana, followed by his Concerto for guitar and orchestra. His music, and particularly his pieces for guitar, transcended the confines of Venezuela’s musical scene to become a hugely important benchmark for subsequent generations of players worldwide. His compositions for guitar aimed to create a synthesis of Venezuelan popular music with elaborate forms from the European tradition. He took inspiration firstly from popular and folk-inspired pieces such as the Venezuelan waltzes (valses venezolanos) and pieces written in traditional styles; secondly, from demanding works deploying the most sophisticated aspects and features of the Western compositional tradition, such as the Sonata and the Suite venezolana; and thirdly, contrapuntal styles. Lauro is a composer whose greatness is deserving of recognition above and beyond his accomplishments in the reinterpretation of music from the popular and folk traditions, hugely successful though these were. His great achievement as a composer was to absorb and synthesise, in an entirely idiosyncratic and personally creative manner, a range of highly distinct elements and to bring them to life in compositions of real substance. This recording aims to bring together all the different facets of Lauro’s musical personality, while attempting to avoid the cliché of a folk-based, instinctual interpretation, instead approaching his music in a more structured manner. The son of two Italians, a barber and a musician, Antonio Lauro (1917-1986) was born in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela. He began at an early age to take music lessons from his father. The family moved to Caracas, a city with many stimuli and full of opportunities and he started taking music lessons, studying piano and composition at the Academy of Music and Declamation. It would be his encounter with the music of Agustín Barrios Mangoré, who was giving a series of concerts in Venezuela at the time, that he decided to abandon the study of the piano and violin to dedicate himself completely to the guitar, becoming an exceptional guitarist and composer. Antonio Lauro was, in 1938, the first Venezuelan to complete formal studies in classical guitar, while at the same time cultivating a career as a popular musician and performing in a trio for voice and guitars with which he toured all of South America. Lauro was politically committed and a fervent nationalist. This inspired him to celebrate and explore his Venezuelan origins and musical heritage: he was particularly attracted to the Venezuelan Waltz form, characterized by its brilliant, rhythmic melodies and frequent use of the hemiola and changes of metre and tempo. In 1951, Lauro was imprisoned, because of his democratic convictions, by General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, this however did not stop his composing activities, it was during his time in prison that he wrote two of his most important works: the Sonata for guitar and the famous Venezuelan Suite, followed by the Concerto for guitar and orchestra. In his compositions for guitar Lauro aimed to unite popular Venezuelan music with complex forms of the European tradition. They are highly attractive, melodious works, full of spirit, charm and brilliant writing for the instrument. Beautifully played by Cristiano Poli Cappelli, one of the leading Italian guitarists. He already recorded several successful albums for Brilliant Classics with music by Gangi, Tansman, Carlevaro and Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

Gustav Mahler’s cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn features on innumerable recordings – so why yet another one? Because it is … entirely different. Peter Schöne, a baritone with an immense sense for songs, the winner of prestigious international competitions (Franz Schubert Kammermusikwettbewerb in Graz, ARD in Munich), accepted the invitation to work with PhilHarmonia Octet Prague, whose members have performed with leading European orchestras (Czech Philharmonic, Berliner Philharmoniker, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln). After presenting arrangements of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and a suite from Leoš Janácek’s opera From the House of the Dead, the Mahler project currently represents the apex of the Czech wind ensemble’s endeavour to extend their repertoire and make it even more intriguing. Even though essentially intimate, Mahler’s songs have often been closely linked with symphonies, which also applies to the Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection. Of the 24 pieces, PhilHarmonia Octet Prague have recorded ten, those best suited to a wind ensemble. Opting for wind instruments makes sense, given that in his childhood Mahler’s musical vocabulary was formed in part by listening frequently to the Jihlava military band. His music is interwoven with military motifs, with wind instruments being afforded a prominent position. The chamber arrangements on the new album show an interesting path between the piano and orchestral versions, and allow for highlighting the colourfulness and intimacy of Mahler’s songs. Mahler’s songs, extraordinarily colourful and intimate

At the turn of the XVII and XVIII Centuries, from the enigmatic Guilain, four suites dedicated to the Magnificat, one of the oldest and most venerated songs of praise in Christianity.

Three nights of recording this album are behind me. This time has brought me even closer to the instrument of the organ-building company Hermann Eule in the Cathedral of St. Petri in my home town of Bautzen, which has been well known to me since my early childhood. The mystical atmosphere and soul of the house of God are especially palpable at night, when everything is silent and dark outside. The focus of my programme is Johann Sebastian Bach, who is an important guide and inspirer for me. Seb. Bach is for me the beginning and end of all music; on him rests and is based all true progress!" - this quote by Max Reger runs as a common thread through my programme for the recording. The important Leipzig Thomaskantor was also an important creative source for Karl Straube, Max Reger and Franz Liszt. Each of the pieces on this CD finds its own reference to the work and person of the Baroque master: from late Romantic arrangements of Bach works by Karl Straube and Max Reger, to a work by Franz Liszt that quotes thematic motifs from Bach works, to Max Reger's monumental composition on the tone letters B-A-C-H, all the compositions revolve around the person and work of Johann Sebastian Bach. I go in search of the musical expression of the 19th century and trace compositions and interpretations from this period. Numerous recordings on the historic Sauer and Walcker organs already document the tonal and musical influences of the late Romantic period on the way music was made. The Eule organ in Bautzen's St. Peter's Cathedral, with its broad sound spectrum and numerous fundamental voices, offers an instrument directly suited to this repertoire. Already Karl Straube, who performed the organ recording on 8 March 1910, was particularly impressed by the mild intonation of the sound body. The recording is my personal gift on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversaries of Karl Straube and Max Reger, which will be celebrated on 06 January 2023 and 09 March 2023 respectively. The programme revels in Bach interpretations around 1900, the heyday of symphonic organ art. In this epoch, not only were new compositions specifically geared to the instruments of the time created in the field of organ music, but existing works were also arranged. The listener embarks on a journey into the past and experiences with Romantic ears a 100-year-old reception history of Johann Sebastian Bach's music. Each of the recorded works refers in its own way to Johann Sebastian Bach, whose figure and name inspired Karl Straube, Max Reger and Franz Liszt to create new, contemporary late Romantic works."

One of the threads that runs through Debussy’s music is an expressive range that embraces the tragic to the grotesque. This is especially evident in his early piano music. The Suite bergamasque is the masterpiece of his pre-Raphaelite period, a compound of archaism, rich lyricism and decadence. Pour le piano also evokes a medieval atmosphere, while – in its Toccata finale – offering perpetual motion virtuosity. There is an oriental ethos in the Nocturne, the Rêverie is an alluring portrait, and Images oubliées – which was unpublished as a set until as late as 1977 – contains both rich portraiture and burlesque.

Philippine-born pianist, composer, and educator Dr. Charisse Baldoria draws upon Western pianism, her Southeast Asian and Hispanic heritage, and various art forms in her work. Prizewinner of international piano competitions, she has performed as a soloist on five continents and established a career as a musician with multidisciplinary interests. She has collaborated with dancers, visual artists, performance artists, and Hindustani classical performers, performs her own compositions, and explores the art of improvisation. Her album Gamelan on Piano features music inspired by Southeast Asia while Evocación showcases flamenco and tango inspirations. Her recently recorded all-Godowsky album features the complete Java Suite inspired by pianist-composer Leopold Godowsky’s travels to the island of Java in 1923, as well as other pieces inspired by non-Western cultures. Recordings of her song cycles Alchemy and The Kiss based on the poems of Denise Levertov and Sara Teasdale are also being prepared for release.

Following their first album for Linn (Dvorák: Legends Op. 59, Czech Suite Op. 39), the WDR Sinfonieorchester and Cristian Măcelaru pursue the same folk vein with two orchestral works by Béla Bartók. Based on a rather childish tale (prince, princess, fairies, and of course a happy ending!), the music of the ballet The Wooden Prince – recorded in full here – has all the ingredients of a masterpiece: masterful scoring for large forces, use of musical themes, an effortless amalgam of folk and late-Romantic elements.

Composed in 1923 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the merging of the towns of Buda and Pest – alongside commissions by Ernö Dohnányi and Zoltán Kodály – the century-old Dance Suite is a six-movement work that has become one of Bartók’s best known compositions. Born in Timișoara, a short distance from Hungary, Măcelaru can boast an unparalleled understanding of Bartók, as evident here.

REVIEW:

For overall quality Măcelaru rivals Mälkki, and comparing the two readings episode by episode, one is as likely as the other to convey a little more mood and color. But neither really has the freshness of discovery and excitement heard in Boulez’s first account on Sony, and neither of the two orchestras, the WDR Symphony and Helsinki Philharmonic, approaches Boulez’s spectacular results with the New York Philharmonic.

Măcelaru is up against it again in the Dance Suite, which has had outstanding recordings from Fricsay, Boulez, Solti, and Iván Fischer, among others. Less raw than Solti, Măcelaru shows himself a master of the score in a reading that crackles with aliveness and presence. He gets animated playing from the Cologne musicians, and you quickly forget that they are not on a par with eminent ensembles in this music.

I was captivated from start to finish, and more importantly, I got a bead on Măcelaru beyond my only other exposure to him, in the Shostakovich piano concertos. There’s no reason not to give this release the same enthusiastic praise that has become the norm for Măcelaru. The recorded sound is full, vivid, and lifelike.

-- Fanfare

SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce – A Bad Night in Los Angeles – a disc of music for solo piano and piano duet by Robert Matthew-Walker, with Mark Bebbington partnered by Rebeca Omordia. Matthew-Walker has been an influential part of the classical recording industry for more than 50 years, running marketing and publicity departments for leading labels CBS and RCA, and as editor of Musical Opinion magazine since 2009. A Bad Night in Los Angeles features first recordings of eight works composed between 1980 and 2021, including the title track – “disco dance music for the piano” – one of Three American Pictures offering vibrant impressions of the City of Angels and New York.The earliest, substantial work, Fantasy-Sonata: Hamlet, Matthew-Walker’s Third Piano Sonata, is “neither programmatic nor a character portrait”, says the composer who describes it as “a metaphysical work”.

The Evening of Memory is a contemplative piece inspired by a comment by the American General Douglas MacArthur, Nocturne and Aubade two contrasting miniatures for left-hand, Battledore, a five-part suite for children. Completing the disc are tributes to other composers: The Fields are White Already “a contemplation for solo piano in memoriam John McCabe”; Fantasy on a Theme from Malcolm Arnold built around the older composer’s name; and Divertimento on a Theme of Mozart “an aphoristic patchwork” for piano duet suggested by the F major Sonata (K.533).

Robert Matthew-Walker took lessons with Darius Milhaud, has produced more than 130 recordings and published many books, subjects ranging from Muhammad Ali and David Bowie to Rachmaninov, Havergal Brian and Grieg.

Mark Bebbington has recorded extensively for SOMM. His previous collaboration with Rebeca Omordia, The Piano Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams (SOMMCD 0164), was hailed by MusicWeb International as “spellbinding”. Gramophone declared it “a classy anthology [with an] unremitting logic, sweep and concentration that thrill to the marrow”.

What made Mariss Jansons different from many of his colleagues? What was the key to his success? And most importantly, after all his artistic experiences, what brought about his maturity and artistic completion In addition to his own willpower and his work ethic, his extraordinary musical life was determined by many factors; they included an open-minded and supportive environment, and an orchestra of outstanding musicians. One important aspect was certainly the fact that Jansons despised any kind of routine. Even when rehearsing Beethoven's Eroica for the umpteenth time, he was always inspired anew by the work - discovering the as yet undiscovered. Routine would have prevented any change in his perspective, and hampered his enthusiasm. Moreover there was Jansons' meticulous and analytical approach to his work, which started long before he mounted the podium. He began by reading biographical information on the composer, scholarly information on the work, texts about its era and its milieu - everything he could lay his hands on. During rehearsals, he then passed on his profound knowledge and his resulting interpretive approach to the musicians. Jansons considered it his task, as early as the first rehearsal, to bring all the musicians up to the same level of knowledge. He wanted them to understand his thought processes, to recognise the explained concept behind the work and, ideally, to be able to feel the same way during their performance as he did on the podium. In the concerts, this synchronous implementation by one hundred musicians of the musical content of a work and of the concept inherent in it duly brought about that incredible pull that almost all of Janson's interpretations exert(ed) on his listeners. In addition to this collective aspect of everyone pulling together, Jansons also worked on the sound that is genuine for each composer. In this regard, for instance, he condemned accusations of kitsch where Tchaikovsky's music was concerned. He was aware of the danger of music being played too sweetly. For him, it was simply Tchaikovsky played wrongly, and was like pouring "sugar into honey". It meant a lot to Jansons to bring out the emotions in Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, of course - the emotional drama, the tragedy, the depression - but he would never force, exaggerate or emphasise them merely for the sake of effect. When the Sixth is performed as sensitively as it is by Jansons, Tchaikovsky's music acquires its true depth of meaning. "A conductor," said Mariss Jansons, "is like a director on the podium" – he analyses, stages and interprets the work. This principle, resulting from his opera conducting, was one that he transferred to the many levels of meaning in symphonic music, and here he developed a kind of directorial concept with precise approaches to interpretation. Works such as Stravinsky's Petrushka or Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique were primarily suited to this, because as programme music they sparked the visual imagination and demanded a certain musical "realism". He wanted the fairground music in Petrushka to sound shrill and out of tune, and asked the musicians to have the courage to articulate their part in just the same manner, rather than trimming it to the expectations of high culture. The contrabassoon was to play roughly, even vulgarly. Jansons was against any attempt to make the music sound pleasant here – he wanted the orchestral barrel-organ to sound out of tune, and the symphonically portrayed drunken passer-by to sound very drunk indeed. Similarly, in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, the March to the Scaffold passes us by as a musically realistic nightmare, gripping right to the end – when the head of the executed man, severed by the guillotine, falls very audibly to the ground. Jansons also worked especially intensively on modifying the sound of the strings, above all when a phrase had to assume a subtle and psychologically important function. He differentiated playing styles very precisely in individual passages - rough, melancholy, brisk, cynical, gloating, whispering, giggling or radiant – and here he particularly influenced the bow stroke, the pressure on the string and the stroke length.