In 2018 I was delighted to accept the challenge of writing a Christmas song for clarinet and higher voices and decided to set one of my favorite medieval poems, I Sing of a Maiden that is Makeless. The poem tells of the miracle of the divine birth and is a paean to the mother of Christ. I became so fascinated with composing for clarinet and upper voices that I found myself writing three more songs, all celebrating the Christmas story. All four songs are grouped under the title, Songs of Celebration and they can be performed separately or as a suite. Oddly, the lyrics for Precious Gift, came to me whilst waiting in an NHS hospital waiting room. Perhaps influenced by my surroundings, I focus on the pain inherent in baby Jesus’ story! An epilogue from the clarinet expressing grief completes the story and turns the mood around in readiness for the final carol. There is No Rose of Such Virtue is another early 15th century poem equating Mary with a vigorously growing rose, a popular metaphor of the time. It was very gratifying to see the children in Gloucester cathedral choir singing this carol with gusto, relishing its beat boxing and glissandi which felt at once incongruously modern and yet perfectly apposite in the cathedral surroundings. (Emma Johnson)

The American critic Robert Reilly described the music on Volume One of this cycle of the complete string quartets of David Matthews (b. 1943) as ‘some of the most concentrated, penetrating writing for this medium in the past 30 years or more. It is musical thinking of the highest order and quartet writing in the great tradition of Beethoven, Bartok, Britten, and Tippett’. Matthews’ three most recent quartets call in a wide range of references. Birdsong – heard in Nos. 13 and 14 – is a standard Matthews topos; and the fugal No. 15 seems to find a middle ground between late Beethoven and folk-music. No. 13 presents the biggest surprise: it introduces four solo voices, siting the work somewhere between Berg’s Lyric Suite and Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music. Some touching arrangements and two canons for two Michaels – Tippett and Berkeley – complete the program.

REVIEWS:

Perhaps the most important series of quartets written in the last two decades.

The disc is topped off with various miniatures, mainly beautifully idiomatic arrangements for string quartet of pieces which Matthews finds particularly interesting, as he explains in his booklet essay, or written for friends or for special occasions...if you have been collecting David Matthews quartets on this wonderfully enterprising label, then you will wish to snap up this one...One cannot find fault with the four singers or with the Kreutzer Quartet who clearly understand the composer’s requirements and communicate them lucidly and intelligently.

There is little or no difference in the acoustic and atmosphere of the recordings made at varying venues. The sound is consistent and always transparent.

Gary Higginson

Final volume in the first-ever complete recorded cycle of symphonies by Talivaldis Keninš (1919–2008), one of the most prominent post-WW2 composers in Latvia and Canada. This album includes three of the composer’s eight numbered symphonies performed by the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra under Andris Poga.

Although born in Latvia, Keninš lived most of his life as an exile. He was educated in Paris, where he studied under Tony Aubin and Olivier Messiaen, and won several awards. Keninš emigrated to Canada in 1951 and became a respected pedagogue and a very influential figure in Canada’s music life. Alongside his eight symphonies, the composer also wrote 12 concertos. However, he also included many concertante elements in his symphonies and the Symphony No. 2, “Sinfonia concertante” (1967), scored for three wind instruments and symphony orchestra, is very close to a triple concerto. The symphony’s extensive second movement is based on a lullaby of the Mi’kmaq First Nations people. Symphony No. 3 (1970) was completed few years after its predecessor and is a step forward in the composer’s journey as a symphonist. Here we encounter the idea of a lyrical hero, which, in the ears of the listener, could be personified. Although many consider Kenins’ 8th Symphony to be his symphonic climax, the 7th Symphony (1980) is by no means a lesser work: it could be even considered as one of the composer’s most personal and intimate creations. The symphony ends with an aria based on a text by the composer’s father and the atmosphere of the work seems to stem from the composer’s emotional trauma on the occupation of his native Latvia by the Soviet troops.

REVIEW:

Ķeniņš composed his first symphony when he was forty and almost a decade elapsed before he turned to the genre again. However, his Symphony No 2 “Sinfonia concertante” does not strictly adhere to any symphonic mould. That the composer had a trio of wind instruments as some sort of a concertino tends to show that he was not completely sure of how to tackle that form again. This also shows is the lay-out of the piece, i.e three movements of strongly contrasting character as well as weight. In fact, the whole weight of the symphony lies in the long central movement whereas the brief opening Lento and the equally brief final Molto animato e marcato merely function as a prelude and epilogue of some sort. Moreover, the central Molto moderato: Tema e variazioni is twice as long as the two other movements put together. The weighty central movement is cast as a theme and variations on a lullaby of the Mi’kmaq First Nations people which the composer also used in his Suite in D major for organ. Anyone interested in what the Mi’kmaq First Nations people may be referred to Wikipedia for it all seems a rather long story. The variation movement of the Second Symphony is an impressive piece of music in which Kenins’ contrapuntal mastery is already fully displayed.

The Symphony No 3 is Ķeniņš’ first large-scale work for large symphony orchestra and again the composer demonstrates his assurance in his handling of form and counterpoint. The central movement Lento inquieto, though shorter than that of the Second Symphony, is again the emotional heart of the piece but it is nevertheless counterbalanced by two outer movements of fairly equal length but of quite different character. Georgs Pelēcis is quoted in Orets Silabriedis’ excellent notes as saying that “Kenins rejects seemingly essential symphony ingredients, such as the sonata form. That does not appear in any of the three movements … only one main theme is developed in each movement, and they are all interrelated. The unifying element is the rich chromatic intonations …”. The Third Symphony is clearly a work by a composer in full command of his aims and means, which shows in the way that the composer handles polyphony – an essential component of his music making. The first and second movements end with uncertainty, preparing for what is to follow, but the final movement Molto animato e brioso ends with an assertive gesture. As Silabriedis puts it: “I am responsible for everything that I have said and done”. (Incidentally, one might be reminded of RVW, whose Fourth Symphony also ends abruptly with a fist banging on a table and a door brutally slammed.

The Symphony No 7 “Symphony in the form of a Passacaglia” is scored for large orchestra and a mezzo-soprano in the final aria. Half the duration of the piece is purely orchestral and cast as a fully developed Passacaglia capped, so to say, by a short Allegro molto before the final aria for mezzo-soprano on a poem by the composer’s father, Atis Ķeniņš (1874–1961), who was also a statesman and one of the founders of the Republic of Latvia in 1919. The poem must have had a particularly personal resonance for the composer. “The mezzo-soprano solo links the composer more tightly with his family roots, expresses itself in more trusting and optimistic feelings; however, the unease in the harmonies and rhythm likely cannot hide the composer’s fears about out era. The concluding epilogue is like an Agnus Dei. The finale should express hope and faith, which stands over life’s troubles, soothing our darkest predictions, and suppressing our fears” (the composer’s words quoted in Silabriedis’ notes). The text, as translated in the booklet, may seem somewhat dated but has now acquired some new relevance in our troubled times and the symphony now carries a most welcome and needed appeal for peace. Nonetheless, Ķeniņš’ Seventh Symphony is quite an impressive piece of music in its own right and its “message” (if such there is) may be heard by any man of goodwill.

This final installment in Ondine’s Ķeniņš cycle has been carefully prepared and is as immaculately performed as the preceding ones. These are committed performances throughout, in excellent sound, up to Ondine’s best standards and Orests Silabriedis’ notes are excellent.

Ķeniņš’ symphonic cycle is on a par with other largely forgotten similar cycles that would probably have remained ignored or little known, were it not for brave and enterprising recording companies who have invested in similar projects. Examples that immediately come to mind are BIS’ recordings of Tubin’s symphonies and the hopefully ongoing Wordsworth cycle by Toccata. One cannot but hope that ventures such as these will encourage others to follow suit.

Ķeniņš’ music is too good to be ignored and these performances do it full justice; I am sure that they will play a part in securing his music its deserved status.

-- MusicWeb International

The expressive immediacy of Aram Khachaturian's music, with its sensuous melodic writing, vibrant orchestration and rhythmic drive, resulted in a popularity equaled by few composers of his generation. Composed in 1936, the Piano Concerto was the work that established Khachaturian’s name. Cast in the customary three movements, it is scored for a sizable orchestra, with notable contributions from both side-drum and military drum in the percussion section. In the second movement there is also an extensive solo for a so-called ‘flexatone’; it is often put forward that Khachaturian in fact intended the part to be played on the musical saw, as it is on the present recording. Thirty years after the Concerto, the composer returned to the genre with his Concerto-Rhapsody for piano and orchestra. This time the score offers prominent roles for the xylophone, marimba and vibraphone, which contribute towards making this one of the composer’s most colorful works. The demanding solo parts are here performed by the young Jordanian-Palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer, with spirited support from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Andrew Litton. Sughayer made his acclaimed début as a recording artist with an album of Khachaturian's piano works and sandwiched between the two works with orchestra he here presents the piano version of one of the composer's best loved pieces, the Masquerade Suite with its yearning opening Waltz and closing Galop.

Richard Jones (1680?-1744) was an English composer and violinist of whom lamentably little is known. Jones' first publication appeared in 1720, a solo cantata While in a Lovely Rurall Seat. In 1732 he was associated with the Drury Lane Theater Orchestra in London, succeeding Stefano Carbonelli as the orchestra's leader. He was a stage composer at a time when George Frideric Handel's music dominated the British stage, and much of his music, or what of it survives, shows clear Italianate influence. Like the details of his life, little of Jones's music survives. His pantomime stage works and ballad operas are all lost. His keyboard and violin suites however did survive and are noted for their wide, angular leaps and unconventional structure.

The 6 Harpsichord Suites (or Lessons), possible inspired by the great keyboard suites by Handel, are of a very high quality, beautifully written, original and enormously appealing, with inventive handling of sweeping melodies, unexpected cadenzas and frequent changes of direction. They are also rich in harmony, with some bold inventions and plenty of vigorous rhythm that can be quite challenging from a technical point of view. In other words, they are compositions that on occasion rival those of Purcell and Handel.

Francesco Fornasaro followed master classes with Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, Giulia Nuti, Bob van Asperen, Pierre Hantaï, Christophe Rousset, Skip Sempé, Menno van Delft, Francesco, while he further improved his skills in baroque ensemble music and baroque instrumental techniques and practices at the Maggio Fiorentino Formazione under the guidance of Alan Curtis, Federico Maria Sardelli and Federico Bardazzi.

Acknowledged by Sir Arthur Sullivan as his musical heir, Edward German enjoyed huge acclaim during his lifetime. His dances are ‘charged with the fragrant essence of the greenwood’ and the Overture to Nell Gwyn, with its richly English themes, explains Elgar’s liking for German’s music. The gloriously romanticized Gipsy Suite pays subtle homage to Dvořák; the dances from Henry VIII were responsible for his early celebrity; and Tom Jones (on 8.660270-71) and Merrie England were two of his greatest stage successes. Conductor Adrian Leaper is a prominent conductor in Naxos’ roster and in addition to those light music discs he has also recorded formidable recordings of Elgar and Wieniawski (8.572952), and Havergal Brian (8.572014), among many others.

Saxophonist Julian Velasco headlines an inventive, virtuosic, and diverse album of contemporary classical works for soprano, alto, and tenor sax as winner of Cedille Records’ first Emerging Artist Competition, a juried event celebrating the independent classical label’s 30th anniversary of championing Windy City artists of world-class talent.

For his first-ever album as a featured soloist, Velasco has assembled a program he says reflects “the different musical aspects of my life at this moment” while paying tribute to “the unique and wonderful people with whom I have been lucky enough to surround myself.” The album opens with works for saxophone and piano, performed with collaborative pianist extraordinaire Winston Choi. These include the world-premiere recording of classical saxophonist and composer Steven Banks’ Come As You Are, with Velasco on tenor sax, a composition influenced by African American sacred music and structured like a four-movement sonata. Velasco picks up his alto sax for David Maslanka’s Tone Studies No. 5: Wie bist du, Seele, which adopts its melody from a J. S. Bach four-part chorale. John Anthony Lennon’s Distances Within Me explores the vocal qualities of the alto sax in a score drawing inspiration from early 20th-century avant-gardist Alban Berg’s Wozzeck and jazz fusion bands like pianist Chick Corea’s Return to Forever. Amanda Harberg’s Court Dances, heard here in the world-premiere recording of the soprano sax version, is a three-movement suite referencing French Renaissance and Baroque court dances. Works for saxophone and electronics include world premieres of the soprano sax versions of Elija Daniel Smith’s Animus and Christopher Cerrone’s Liminal Highway. Animus places the live-in-studio saxophonist “in conversation” with his own recordings. Liminal Highway calls for extended techniques such as flutter-tongue, slap-tongue, and key clicks, while enlisting a harmonica and empty beer bottles, also played by the saxophonist.

A feast of previously unpublished broadcast recordings, focused on music for the stage and including much repertoire otherwise unrecorded. The main work is a three-act comedy by Frederick Rung, telling the story of The Three-Cornered Hat with a light touch and delightful duets and arias. Rare overtures, suites and scenes fill out a rich portrait of the Danish operatic scene in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, completed by a pair of powerful mid-century orchestral pieces.

Karlsson Barock is possibly the most prominent string ensemble for Baroque music in Northern Europe. On this album, Two Orchestral Suites & Three Arias, the orchestra is expanded with three woodwind play-ers from another important Swedish ensemble: The Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble. The first piece on this album is the orchestral suite by Georg Philipp Telemann, Ouverture-Suite in C Major, TWV 55:C6. Telemann’s Orchestral Suites – also known as ‘Ouvertures’ like Bach’s – were viewed as the pinnacle of the composer’s synthesis of Italian and French styles into something quintessentially German. As an interlude before Bach’s orchestral suite, we hear three arias from two tremendously popular operas at the time: Alcina by Georg Friedrich Händel and Farnaceby Antonio Vivaldi. To our great joy, the soprano part is performed by Helena Ek, a much-appreciated soloist for early music in Europe. Ms. Ek has an impressively extensive repertoire that spans from early music to con-temporary and she has teamed up with Göran Karlssonin several early music productions. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major, BWV 1066, concludes this wonderful album. Bach’s Four Orchestral Suites have helped challenge, alter and reshape what we understand about the composer. Mostly because we don’t often associate Bach, the sober Lutheran organist, with exuberant and joyful dance music. But these are works of considerable maturity and sophistication that deserve their place alongside the great scores of Bach’s last decades. From Footprint Records, we wish you an enjoyable listening.

In this recording, David Stromberg deals with the well-known Bach cello solo suites. Unlike the usual recordings, he uses a historical style of playing and interpretation using the baroque cello, piccolo cello and a baroque bow. The gut strings of the baroque cello have a more versatile sound than the steel strings and enable the finest nuances in the tone. In this way one will discover these works in a fresh new way. The cellist David Stromberg is looking for new listening experiences - be it with the baroque cello, the cello piccolo or the modern cello. He is fascinated by both early music and new music, he searches for new forms of expression in improvisation, arranges well-known masterpieces so that they appear in a completely new guise and searches for forgotten instruments. David Stromberg completed his cello studies at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater in the class of Prof. Wolfgang Mehlhorn and at the Music Institute Schloss Edsberg in Stockholm with Prof. Frans Helmerson.

REVIEWS:

This is a lovely production. These fresh recordings of the 6 solo cello suites are the result of meticulous research and preparation by cellist David Stromberg. The first five suites are performed on a baroque cello which, according to the notes, has a slightly different tuning for number five. The sixth was apparently originally written for a five-stringed instrument which is used here. Straightforward and very accessible notes are included in the accompanying booklet.

-- Lark Reviews (Stephen Page)

With the versatile sound of the gut strings and also the historically informed handling of the bow, the finest nuances in tone can be explored. It is therefore only logical that David Stromberg concentrates entirely on his playing qualities and those of the music, away from any unnecessary fuss that only serves the presentation without meaning. Thus, on the one hand, he creates a coherent world of the six suites as well as a precise attention to the details of each movement and phrase. He sticks to the beautiful sound and only in a few places, for example in the fourth suite, he lets it creak a bit. But this then brings a new shade of color into the interpretation and does not seem careless or unintentional.

-- Pizzicato

Wolf-Ferrari is famous for his operatic works in which he invented a new idiom by transplanting 18th-century Venetian culture into the 20th century. But almost all of the composer’s orchestral music dates from his final years and occupies a different expressive realm. The Suite veneziana resonates with melancholy, and the Triptychon is a contemplative, passionate masterpiece of orchestration. Subtle use of counterpoint transforms the Divertimento into a playful exploration of themes, while Arabesken pays tribute to an old friend, the Venetian painter Ettore Tito (1859–1941). His own elegantly simple melody, known as ‘Tito’s theme’, is turned by Wolf-Ferrari into a sequence of sumptuous orchestral variations culminating in a powerful fugue.

John Burge is a JUNO Award-winning composer and a passionate advocate for Canadian music who has a strong affinity with writing for string instruments. All of the works in this recording were commissioned and premiered by the Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra. Opening with the joyous and celebratory Sinfonia Antiqua, the mood shifts to an evocative and impressionistic atmosphere in Forgotten Dreams, while One Sail captures the compelling power of poetic imagery. The Upper Canada Fiddle Suite blends tradition and nostalgia with entirely original inventiveness, and concludes an album that perfectly represents Burge’s eloquent and deeply expressive compositional style.

The rich variety of colors and rhythms in South American culture and music are an essential feature of this program for concert flute and piano, which focuses largely on music by composers from the Ecuadorian Andes. Opening with Durán’s popular and crowd-pleasing Leyenda incásica, the theme of Ecuadorian dances continues in Jacinto Freire’s Suite, which also celebrates the flight of the condor. Virtuosity, evocations of landscape and expressive traditional songs can all be found here, concluding with Mexican composer Samuel Zyman’s internationally acclaimed Flute Sonata No. 1, which ranges from lyrical introspection to intensely contrapuntal dialogue.

After being forced out of his Soviet-occupied home in Bukovina (Chernivtsi), Radu Paladi was an exceptional, extraordinary talent, whether as a composer, pianist, conductor, or lecturer. In the 1950s, a time that was politically as well as artistically particularly tricky, Radu Paladi managed to find his artistic path and own distinctive voice, incorporating and elevating Romanian folklore in his highly elaborate compositional technique to fascinating effect. His music, combining depth, brilliance, and vitality, spoke to listeners with an immediacy that made hearing his music an exhilarating experience.

REVIEW:

Radu Paladi (1927-2013) was an important musical personality in Romania—as a composer, conductor, interpreter, and pedagogue.

We are dealing here with very expressive music that focuses on emotion.

The piano concerto, with Oliver Triendl as soloist, starts like a whirlwind, and all the musicians put their full energy into this at times ecstatic bundle of music. A wonderful contrast is provided by the second movement, a lament in which soloist and orchestra listen very delicately into the silence. Eugene Tzigane stretches the tension to bursting point and shapes the climax of the movement passionately and stirringly. The finale, in turn, is a single bubbling fountain of virtuosity and tonal brilliance.

No less expressive is the Violin Concerto from 2002, which begins with a moving elegy that suddenly leads into an orchestral outcry. Here, too, the performers live the music with every fiber of their souls, especially again in the slow middle movement. There is a little wink in the finale with the surprising reminiscence of Vivaldi’s Seasons as well as lively folk dances, brilliantly played by Nina Karmon.

The two concerti are accompanied by Eugene Tzigane’s colorful and rousing interpretation of the symphonic suite ‘Das Zauberflötchen’.

-- Fanfare

Internationally acclaimed composer William McClelland has written a wide variety of music in many styles and forms, but the works in this program have all been inspired by poetry. The choral works evoke the atmosphere of time and place in settings of very early texts, including Catullus’ movingly elegiac lament for his lost brother, These Last Gifts, an experience shared by the composer. The short pieces in Five for Piano all evoke specific poems and, composed over several decades, McClelland’s songs are primarily settings of poetry by American writers that express a mystical, symbolic or visionary view on nature.

Watch this Naxos Live Q+A with William McClelland for insights on the music!

REVIEW:

McClelland’s choral writing is so thoroughly gorgeous, his Five for Piano so engaging, and his more lyrical art songs so evocative that I recommend this disc wholeheartedly.

-- Fanfare

The choral piece Hail Lovely and Pure...sets a Medieval shepherd's poem and is both glowing and limpid. The piano pieces explore more of the sense of willfulness, of saying something strong in a solo voice. Harold Rosenbaum leads the New York Virtuoso Singers in all the choral music, drawing singing that is lovely and fine in all the details. The excellent pianist Blair McMillen has full measure of the piano pieces, which he previously premiered. Another excellent pianist, Donald Berman, accompanies mezzo-soprano Krista River and baritone Thomas Meglioranza as they alternate in the songs. There is a welcome breadth of moods in McClelland's songs. Singers and music really come together here, with the notes and the rhythms lying right where the singers sound best...all of these McClelland songs are a pleasure.

-- The Classical Review (George Grella)

The New York Virtuoso Singers under Harold Rosenbaum  deliver a marvelously unwavering set of performances of the highest caliber. Bravo.

-- Classical-Modern Music Review

Even within this program, the tonal language of individual pieces ranges substantially, but the program never feels like a stylistic pastiche; rather, one has the impression that McClelland has responded in deep, individual ways to the texts he sets… All of these recordings are world premieres, and many listeners will wonder where McClelland has been all their lives.

-- AllMusic.com

The performances are all well informed and nicely executed. Donald Berman’s accompaniments for Krista River and Thomas Meglioranza are models of support. Blair McMillen’s rendition of the piano suite Five is nicely done… Best of all are the three choral items, not least the final setting of Catullus, ‘These Last Gifts’.

-- Gramophone