The turn of the 18th century was an exciting time for music publishing in Northern Europe. Music printers in England and the Netherlands were turning out copious sheaves of fine music for amateurs and connoisseurs alike, often surpassing in production quality even what was coming out of France and Italy. This was, on the one hand, due to the sheer readability of music printed from engraved copper and pewter plates instead of moveable type, and on the other to the craze for concertos as well as solo and trio sonatas by famed Italian masters.

The Ten Sonatas for 2 violas da gamba and continuo by a “Mr Carolo” fall into this last category. Although his name sounds Italian, our Mr Carolo is a real mystery, and no one really knows who the elusive composer was or who (else) may have written these ten sonatas for bass instruments. Indeed, the title page of the original undated printing by the Amsterdam firm of Estienne Roger bears no given name but does expand on the instruments that can be used, stating the works are equally suited to two bassoons or basses de violon.

-From the liner notes by Jacques-André Houle

“Viola Virtuosa aims to demonstrate that the viola can, in addition to producing all the deep, sad notes and songful qualities attributed to it, also be an independent solo instrument. The instrument’s position, between the violin and the cello, offers us violists many opportunities to combine elements from both soundscapes and thereby to create something independent and new. This release features a number of transcriptions – not derived from a desire to take something from someone else, but because I am absolutely convinced that good music can be played in a variety of ways as long as we remain true to the spirit in which the work was originally composed.

"Works by both Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe and Gaspar Cassadó appear on this album, recorded for the first time on the viola. Ysaÿe has long fascinated me, and after featuring this work in a number of my concerts, it seemed perfectly natural to record his 4th Sonata. It was my former student Martin Moriarty who suggested the possibility of playing Cassadó on the viola, when he turned up for a lesson one day with the score of this cello suite. I was enthusiastic from the word go because the suite sounds so good on the viola and I hope that the enthusiasm we felt during the recording session is palpable. Thank you, Martin, for this great idea!” -Veit Hertenstein

With the present release, Pascal Rophé and his Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire pay tribute to their great countryman, Claude Debussy – but not with the standard orchestral fare. Debussy Orchestrated paints a portrait of a light-hearted composer, seen through the eyes of two of his collaborators, Henri Büsser and André Caplet, who transferred the works recorded here from the keyboard to the orchestra. In Petite Suite, composed for piano four hands in 1899, Debussy makes allusions to Fêtes galantes by Paul Verlaine, the poet who so often inspired him. Büsser’s orchestration of this light and pleasant suite was made in 1907, and obviously pleased Debussy, as he later entrusted him with making an orchestral version of Printemps. As for Children’s Corner and La Boîte à joujoux, it is probably fair to say that the composer’s main inspiration was his own daughter, Claude-Emma, born in 1905. Both works are dedicated to her, and it is easy to imagine that some of the characters that appear in Children’s Corner had their counterparts among her toys. Letting toys come alive in a ballet was the idea that illustrator André Hellé a few years later presented to Debussy with La Boîte à joujoux. The piano version of the piece was published, with Hellé’s illustrations, in time for Christmas in 1913 and Debussy began orchestrating it the following year, but died before he could complete the task. His friend André Caplet – who had already orchestrated Children’s Corner – took over and the ballet was finally premièred in December 1919.

REVIEWS:

Both "La boite a joujoux" and the similarly enchanting "Children’s Corner" are performed with deft panache by this quality orchestra. There are outstanding individual players, among them the principal oboe, whose haunting contribution to ‘The Little Shepherd’ in Children’s Corner is a special moment.

-- BBC Music Magazine

This is a fine orchestra… and the playing is exquisite. The woodwind sound particularly lovely… it’s a wonderfully engaging disc of great charm.

-- Gramophone

Maurice Ravel composed many works which stand as classics for both solo piano and for orchestra. On this disc, all except one work were first conceived for piano, which raises the question how it is possible to transfer such pianistic music to the orchestra without making it sound like a mere ‘colorized’ version. Ravel’s orchestral writing was the result of a long apprenticeship and careful study. Although his skills as an orchestrator are much admired today, his ability to coax new sounds out of the orchestra wasn't always appreciated in his own time, however – in 1907 the critic Pierre Lalo complained that ‘in Ravel’s orchestra, no instrument retains its natural sound…’!

Among the works performed here by Sakari Oramo and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra are some of Ravel’s earliest compositions, including the much-loved Pavane pour une infante défunte, but the album closes with a later work: La Valse, written in 1920 as one of only four works by Ravel originally conceived for orchestra. The idea of composing a tribute to Johann Strauss had pursued Ravel since 1906, but it took a commission from Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes for him to return to the project. When Diaghilev found it unsuited for ballet, Ravel gave it the subtitle ‘choreographic poem’. It was premiered in concert in 1920 and enjoyed immediate success.

REVIEW:

The ostensible title of this disc is “La Valse,” which is actually the least interesting performance on it. Oramo delivers a quick, lithe and lean interpretation of a work that ought to sound like a decadent, high cholesterol indulgence that explodes in a giant orchestral aneurism at the end. Here, he leaves the music no room to increase in urgency through the apocalyptic closing pages, although the playing is excellent and the sonics, as usual, first class. No, the real treat here is Le Tombeau de Couperin, here given with the two movements of the piano original that Ravel left off the orchestral version (Fugue and Toccata) very idiomatically arranged by Kenneth Hesketh. I particularly like Oramo’s decision not to take the opening too quickly, so that we get to savor the melody as well as Ravel’s gorgeous harmonies. It’s a splendid performance all around.

After Le Tombeau, the highlight of the program must be Une barque sur l’océan, still something of a rarity (even the score used to be hard to find), and I suppose a work that seems to fail next to Debussy’s La mer. The truth is that it’s a totally different beast, mostly dark and mysterious, and that’s just how Oramo plays it. The remaining works are mostly good. The inevitable Pavane for a Dead Princess and the Minuet antique are unkillable, but Alborada del gracioso needs more swagger towards the end. Why doesn’t Oramo give the trombones a chance to inject a little healthy vulgarity into the concluding bars? Of course, it’s not as if we’re short of worthy alternatives in most of this music, but the excellence (and novelty) of Le Tombeau and Une barque make this release impossible to dismiss.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

This is a compendium of festive rarities in the ‘Grand Siècle’ of the French organ: their authors have almost been forgotten, secular and the sacred mix with dance rhythms, and half of these works have been written more for a concert than the Service! These precious scores have been waiting like guilty pleasures buried in the secret drawers of our lives, hidden behind the French organ grand masters’ sumptuously bound volumes… Lucile Dollat breathes life into Piroye’s L’Allegresse, L’Immortelle and La Béatitude, the brilliant D’Agincour Suites and Balbastre’s sparkling Concerto again, with the contribution of percussionist Michael Metzler, who is more inventive than ever in Raison’s Le Vive le Roy des Parisiens (Long live the King of Parisians)! The Great Organ in the Royal Chapel of Versailles gives a majestic voice to these collector’s gems, unearthed with great enthusiasm by a young organist with determined play.

Review

This is the seventh disc on the Château de Versailles Spectacles label, devoted to organ music performed at the organ of the Chapelle Royale in Versailles, which dates from 1711. It is pretty much the ideal instrument, both for the liturgical and the more secular works. Lucile Dollat is a young organist who has won several prizes and is giving concerts across Europe. I had not heard her before, and I am impressed by her style of playing.

--MusicWeb International (Johan van Veen)

Matthew Locke was born 400 years ago in 1622, and while he is often ranked as one of England’s finest composers, he is still unaccountably neglected: his music may not be as immediately appealing as his immediate successor, Henry Purcell, nor as wide-ranging as William Byrd, yet his forceful musical personality and luxuriant technique place him in the first echelon of English composers, with his works described by Richard Boothby of Fretwork as having a "quixotic, capricious restlessness that is constantly challenging the listener to follow his argument...a thrilling musical ride".

Accompanying Fretwork on continuo for this recording are David Miller (archlute and theorbo) and Silas Wollston (harpsichord). The cover of the album bears an inscription in the walls by the choir stall of Exeter Cathedral, thought to have been carved by the composer during his time as a member of the choir there. In 2021, Fretwork celebrated its 35th anniversary. In the past three and a half decades they have explored the core repertory of great English consort music, from Taverner to Purcell, and made classic recordings against which others are judged. Their recent critically-praised releases with Signum include If and Lamento – both with countertenor Iestyn Davies – and In Nomine 2.

REVIEWS:

Fretwork captures the brooding quality of the minor-mode suites particularly well, and their sinewy playing points up Locke’s vigorous counterpoint and robust rhythms.

-- BBC Music Magazine

The delicious way in which Locke’s fantazias – unlike those of Jenkins or Lawes – present a cornucopia of switches in tempo or affect is matched by Fretwork’s agility in moving from one colour and affect to the next.

-- Gramophone

Rebellion and maturity run through Shakespeare's histories like a single twisted thread, exemplified by the tearaway turned - hero Hal and his forever adolescent associate Falstaff, who deserves and gets a comedy to himself in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Lives real and imagined, nobles and beggars, Tudor history and culture all spring to vivid life on the stage of the Globe Theatre in award-winning productions featuring many fine British actors and original music played by a Shakespearean pit band playing period instruments.

Reviews

"Henry IV is the Shakespeare play that's perfectly suited to the Globe. In Dominic Dromgoole's intelligent, faithful andentertaining new production, Sir John Falstaff, that 'sweet creature of bombast', might have stopped for a pint of sack in Southwark en route for a rendezvous with Doll Tearsheet at the Boar's Head." (The Guardian on Henry IV 1-2)

"A joyous spectacle." (The Sunday Telegraph on Henry VIII)

"Oustanding." (The Guardian on Henry VIII)

"Audiences tend to adore this play, in which Shakespeare genially celebrates his own middle-class English provincial background and seeks to do nothing more than entertain - which he does, splendidly. The Merry Wives, with its ridiculous foreigners, jealous husbands and scenes of low farce, keeps you chuckling almost throughout." (The Daily Telegraph on The Merry Wives of Windsor)

Elena Urioste is a musician, yogi, writer, and entrepreneur, while Tom Poster is a musician whose skills and passions extend well beyond the conventional role of the concert pianist; they are musical and (now married) life partners. From Brighton to Brooklyn is an exploration and celebration of their British and American backgrounds and mutual fascination with music from each-other’s home country. They comment: ‘All the pieces by English and American composers on this recording deserve to be heard far more often than they are: none would be considered core repertoire, yet every one of them captivates through its composer’s distinctive voice. Some of the pieces have been known to one or both of us for many years; others we discovered only when we were dreaming up this recording. With the exception of Coleridge-Taylor’s soaring, impassioned Ballade, this is a collection of miniatures and character pieces. Some, such as the works by Beach and Bridge, transport us to a world of elegant salons; others, such as the pieces by Britten and Schoenfeld, are colorfully virtuosic and certainly gave us a shot of adrenaline in the recording studio! Bridge’s Heart’s Ease, with which the album closes, perfectly encapsulates a more general tendency among our chosen pieces to convey the listener to another world, using relatively few notes, and it has become a particular favorite of ours. We hope that you, too, will discover some new treasures here.’

REVIEW:

Urioste and Poster link lighter, salon-type pieces by the Americans Amy Beach and Florence Price and the Britons Frank Bridge and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to music that draws on vernacular sources. Primary among these are Copland's early and heavily jazz-flavored Two Pieces of 1926, which are not often heard and fit in beautifully here. The players draw in a later work imbued with Gershwin's spirit, the Four Souvenirs of Paul Schoenfield. Britten's Suite adds a just slightly harder edge, and the program concludes with Bridge's beautifully lyrical Heart's Ease. Urioste and Poster never try to make more of this music than is actually there, and what is actually there is considerable charm and a fresh concept that no one should disvalue.

-- AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

The first installment of what is widely acknowledged to be Shakespeare’s greatest historical saga, Henry IV Part 1 is an epic tale of power, treachery and war, exploring the complexity of father-son relationships. Featuring an Olivier award-winning performance from Roger Allam as Falstaff, the comical mentor to Jamie Parker’s Prince Hal, this is a celebrated presentation of the English classic, expertly directed by Dominic Dromgoole.

REVIEWS:

"Henry IV is the Shakespeare play that's perfectly suited to the Globe. In Dominic Dromgoole's intelligent, faithful and entertaining new production, Sir John Falstaff, that 'sweet creature of bombast', might have stopped for a pint of sack in Southwark en route for a rendezvous with Doll Tearsheet at the Boar's Head." (The Guardian)

"It is the first time these wonderful plays have been staged at the reconstructed globe and it may be one of this theatres finest achievements." (The Daily Telegraph)