Mario Pilati was a leading member of the Italian generation of composers born around the turn of the 20th century. His love of the Baroque can be felt in the sunny and joyful immediacy of Preludio, aria e tarantella, originally conceived for violin and piano. His other abiding passion was for the folk traditions of his native country, exemplified by his beautiful settings of Quattro canzoni popolari italiane- light, elegant, and suffused with subtle humor- and the delightful Bagatelles. In the strikingly inventive ‘Divertimento’ for brass ensemble, he draws on cinema, jazz and the vibrancy of Neapolitan street life. Pilati’s Concerto for Orchestra and Suite for Strings and Piano can also be heard on Naxos.

Volume 15 of Bridge's POUL RUDERS EDITION includes Piano Concerto No. 3 "Paganini Variations", a virtuoso duo for harpsichord and piano, Cembal d'Amore, Second Book, and Kafkapriccio, an orchestral suite from Ruders's third opera, Kafka's Trial. All three works are world premiere recordings, performed by Anne-Marie McDermott, piano, Quattro Mani, and the Odensesymfoniorkester conducted by Benjamin Shwartz and Andreas Delfs. Three brilliant compositions from one of the world's greatest living composers. Paul Ruders lives a spartan life in the countryside of Denmark. The isolation has afforded him the opportunity to produce a deep and highly varied catalog which includes five operas, 45 symphonic works and concertos, and dozens of solo and chamber pieces. In July of 2019, Poul Ruders celebrated his 70th birthday with the world premiere of his newest opera, The Thirteenth Child, staged by the Santa Fe Opera. Also, on tap in 2019/2020/2021 are new productions by The Boston Lyric Opera, the San Francisco Opera and the Royal Danish Opera (Copenhagen) of Ruders's best known opera, The Handmaid's Tale, after the dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood.

This recording presents two of Claude Debussy's enduring masterpieces- the Children's Corner suite (1908), and his brilliant- Études (Books 1 & 2) (1915), played by the American pianist, Aleck Karis. Aleck Karis has performed recitals, chamber music, and concertos across the Americas, Europe and in China. As the pianist of the new music ensemble Speculum Musicae he has participated in over a hundred premieres and performed at major American and European festivals. His appearances with orchestra have ranged from concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin to those of Stravinsky, Messiaen and Carter. His five solo discs on Bridge Records include Aleck Karis performs Schumann, Carter, Chopin; Aleck Karis: Mozart Recital; Stravinsky: Music for Piano 1911-1942; John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes; and Karis Plays Webern, Wolpe & Feldman. His two albums on Romeo Records are Piano Music of Philip Glass and Late Piano Music of Frederic Chopin. He is a Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego, and Associate Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities.

This double album, newly documenting Mr. Rangell's exploration of Bach's keyboard music can be added to a long list of distinctive performances. "Andrew Rangell's free-spirited Bach is distinguished by it's powerful drive and intensity and a remarkable articulation that illuminates contrapuntal intricacies with microscopic clarity... His playing captures every mood in the psychological spectrum..." (New York Times) Long recognized as among our most eloquent and insightful interpreters of the major keyboard works of Bach and Beethoven, pianist Andrew Rangell has drawn acclaim for a variety of recordings, ranging from the music of Sweelinck, Farnaby, and Gibbons to that of Janacek, Enescu, Nielsen, Bartok, Valen, Christian Wolff, and many others. The present recording, newly documenting Mr. Rangell's exploration of Bach's keyboard music can be added to a long list of distinctive performances, including The Goldberg Variations, French Suites, Partitas, Well-Tempered-Clavier, Book 1, The Art of Fugue, Inventions, Sinfonias, and many shorter works.

Mood Suite

Tony Banks, the renowned founder member and keyboard maven of the rock band Genesis, continues his acclaimed series of orchestral compositions with Five. The suite opens with Prelude to a Million Years, originally commissioned for and performed at the Cheltenham Music Festival. Banks’ signature melodic gifts and feel for cinematic scale are all in evidence in Five, just as they were in Six (8.572986) and Seven (8.557466), ‘a work of stirring beauty’ (ProgSheet). First released by BMG Records in February 2018, Naxos is proud to present this recording which is described by Stage and Cinema as 'gorgeous, transporting music sounds exactly like a soaring soundtrack'. CrypticRock gave this recording 5 out of 5 stars: ‘Five is therefore no different from what one would expect from this artist: stunning, evocative, beautifully-orchestrated, and timeless. With five marvelous pieces of brilliance, Five is a shining gem of sonic beauty that is truly deserving of your attention and a round of emphatic applause.’

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REVIEW:

If you enjoy wide-screen film music then you will most certainly want this disc, which is sumptuous in sound and extended in dynamic impact.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Moscow-born Nikita Koshkin won international fame for his 1980 score The Prince’s Toys and has since established himself as one of the greatest creative composers for the contemporary guitar. His 24 Preludes and Fugues for Solo Guitar, of which this is the first volume, is a compendium of musical styles, colors and effects. It is both a virtuosic tour de force and an expressively complex undertaking that demands unremitting technical command and absolute interpretative clarity from the performer. Asya Selyutina represents the new generation of the Russian classical guitarists. She appears regularly as a soloist, in chamber music ensembles, with orchestras and as a juror at prestigious competitions.

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REVIEW:

You enjoy the guitar, you want to hear something new, but not some off-the-wall, out-there experiment in how much abuse a guitar string (or the guitar itself) can take (attention-getting but not usually pleasant listening). Nor are you looking for yet another go at Recuerdos de la Alhambra or Asturias. What do you do? Well, I suggest you look no further than this extraordinary recital from Russian guitarist Asya Selyutina, performing a set of pieces that you’ve probably never heard of–it’s a world-premiere recording–but that I promise you will play over and over, in the background, the foreground, and whenever you just want to hear guitar music (and playing) that’s always engaging, never harsh, that’s clever, not cute, that’s expertly crafted and both easy on the ear and stimulating to the musical mind.

Bach’s monumental tribute to tonality, the Well-Tempered Clavier, inspired numerous imitations and re-imaginings, among the most notable and perhaps the closest to the master’s in ingenuity and pure keyboard craft, is Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes & Fugues–and although not nearly as extensive or complex in invention and development, fellow Russian Nikita Koshkin’s creations for guitar are equally varied, while stylistically sophisticated, and–absolutely essential–unfailingly idiomatic to the guitar, comfortably inhabiting the instrument’s (non-gimmicky) expressive realm yet consistently challenging the player’s virtuosic technique.

And the Moscow-based guitarist Asya Selyutina is a superb soloist, displaying an enviably smooth legato while delineating contrapuntal lines with uncanny, and uncommon, clarity. She seems to relish the rare moments of “special effects” (rapping on the guitar body; harmonics), and charges into rapid passages without inhibition. She’s not only a renowned teacher in her home city, but also has a successful performing career mostly in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East (she even created the painting featured on the disc cover). Perhaps following this project, Selyutina will be deservedly better-known around the world.

Oh, and never heard of Nikita Koshkin, you say? The 64-year-old composer is well-known to guitar fans for his suite The Prince’s Toys and Usher-Waltz (after Edgar Allan Poe) from the 1980s; he’s an accomplished guitarist himself, which explains his master’s grasp of what’s possible in creating these terrific pieces; his artistic inventor’s mind takes care of the rest, making it all interesting and musically satisfying. And we can happily look forward to another 12 preludes and fugues in Volume 2. Don’t miss this.

– ClassicsToday (David Vernier)

Alb�niz wrote seven piano sonatas during the 1880s, but only Nos. 3, 4, and 5 survive as complete works. As with so much of his output they are now better known in the form of guitar transcriptions - at least for Nos. 3 and 5 - but the piano originals show the same fantastical imagination and romantic temperament as his masterpiece Iberia, while conforming to a more conventionally Classical form. Their craftsmanship in harmony, scoring, and voice-leading are beyond reproach, but it is the lyric sweep and often playful touches of harmony that secure their place on the fringes of the repertoire. As a pianist, Alb�niz was a noted interpreter of 18th-century music - not only Bach and Scarlatti but also Handel, Couperin and Rameau - at a time when such music was often disparaged as dryly academic or old- fashioned. The Suites anciennes are an early example of musical neoclassicism, comprising suites of gavottes, minuets, sarabandes and chaconnes in his own tribute to the Baroque era. But then the minuets, rondos and well-worked counterpoint to be enjoyed in the three sonatas also belong to an earlier era. The Fourth is a particular highlight, establishing Alb�niz as the leading Spanish composer of keyboard sonatas since Antonio Soler, but the others are every bit it's equal in craftsmanship and elegance. Sebastian Stanley is a British pianist who has specialized in the piano music of Spain, making well-received recordings of the Danzas Espanolas and Goyescas by Granados. This is his debut album on Brilliant Classics, enhanced by booklet notes by the noted authority on Spanish piano music, Walter A. Clark.

The music scene of Paris during the reign of Louis XV could be defined as truly cosmopolitan. The change in aesthetic preferences were already observed in the works written as early as the 1700s, when French composers started to assimilate more and more willingly some elements of Italian style into their pieces. What strikes is the fact that concepts concerning the creation of a mixed style (les goûts rèunis) were primarily developed by instrumental music composers. In contrast to opera, which was naturally connected with the morphology of the language and literature of a given country, compositions lacking the semantics of a text were more suitable for the creation of a universal musical language. The figure of Boismortier can be described as French Telemann. Similarly to his German counterpart, he favored the idea of a mixed style and experimented with unorthodox instrumentation solutions. Boismortier was also one of the first composers that did not have a wealthy patron or protector, living off his works solely. He owed that position to the royal prerogative (1724) to print and sell sheet music, which helped him to avoid the necessity of working as a teacher or seeking employment as an instrumentalist in one of numerous court ensembles. This new recording is the first complete album of Boismortier’s suites performed on the recorder solo.

This album of world-premiere recordings features solo and duo piano music spanning nearly the entire career of Prix de Rome and Pulitzer Prize winning composer Leo Sowerby (1895–1968), one of the most distinctive American voices of the early and mid-20th century. Recorded in 1997 in Chicago, where Sowerby spent the bulk of his student and professional life, the album is being released at mid-price with support from the Leo Sowerby Foundation.

Pianists Gail Quillman and Julia Tsien share a direct musical lineage to Sowerby. Quillman, who established the Leo Sowerby Foundation, studied with Sowerby, and has performed more of his solo piano and chamber music than anyone else. Tsien, an active performer and teacher, was a Quillman student. The album’s earliest work, Three Summer Beach Sketches, for solo piano, from 1915, shows the influence of composer-pianist Percy Grainger, with whom Sowerby studied. It’s also one of the earliest serious compositions to use jazz and blue harmonies. Composed in 1959, Suite for Piano (Four-hands) shares a kinship with the music of Samuel Barber, whom Sowerby championed, and the music of Sowerby’s former student Ned Rorem. Passacaglia, Interlude and Fugue for solo piano (1931) is a dreamy, French Impressionist take on classic forms. Prelude for Two Pianos (1932) is more Delius than Debussy, more English austerity than French sensuality. Sowerby’s brief Fisherman’s Tune is an homage to Grainger. The overture-length sonata movement Synconata, arranged for two pianos, was originally composed in 1924 as a curtain-raiser for American bandleader Paul Whiteman’s “symphonic jazz” concerts.

REVIEWS:

Sowerby's music offers a welcome mix of approachability and compositional sophistication. The discographical value of this disc is huge; that it is a musical triumph seals the deal.

– Fanfare

Leo Sowerby (1895-1968) is a name that takes me back to my Anglican roots. His music that I remember from church choir did nothing to prepare me for the rather brilliant piano music on this release. Here we get what are all labeled world premiere recordings. The solo piano works are played by Quillman (a student of Sowerby’s): Three Summer Beach Sketches (1915) and Passacaglia, Interlude, and Fugue (1931). The rest are performed on two pianos by Quillman and her student, Tsien: Suite for Piano 4 Hands (1959), Prelude for 2 Pianos (1932), Fisherman’s Tune, and Synconata.

Sometimes jazzy and even using blues harmonies, Sowerby’s piano music is always interesting and well crafted. He toured with Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra alongside Gershwin, Zez Confrey. and Ferde Grofe. The first performance of Synconata had Sowerby and Confrey on the two pianos. Sowerby also studied with Percy Grainger, whose influence is quite apparent here.

The booklet notes are quite comprehensive, and the only criticism I have of this recording is the piano sound. It is just adequate and sounds like it was made in a good sized empty concert hall (Ganz Hall in Chicago’s Roosevelt University). I would expect a 1997 recording to be on a higher level, but the unique music makes it worth coming back to.

-- American Record Guide

RecArt presents an album entitled Suite: The Road with the composition by Piotr Scholz. A thirteen-person jazz orchestra meticulously combines notation with the exuberant improvisation of excellent instrumentalists. This is a five-part journey around the world of sounds and harmonies, full of sudden plot twists as well as nostalgic moments of tranquility. Piotr Scholz about the Suite: "The album "Suite: The Road" is a five-part journey around the world of sounds and harmonies. The eponymous Road yields a number of interpretations, both literal and metaphorical. In the end, every one of us follows in the set direction, along the path determined by fate... I invited a number of wonderful artists to participate in my project - my friends, colleagues, even teachers and lecturers, who kindly agreed to enrich my music with their virtuoso performances. My debut album was made possible mainly because of the Mloda Polska 2016 Scholarship, which I was granted to realize my artistic endeavor and, at the same time, my great dream."

Emil Hartmann (1836-1898) had a heavy family heritage to lift, being the son of one of the true greats in Danish music life, the composer and organist J.P.E. Hartmann. In Denmark, Emil Hartmann had difficulty freeing himself from his father's shadow, but in Germany, things were easier. On this release, Elisabeth Zeuthen Schneider and friends delve into his chamber musical key works, providing the perfect showcase for the romantic flair of Emil Hartmann, making his lines sing beautifully and virtuosic passages dance, and finding intimacy and eloquence at telling moments. A musical journey through time: The form of the piano suite has, as a nationally different set of rules, the following succession of dance sentences or character pieces, originating essentially in the Baroque period. Composers like Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, Fran�ois Couperin and Jean-Philipp Rameau have created something significant here. Especially extensive is the list of French composers who have taken up the form of the suite again and again in the following years and further developed in one or more works, modified or redefined for themselves. Perhaps this reflects a typically French blend of traditionalism and innovative spirit. To name a few would be Camille Saint-Saens, Albert Roussel, Mau-rice Ravel, Jacques Ibert, Claude Debussy, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc. Wolfgang D�berlein studied at the "Mozarteum" in Salzburg (with Alfons Kontarsky) and at the Musikhochschule in W�rzburg (with Peter Hollfelder and Kirsti Hjort), where he also completed the masterclass with Andr�s Hamary. D�berlein is Professor at the College of Protestant church music Bayreuth.

After the suites by Johann Sebastian Bach in the early 18th century, nothing happened for a long time in the genre of works for solo cello. But the work that put an end to this period of no production was a weighty one: the almost monumental sonata by Zoltan Kodaly of 1915 set high standards for other composers. Indeed, subsequently not only many works were written, but also highly differing ones, among which the half-hour work by the Hungarian composer stands there like the “Mount Everest” (Daniel Muller-Schott). Together with works by Prokofiev, Hindemith, Henze, Crumb and Casals, Daniel Muller-Schott here introduces a work composed by himself for the first time: the “Cadenza” is to be understood in the tradition of those compositions that other cellists have always added to their recital programmes.

“Here, you can recognize influences of the solo works that have influenced me over the years. In the Cadenza, the contrasting elements of the world of my instrument appear in the closest space – the cello in pure lyricism, just as sequences catapulting themselves into the highest registers in rhythmical savagery and immediately concluding the movement after a final culmination.” (Daniel Muller-Schott)

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REVIEW:

Müller-Schott ends this formidable unaccompanied recital with Pablo Casals’s Song of the Birds, played with the intense focus, the sense of line and the gleaming purity of tone that characterises the whole disc. Müller-Schott’s ability to inflect a single line of music makes even works such as Prokofiev’s slightly dubious reconstructed Sonata and his own entertainingly eclectic Cadenza repay re-listening. He certainly has something to say.

– Gramophone

Period instruments such as the traverso, the Baroque violin, the viola da gamba and the harpsichord offer an incredibly wide palette of new sound possibilities suited to contemporary ears. From the early 1960s an increasing number of postmodernist composers began looking at these instruments as perfect tools to reconnect with both their audience and the music traditions from the past. Contemporary experimental “effects”, through the use of extended techniques and electronics, are proven able to create a fruitful dialogue with the perennial “affects” that baroque instruments are capable of arousing. Affect is no Crime explores the heterogeneity of this new path, presenting 5 world premiere recordings of 5 works written for these 4 instruments from 5 celebrated living composers, from 5 different countries: from Anspielungen by H.M. Linde, an atonal patchwork enriched with baroque quotations, to the ironic and microtonal Tiet/Lots by J. Tiensuu; from the neo-impressionistic La Fenêtre Ouverte by J. Fontyn to Revenant by J. Morlock, a modal and minimalist homage to Bach, passing through the experimental Sun Bleached with electronics, freshly commissioned from T. Polymeneas Liontiris.

Classical Music