A busy schedule as music director of the Bach Collegium Japan and sought-after guest conductor doesn’t stop Masaaki Suzuki from returning to his first loves, the organ and the harpsichord. With the present release he adds yet another chapter to his series of Bach’s works for solo harpsichord. After acclaimed recordings of the Well-tempered Clavier, the Goldberg variations, the French Suites and other works the turn has come to the English Suites. Composed while Bach was in his thirties it precedes other sets such as the French Suites and the Toccatas, and in his liner notes, Bach scholar Yo Tomita draws attention to 'the stylistic traits of a youthful and ambitious composer wanting to make his mark through the use of counterpoint and virtuosity'. Despite its title, the collection has very little to do with England, at least musically: the six suites are instead rooted in the French tradition, and show certain striking similarities to the composer Charles Dieupart’s Six Suites pour le Clavessin from 1701. (Bach made a copy of Dieupart's set sometime between 1709 and 1716.) It was only in the 19th century that the suites became known as the 'English', based on a never substantiated claim that the set was commissioned by an English nobleman.

This album pays homage to the guitar. While the casual listener may recognize many of these works as favorites from the guitar canon, the majority of the repertoire wasn’t originally written for the instrument.

Only the Sor and the Brouwer were originally guitar compositions. The other works started life in a different form, and stand testament to the strength and versatility of the guitar to not only play such a diverse range of repertoire, but to truly embrace it. With its polyphonic capabilities and roots in popular music around the world, the guitar is singularly capable of such a traverse of styles. This album is not, as the title may imply, a collection of the most beloved or greatest hits from the classical guitar repertoire, but instead a demonstration of the power and ability of the guitar to perform and assume ownership of such beloved repertoire.

New York-based Australian classical guitarist Rupert Boyd has been described by The Washington Post as “truly evocative”, by Gramophone as a “fine guitarist”, and by Classical Guitar Magazine as “a player who deserves to be heard”. He has performed across four continents, from New York’s Carnegie Hall, to festivals in Europe, China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, New Zealand and Australia. Active as both a soloist and chamber musician, Rupert Boyd regularly performs throughout the world in Boyd Meets Girl, with cellist Laura Metcalf, and as part of the Australian Guitar Duo with guitarist Jacob Cordover.

REVIEWS:

The sheer versatility of this instrument comes to the fore in a really eclectic selection, which traverses centuries of music from Bach to The Beatles in a sunny 60 minutes.

– BBC Music Magazine

Boyd is a very fine musician. His sense of line is beautifully showcased in Bach’s Suite, while his rhythmic acuity enlivens from the onset of Jobim’s Felicidade, performed here in Roland Dyens’s masterly arrangement. The final item, Boyd’s own technically assured arrangement of John Lennon’s ‘Julia’, makes for a quiet, slightly downbeat encore.

– Gramophone

The long-awaited release from the chamber ensemble Duo Sequenza, YES…IT’S A THING!, includes works by five critically acclaimed contemporary composers. David Noon is one of the most prolific composers in the U.S.; Jerry Owen’s numerous achievements include two Pulitzer Prize nominations; Jorge Muñiz has had his music performed by chamber ensembles, chorales and orchestras throughout the world; Marc Mellits is one of the leading American composers of his generation and one of the most performed and recorded living composers in the United States; and Amin Sharifi’s recent works have been performed in the United States, Europe, and his native Iran. The program opens with David Noon’s Partita Op. 103 containing four movements reminiscent of Baroque dance forms, capturing their rustic charm in a reimagined context that makes use of chromatic harmonic and lyric melodic materials. The soaring work Mesquanowat’, composed by Jerry Owen and named for the Mesquakie word for the red-tailed hawk, captures the spirit of both the majestic bird and the Mesquakie tribe. The two pieces that comprise Marc Mellits’ humbly named Two Pieces for Flute and Guitar highlight his unique musical style: an eclectic combination of driving rhythms, sumptuous lyricism, and vibrant orchestrations that combine to communicate deeply with the listener. “Fast” exploits changing meters and rhythmic minimalism in a way that is distinctively his own, while “Elegy for Lefty; Expressive” is compellingly poignant and haunting. Duets Exhibition, composed by Amin Sharifi, is comprised of a set of short pieces designed to put listeners inside an experience in which all their other senses are engaged beyond mere listening. The album concludes with Jorge Muñiz’s South Shore Suite, written as a metaphor for a journey on the South Shore Rail Line. It draws upon diverse musical elements from the Midwest and Indiana vernacular: jazz, blues, country, R&B, and even rock. Its first movement, “Prologue: South Bend, Indiana” establishes the train metaphor as a rhythmic ostinato with unexpected meter changes, and in its final movement, “Epilogue: Chicago,” played attacca, the sense of the train’s motion is more and more apparent as the train draws closer to its destination of Chicago.

The doyen of Australian guitarists, Timothy Kain, has always encouraged the creation of vibrant new music for the instrument and has worked closely over the years with the four composers presented here. In Richard Charlton’s ‘Sonata of Forgotten Dreams,’ non-standard tunings allow cascade-like harmonics to infuse the music, while Mark Isaacs contrasts jazz-like chords with classical color in Five Bagatelles. Phillip Houghton’s ‘The Goldfish Suite’ brings iridescent color and atmosphere, and ‘Mosstrooper Peak’ is Nigel Westlake’s alternately reflective and energetic solo piece evoking remote locations on the country’s east coast, shrines to the memory of his son.

Composer Mark Dal Porto's award-winning, neo-Romantic Song of Eternity for Orchestra starts off The Music Of Mark Dal Porto in epic fashion. If Mahler and Prokofiev had collaborated on a composition, it would probably have sounded a lot like this: pensive, evocative, and nostalgic. Song of Eternity describes the eternal renewal of nature with cinematic impact. It is inspired by an ancient Chinese poem, as is the next piece, I Seek Rest for My Lonely Heart for A-Cappella Choir. This work continues the subject of nature, albeit in a more individualized fashion, capturing the sentiment of a distressed soul in search of peace in a pastoral setting. But it isn't just Far Eastern poetry which Dal Porto sets to music. Western verse receives due attention as well, and it's quite a trip through the ages: Spring, the Sweet Spring is an enthusiastic anticipation of the end of winter, based on a poem by Elizabethan poet Thomas Nashe. On the other hand, German Romantic poet Clemens Brentano laid the conceptual groundwork for Dal Porto's musical adaptation When Your Song Rang Out to Me, an unbridled, joyful choir supported by a lively piano accompaniment. Dal Porto strikes a more personal note with Romance for Oboe and Piano, dedicated to his beloved wife, oboist Tracy Carr. He also demonstrates considerable humor in his Exotic Animals Suite for Woodwind Quintet, depicting warbling birds, crawling reptiles, and growling big cats. The final piece, Mystic Mountain, evokes the sublime sensation of one overlooking a vast landscape after a breathtaking ascent to a mountaintop – with an intensity that is both uncanny and awesome. Caspar David Friedrich's "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog" immediately springs to mind, and indeed, if one were to liken the Romantic painting to an album – The Music Of Mark Dal Porto would be it.

This new release presents an absorbing portrait of Abel Carlevaro (1916-2001) through his music as performed by Cristiano Poli Cappelli, an Italian guitarist making his second album for Brilliant Classics. The first was of guitar music by another relatively forgotten figure, Alexander Tansman, and it was enthusiastically reviewed by Classical Guitar magazine: ‘Highly recommended!’ Like Tansman, Carlevaro studied with Andres Segovia, the father of the modern guitar, during the 1930s. However, he broke away from his master’s teachings in order to make his own experiments in both guitar manufacture and composition. His music caught the ear of Heitor Villa-Lobos, another South American innovator, and it embraces the widest stylistic range captured by Poli Cappelli on this album, from the delicate watercolours of the Preludios Americanos (1969-74) to the vivid brushstrokes and abstract form of Cronomias (1972). Carlevaro’s later music returned often to the milonga, a tango-related dance popularised in the classical sphere by Astor Piazzolla. Milonga para Ling (1999) is brief but saturated with melancholy, while to the Milonga Oriental (1994) belongs one of the composer’s happiest melodic inspirations. Later still, a pair of milonga suites describe a peaceful return to the composer’s heritage. An essential acquisition for guitar aficionados, but also a collection of beautiful South American melodies that deserve to travel more widely.

The promise of rebirth and rejuvenation is celebrated by SOMM Recordings’ Songs of Renewal, a collection of choral works – including three first recordings – by seven living British composers performed by Bath Camerata under musical director Benjamin Goodson. Joining the ensemble are soprano Elizabeth Cragg and composer-pianist Huw Watkins, whose Shakespeare setting The Phoenix and the Turtle (2014) moves puissantly from monotone chanting to solemn chorale for an allegorical poem mourning the passing of ideal love. Commissioned by Bath Camerata to mark its 30th anniversary in 2017, the disc’s title track is a three-movement choral suite by Will Todd reflecting his interest in jazz music and featuring lyrics by the composer and former UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. The earliest work, Jonathan Dove’s The Passing of the Year (2000), is a rich and varied tribute to the composer’s late mother cast in seven sections and setting an eclectic array of texts by William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Nashe and others. To words by E.E. Cummings, Judith Weir’s a blue true dream of a sky (2003) is, says English music specialist Jeremy Dibble in his booklet notes, “a revelation of the divine”. Cecilia McDowall’s Standing as I do before God is a moving centennial tribute to the British nurse Edith Cavell executed by the German army in 1915. Two pieces by long-time SOMM collaborator, composer-baritone Roderick Williams, complete the disc. The setting of George Herbert’s Eucharistic poem Love bade me welcome (2007) is, in Jeremy Dibble’s words, “an harmonically sumptuous, largely homophonic narrative” that speaks of atonement and redemption. Commissioned by Bath Camerata in 2018, Everyone Sang sets a familiar text by First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon in a poignant and powerful riposte to the futility of war that holds out the curative promise that “the singing will never be done”.

The chamber music of contemporary American composer Truman Harris is informed by his experience as an orchestral musician; it is idiomatic, exciting, and frequently cast for unusual combinations of instruments. One such example is the unique Sonata for Two Bassoons and Piano, flavored with jazz, romance, and waltz-like elegance. Rosemoore Suite is a captivating ‘story without words’ moving from nostalgia to vitality, and the two Concertinos explore rich lyricism and playful virtuosity. Vibrant colors and a sense of vivid fantasy suffuse the radiant Aulos Triptych. The Eclipse Chamber Orchestra is well-known for its exceptional performances and diverse repertoire. Founded in 1992, and comprised of 22 members of the world-renowned National Symphony Orchestra, the membership also represents a convergence of instrumentalists from chamber ensembles based in Washington, DC, including the American Chamber Players, the Capitol Woodwind Quintet, and the Chamber Soloists of Washington.

Spring Forward, the delightful title work by multi-talented Peter Schickele, is a gift to the composer/ humorist’s many worldwide fans. This touching Suite represents a culmination of sorts “after a lifetime of entering sketches for such a piece into my notebooks,” Schickele writes in his entertaining program notes. Richard Danielpour’s moving Clarinet Quintet (“The Last Jew in Hamadan”) was composed with Danielpour’s memories of his childhood in Iran in mind. (The members of his family who escaped the country were the lucky ones.) Aaron Jay Kernis’ intriguing Perpetual Chaconne reflects his fascination with the variety of approaches composers have used to develop and vary their ideas over the ages.

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REVIEW:

It was a surprise to learn that Peter Schickele was 79 when he wrote Spring Forward. It sounds very much what you would expect from a young composer, so Schickele is obviously still young at heart. He is also a humourist, and that also shows in this truly magical and delightful quintet.

The quintet is in five movements, each an absolute delight. Once you know about Schickele’s humourist side, you can see where the fun he injects into the composition comes from. He is clearly a worthy successor to both Gerard Hoffnung and Victor Borge.

Richard Danielpour is an extremely thoughtful tunesmith with some truly original ideas. This quintet is no exception, with its intriguing subtitle The Last Jew in Hamadan. Hamadan is a town in Iran where the composer’s father and maternal grandfather were born. It once had a sizeable Jewish population, and is in fact the biblical city of Esther. But over time that population has shrunk so much that once — on reading in the New York Times that there were but 13 Jews still living there — Richard Danielpour realised that there would soon be none at all left. Hence his telling title.

There is a sad and fragile beauty in this music that is infectious, along with a sense of regret that things have changed so much for the worse since 1979. The music peters out as if all energy has been lost.

Aaron Jay Kernis's quintet begins lyrically enough but soon becomes full of nervous energy and restlessness, which slows down when the theme seems to have become worn out. It then gathers a new momentum. Its lyricism returns for much of this second period but eventually the fractious nature resumes. The theme appears as a fragmented entity which then once again seems to run out of steam in the quintet’s closing minutes, and the work fades away to a whispered ending. I wish my musical understanding was sufficient to discuss the technical side but I can say that I enjoyed it, and always applaud composers who continue to explore new ways of expression.

All three quintets are performed by three extremely talented ensembles. The unifying element is David Shifrin as clarinettist. This hugely experienced performer rises to every challenge in these three quite different works, and everyone involved in the entire project deserves accolades for their performances. This is a disc that challenges the listener to give the closest attention to the music but pays off in a rewarding experience of three composers all of whom have produced thoroughly engaging and contrasting works.

– MusicWeb International (Steve Arloff)

When Torbjorn Iwan Lundquist in 1962 was asked to compose the music score for the screen adaptation of Selma Lagerlof's Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (Adventures of Nils Holgersson), he was already a well-known composer of film music. By 1954 he had written the scores for 16 films, and three other movies with his music were premiered the same year as Nils Holgersson. In 1962, Lundquist was engaged to compose the music for the grandiose and lavish 'Adventure of Nils Holgersson,' an adaptation of Selma Lagerlof's novel, directed by Kenne Fant. It was to be a film in color with stunning aerial photographs of Sweden and with music by Lundquist. It was actually the first time a complete soundtrack in a Swedish film was released on LP. The Suite from this score is paired here with the Suites from Gosta Berling's saga as well as some additional movements which were used in radio dramas.

“Celesta” is a suite of a dozen quietly transcendent, gem-like celesta solos by noted Los Angeles composer Michael Jon Fink, who also performs them. As each piece unfolds, revealing itself through elegantly fashioned variation, the listener is drawn into a highly nuanced, lyrical sound world. Taken as a whole, the collection creates its own graceful musical arc, and is certainly among the largest statements ever composed for the celesta alone. The album was recorded on one of Los Angeles’s finest five-octave Schiedmayer celestas. Fink’s usually quiet, lyrical music has been described by the “Los Angeles Times” as “lustrous,” “metaphysically tinged” and “unapologetically tranquil.” LA Weekly has written that his music is “of ethereal simplicity . . . he has shaped and refined his spare style greatly—it is distinctly his own.”

Alberto Nepomuceno was a herald of Brazilian musical nationalism. He was one of the first composers in his country to employ elements of folklore in his compositions, he encouraged younger composers such as Villa-Lobos, and his music was conducted by Richard Strauss. The Prelude to O Garatuja, an incomplete opera, is one of his best-known works and an example of a truly Brazilian lyric comedy. Serie Brasileira is a vivacious suite that employs maxixe rhythms and ends with the feverish batuque dance, while the Symphony in G minor is one of the earliest such examples by a Brazilian, a heroic and lyric structure revealing the influence of Brahms.

REVIEW:

Alberto Nepomuceno (1864-1920) was a major force in the development of Brazilian music at the turn of the twentieth century. He worked as a composer, conductor, and educator, tirelessly promoting Brazilian music and the use of Portuguese as an “art language.” The three orchestral works presented here are typical of his work. The Prelude to O Garatuja (1904), an incomplete lyric comedy, uses obvious national themes and offers nine minutes of high-spirited fun as well as a lightness and elegance found in all of the pieces on this disc.

The Brazilian Suite of 1891 had me immediately thinking “Grieg,” and it came as no surprise to learn that Nepomuceno befriended the Norwegian composer during his studies in Europe and saw him as a model. All the same, the work is beautifully scored and in several places quite personal in expression–its four movements representing “Dawn at the Mountains,” a gentle Brazilian dance intermezzo, “Napping in a Hammock,” and a gutsy concluding “Batuque” with a notable part for some native percussion (a reco-reco, or guiro).

Nepomuceno’s Symphony in G minor dates from 1893, the same year as Dvorák’s “New World.” It’s a much more conservative piece than that, although the opening movement has a nice rhythmic swing to it, and both the slow movement and scherzo feature characterful melodic ideas. The scherzo, in particular, mixes a sort of Mendelssohnian delicacy with sudden military interjections from the trumpets and timpani that are very effective. The finale, though, as with so many late romantic symphonies, disappoints. It’s based on the rhythm of the first allegro in Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony, repeated endlessly. Despite a charming second subject, the movement never really gets off the ground, and the ending, with piccolo, cymbals and triangle making a predictable entrance, is unmotivated and ineffective. A good effort, in other words, but a true symphonist Nepomuceno evidently was not, and that’s no crime.

The Minas Gerais Philharmonic, a relatively new group founded only in 2008, plays all of this music very well under Fabio Mechetti. The ensemble has good discipline, and reveals some fine players occupying the principal woodwind and brass chairs. They are also quite well recorded in what sounds like a flattering acoustic space, the Sala Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte. I look forward to further releases from these forces. Minas Gerais is a region perhaps best known as a source of gems and minerals for collectors, and I’m happy to report that the region’s jewels include more than just the rocky kind. Nepomuceno’s output may have been uneven, but his music is worth getting to know, and a disc like this offers an ideal introduction.

– ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

Jeff Morris's second album, With Strings, explores the possibilities of 21st-century counterpoint. He builds up rich musical textures by sampling violin and cello live and folding them back into the mix, influencing the performers in turn. German electric cellist Ulrich Maiss, a former collaborator of Lou Reed and Al Di Meola, joins Morris on B4ch1007 ("Bach Loot"). The piece is a vivid, glitchy fantasy on J. S. Bach's music, with inspiration from Lou Reed's classic Metal Machine Music and a video graphic score reminiscent of early experimental film by Hans Richter. Morris uses sound to visually distort the manuscript of Bach's famous Cello Suite, yielding a new musical score to read. This audiovisual reimagining is native to our time while gleaning some underlying musical intuition from the flow of Bach's music. Eric KM Clark (Southland Ensemble, California E.A.R. Unit) performs a tryptich of improvised works in different interactive environments: a virtual string quintet, a tangled strand of echoes, and a microscopic journey inside the materials that make up the violin itself. Morris controls these musical constructs live, which are inspired by a house of mirrors and Einstein's daydream of riding beside a beam of light. Using control interfaces like a gamepad and Nintendo Wii Remotes (Wiimotes), Morris takes a variety of roles in the music, ranging from a performer alongside Clark to a digital conductor of his own software orchestra. This is not your ordinary laid-back "strings" music. Rather, it is a vibrant journey through the possibilities of digital-native chamber music that is sure to light up your imagination.

Within their varied appearances and sounds, the piano, vibraphone, and marimba make up a unique family. Nonetheless, key similarities bind them together, and Sustain explores just that. The latest multi-composer release by Navona Records, Sustain presents works for various keyboards that explore not only the abilities of each instrument, but the varied approaches from five different composers. John Dante Prevedini’s Lyme Sonata begins the album, looking at the sonic interplay between smooth and jagged musical voices on piano. Robert Thomas’ Moto Perpetuo and Sixteen Lines Circling a Square create an audial puzzle on solo marimba and on marimba and vibraphone, respectively. Working through layered structures, each piece involves finding the answer to some mental and sonic games. Willem Van Twillert’s Adagio for Piano and Andante for Antoinette presents the composer’s serene, smooth, and in this case romantic, approach to writing music. Daniel Adams introduces Solstice Introspect for three vibraphones. Inspired by the feelings conjured up by the winter solstice, where the day is at its darkest and feelings of both peace and unsettlement are stirred up, the three vibraphones play with the opposing forces of movement and stillness. John A. Carollo’s Piano Etudes and Piano Suite No. 9 take listeners on a multifaceted journey inspired by the romantic sensibilities of Franz Liszt, the intensity and mischievousness of author Edward Gorey’s story Doubtful Guest, and more. SUSTAIN demonstrates all that the keyboard is able to present, as well as all its composers are able to pull from the instrument. From soft to striking, from smooth to jagged, Sustain gives it all, and everything in between.

Gottlieb Muffat, youngest son of composer and Kapellmeister Georg Muffat, was a keyboard virtuoso whose career was based around the Viennese Imperial Court. Muffat, with his own elegantly ornamented style, absorbing influences from Germany, France and Italy, is remembered as a composer from whom Handel borrowed extensively- a common practice of the period. These premiere recordings represent the remarkable rediscovery of manuscripts sequestered and dispersed after the Second World War. Naoko Akutagawa's previous recordings from Muffat's Componimenti musicali were described by MusicWeb International as 'galvanically virtuosic.' Naoko Akutagawa was born in Hiroshima in 1974, and began playing piano at the age of three. At 16 she switched to the harpsichord, studying first at the Toho Gakuen School of Music, and then at the Hochschule fur Musik Wurzburg, Germany, as a student of Glen Wilson. Her recordings have been broadcast by the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.