For the Cordas et Bentu Duo, Sardinia has always been a source of inspiration; the ensemble’s name, Sardinian for “strings and wind”, is an homage to the island’s culture. Apeddu and Luciani’s mission to find original compositions connected to their roots began after hearing the stunning Acabbadora for guitar by Francesco Morittu, and the Duo would commission a new work from him: Attítus for alto flute and guitar. That was the first step in a project that went on to see them commission a range of composers from Sardinia and beyond to write music celebrating Sardinia. Traditionally, families would gather in front of the fire after dinner to tell each other stories from legends and ancient myths. Contos de foghile (Tales from the fireside), by the Sardinian composer Roberto Piana, is divided into four short episodes, each dedicated to a different story. The island’s fascinating mythology includes epic tales, monstrous creatures and legendary beings, and without a doubt the key players in these fables are the Janas, beautiful little creatures with a dark side – at times fairies or witches – who have extremely delicate skin that must avoid sunlight. These five short compositions depict a few moments from the lives of these mythological creatures, from the moment they wake until the dawn, when they go back into their caves to avoid being burned. According to Sardinian tradition, the Attítus are laments sung by wailers at a funeral. These dirges are highly repetitive in nature but can change suddenly and take on a very different tone depending on what the singer wants to express about the deceased. This piece is made up of four episodes. Composed at the height of lockdown in March 2020, it came from the need to give grant some mental space to death, understood in cultural rather than biological terms. As the title suggests, Memorie di Nora is a piece that takes inspiration from the archaeological site of the same name and is intended to evoke a possible imagined past for it. The composition, formally a fantasia, is made up of several parts that flow seamlessly from one to the next, invoking ancient rituals and dances as if to celebrate their survival in the traces of temples and mosaics overlooking the sea. Ammentos de siddhàdos et janas (Memories of treasures and fairies) is a short suite, originally titled Three Sardinian impressions, that expresses the composer’s emotions, thoughts and memories from his brief stay on the island. A unique piece inspired by the birthplace of the musicians to whom it is dedicated, Concertino di Alghero is an homage to Maria Chessa Lai, a primary school teacher and poet who wrote predominantly in Algherese. This dialect, an ancient branch of Catalan, is a linguistic island within an island. The work’s three movements trace a musical outline of one of many possible readings of Maria Chessa Lai’s Algherese poem En Dins De Mi.

New Czech recordings of perennially popular serenades from the pen of Dvorak at a turning point in his career, full of freshness, Bohemian charm and flowing melodies. The Serenades for Strings and Winds never get old, and never lose their appeal, especially in the hands of musicians who feel this music in their bones. The opening of the Serenade for Strings issues the warmest welcome to a world poised between the 18th and 19th centuries, looking back in terms of its reassuring character as music for nocturnal entertainment, yet also unmistakably belonging to the Czech composer’s own place and time – Prague, 1875 – with its Bohemian turn of harmony and yearning cantabile. Composed three years later as a counterpart, the Serenade for Winds marks a development in the composer’s technique – more elegant handling of counterpoint and melodic development – from the earlier work. At the same time, the Mozartian air of good-natured humour is even stronger. Both serenades relax into slow movements of poetry without pathos, and each of them was composed within less than a fortnight’s work, testifying to the inspiration felt by the composer as he worked at his material. The melodies seem to come, as Richard Strauss later said of himself, as easily as a cow giving milk.

The Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra Pardubice has made several albums of Czech repertoire for Brilliant Classics and Piano Classics, most recently the neglected Piano Concerto of Dvorak (PCL10272), as well as the complete piano concertante works of Chopin with Ekaterina Litvinseva, and the Cello Concerto of Dvorak (95696). The recording was made under studio conditions in the orchestra’s home concert hall, yielding a warm, transparent sound which is ideally suited to these intimate pieces.

This new album presents a delightful selection of Poulenc’s piano music, starting with the intriguing little Valse (1919) from L’Album des Six, which first presented in published form the collective of Franco-Swiss composers who came to be known under that title. As the fruit of a trip to Italy in the company of Darius Milhaud, a fellow Les Six-er, Napoli is a suite written in 1925 and presenting Italian forms through the light of Poulenc’s irrepressible personality.
More affecting are the eight Nocturnes, composed between 1929 and 1938, and the three Novelettes (1927-1959), while the ’Six petites pièces enfantines’ that make up the Villageoises of 1933 share the a spirit of gentle playfulness with Poulenc’s popular musical tale, Babar the Elephant. One day when Poulenc was improvising on the piano, his cousin’s little girl exclaimed: “Grandfather, it’s so boring when you play like that, why don’t you play us this?”. And in 1945, once the dreadful war years were over, Poulenc was happy to oblige.
The Trois Mouvements perpetuels are early pieces, a product of the kaleidoscopic ‘harlequin years’ of Paris in the 1920s. The three movements reveal a musical freshness and fluidity somewhat reminiscent of Satie, whose individualistic approach to life and art inspired the members of Les Six, to whom he served as a kind of honorary president. Finally, Poulenc evokes the spirit of Bach returns in a surprising guise in the Valse-Improvisation sur le nom de Bach, a piece bursting with vitality, in perfect keeping with the famous pianist Vladimir Horowitz, to whom it was dedicated.
Two previous albums by Chiara Cipelli on Brilliant Classics and Piano Classics have won enthusiastic praise from reviewers in Fanfare magazine. The piano music of Bruno Bettinelli is ‘presented with wonderful vigour and colour by the fine young Lombardy native Chiara Cipelli’ (95801), while ‘Cipelli’s technical capabilities are impressive throughout’ her selection of early Messiaen pieces (PCL10200).

My selection of works by Rameau, Rachmaninoff and Bach for this album weaves a tapestry of nostalgia for a Golden Age — an epoch of eternal beauty and purity in which time itself has a completely different meaning.
I have placed the works non-chronologically and in a tripartite form in order to present not only a better perception of time’s effects on the artist, performer and listener but also its presence in essence thanks to the composer’s art: Rameau’s Suite in G from his Nouvelles Suites de pièces de clavecin functions as a type of prelude, Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a theme of Corelli as the central element, and Bach’s French Suite in B minor as a postlude.
The time frames of the two Baroque cycles that open and close the album are extremely flexible; music of this period never seems to hurry — it is as if the com­poser is saying “Take your time — you have plenty of it — and breathe as freely as you want”. Rachmaninoff, however, pushes us out of our comfort zone, squeezing time like a spring or stopping it completely while reflecting upon the cruelty of the outside world and the harm that it does to harmony and beauty. I decided not to end this recording with the Variations on a theme of Corelli, given the work’s powerful emotional charge; the suite by Bach that concludes the album returns us to a state of harmony and gives us hope that there is time enough.
Konstantin Emelyanov

In Puccini’s anniversary year, Chief Conductor of Welsh National Opera Carlo Rizzi has created new, purely orchestral versions of some of his most well-known and beloved works. Staying pure and faithful to Puccini’s original orchestration without anything added to ‘cover’ any perceivable lack of vocal line the brilliance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Tosca and other works shine through in this album of world premiere recordings.

REVIEW:

This fabulous album of world premiere recordings is just exhilarating from start to finish. I do hope that by the end of the year Maestro Rizzi will give us other orchestral suites, say, from La bohème or Turandot. I am sure they will be welcomed most enthusiastically.

This is an irresistible programme full of shimmering melodies that help us to really discover Puccini’s orchestral mastery which is often overshadowed by the singing and heartwrenching drama of the stories. This exceptionally innovative music that strongly enhances the total mastery of Puccini’s art is not to be missed.

-- Classical Music Daily

Suite italienne is the brainchild of violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha – his second album on Linn – and the Swiss ensemble CHAARTS Chamber Artists. With Italy as the common thread through each of the three works, the riotous programme includes the premiere recording of Sollima’s TYCHE, a violin concerto that was composed specifically for Jonian. Echoing Jonian and Sollima’s mixed roots, the work absorbs musical ideas from different sources and, as the title suggests, reflects on the Greek goddess of fate, or the Italian equivalent Fortuna, and the ambivalence of life itself. The title work, Suite italienne from Stravinsky’s ballet Pulcinella, is performed here in an arrangement for string orchestra, harpsichord and violin; its playful style calls to mind the Commedia dell’arte. Vivaldi’s ‘Il Grosso Mogul’ concerto, likely named after one of the largest diamonds to have ever existed, completes the programme and finds in Jonian one of its most flamboyant champions.

Composed by Phil Scarff and performed by world-jazz ensemble Natraj, RAGAMALA PAINTINGS ALIVE! shines a contemporary light on historic artwork from India. The members of Natraj individually and collectively bring a wealth of experience exploring the intersection of jazz and global musical traditions. Their stunning performance showcased in this release is wide ranging, deep, and accessible, while firmly rooted in the rich tapestry of Indian classical music. RAGAMALA PAINTINGS ALIVE! is part of a larger multimedia work created in collaboration with Indian classical dancer Jayshree Bala Rajamani, incorporating dance, music, spoken word, and projected images. It brings to life historic ragamala paintings, with each painting representing one Indian classical raga or melodic framework. Inspired by Modest Mussorgsky and his iconic work, Pictures at an Exhibition, Scarff threads the suite together with musical “promenades” that represent the viewer entering and moving about an art gallery, with each theme anticipating a painting or set of paintings to come. Whether heard on its own or experienced as a full multimedia performance, RAGAMALA PAINTINGS ALIVE! takes listeners on a compelling contemporary journey that celebrates classic ragamala paintings from India.

The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra can with justification be regarded as ‘Sibelius’s own orchestra’, as it was this orchestra, usually conducted by the composer, that premièred most of his major works. On this disc of three such pieces, the orchestra is conducted by Susanna Malkki; the recording follows on from their three acclaimed albums devoted to the music of Bartók.

Although they were all later revised, the three works on this recording all originated within a very short period in Sibelius’s career: the years 1893–96, a time when he was beginning to establish himself as a composer and a time of national awakening.

One of his most popular works, the Karelia Suite is drawn from a series of tableaux that evoked events in the history of Karelia, the region where Finland and Russia meet. In late 19th-century Finland, the promotion of Karelian folk culture was both fashionable and politically relevant. The short suite Rakastava [The Lover] is a subtle reworking of a work for male voices based on lyrical poems from the collection Kanteletar; Sibelius often conducted it in concert. Sibelius often drew inspiration from the Finnish national epic Kalevala, and episodes from this poem provide the subject matter of Lemminkainen, a substantial four-movement suite (including the captivating Swan of Tuonela) that recounts the adventures of a daredevil hero, a sort of Nordic Don Juan.

REVIEWS:

Mälkki and the orchestra remarkably conjure the dark, swirling soundworld of ‘Lemminkäinen in Tuonela’ (the Hades of Finnish legend). And the concluding ‘Lemminkäinen’s Return’ canters along in roistering style.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Susanna Mälkki and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra produce wellcrafted, beautifully detailed accounts on a par with rival versions – including the Helsinki orchestra’s own with Segerstam (with warm Ondine sound) from the mid-1990s.

-- Gramophone

Leonard Slatkin released multiple albums on the Vox label. These classic Vox recordings of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky (sung in English) and Lieutenant Kijé have been praised as ‘powerful and compelling performances’. Produced by the legendary Elite Recordings team of Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz who made some of the finest sounding examples of orchestral recordings.

REVIEW:

Despite having been conceived and composed as film scores, these two key works by Sergei Prokofiev stand perfectly well on their own, and are prime examples of the Russian musical landscape during the Soviet era. Written in 1939 and 1934 respectively, they are perfect entry points within Prokofiev’s output.

Alexander Nevsky is a stirring dramatic cantata of epic proportion, scored for mezzo-soprano, chorus, and orchestra. It’s a tour de force in orchestral writing, and conductor Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony capture and project all of its brutal magnificence.

On the other hand, Lieutenant Kijé presents Prokofiev’s lighter side, as it depicts in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, the life and times of a fictional or nonexistent army officer. It’s good to hear the rarely performed or recorded original version with voice for a change. Slatkin and the orchestra musicians fully convey a fictional life well spent, during the closing “Burial of Kijé” segment.

During the early years of stereo recordings Vox Classics, along with Mercury Living Presence, Everest, and Vanguard Records, had a notable reputation for producing audiophile quality recordings. This 1977/79 recording is one of them. This is a new 192 kHz / 24-bit high definition transfer of the original Elite Recordings analogue master tapes. The Elite Recordings for Vox by legendary producers Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz are considered by audiophiles to be amongst the finest sounding examples of orchestral recordings. In my opinion, they deliver a somewhat more tangible and realistic sound than most of the recent digital productions.

-- Classical Music Sentinel (Jean-Yves Duperron)

Sebastián Cruz possesses one of the most distinctive voices in the flamenco world today. He started out earning a living as a slaughterman, but has always had a deep-rooted connection to music and to the natural world of his native Andalusia. His life was changed when, a few years ago, he came across the film"Tous les matins du monde", starring Gérard Depardieu as Marin Marais, with its soundtrack of works by Marin Marais and Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe performed by Jordi Savall. From that moment onwards, the music of these pioneering Baroque composers, which had touched him with such unique intensity, filled his mind as he spent time in the Huelva countryside with his beloved greyhounds and horses.

On this album, Cruz explores a century and more of flamenco history, venturing into a new soundworld and creating musical poems that express his innermost being. Open to an array of influences, he pushes the strict boundaries of flamenco tradition with incomparable vocal passion and emotional depth. Sebastián Cruz sees flamenco with his heart and, together with kindred spirit Raúl Cantizano, his friend and musical director, forges breathtaking music that speaks to both body and soul. (Translation: Susannah Howe)

Before the actual recording of the album, which took place in Seville, there was only a working title. The album title"Zarabanda" was created only during the production. The sarabande is a courtly, mostly instrumental dance form of baroque music since the middle of the 17th century. This dance inspired several composers to write expressive compositions and later became a standard movement of the Baroque suite ... but the once frivolous dance became popular in non-courtly circles in the Spanish colonies much earlier, before it made its way back across the Atlantic to Spain. Although the dance was banned in Spain in 1583 for its obscenity, it has been frequently cited in the literature of the time [e.g. in works by Lope de Vega, who penned some of the lyrics selected for this album].

With incomparable depth and voice, Sebastián Cruz breaks with the strict flamenco tradition and, together with his congenial partner Raúl Cantizano, transcends musical boundaries that have been firmly drawn for over a hundred years. He is assisted by the exceptional guitarists Rafael Riqueni and Alfredo Lagos, as well as bassist Marco Serrato, who, like Raúl Cantizano, enriches this work with very special timbres.

SOMM RECORDINGS announces the first volume of Prokofiev Milestones, featuring three characterful sonatas and a sparkling arrangement of music from Romeo and Juliet performed by violinists Lana Trotovšek and Boris Bizjak (who also doubles on flute) accompanied by Maria Canyigueral on piano.

Prokofiev Milestones revealingly turns the focus away from the prolific composer’s famed orchestral works and celebrated ballets to his rich and varied chamber music.
First performed in 1943, the Sonata for Flute and Piano (Op.94) is, as Robert Matthew-Walker comments in his notes, “music not of war, but of peace”; a pastoral escape laced with wit and mischief vouchsafed within a pristine neo-classical frame. It is heard again, transformed, in Prokofiev’s own transcription for Violin and Piano (Op.94a). Composed soon after, it lays claim to being “one of the finest 20th-century works in the genre and a genuine masterpiece”.

The Sonata for Two Violins (Op.56) is heard in a new arrangement by Boris Bizjak that eloquently makes much of its sentimentality, drama and vitality.A characterful suite drawn from Romeo and Juliet, and arranged for violin and piano by Lidia Baich and Matthias Fletzberger, revels in Shakespeare’s great romance and Prokofiev’s ardent response to it.
Maria Canyigueral is making her SOMM Recordings debut. Lana Trotovšek and Boris Bizjak’s previous SOMM release was Hoffmeister’s Magic Flute (SOMMCD 0620) with the Piatti Quartet, of which Gramophone approvingly noted: “the challenge falls firmly on the performers… Bizjak, Trotovšek and their accomplices… meet the music’s technical demands admirably”.

Last volume of Ravel

On a previous volume of this, the most complete survey of Ravel´s piano music ever recorded, Oleg Marshev “sails through thickets of tremolos and relentless arpeggios, yet remains attuned to the composer´s sensual harmonic language (Gramophone). The final volume brings the composer's oblique homages to the world of ancient régime Paris, in his dance suite after Couperin, and the Vienna of Schubert and Johanns Strauss in constrasting transformations of the waltz. Marshev is a phenomenon.

- BBC Music Magazine

Lalo considered himself to be first and foremost an opera composer, even though Le Roi d’Ys was his only opera to be performed in his lifetime. He is now best known for his symphonic and chamber music, largely because of the highly political musical establishment in France in his time. The Overture to the opera (which opens this album) is now the best-known music from the piece, which proved a considerable success in France. His ballet Namouna was commissioned by the Paris Opéra and, remarkably, was completed in just four months following extensive delays in agreeing the subject – part of the tales of Casanova. After a successful run of fifteen performances, Lalo parcelled the music up into three ‘rhapsodies’ for orchestral performance. The first two of these were published as Suites Nos 1 and 2. The third was not published, but the ‘Valse de le Cigarette’ was later issued separately. Lalo’s only surviving Symphony was completed in 1886, but somewhat overshadowed by Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony (1886) and Franck’s Symphony in D minor (1888), but it is a strong work that showcases Lalo’s melodic gift and forward-looking harmonic palette.

In this recording, the expert violists of Phantasm return to the unconventional yet brilliant polyphonist Matthew Locke. Under the guidance of Laurence Dreyfus, Phantasm presents the second half of Locke’s Little Consort, composed for treble, tenor and bass viol, and pairs it with three suites from the Flat Consort for my cousin Kemble whose unusual grouping comprises treble and two bass viols. Both sets are accompanied by a chordal bass instrument, in this instance the leading theorbo player Elizabeth Kenny. Locke’s experimental, not to say libertarian, impulse pervades the works, and yet the composer remains grounded in the traditional ethos of strict counterpoint, standing as one of the last champions of the once treasured great polyphonic tradition. More than 400 years later, his music remains as fresh as ever.

Learn more about this recording on the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast!

Mandolinist Alon Sariel continues his series of Bach transcriptions with Plucked Bach II. On his first Plucked Bach album, Sariel played the Cello Suites on a wide range of plucked instruments. Yet in this new recording, he performs works for the lute, organ and violin - all performed on 'only' two types of mandolins. By offering a distinctive and groundbreaking interpretation of his own transcriptions and arrangements, Sariel manages to breathe new life into some very well-known works by Johann Sebastian Bach.

The iconoclast Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565) for the organ receives a contemplative and intimate character on the mandolin. Excerpts of the Lute Suite (BWV 998) and the Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major (BWV 1006) are drawn in a whole new palette of colors. For Bach's Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Minor (BWV 1003), Alon Sariel shows the in-credible suitability of the mandolin for Bach's music. And as an encore, you will hear his rendition of Ysaÿe's dazzling Obsession. Alon Sariel is one of today's most versatile performers, known as a multi-instrumentalist in the realm of plucked strings with a growing reputation as a fascinating Bach interpreter.